Creating the textbook for the digital age

Kurt Squire, PhD

University of Wisconsin-Madison

For the first time in American history, a majority of high school students, even among the high – achieving, school-affiliated report that school is little more than accreditation.

Gee, 2004; Steinkuehler, 2005; Squire 2006

Full Spectrum Warrior: Training

Models for the future of education

• Personally meaningful, tailored• Embodied learning• Learning through failure• Producers and consumers blurred• Transmedia experience (Pokemon)• Information is just-in-time• Learning is collaborative• Embedded assessments

Videogames also suggest social forms of organization indigenous to the digital age.

We are living in an interactive age built on interactive technologies of simulation …

Interactive technologies of simulation

Lemke, 1996)… and social structures of participation

Cultures of participation

“Get a Master’s in Civ3”

• Apolyton University

- Apolyton.net

• 100s of students-74 registered members- 23 courses and 6 games

• 19302 posts- median response time = 2-5 hours

Interviewer: Do you ever compare your Civ play to school?

Rob: Yes. I did a term paper on my Fall of Rome mod. You can also use it to think about current events. Like the way we’re trying to get Iraq to ‘culture flip’ to become an American cultural outpost.

Interviewer: How does Civ 3 compare to the your Western Civ class?

Rob: I actually learned a lot more history and geography through Civ3. I will probably learn more through scenario design and Civ3 than I will in this class because it’s so basic to me.

World Civilization clubs...World Civilization clubs...

• Creating deep, lifelong learning with Civ3• Creating a modding community of practice• Developing design orientation to media• Providing routes to other valued practices• Might we build a “self-organizing” learning system?

Interviewer: So do you think that is like the real Vikings? 

Jamaal: Actually it is because the berserks would take this stuff which they made called wolf-bane….  like with Ivan the Boneless, which is my name in the game.

Interviewer: Where did you learn this? 

Jamaal: It’s from a book I’m reading.  It’s a fantasy but all the land and stuff is just like real Europe.  They have Iceland on the map, and the long ships. 

Interviewer: So have you read about this at school at all? 

Jamaal: No…

Interviewer: So what is the scenario you made? 

Jamaal …I have the island that I really wanted or that I had to get to if I wanted to win the game because it has every resource.   Every island has horses and iron and the basic stuff…,

Might we design games for learning?

Scientific Role Playing Games

...Medical DoctorInterview people & Diagnose symptoms

…Environmental scientistInterview people Take samplings

…Government officialInterview people Official documents

Each player will perceive the case in a particular perspective and can do something others can’t.

Players must collaborate in order to develop a holistic view of the case (jigsawing).

Game Design- Players

Spring Rain

Run-offs

Watershed

Mercury

Food Chain

Algae bloom

Water quality

Fishing

Friendship

Overweight & Health Issues

Alcohol Drinking

Life Insurance

MadCity

TCE

PCB

Job Security

factors

Family

Walleye

Catfish

Sediment

embedded reflection

MD: He is wrong. I think obviously the runoff from … put mercury in the lake. The catfish ate…the catfish consumed the plankton and the mercury and then he ate the catfish and brought some home for his wife. That’s why his wife and kid are sick. And he is sick. And the wife transferred it to the baby through breast milk but not substantially. And the kid suffering from nervous disability so honestly he had died of mercury or something else.

Educational games as designed experience

• Games are ideological worlds• Game players learn through performance in

them• Learning is a reflective process of participation• From content to trajectories of experience

Squire, K. (in press). From content to context. Videogames as designed experience. To appear in Educational Researcher.

Kurt Squire: kdsquire@wisc.edu

Games, Learning, Society: Madison, WI June 15-16

Thanks to: Eric Klopfer, MIT

Games as ideological worlds

Kurt SquireUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison

ADL Academic Co-Lab

culture of simulation

culture of simulation

“For better or worse, simulation is no mere fad. Indeed, to think of simulation games as mere entertainment or even as teaching tools is to underestimate them. They represent a major addition to the intellectual repertoire that will increasingly shape how we communicate ideas and think through problems…We shall be working and thinking in SimCity for a long time.” – Paul Starr, 1995

videogames offer (one) implicit critique of school-based learning