Epistemic Games Video
As researchers studying new media, it only seemed appropriate to let people know about our work using well, new media.
This short video gives an overview of our work on Urban Science and other epistemic games as part of the Macarthur Digital Media and Learning Project and the National Science Foundation.
In these games, players have a chance to learn 21st century skills by playing as urban planners, engineers, journalists, and other professionals in the knowledge economy.
I suppose next we’ll need to make an epistemic game about making epistemic games….
This is wonderful. I’ve taken some similar steps, but not nearly as sophisticated, with SimCity. In trying to get an overarching view of the classroom, I have a couple questions. What are the demographics of the students? Do you think this can be successful as is for a wide range of students – age, ability? If not, what adjustments do you think you would have to make? And, who were the teachers – the regular classroom teachers or were the researchers team teaching? student – teacher ratio? Were the computer applications used all the time, or was it a more ‘blended’ situation? Did you have buy in and participation from regular classroom teachers? Is the model easily adaptable beyond Madison?
thanks!
Thank you for your comment, Beth!
Many of your questions are addressed in the my latest paper (linked below), but to answer a few questions directly, the planning consultants were researchers from our team, and the player:planning consultant ratio was 4:1. The players were all 6-9th graders from diverse backgrounds, and they had varied experiences using computers.
http://epistemicgames.org/eg/?p=258