Pilots & Toolkits

Overview
As part of our development process we are working with several New Visions schools to pilot curriculum along three technology strands: game design, mobile media, and virtual environments. The goal of these pilots is to discover strategies for integrating game-like learning into a standards-based framework and to build curriculum that can be used both in the Game School and in other schools without a dedicated gaming thematic. The focus of these pilots is to develop and test curriculum, as well as to begin to develop models for teacher training, teacher recruitment, and professional development. More information on the workshops will be available soon.

An additional focus is on building, refining, and implementing “toolkits” that can be used by students and teachers to design activities and experiences aligned with particular curricular objectives. Several of these toolkits are listed below:
Gamestar Mechanic | G*M Strategy Guide | Milk | Sophie



Gamestar Mechanic
Developer: Gamelab
Assessment team: Jim Gee, Betty Hayes, Robert Torres, Alex Games
Gamestar Mechanic is an online multiplayer game where players learn the fundamentals of game design as they create games, and share them with a larger community of players. Within the game, players take the role of “game mechanics” in a steampunk world where the rules and elements of games have come to life as creatures. Players use these creatures to repair broken games and create new ones. As an apprentice game mechanic, players prove their expertise by completing a series of increasingly complex game design challenges, earning experience and leveling up on their way towards membership in the Council of Master Mechanics--at which point they can become mentors to others within the community.

A private Beta of the game will begin in January 2008, with a public release scheduled for May 2008. If you would like to be a beta-tester, please contact Greg Trefry: greg at gamelab.com

Developing an assessment framework: 10 Core Heuristics
Robert Torres, a core member of the Gamestar assessment team is developing a set of core heuristics to be considered as part of the assessment program for Gamestar Mechanic. These heuristics point to a set of skills the game supports.



Gamestar Mechanic Strategy Guide
Developer: Institute of Play
We will be developing a strategy guide for Gamestar Mechanic that annotates the experience through documentation of the narrative, characters, creatures, design challenges, player-produced games, and game design lessons. More than an instruction book for play or series of lesson plans, the guide explores the world of game design from the perspective of an apprentice designer, moving players through the challenge and wonder of the G*M world, while enabling them to go deeper into concepts explored in the game.

The format: What is a Strategy Guide?
Traditional strategy guides are instruction books that contain hints or complete solutions to videogames. Most often published in print, they take on book form and are highly illustrated with screenshots, character art, instructional and narrative text and other game materials. Players use strategy guides to work through games, and many games are designed to be so complex that players must use the strategy guide to successfully complete the game.

Why a Strategy Guide?
G*M foregrounds the game design process as a critical mode of inquiry and learning for players. The strategy guide will act to reinforce this value by giving players another learning resource through which to study the game’s principle concepts and strategies. As an easily referenced, comprehensive source for the specialized language, practices, and problems being explored by players, teachers or other facilitators can use the guide as the basis for related curriculum and instruction.

Elements of the G*M Strategy Guide:
The contents of the strategy guide will follow that of a typical game guide including:

• Detailed gameplay information, including design strategies not detailed in the in-game tutorials or challenge screens.
• Complete maps of the game, which show the placement of all game design challenges (including hidden, bonus, and advanced ones)
• Detailed explanations of specific challenges, the inventory available, and tips and tricks for making games around each.
• Detailed information on the 6 Gaming Schools that comprise the conceptual fabric of the world, including overviews of the six different game design schools of thought, sample portfolios of games and creature sets for each school, and bonus design challenges that can be completed by players to unlock hidden creatures.
• Details of all creatures, including creatures that are part of future expansion packs.
• Checklist of creatures and challenges.
• Walkthroughs of challenges in the form of worked models.
• Instructions for the editor, workshop, and challenge map.

MiLK: Mobile Informal Learning kit
Developer: Australasian CRC for Interaction Design (ACID)
MiLK is a mobile gaming platform that allows users to create SMS-based mobile games quickly and easily. We have been working with graduate students from the Design and Technology program at Parsons and 6th and 7th graders at the Ross Global Academy to design and build games using MiLK. The goal of this work is to develop new gaming concepts for MiLK for play by both students and teachers, propose and develop supplementary platforms or content, and prototype, playtest, and document our research findings for use in further elaboration of the tool and related curriculum. Emphasis has been on developing a range of approaches for use of the platform through the exploration of three related domains: Game Design, Psychogeography, and Microfictions. Most recently, a set of MiLK games were co-designed by the graduate students and middle schoolers around the themes of disarmament and non-proliferation, and were played at the UN as part of a student-run games festival. [a

Sophie
Developer: Institute for the Future of the Book
Sophie is an authoring system for multimedia-rich electronic documents. Sophie's model, that of a book, with links to many forms of annotations. We are starting to explore the different potential uses of Sophie within both formal and informal learning environments, as well as its integration into Croquet, an open source virtual authoring environment. Over the next year we will be developing a set of exemplar models for the use of Sophie as both a presentation and authoring platform. We like the way Sophie provides a platform that seamlessly bridges old and new literacies around writing and media production. Stay tuned for updates on the Sophie front!