Telling stories through games. Engaging students in digital story telling through designing computer games, transmedia stories and alternate reality games.

1. Beyond the Page
Digital Storytelling through Games
Cathie Howe
Macquarie ICT Innovations Centre
SMART Teachers Conference 2012
See Share Shape the Future

2. Who am I?
Professional Learning &
Leadership Coordinator
Manager Macquarie ICT Innovations Centre

3. Our Community
DEC & non-DEC schools across NSW
Students K-12
Teachers K - 12 DEC Regional staff
School Executives University students
Academic partners
Industry Partners

4. What do you want
learning to look like?

5. How To Vote How To Vote
via Texting via Twitter
Tweet @poll
435977 and your
61429883481
message
435977
Learning should
look like …
1. Standard texting rates only
TIPS 2. We have no access to your phone number
3. Capitalization doesn’t matter, but spaces and spelling do

7. What could learning look like?
• Student centred
• Abstractness
• Independence valued
• Complexity (inter
• Agile relationships)
• Open & accepting • Variety
• Complex (rich variety of • Study of people
resources, media, ideas,
methods, tasks) Learning • Study of methods of
• Physical/virtual Environment Content inquiry
Where students What students
learn learn
• Higher levels of
• Real problems thinking
• Real audiences Product Process • Creative /critical
• Real deadlines /divergent thinking
Thinking
Result of • Open-endedness
• Transformations (rather processes
learning • Group interaction
than regurgitation) used to learn
• Appropriate evaluation • Variable pacing
• Variety of learning
• Debriefing
• Freedom of choice
Maker Model

8. Imagine having our students being so
engaged in a complex, goal orientated
activity, that self-consciousness
disappears and time becomes distorted
and they do it, not for external rewards
but simply for the exhilaration of doing!

9. What is a digital story?
“Digital Storytelling is the modern expression of the ancient art of
storytelling. Digital stories derive their power by weaving images, music,
narrative and voice together, thereby giving deep dimension and
vivid color to characters, situations, experiences, and insights.”
Leslie Rule
Digital Storytelling Association

10. Elements for the creation
of classic digital stories:
 Point of view
 Dramatic Question
 Voice
 Pacing
 Soundtrack
 Economy
 Emotional Content
The challenge…
How to get students to display them in their own stories?

11. Example| Google Chrome

12. Example | Google Search Stories

13. Why use games to tell stories?
“Video games are increasingly
recognised as becoming the
literacy of the 21st century”
Chris Swain
Associate Research Professor
A unique platform to address essential
skills for learning:
• creativity and innovation
• critical thinking,
• communication, collaboration
• iterative problem solving
• information, media and ICT literacy

14. Video Game Facts
In Australia:
 92% households have a gaming device
 95% homes with children <18 have a
gaming device
 47% of gamers are female
 Average age of video game players is 32
 57% of gamers play every day
 88% of parents who play games, play with
their children
Key Findings DA12
Bond University/iGEA

15. Video games have more story telling
potential than any other medium
Positive Emotions
Relationships
Meaning
Accomplishment
P.E.R.M.A
Dr. Martin Seligman
Make decisions
Interactive
Invested in story at a personal level
Live the experience Choose own path

16. What do we learn when we
play, design and build games?
Judgement,
Problem
analysis & Communication
solving skills &
strategic skills & networking
negotiation
thinking
Improved
Narrative skills Non–linear attention,
& transmedia thinking vision &
navigation patterns cognition

17. Where do you start?| Good Game Design
WILL YOU SAVE US?
Goal World Challenge Story
Player feedback Difficulty curve
Decision making Intuitive play

18. The Next Step: Core Loop
Staring Position:
New World -what
does it look like?
Main Character: Goal:
Who am I? What is the main
Where am I? goal of the game?
Solution:
What do I have to do
How do I overcome to achieve this goal?
the obstacle?
Reward:
What is the reward
Challenge/ for doing this?
Obstacle
What is stopping
me from achieving
my goal?

19. World Map

20. Example | Video Game Design

21. 2011 Kodu Kup winner:
Jacen Sherman
Game: The Vortex
The world under nuclear attack. While humanity has found a way to “upload” itself to a
virtual world and launch into space to avoid extinction, one of the creators of this
virtual world wasn’t able to make it into the virtual world on time. Out of anger, she
unleashed a virus – Vira X – which the player must defeat.
Jacen was inspired both by the programming experience, and by the movie Tron.

22. Kodu: New Hope: by bwilliams
Over the years the Kodus have made some break throughs in technology. After
crowding their planet they turned toward the only thing they could, space. They
travelled to different planets populating them and mining precious resources. After
exploring a new planet they found something. It was a Golden Apple. After finding
the apple the Kodus took it back to one of their planets to study it. One day they
came into contact with a group of aliens of many species. They demanded the
Kodus to give them the apple but the Kodus resisted. The aliens waged war against
them, destroying their civilizations and planets. The Kodus managed to keep the
apple safe and fled to a far away planet. They called this planet, New Hope, as a
reminder that they still had something left...

23. What is Transmedia story telling?
The successful organic flow of narrative over a host of platforms, each one
excelling at what it does best.
Alison Norrington
accomplished novelist,
playwright, and journalist
Originally published at www.thedigitalshift.com

24. Example | Transmedia story
 Unfolds over time and on multiple platforms,
 Connects technologies, languages, cultures, generations
and curricula within a sweeping narrative
 Becomes increasingly interactive and game-like
 Highly collaborative
 Takes advantage of participatory nature of online
environments

26. What are Alternate Reality games?
Alternate Reality Game (ARG)…an interactive story-
based game, delivered through multiple “real world”
modes (i.e., text, phone, Internet, print, and others)
within which players must participate interactively
and work collectively to solve “real world” problems
the story presents.
http://janetclarey.com/2012/01/13/args-part-1-a-good-fit-for-ld/

27. Use of collective
intelligence
(cognition,
cooperation,
coordination
Solving ‘real Multimodal
world’ Elements play over time
problems the
story presents
of ARG (online & real
world)
Participatory
storytelling &
collaboration
Janet Clarey
Spinning the Social Web

28. Example | Alternate reality game
Students as Learning Designers Project Leader Year 7 Global
Manly Selective HS Ms Kate Farrow Citizenship Project
Year 10 students
created an
alternate reality
game played by
120 Year 7 students
over 3 consecutive
school days.

30. Some technologies that support digital storytelling
through games
polls
codes survey
puzzles images
Game audio
engines Interactive
Technologies
Digital
wiki
posters
maps forum
blog video
Resources:
http://bit.ly/QWIaHF

31. Reimagining learning through games
Core principles of how games work that can transform learning.
They:
1. Create a need to know organising learning around solving
complex problems set in engaging contexts.
2. Offer a space of possibility through the design of rules for
learners to tinker, explore, hypothesise and test assumptions.
3. Build opportunities for authority and expertise to be shared
and distributed, i.e. learning is reciprocal among learners,
mentors and teachers.
4. Support multiple overlapping pathways towards mastery
Professor Katie Salen

32. Do games have the power to solve the
world’s problems?
What if we immersed
our students in
designing games to
tackle the world’s
most urgent
problems?
Photo by xJason.Rogersx’s

33. “What will it take to move classroom literacy practices
and instruction into the 21st century?
It will take teachers who are skilled, excited, passionate
about the effective use of ICT for teaching and learning.
It will take a curriculum that integrates new, exciting
literacies and instruction.
It will take courageous and bold initiatives that include
yet unimagined information and communication
technologies and these will result in the development of
unimagined new literacies.”
Associate Professor Kaye Lowe

34. Summary
What learning should look like
 Active
 Self-directed
 Goal orientated
 Authentic
 Interest driven
 Just-in-time

35. Summary
What learning environments should look like
 Be interactive
 Provide ongoing feedback
 Grab and sustain attention
 Have appropriate and
adaptive levels of challenge
 Multiple pathways to
success
 Be agile

36. Contact details
catherine.howe@det.nsw.edu.au
http://au.linkedin.com/in/cathiehowe
@cathie_h
@macict
http://web2.macquarieict.schools.nsw.edu.au
Macquarie ICT Innovations Centre
Building C5B, Macquarie University
NSW, 2109
Ph | 02 9850 4310