A presentation on game design as a strategy for supporting STEM fields in education, delivered at the 2008 annual meeting of the Illinois School Library Media Association

1. Level Up! Supporting Curricular Goals through Digital Design Activities Illinois School Library Media Association 2008 Annual Meeting Brian Myers Wilmette Public Library www.wilmettelibrary.info

2. Gaming at Wilmette Public Library _________________________________________________________ Wilmette Public Library www.wilmettelibrary.info

3. Wilmette Public Library www.wilmettelibrary.info Innovative program serving a previously underserved population Support and facilitate involvement in participatory technologies Promote media literacy and technological competencies Broaden existing gaming programs Why Game Design . . . At the Library? __________________________________________________ Professional initiatives

4. Wilmette Public Library www.wilmettelibrary.info Game design as a context for promoting media literacy ___________________________________________________ “ Our position is that there is an emerging form of media literacy that we sometimes call ‘Gaming Literacy.’ Gaming Literacy has to do with information management, understanding complex systems, social networks, a critical design process, and creativity with digital technology. Increasingly, this new form of literacy will be crucial in the workplace and in our social and civic lives. The process of game design, which combines mathematics and logic, storytelling and aesthetics, writing and communication, systems and analytic thinking, among other elements, is one of the best ways of engaging with this form of literacy.” Eric Zimmerman, interviewed by Henry Jenkins (December 21, 2006) Retrieved July 23, 2007 from http://www.henryjenkins.org/2006/12/an_interview_with_eric_zimmerm.html

5. Wilmette Public Library www.wilmettelibrary.info “ When kids learn to design games they not only learn how to explore the possibility space of a set of rules but also learn to understand and evaluate a game’s meaning as the product of relationships between elements in a dynamic system . . . Game design as a context for promoting systemic thinking ___________________________________________________ “ Educators and education advocates have recently acknowledged that the ability to think systemically is one of the necessary skills for success in the 21st century. We believe that game-making is especially well-suited to encouraging […]t he skills and processes that designer-players use in building such systems, be they games or communities of practice.” Katie Salen, Gaming Literacies ( December, 2007)

6. Wilmette Public Library www.wilmettelibrary.info James Paul Gee (“What Videogames can Teach us about Literacy and Learning”) _________________________________________________ http://digitallearning.macfound.org

7. Wilmette Public Library www.wilmettelibrary.info Gaming Pedagogies _________________________________________________

9. Wilmette Public Library www.wilmettelibrary.info Froebel & Co. ________________________________________________________

11. Wilmette Public Library www.wilmettelibrary.info Constructionism ________________________________________________________ From “Talking Turtle” (BBC Open University, 1984) http://tinyurl.com/2tnzs2/

12. Wilmette Public Library www.wilmettelibrary.info Design Pedagogies ________________________________________________________ Mitchel Resnick Why Design? Engage kids as active participants Encourage creative problem solving . . . Interdisciplinary, bringing together ideas from art, technology, math and sciences . . . Encourage kids to put themselves in the mind of others . . . Provide opportunities for reflection and collaboration Positive feedback loop of learning Mitchel Resnick, Rethinking Learning in the Digital Age (2002) www.media.mit.edu/~mres/papers/wef.pdf

13. Wilmette Public Library www.wilmettelibrary.info Design Pedagogies ________________________________________________________ How have educators used game-making activities? 1. Helping students to learn programming tools and concepts 2. Helping students learn content 3. Facilitating the understanding of design concepts and engendering fluency with digital technologies.

26. Scratch Programming Environment _____________________________________________________________ Wilmette Public Library www.wilmettelibrary.info

27. STEM fields ________________________________________________________ Cartesian coordinates Negative numbers Degrees/Angles Distance Randomness Variables Fractals Greater/Less than Calculus Equations, Operators Math concepts Wilmette Public Library www.wilmettelibrary.info

28. STEM fields ________________________________________________________ Object orientation Boolean operations Flow control Variables Conditional expressions Collision detection User input Keyboard controls Inheritance Functions, methods Programming concepts Wilmette Public Library www.wilmettelibrary.info

29. Content domains ________________________________________________________ Digital stories Tutorials Demonstrations Serious Games Multiple choice exercises Interactive Projects Wilmette Public Library www.wilmettelibrary.info

30. Wilmette Public Library www.wilmettelibrary.info Game making lesson plans, rubrics, projects ________________________________________________________ http://scratch.mit.edu/forums/viewforum.php?id=7

31. Wilmette Public Library www.wilmettelibrary.info Game making lesson plans, rubrics, projects ________________________________________________________ http://wiki.classroom20.com/Scratch

32. Wilmette Public Library www.wilmettelibrary.info Game making lesson plans, rubrics, projects ________________________________________________________ http://wiki.yoyogames.com/index.php/Information_For_Teachers

33. Wilmette Public Library www.wilmettelibrary.info Game making lesson plans, rubrics, projects ________________________________________________________ http://www.texasgames.net

34. Wilmette Public Library www.wilmettelibrary.info Game making lesson plans, rubrics, projects ________________________________________________________ http://www.freewebs.com/schoolgamemaker/

35. Wilmette Public Library www.wilmettelibrary.info Game making lesson plans, rubrics, projects ________________________________________________________ http://www.users.on.net/~billkerr/g/int.htm

36. http://www.glsconference.org/2008/ Wilmette Public Library www.wilmettelibrary.info Games + Learning + Society ________________________________________________________

37. Wilmette Public Library www.wilmettelibrary.info Create Relationships ________________________________________________________ Download and install Scratch at home Experiment, have fun Invite IT & Learning Technology staff to play with Scratch Install Scratch on Media Center computers Explore Scratch galleries and Educator’s wiki Share sample projects with teachers Establish yourself as the school’s Scratch liaison

38. Brian Myers [email_address]