mobile media learning classroom practices and integration

@regardingjohn • [email protected] • [email protected]

Seann Dikkers, Chris Holden, Breanne Litts, John Martin,

James Mathews

FIVE THEMESIN ONE CASE

1Friday, May 3, 13

I’m John, Breanne and Chris are with me here. I’m from UW-Madison, and research mobile-enhanced, and situated, learning in higher education.

Chris is an Assistant Professor at the University of New Mexico, and probably the #1 place-based game designer in the world.

Breanne is an awesomely brilliant doctoral student at UW-Madison, and she’s going to rush out of here to present at the Hilton right after.

mailto:[email protected]




MOBILE OPPORTUNITY

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We’ll be talking about some themes that develop when we use these things -- in everyone’s pockets and bags -- for more than conversations.

HOW MANY ARE FAMILIAR WITH AR GAMES?

Seven ARDesign Projects

South Shore Beach: (CSI)

Hip Hop Tycoon: Math

Mad City Mystery: (CSI)

Saving Lake Wingra: Civics

Riverside Game: Land Use

ClassroomCurriculum AR Games

Squire, K.D., Jan, M., Mathews, J., Wagler, M., Martin, J., Devane, B. & Holden, C. (2007)Squire, K., Mathews, J., Holden, C., Martin, J. Jan, M., Johnson, C., & Wagler, M. (forthcoming).

Martin, J., Mathews, J., Jan M., Holden, C. (2008)Jan, M; Mathews, J., Holden, C., Martin, J. (2008)

Played by ~1000 students Games to teach Environmental Sciences, Social Studies, Persuasion, Math26 classrooms (urban, suburban, rural Wisconsin)

Mathews, J,. Holden, C., Jan, M,. Martin, J. (2008)Squire K.D. & Jan, M. (2007).

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Chris and I, (and Jim) have been working with mobile games and learning since 2005.

We used the MIT Outdoor AR platfrom, and worked with middle and HS teachers to create place-based games FOR THEM, but we always wanted to get the tools for creating curriculum into their own hands — and the hands of the students!

MCM was about finding chemical pollutants; in SSB they found ecoli in goose poop made kids sick; SLW was about urban design and land use in Madison; Riverside did that in Milwaukee.We found that good location-based experiences situate learning; make data and problems meaningful.

Seven ARDesign Projects

Mystery Trip Nature Hill

Greenbush History

Greenbush Story

Tree Tour

State Street

Game Unit

Student-Designed

AR Projects

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So, on the side, we let students go out and research their communities with mobile devices (maps, clipboards, cameras, iphones, GPS units, etc.) and helped them create their own Place-based experiences.

This was super-powerful, super-situated place-based learning.

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And Seann and Breanne joined us in 2009 and 2010, and we moved from the MIT Outdoor AR platform to ARIS, a student project-turned-awesome-AR-game-platform.

Drag & Drop

ARISgames.org6Friday, May 3, 13

I mention ARIS because it’s the tool that we’re most involved in, and where many of the cases we know come from.

It’s easy to use, with a browser-based drag-and-drop editor.

community between developers, between educators

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And it has an active decentralized community that chips in for tech support.

June 2011

February 2012

April 2013

Games 713Players 735Authors 536



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Which is why, we think, more and more folks have been designing games with it.

http://www.etc.cmu.edu/etcpress/content/mobile-media-learning

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We’ve been collecting stories, and learning from them — in ARIS, as well as other platforms. Today’s story is detailed more in this book — FREE online (or buy it!)

Mobile Media LearningWed, 06/06/2012 - 18:51

Seann Dikkers, John Martin, Bob Coulter et al. 2012Mobile Media Learning: Amazing Uses of Mobile Devices for LearningMobile Media Learning shares innovative uses of mobile technology for learning in a variety of settings. From camps to classrooms, parks to playgrounds, libraries to landmarks, Mobile Media Learning shows that exciting learning can happen anywhere educators can imagine. Join these educator/designers as they share their efforts to amplify spaces as learning tools by engaging learners with challenges, quests, stories, and tools for investigating those spaces.In addition, Mobile Media Learning shares tips, guides, and plans for building your own mobile game or game design 'jam'. Start building mobile learning experiences today!This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 LicensePurchase from Lulu.com, or Download for freeGet plain text for the Kindle at Amazon, and for the iPad at the iBookstoreDownload various e-book formats (ePub/iPad, Mobipocket/Kindle, PDF) at FeedbooksSee it in the ThoughtmeshFind it in the ACM Digital Library



Up River

10Friday, May 3, 13

We’ll be focusing on the “Up River” activity by Jim and Mark.

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Although we’re using one case today, the themes are clear across all nine in the book, and across hundreds more that we’ve seen.

A Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) Perspective

Pinch and Bijker, 1984

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We use SCOT to frame our users (teachers & students) as stakeholders and change agents in development and practice of mobile enhanced learning — specifically, situated learning (Lave) that is place-based.

Encouraging Engagement

Participatory Design

Leveraging Place-Based Experiences

Systemic Thinking & Cyclical Design

Information Gathering

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five themes emerge: 1) use participatory design strategies; 2) encourage engagement through design; 3) employ mobile media as a tool for just-in-time information gathering; and 4) leverage place-based experiences to 5) foster complex systemic thinking.

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So, let’s look at Up River...

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Up River explores how place-based interactive storytelling can teach ethnographic skills and explore relationships between local cultural and ecological systems (Wagler & Mathews, 2012).

It’s based in the St. Louis River estuary, in Northern MN — and it’s driven by narrative.

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The Protagonist is a fictional local chef who needs players to get local ingredients — he’s pretty demanding.

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“There was some huge beds of rice on the St. Louis in the early 30s. And I did a lot of wild ricing in the 1940s, late 40s, and into the 1950s, and that’s when it started to disappear. But all these bays above the Oliver Bridge, and below the Oliver Bridge, were full, full of wild rice. Big Pokegama Bay, Allouez Bay had a lot of rice, every bay here was loaded on both sides, the Minnesota side and the Wisconsin, there was more rice on the Wisconsin side than the Minnesota side. Every bay here was loaded, was loaded with wild rice.”

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And he sends players on quests to interact with real characters. And we’ll visit the story more, but more important to the theme of this session — it was part of a workshop where students and teachers collaborated to design and create their own place-based mobile stories.


“[Expert partners] quickly came up with story ideas and components on sticky notes, arranged them into a

narrative, and reported out to the group. The initial, rough narrative for Up River was born at this session.”

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Which brings us to the first point: Participatory Design — local teachers generated ideas, and were checkpoints of authenticity. They know the place better than outside designers — they know the secret cool things that make local lore magical for learners.

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So teachers and students played Up River as part of a workshop, then began designing ethnography-based mobile stories for their own community.


“Up River also encourages players to observe, interview, and record real people, places, and interactions. Indeed, Up River

served as a model during our workshop for how readily ethnographic documents can be incorporated into a mobile story.”


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As with many educational processes, Up River started with information gathering

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Players walked around and got some history, situated in key locations

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and they got some science in contexts that make an impact ...



“We also used photos and videos we took in the field to more accurately ‘place,’ or situate the final story.”

“... teachers were intrigued by this approach and easily began generating ideas for how they could conduct

ethnographic research with their own students.”


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but remember, they were also thinking about how they could make the activity better, and make a similar one for their own students. So they were paying attention to the balance of active vs passive learning

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For example, Chef checks in on his old cell phone, and makes them take their own notes and engage with real people

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“Most of the effects on the fishing that have happened here have been through the introduction of exotic species, the smelt, the salmon, zebra mussels, the gobies, the roughy fish; and they have competed with the native fish for food sources and habitat and eaten the fish.Smelt are carnivorous; they are the most devastating thing to ever come here...They ate all the baby white fish and herring and the walleyes and the perches that were there in the bay. They would come in en masse and just wipe out everything when they spawned.”

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And they run into Mark Howard in a video — but he’s real too, and as you pass Howard’s you might see him working, as well on screen. This sort of authenticity adds to the experience.

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“I really like fishing for northern and muskie, they’re more fun to catch.”

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As part of the design, Jim and Mark wanted to “...nudge players to talk with and even interview real people.”

So, for example, players run into virtual fishermen and get info on fishing

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And need to catch that walleye that Chef demanded (2 slides back), but if they weren’t sure about what to use they could ask one of the REAL folks fishing!



“In Up River, players travel upstream from the Duluth harbor in search of wild rice and native fish species. Along the way they become physically immersed in the estuary, exploring tourist

attractions, industrial sites, restored habitats, and fishing piers.”



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in this way, it leverages the experience of being in the physical place and making obvious connections

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while augmenting the real place by highlighting things that might NOT be visible or apparent.

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And at the end of the experience, they’ve collected a lot of content by interacting with the space

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but they’ve also added their own multimedia notes that personalize it for them — it becomes their own experience.




“Learning about the estuary through the stories of people who live and work there helps players ‘see

beyond’ what is in front of them, making transparent some of the complex systems at play in the estuary.”



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They take this active learning experience about how these complex cultural and ecological systems interact with each other, and it goes home with them.

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Which helps them in the design of their own games.

• what is the most important content?

• what do we need to communicate here?

• what do we keep literal and what can we conceptualize through narrative?

• is that the right balance?

• how do we get players to “get it” through game play?

• the experience is a good representation, but it’s no fun — how do we make it compelling?

• the format we chose doesn’t cover everything we need them to get — is there a better format?

• it takes too long to play — how do we tweak?

• it’s too complicated/we need to simplify — what’s okay to leave out?

• have we left out too much?

What they think about

how do we explain this thing, given our constraints?

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And they reflect, not only on the content, but on how to present the content, in a format that they’ve probably never worked in before. And it’s a struggle — but a good one for learning.






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And thus the circle is un-broken. By and By...

And we think that’s a good thing, so we’ve been trying to make that process easier and easier

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Again, since we’re involved with ARIS, these themes and experiences inform the development of the platform.

1. ease & accessibility

2. field research & data collection

3. assessment, tracking, and activity measures

4. community

Current Concerns

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and, as educators, although we hope to spread situated learning far beyond the longevity of ARIS, we’re also hoping to contribute through development

ease of use & accessibility

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So this summer we plan to improve the authoring interface and move it from Flash to HTML5

field research & data collection

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To support Field Research and Assessment, we’re improving the Notebook and a visualization tool (Web Notebook) that lets users reflect on notes with others, sort and filter by tags, etc. This also increases assessment ability.

assessment, tracking, and activity measures

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To encourage community and collaboration, we now let users comment on each others’ notes, and “like” them. And can make these interactions part of the gameplay. This can introduce peer review, which helps with assessment as well.

thanks!

@regardingjohn • [email protected] • [email protected]

#ARISgames

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And we encourage you to talk with us about any of these things. We’re always happy to answer any questions!





mobile media learning classroom practices and integration

Education