Visit to Singapore

I just had the pleasure of visiting colleagues at the Learning Sciences Laboratory at the National Institute of Education in Singapore. There is some really interesting work going on there.

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!