Presentation on the learning benefits of game design programs delivered at the Illinois Library Association Annual Meeting, Springfield, IL, October 12, 2007

1. Offering Teen-oriented Game Design Programs for Fun, Literacy and Learning Betty Giorgi Brian W. Myers Wilmette Public Library www.wilmettelibrary.info Illinois Library Association 2007 Annual Meeting

2. Wilmette Public Library www.wilmettelibrary.info Offering Teen-Oriented Game Design Programs for Fun, Literacy and Learning Download this presentation: www.wilmettelibrary.info/ila2007

3. Wilmette Public Library www.wilmettelibrary.info Teens Not Allowed Reshuffling the deck of cards Pizza still works Do it on a dime Are you an enabler? Goal = Youth + Technology

4. Wilmette Public Library www.wilmettelibrary.info Design applications Why game design? Creating from Scratch Game Maker Academy Play = Learning Developing Teen-Oriented Game Design Programs for Fun and Learning Gaming Literacy Resources

5. Wilmette Public Library www.wilmettelibrary.info MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Initiative _________________________________________________________ http://digitallearning.macfound.org

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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 21 st century. We believe that game-making is especially well-suited to encouraging meta-level reflection on the skills and processes that designer-players use in building such systems, be they games or communities of practice.” Katie Salen, Gaming Literacies ( May, 2007)

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

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.

25. Gamestar Mechanic – Katie Salen (“Rules of Play”) ________________________________________________________ Wilmette Public Library www.wilmettelibrary.info

29. Game Maker Collaborative/Support sites ______________________________________________________________ Wilmette Public Library www.wilmettelibrary.info

30. Scratch ______________________________________________________________ Wilmette Public Library www.wilmettelibrary.info Scratch Developed as a learning technology by the same team that developed the LEGO robotics kits; a distant cousin of the LOGO family of learning tools. Intended for kids ages 8 -16. Widely tested by academics in schools and after school centers; currently offered as an instructional program by the Minneapolis Public Library through a partnership with MIT and the Science Museum of Minnesota. Available in multiple languages and used by children internationally Available as a free download. Very low floor/very high ceiling. Includes built in graphics and sound editors. Support includes forums on the Scratch Web site (scratch.mit.edu) for users and educators. Instructional material created by the development team is available as a free download from the Scratch Web site.

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

32. Wilmette Public Library www.wilmettelibrary.info Scratch Online Community ______________________________________________________________

33. Wilmette Public Library www.wilmettelibrary.info Scratch at the Science Museum of Minnesota & Minneapolis Public Library ______________________________________________________________ Jennifer Nelson Partnerships Coordinator (Digital Inclusion) Minneapolis Public Library [email_address] Keith Braafladt Director of Learning Technologies Science Museum of Minnesota [email_address] Scratch Gallery http://scratch.mit.edu/galleries/3817

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

35. Game Maker Programming Environment _____________________________________________________________ Wilmette Public Library www.wilmettelibrary.info Tool Bar Resources Menu Tool Bar Actions Menu Events Menu Events Column Actions Column

36. Wilmette Public Library www.wilmettelibrary.info Game Maker Resources _____________________________________________________________ Habgood, Jacob and Overmars, Mark, The Game Maker’s Apprentice. NY: Apress. (2006) Swamy, Nanu, Basic Game Creation for Fun and Learning. Hingham, MA: Charles River Media. (2006).

37. Wilmette Public Library www.wilmettelibrary.info Game Maker Resources _____________________________________________________________ Game Maker’s web site offers tutorials and game-making resources such as sprites, sound effects, backgrounds, and animation strips. It also offers links to resources and instructional materials posted by educators at the high school and college level.

38. Wilmette Public Library www.wilmettelibrary.info Game Maker Academy _____________________________________________________________

39. Wilmette Public Library www.wilmettelibrary.info What have we learned? _____________________________________________________________

40. Wilmette Public Library www.wilmettelibrary.info What have we learned? _____________________________________________________________

41. Wilmette Public Library www.wilmettelibrary.info What have we learned? _____________________________________________________________

43. Wilmette Public Library www.wilmettelibrary.info What have we learned? _____________________________________________________________ Keep class size limited to 10, unless you can find a good TA. Assume the role of facilitator, not instructor. Allow teens to reason through their design issues, rather than offer an answer to every question you are asked. Encourage creativity. Prepare handouts. Most teens will attend each workshop, but not all. Outcome is not as important as performance. The learning activity is far more important than achieving professional results. There is only so much that can be done within a 4-5 week time frame; create a club that meets on a monthly basis and use the workshops to fuel club momentum.

44. Wilmette Public Library www.wilmettelibrary.info Conclusion ______________________________________________________________ Professional game artist Rachel Nador ( www.rachelnador.com ) visits with Wilmette’s game design club to demonstrate 3D modeling techniques.

45. Wilmette Public Library www.wilmettelibrary.info Conclusion ______________________________________________________________ Steve Abram interviewing teens from Wilmette and Park Ridge at the 2007 ALA Gaming, Learning and Libraries Symposium Photo: Jenny Levine

46. Bibliography ______________________________________________________________ Wilmette Public Library www.wilmettelibrary.info Gee, James P. What Video Games have to Teach us about Learning and Literacy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan (2003). Jenkins, Henry. Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. Chicago: The MacArthur Foundation (2007). Kafai, Yasmin. Minds in Play: Computer Game Design as a Context for Children’s Learning. Hillsdale, NJ.: Erlbaum Associates (1995). Kafai, Yasmin and Resnick, Mitchel [eds]. Constructionism in Practice: Designing, Thinking, and Learning in a Digital World. Hillsdale, NJ.: Erlbaum Associates (1996). Papert, Seymour and Harel, Idit. Constructionism. Ablex Publishing (1991). Papert, Seymour. Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas. New York: Basic Books (1980). Books:

47. Bibliography _____________________________________________________________ Wilmette Public Library www.wilmettelibrary.info Papert, Seymour. The Children’s Machine: Rethinking School in the Age of the Computer. New York: Basic Books (1993). Piaget, Jean. Play, Dreams and Imitation in Childhood. New York: W.W. Norton (1962). Resnick, Mitchel. Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams. Cambridge: The MIT Press (1997). Salen, Katie [ed.] Ecology of Games. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. (Forthcoming in September 2007). Salen, Katie and Zimmerman, Eric. Rules of Play. Cambridge: MIT University Press (2003). Salen, Katie and Zimmerman, Eric [Eds]. The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology. Cambridge: MIT University Press (2005). Books (cont) :

48. Bibliography _____________________________________________________________ Wilmette Public Library www.wilmettelibrary.info El-Nasr, Magy and Smith, Brian. “Learning Through Game Modding.” Computers in Entertainment, Vol. 4, no. 1 (January 2006). Good, Judith and Robertson, Judy. “Computer Games Authored by Children: A Multi-Perspective Evaluation.” Proceedings of the 2004 Conference on Interaction Design and Children, pp.123-124. Good, Judith and Robertson, Judy. “Story Creation in Virtual Game Worlds.” Communications of the ACM, Vol. 48, no. 1 (January 2005). Habgood, M.P.J. “Zombie Division: Intrinsic Integration in Digital Learning Games.” Proceedings of the 2005 Human Centered Technology Workshop (2005). (Retrieved March 7, 2006 from http://hct.fcs.sussex.ac.uk/Submissions/12.pdf ). Habgood, M.P.J., Ainsworth S.E.& Benford, S. “The educational content of digital games made by children.” Paper presented at CAL conference (April 2005). (Retrieved March 7, 2006 http://www.gamelearning.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/research/CALabstract.htm ). Ito, Mizuko. “Education v. Entertainment: A Cultural History of Children’s Software.” Forthcoming in Salen, Katie (ed.) Ecology of Games. Harvard University Press (September 2007). Articles:

49. Bibliography ______________________________________________________________ Wilmette Public Library www.wilmettelibrary.info Kafai, Yasmin. “Playing and Making Games for Learning: Instructionist and Constructionist Perspectives for Game Studies.” Games and Culture Vol. 1, no. 1 (January 2006). Retrieved May 1, 2007 from http://gac.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/1/1/36 Kafai, Yasmin and Peppler, Kylie. “Creative Coding: Programming for Personal Expression.” Retrieved March 6, 2007 from MIT Media Lab website: http://weblogs.media.mit.edu/llk/scratch/archives/CreativeCoding-PepperKafai.pdf (Discusses Scratch). Kafai, Yasmin. “Game Design as an Interactive Learning Environment for Fostering Students’ and Teachers’ Mathematical Inquiry.” International Journal of Computers for Mathematical Learning Vol. 3, no. 2 (May 1998). Millner, Amon. “The Hook-ups Initiative: How Youth Can Learn by Creating their own Computer Interfaces and Programs.” 2004 ACM SIGGROUP Bulletin, 24. (Discusses Scratch) Overmars, Mark. 2004. “Game Design in Education.” Retrieved March 7, 2007 from Utrecht University, Computer Science Department website: http://archive.cs.uu.nl/pub/RUU/CS/techreps/CS-2004/2004-056.pdf (Discusses Game Maker). Overmars, Mark. “Teaching Computer Science through Game Design.” Computer Vol 37, no. 4 (2004). (Discusses Game Maker). Articles (cont):

50. Bibliography _____________________________________________________________ Wilmette Public Library www.wilmettelibrary.info Papert, S. “Does Easy Do It? Children, Games and Learning.” Game Developer, June 1998, p.87-88. (Retrieved March 7, 2006 from http://www.papert.org/articles/Doeseasydoit.html ). Reiber, L. P., Luke, N., & Smith, J. “Project KID Designer: Constructivism at Work Through Play.” Meridian: A Middle School Computer Technologies Journal, vol. 1, no. 1. (1998). (Retrieved March 7, 2006 from http://www.ncsu.edu/meridian/jan98/feat_1/kiddesigner.html ) Resnick, Mitchel. “Computer as Paint Brush: Technology, Play and the Creative Society.” In: Singer, D., Golinkoff, R.M. & Hirsh-Pasek, K. (eds.) Play = Learning. Oxford University Press (2006). (Discusses Scratch). Resnick, Mitchel. “Closing the Fluency Gap.” Communications of the ACM, Vol. 44, no. 3. (March 2001). Salen, Katie and Zimmerman, Eric. “Game Design and Meaningful Play.” In: Handbook of Computer Game Studies. Joost Raessens and Jeffrey Goldstein (ed.). MIT Press, (October 2005) Salen, Katie. “Gaming Literacies: What Kids Learn Through Design.” Educational Gaming, a Special Edition for Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia (JEMH). [forthcoming 2007] Articles (cont):

51. Wilmette Public Library www.wilmettelibrary.info Contact: Betty Giorgi Head of Adult Services blgiorgi -at - wilmettelibrary -dot- info Brian Myers Reference Librarian and Web Manager bmyers -at - wilmettelibrary -dot- info