I was suddenly caught without my external memory field, without reliable communications, and without any way to reliably deal with the information that was coming into my life. I had come to depend on this technology, and then it failed.

A lot of things fell through the cracks: phone calls, doctor’s appointments, email exchanges.

[For those of you wondering, I did manage to recover the data. But if you sent me email last week and didn't hear back, it might be a good idea to resend it!]

The result, though, was an opportunity to ponder, first hand, one of the darker sides of technology…

My first reaction, honestly, was to feel a deeper sympathy for the Cassandras of the digital age who say that we will become dependent on our technologies, and if, heaven forbid, we ever lose them we will become helpless.

Well, OK. My first reaction was actually a long stream of obscenities. But my first rational reaction was  to think about the Cassandra argument.

And, yes, it was an awful week, and some important things got lost. But I also realized (once again) that the Cassandra argument has a fatal flaw in it:

The Cassandras of the digital age don’t weigh the conditional probabilities in their calculation.

What I realized is that, yes, this week was awful because of a failure of technology and my dependence on it. But that was one week of one year.

The other 51 weeks of this year–and the 52 weeks of the year before that, and the year before that, and the year before that–were much better because of the technology. Much much better.

To be sure, the Cassandras are right that we have to take steps to protect ourselves from the most catastrophic failures of technology. Backing up my hard drive and iPhone regularly, for example, made this much less of a fatal meltdown than it could have been.

But you have to weigh the likelihood and frequency of failure into the cost/benefit calculation of becoming “dependent” on technology.

I was once at a meeting where Alan Kay argued that science was more important than literature by asking:

If you were stranded on a tropical island, would you rather have a topological map of the island, or a map of Tolkein’s Middle Earth?

To which my friend and colleague Rick Borovoy answered:

Most of the time when I am on a tropical island, I am at a beach resort, and there I’d rather have the Lord of the Rings than a science textbook.

[Added Jan 30] For the record, Alan doesn’t remember it quite that way, and I am not trying to put words in his mouth! See the comments below….

But, yes, when my Microsoft Exchange server fails, I would rather have my datebook on paper. Most of the time, though, I am much better off trying to manage information electronically.

Similarly, when people argue that kids need to learn basic math facts so they can give the right change if the cash register breaks down, you have to ask what they are giving up so they can be prepared for the relatively few times they might face that particular kind of emergency….

I was reminded of this is a very concrete way last week when I took my daughter and one of her friends to a synchronized swimming meet for their team, which is the first synchro meet I had ever been to. I did it because this is something that my daughter cares about. Something that she wants to spend time on. An interest that I want to share with her, even if I don’t hold it as an interest of my own.

Now, please don’t get me wrong: I have nothing against synchro as a sport. But driving an hour and a half and sitting for over two hours to…

Oh, well, rather than trying to explain, I’ll just copy my liveblog of the event below, which I imagine is not that different from how many parents experience watching their first videogame. It was really confusing, and a lot of it seemed pretty trivial to me as an outsider. But it was fun for my daughter, and in the end brings us closer together and lets me help shape her experience of that part of her life.

For those who don’t want to read below the jump, the point is: as a parent we do all kinds of things that our kids love but we don’t. And just like the decision to go see the latest Disney movie, whether you as a parent like to play computer games is not the last word on whether your could or should play them with your kids.

17.15 getting here was no problem, although it did take a few circuits in the parking lot to figure out which entrance to use.

17.20 as soon as we got inside the girls joined a group of their teammates an disappeared into the locker. My daughter had been saying she was nervous, but there wasn’t even really a moment to wish her luck. Little more than a chauffeur I am.

17.23 I looked at the signup sheets outside the pool, but they were singularly uninformative. Looks like there are maybe 30 kids in the meet? Or only 30 younger kids? Really, who can tell?

17.35 another dad in the bleachers suggests not losing sight of your kid, since they are all in the same outfit: black bathing suit and white cap. To my credit I can recognize my daughter’s stroke in the water during warm ups.

17.43 there is clearly no hope of finding another Madison parent here. So much for building community.

17.46 there is the usual concession stand with the usual junk. So it is like a swim meet, only more confusing since I have no idea what is going to happen, and clearly the kids will never be coming to the bleachers. I do have a new appreciation for what parents who haven’t been to swim meets before go through.

17.51 I asked a neighbor in the stands a question about the meet and she had no idea. Kind of feels like the blind leasing the blind.

17.57 still looks mostly like a bunch of white caps bobbing in the water.

18.04 fewer heads bobbing now. Kids moving to the side of the pool to chat with friends.

18.06 heads bobbing again.

18.07 I can’t help but think how interesting this would all be to an anthropologist. Perhaps that is why I’m not am anthropologist.

18.11 another more experienced parent says there are 2 sections to the meet. These are the little kids, and they finish up and can leave before the older kids start. 

18.12 all he bobbing head out of the pool now. The meet was supposed to start at 6pm.

18.13 someone just said “girls, line up”. But nothing is actually happening. How will they know where to line up, anyway?

18.14 just heard a kid saying “I don’t know where to go”

18.16 I’ve seen physics simulations of the random motion of particles in an ideal gas that seem less chaotic than this.

18.17 someone is trying to direct traffic, but it is hard to believe any kid could hear her over the commotion.

18.18 a more experienced parent just said to me: “I told you they all look the same”. But I’d recognize my daughter’s stance anywhere. Besides, she’s the only one chewing her fingers.

18.20 a judge just asked for quiet, but nothing happened.

18.22 a judge bellows for quiet and the first swimmer starts her routine.

18.23 my daughter is second in her group.

18.24 she gets about a 3.4. Snapped her leg up too quickly, I think. But then what do I know>

18.25 now she moves to the back of a very long line.

18.26 looks like my daughter’s score was actually pretty good for her group. But again, I can’t really tell.

18.31 talking with a dad who is on his second year of synchro and he isn’t really sure why is going on either.

18.33 just stripped down to my t-shirt because the pool is so hot. My informant says this is one of the less overheated pools.

18.35 my daughter has moved on to licking her thumb.

18.36 kind of odd that here is no cheering at all. It is almost surreal.

18.38 my daughter just saw me and waved.

18.43 my daughter does a baracuda (whatever that is). Gets 3.4 again.

18.46 last figure. It is a “walkover”. 3.2.

18.49 almost all the kids heading to the shower. So now I guess we wait for awards?

18.51 everyone just sitting around, sort of chatting.

18.53 the older kids are starting their warm ups. I think this may be a bad sign.

18.54 they just announced that the little kids awards will come after the next age group. There was a collective groan from the spectators.

18.55 lots of muttering complaints from the stands.

18.58 still no sign of my daughter from the showers.

19.00 my theory is that they are postponing awards to sell more hotdogs.

19.01 my land but it’s hot in here.

19.04 no change. I mean literally, no change.

19.08 one of the coaches said that the next age group will go much faster.

19.17 older kids done bobbing heads. Lined up and ready to go.

19.19 still lined up.

19.21 it is actually pretty amazing what these kids can do–even just that they can hold their breath so long.

19.26 well I wouldn’t use the word “quick” to describe this part of the meet.

19.53 my daughter won a first place in her division! Although the fact that she was the only person in her division does take some of the shine off the ribbon.

20.05 heading back to the parking lot….

My host was Yam San Chee, who among other projects is working on a game called Statecraft X. The game is built around a Civilization-like simulation model, but the twist is that his team has developed the clever idea of setting one fictional world within another to support the reflection-on-action that turns play in the game into understanding of the world outside the game.

::

I also had a chance to talk with an old friend and colleague, Katerine Bielaczyc, who has created a 2-year knowledge-building curriculum in science for primary school students. [And by "old" here I mean I've known her for a while, not that she's old....]

Steve Zuiker is working on a model of how epistemic frames developed in one setting (like a game) get mobilized to guide action in another. To be fair: I am taking the liberty of translating his more interesting idea into the language of epistemic frames!

I also had a chance to talk with game researchers Henry Duh and Vivian Chen.

Four observations from the trip:

First, folks were really interested in the work we’ve been doing on Epistemic Network Analysis, which makes me even more hopeful that it will be able to make a real difference in how we think about education.

Second, there is a lot of funding for research on game-based learning in Singapore–particularly relative to its size. As I’ve said before, the world is not sitting still when it comes to thinking about developing games for innovative thinking….

Third, I put together two new talks for the trip, which was a lot of work. But it was nice to be able to get a chance to present some of the more recent work and thinking we’ve been doing.

And finally, it is a long plane flight to Singapore–or rather three long plane flights!–but worth the trip!

I thought I’d share a some of those thoughts for those who might be interested….

::

I am proud of the fact that that students say my classes are challenging and often transformative for their thinking. My work as a teacher goes in to orchestrating activities, contexts, and classroom practices that help a class navigate the difficult challenge of exploring ideas in a way that gives authentic voice to their own insights and opinions while simultaneously taking them toward a deeper understanding of the central issues of the material.

The central organizing metaphor I use for this is the idea that a course is a narrative: that the rules of good storytelling apply to the course as a whole, to individual classes and assignments, and to the moment-by-moment unfolding of ideas. A syllabus represents the unfolding of a story arc: ideas are foreshadowed, explored, and connected; dramatic tension is created and resolved; conflict between theories, authors, and traditions are introduced and played out. The result, when it works well, is a course in which students develop a framework for thinking about a topic or field that is authentically their own but respects the traditions and norms of the field they are studying.

Along the way, there is much discussion of epistemology: claims being made, evidence that supports them, and forms of argumentation that link the two. I use a model for final projects in my classes in which students prepare a paper and present it to the class, and then revise their work based on extensive feedback from their peers and me. The result is an opportunity for the development of their writing skills and personal intellectual growth.

Here’s what I sent her:

1. Aren’t a lot of computer games violent and bad for kids?

Well, yes, there are a lot of bad games out there, just as there are a lot of bad books out there. And there are some good games that aren’t appropriate for young kids.

To Kill a Mockingbird is my favorite book of all time, but I don’t read it with my 7 year old.

The more important question, it seems to me, is to look at what makes games good, and how we can help children learn to choose good games and play them well.

2. What should I do as a parent or teacher about computer games?

Good parenting and good teaching don’t simply mean turning kids loose in a media jungle. Wise parents and good teachers need to do become educated about games and engage with their children. They need to help their children choose appropriate games.

Playing games with children is one of the best ways to do that, and what parent wouldn’t want to do things with their kids?

At the very least talking with them about the games–what works and what doesn’t, what is interesting about the game, what they are learning, what the strategies are–is an important part of helping kids play games thoughtfully and reflectively, and that reflection is an important part of the learning that can happen in games.

Henry Jenkins makes the excellent point that although that might not always be our first choice as parents, we spend a lot of time at soccer games and violin recitals and other things that we do not because we like them but because they matter to our kids.

3. Do we really need games to learn? Aren’t they just something that helps motivate kids?

Yes, we really do need computer games. They aren’t just something that would be “nice to have” because they “make learning more fun.”

Computers and video games are tools that let us make simulations that let players do things that are too expensive, too complicated, too dangerous to in the real world. In that sense good games can be more authentic than school by offering more realistic and more meaningful ways of thinking about problems that matter in the world–the kind of problems that young people need to be able to solve if they are going to find good jobs, express themselves in an increasingly technological world, and figure out how to keep us from melting the planet, using up all the water we have, or just killing each other off in the fight for dwindling resources.

4. Can’t kids get addicted to playing games?

Yes, people can become addicted to anything that they like. Kids need a balance in the things they do: read books, do arts and crafts, watch TV and movies and learn to do that responsibly, play sports, hike in the woods, sit around talking with friends about nothing in particular. But kids also need a chance to use the technologies that are shaping the world they live in, and computer games are one way to do that.

Part of our job as adults is to help children find a good balance, and sometimes that means saying “no” when they want to do things they want to do. If someone is doing anything–playing computer games, reading books, playing sports, whatever–to the point where it interferes with their ability to maintain healthy relationships, function in school or work, if they become belligerent when asked to stop, well, then there is a problem, and you need to get help to solve it.

The post should be appearing on the Macarthur Digital Learning and Media Blog sometime soon….

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. Facebook, the online social grid, could not command loyalty forever. If you ask around, as I did, you’ll find quitters. One person shut down her account because she disliked how nosy it made her. Another thought the scene had turned desperate. A third feared stalkers. A fourth believed his privacy was compromised. A fifth disappeared without a word.

At the same time, we’ve seen an explosion in the use of (and talk about) Twitter–not least because of its role in political events in Iran over the summer.

Soon, no doubt, people will become disenchanted with Twitter and some new Internet tool will be the next big thing. E-mail was cool once; now, not so much. Then instant messaging. Then blogging. Then texting.

For fans of Marshall McLuhan, this is anything but surprising. As I point out in How Computer Games Help Children Learn:

Media scholar Marshall McLuhan once said that “content” is like a juicy piece of meat that a burglar uses to lull a guard dog to sleep. What he meant is that the things we do with a new technology, such as the printing press or television, are less important than the fact that we are using the technology at all. Reading and writing change us in ways more profound than the content of any single book. Television’s power is its ability to bring the world to our living rooms—and it doesn’t matter, in the end, which part of the world pays us a visit, because whoever comes to call makes the world seem like a smaller place. New technologies change the speed and kind of information we exchange and thus change the way we interact with each other and understand the world.

The Internet is about connectivity: about exchanging information. Most of us don’t care about the technical details of how that is done, using IP addresses and packet switching. We think we care about the specifics of the software we use, such as Twitter or Facebook. And yes, getting the details right matters. The properties of a tool shape the way it is used and the impact it has.

But in the end the details of any specific Internet tool may matter less than the interconnectivity itself. Blog, message, or mail: at some point arguing about the differences is just tweeting in the wind.

Students with video gaming did better with the zoning maps; they had developed the visual hand to eye skills to be able to infer meaning with their actions. Students who spent less time gaming had greater difficulty with the maps….

The key point? That the visual skills from gaming are not necessarily just hand-to-eye. They are hand-to-eye-to-mind.

In the field of games and education, this principle is often invoked (implicitly, if not explicitly) to explain how the community of players is able to provide mentoring that is as good or better than would be available from “trained” expert mentors.

But as a recent article, The Crowd Is Wise (When It’s Focused), suggests, that argument may be too simplistic:

The overarching notion is that the Internet opens the door to a new world of democratic idea generation and collaborative production…. In the new model, innovation is often portrayed as a numbers game. The more heads, the better — all weighing in, commenting, offering ideas. Collective knowledge prevails, as if a force of egalitarian inevitability.

But it turns out that in successful examples of crowdsourcing, the process is not just left to chance: there are formal structures of evaluation in place–from outside the “crowd”–that focus the results of the crowd’s input in producive directions:

Open-innovation models are adopted to overcome the constraints of corporate hierarchies. But successful projects are typically hybrids of ideas flowing from a decentralized crowd and a hierarchy winnowing and making decisions.

So the lesson for games–and particularly for mentoring in games–is not that many untrained mentors will be as good or better than a few trained ones. Rather, oversight (and in the case of mentoring, that surely includes training) may be an important part of any crowdsourced solution to a problem.

In her everyday life, Rachel and her family cared for stray and abandoned cats awaiting adoption through a local animal shelter. We often observed her readily pause her game play to monitor a cat’s health or attend to its needs. In-game however, Rachel’s decisions about the animals she was caring for as zookeeper were driven by monetary gain rather than the happiness or well-being of the animals. For example, while creating a zoo for different types of cats (e.g., tigers, lions, and leopards), Rachel learned of a new birth in her zoo and responded by selling the newborn animals immediately.

So, naturally, this leads one to wonder what kind of lessons kids learn playing the game.

Rachel behaves immorally towards the animals in her virtual zoo, so perhaps the game is teaching her bad moral lessons.

To be fair, Gene and his co-author use the excerpt to make a more subtle point, suggesting (as I have also argued) that the moments Rachel has for reflection on the game matter to what she learns, as does the approach that she herself takes playing the role of zookeeper.

But it seems to me that there is another important point here. Rachel is clearly learning is a valuable lesson about zoos: that they are often run as businesses, and that leads to decisions that are not always in the animals’ best interest. We can’t be sure, of course, whether she understands her experience as being about how zoos treat animals or about how she should treat animals–though I rather suspect in her case that what she’s learning is either that she doesn’t want to be a zookeeper because it will mean she can’t always treat animals as well as she would like, or that if she is in that position she will have to fight against the economic imperatives of the business side of zoos. Either way, that seems like it would be quite a positive moral lesson.

And this, it seems to me, is the real idea behind epistemic games: not just that we can model prosocial ways of thinking (although that is one good use of the games), but that we can give players an understanding of why decisions in the world get made the way they do–and that things that seem immoral happen not always because a specific person is immoral, but because the system itself constrains actions and provides incentives that are problematic.

http://epistemicgames.org/eg/wp-content/uploads/ECD-for-Epistemic-Games-JTLA-Final-Version-with-Editorial-Edits.doc

We are currently at an exciting juncture in developing effective means for assessing so-called 21st-century skills in an innovative yet reliable fashion. One of these avenues leads through the world of epistemic games (Shaffer, 2006a), which are games designed to give learners the rich experience of professional practica within a discipline. They serve to develop domain-specific expertise based on principles of collaborative learning, distributed expertise, and complex problem-solving. In this paper, we describe a comprehensive research programme for investigating the methodological challenges that await rigorous inquiry within the epistemic games context. We specifically demonstrate how the evidence-centered design framework (Mislevy, Almond, & Steinberg, 2003) as well as current conceptualizations of reliability and validity theory can be used to structure the development of epistemic games as well as empirical research into their functioning. Using the epistemic game Urban Science (Bagley & Shaffer, 2009), we illustrate the numerous decisions that need to be made during game development and their implications for amassing qualitative and quantitative evidence about learners’ developing expertise within epistemic games.