David Williamson Shaffer’s Presentation at Eduverse Symposium 3
In Amsterdam, September 2008, the Eduverse Foundation hosted Eduverse Symposium 3, an event that included noted speakers such as David Williamson Shaffer of Epistemic Games; Philip Rosedale, former CEO of Linden Lab; Julian Lombardi, head of the Croquet Consortium at Duke University; Chuck Hamilton, director of the Center for Advanced Learning at IBM, and many more.
The symposium itself was divided into three main sections: 1) serious gaming and the future of game technology, 2) new virtual platforms and the 3D web, and 3) the science of education and virtual learning in the 21st century.
In his presentation, David Williamson Shaffer argues that “games create worlds” and that “a game is always a culture.” While members of a culture require certain knowledge, skills, and values in order to participate in it, they need to share that culture’s epistemology. As Shaffer explains, that epistemology includes the way that decisions are made and actions are justified in that particular culture. He highlights his work with epistemic games, and differentiates these from educational games that simply entail rote learning. A video of his full talk is available on the Eduverse website.
