Serious Play Conference

Started by bayonetbrant, July 26, 2016, 08:32:30 AM

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bayonetbrant

I'm attending this thing for the next 3 days.  If y'all see something in the program you want me to check out, let me know. 

http://seriousplayconf.com

For the first thing this morning, I'm in the session for "Creating a Serious Game for Mission Critical Operators"
For the second one, I'm leaning toward "Gamification and how it will change business / nonprofit / gov't"



The key to surviving this site is to not say something which ends up as someone's tag line - Steelgrave

"their citizens (all of them counted as such) glorified their mythology of 'rights'...and lost track of their duties. No nation, so constituted, can endure." Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers

bayonetbrant

OK, so this Mission Critical Operators session has jack-all to do with actual, y'know - missions

It's more about maintaining operations at 24-hour facilities, like power plants and data centers.
The key to surviving this site is to not say something which ends up as someone's tag line - Steelgrave

"their citizens (all of them counted as such) glorified their mythology of 'rights'...and lost track of their duties. No nation, so constituted, can endure." Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers

bayonetbrant

This morning, I'm parking myself in room 3575 until lunch
I have a feeling I'll be asking a lot of questions in the second one of those

First afternoon session will be in room 3600, and last one (if I stick around that long) in 3650, but I'll take suggestions for what I should do with the 330pm session



The key to surviving this site is to not say something which ends up as someone's tag line - Steelgrave

"their citizens (all of them counted as such) glorified their mythology of 'rights'...and lost track of their duties. No nation, so constituted, can endure." Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers

mirth

That 2nd session does sound cool.
"45 minutes of pooping Tribbles being juggled by a drunken Horta would be better than Season 1 of TNG." - SirAndrewD

"you don't look at the mantelpiece when you're poking the fire" - Bawb

"Can't 'un' until you 'pre', son." - Gus

bbmike

If I had to choose a 3:30 session it would be Using Open World Games for Education.
"My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplace of existence."
-Sherlock Holmes

"You know, just once I'd like to meet an alien menace that wasn't immune to bullets."
-Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart

"There's a horror movie called Alien? That's really offensive. No wonder everyone keeps invading you!"
-The Doctor

"Before Man goes to the stars he should learn how to live on Earth."
-Clifford D. Simak

bayonetbrant

Transforming War Games for the US Army

(Raytheon guy who helps run training areas in Germany)

Comparison of Bill Murray in Stripes to current photos of Armies training centers
Describing MILES to people that don't know what it is
("utilize a blank training round to replicate the firing event"...  just say "the blank triggers the laser")
Very basic overview of how the CTCs work (FICA, FPLA, 29 Palms, etc)

Describing the link-up between live-virtual-constructive training connectors that allows units at different geographical areas to train in a shared environment by replicating the ground used by live participants in the virtual world for those plugged into the sims

Barely a 10-minute presentation about the LVC hookups handled by Raytheon; old news for anyone who has paid attention to DoD training for the past 10 years.

This isn't "transforming" - this is reporting on on-going ops that are already into their second decade.
The key to surviving this site is to not say something which ends up as someone's tag line - Steelgrave

"their citizens (all of them counted as such) glorified their mythology of 'rights'...and lost track of their duties. No nation, so constituted, can endure." Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers

bayonetbrant

Effective Games - Why We Can't Have Nice Things (Yet)

Erin Hoffman-John (formerly) of GlassLab

"Teaching well is really freaking hard"
Moved into the education world with inspiration from Raph Koster, who said that "fun is learning"

The idea behind GlassLab was that school is boring, and maybe video game designers could make school less boring
Also wanted to apply big data to help create adaptive, personalized learning

Brought SimCity into the schools and the kids said that it was fun but they weren't learning anything
However, the kids really were learning, but didn't realize it because it wasn't packaged as a traditional lesson they were used to

When kids are "really engaged in learning" there was something going on that wasn't "fun" but something deeper

What games can do is that they do a lot of things at once -
Create situated context - gives learners a shared experience they can use
Prepare for future learning - there's a groundwork the teachers can build on
Inspire & Engage
but they don't teach, they support the teaching done by the teachers


What does a teaching game need to do?
Need an assessment, but what kind of assessment and how valid is it?
Even greater need for those assessments without over-the-shoulder supervision
Need to scaffold the lessons (in game terms: "level design")
Needs repetition / multiple representations: people can internalize lessons through repetition

The assessment in most video games is "The Boss Battle" - now that you've learned how to use all the powers you need along the way, can you integrate them
How do you validate the learning against the standard?

Scaffolded learning = level design toward the boss battle at the end
How do you move the current user through a learning standard toward an assessment
— dependent on where they started and assumes they all want to get to the same place
DragonBox = example of good scaffolding to teach algebra

Multiple representations
Minecraft as an example that lets multiple representations exist (sort of)


Design from the starting point of a "pain point"
Antithetical to good UX design, which is designed to minimize pain, but pain is necessary to ID where / how to grow and push that growth
Part of the 'selling point' to users is "what's the payoff" that users will get on the other end

How did Pokemon trick the kids into doing all this math, and so quickly, and so obsessively?
Complexity isn't the problem
There were meaningful and resonant relationships between the cards that mattered to the kids


How to map argumentation skills to the skills used by players in a traditional game?
identify
organize
use
evaluate
explore
equip
battle
The key to surviving this site is to not say something which ends up as someone's tag line - Steelgrave

"their citizens (all of them counted as such) glorified their mythology of 'rights'...and lost track of their duties. No nation, so constituted, can endure." Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers

bayonetbrant

Wow - so now the guys talking about how to get games into higher ed just took at 10 minute detour into the legalities of the ADA as they apply to the students who have/not self-identified as having a disability and whether or not to caption your videos or whether capturing code in a programming class counts as your 'closed captioning' and seriously, this is supposed to be about getting the games into the system, and just turned into an ADA discussion.

They've totally gone tangential and turned into something completely useless...
The key to surviving this site is to not say something which ends up as someone's tag line - Steelgrave

"their citizens (all of them counted as such) glorified their mythology of 'rights'...and lost track of their duties. No nation, so constituted, can endure." Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers

bayonetbrant

#8
here are the slides: goo.gl/Sdpkor  (and he gave out the link and told us to share)

Apparently this is what passes for "Getting Students Engaged in Historical Topics Through Games"

Yes, it's a nice social dynamic game of how a witch-hunt happens in a social environment, but aside from a thin veneer of "theme" (which could very easily be re-skinned to Battlestar Galactica) you're not learning anything historical from this.  You're learning empathy.  You're learning discussion & argumentation, you're breaking up monotony, and you're having a chuckle, but aside from maybe stretching this to the Salem trials, what the hell are you learning for a historical lesson?


Good point that the game is not the teacher, the teacher is the teacher, especially when teaching something like empathy.
The key to surviving this site is to not say something which ends up as someone's tag line - Steelgrave

"their citizens (all of them counted as such) glorified their mythology of 'rights'...and lost track of their duties. No nation, so constituted, can endure." Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers

bayonetbrant

I don't often walk out of sessions. I did that one.

It wasn't what I expected from something purporting to be "historical" and I needed to catch a bus to the park and ride still
The key to surviving this site is to not say something which ends up as someone's tag line - Steelgrave

"their citizens (all of them counted as such) glorified their mythology of 'rights'...and lost track of their duties. No nation, so constituted, can endure." Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers