ARVEL SuperNews Spr 2012

Augmented Reality | Emerging Tech | Video Games | Virtual Worlds

ARVEL

www.ArvelSig.com

Applied Research in Virtual Environments for Learning

EXCLUSIVE

Interview With MATT DUNLEAVY ENGAGE

To Know Is The Beginning

by JONATHON RICHTER ASK CHRIS

Research Advice from CHRIS DEDE PROPHETS OF SCIENCE FICTION

SF Book Reviews

by SHARI METCALF

JANUARY-APRIL 2012

arvelsigSuperNews

The ARVEL SuperNews is an initiative of The Applied Research in Virtual Environments for Learning special interest group of the American Educational Research Association.

EDITORS: Jonathon Richter and Sabine Lawless-Reljic AUGMENTED REALITY EDITOR: Patrick O’Shea EMERGING TECHNOLOGY EDITOR: Jeremy Kemp VIDEO GAMES EDITOR: Moses Wolfenstein VIRTUAL WORLDS EDITOR: Sabine Lawless-Reljic ASK CHRIS: Chris Dede EDITOR AT LARGE: Jodi Asbell-Clarke SCIFI COLUMN EDITOR: Shari Metcalf CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS: Jonathan Bartels, Barbara Johnson, Ryan Martinez, Dennis Paiz-Ramirez EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 2011-2012 HONORARY CHAIR & NOMINATION COMMITTEE CHAIR: Chris Dede CHAIR: Lisa Dawley PAST CHAIR: Jonathon Richter PROGRAM CHAIR: Scott Warren PROGRAM CHAIR ELECT: Amy Cheney FINANCE/SECRETARY: Brian Nelson SPECIAL EVENTS: Patrick O’Shea COMMUNICATIONS: Sabine Reljic MEMBERSHIP: Dennis Beck AWARDS: Shari Metcalf WIKI: Nicole Miller PUBLICATIONS: Krista Terry CONTACTS: WEBSITE: http://www.arvelsig.com NING: http://arvelsig.ning.com EMAIL: arvelsig173@gmail.com

ARVEL SuperNews was powered by …..http://writtenkitten.net

Applied Research in Virtual Environments for Learning

CONTENT S WHAT’S THE BUZZ

SPECIAL FEATURE

4 Researching the Rules of Play 5 From the ARVEL Chair-interim

9 Interview with Matt Dunleavy

AUGMENTED REALITY

REGULAR FEATURES

7 Is AR Overrated?

8 Software/App Reviews

6 Movie Review 12 ARVEL@AERA 17 Ask Chris 18 SF Column 25 Club Photo 26 Blog Alert 27 Art Reviews 28 Announcements

EMERGING TECH.

11 Software/App Reviews VIDEO GAMES

20 Non Satis Ludere 22 Game Reviews

Sketchy Paper Icons by http://dryicons.com

VIRTUAL WORLDS

24 Immersive Learning with ARVEL

Image Credits: see page 28

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Front Page Image: Members of the Cognitive Dissonance Educator’s Guild participants begin the last fight in the End of Time five man dungeon in World of Warcraft. This fight requires players to use the hourglass to rewind during the fight, which allows them to rapidly execute strategies and make corrections.

This unique interface mechanic allows players to experience real time feedback and to renew the fight and correct past mistakes. Credits see p.32

|What’s the Buzz?

Researching the Rules of

Play s research professionals, we presume to undertake the difficult, perhaps impossible challenge of seeking and communicating knowledge. As educators, we give students experiences that we hope provide them with the knowledge they need to better function in the world. For members of ARVEL and our ilk… we get to interrogate games and immersive spaces as contexts for acquiring such meaningful knowledge. Lucky us.

All of this work with knowledge as our currency is quite challenging of its own sake – but as they say, “To Know is Not Enough”. It’s not enough for us. It’s not enough for them. Peter Drucker once said, “knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes.” Knowledge is a tricky thing, like a river.

Indeed, we live in an increasingly interconnected, fastpaced, and rapidly changing world. This puts “simply knowing” beyond our reach. It isn’t just the technology that won’t stand still. As the world is increasingly revealed, we have come to comprehend that it is really too big to know. So we cannot stand apart from the world, but must be involved in it. We must engage in the transactions of things: to strive, to balance, to connect, and transcend.

What then, are we to do with our knowledge?

I like that AERA traditionally follows the first Sunday after the full moon that occurs after the vernal equinox.

In the springtime, we realize our capacity to emerge from the darkness. Enlightenment is to know in a way that allows us to see and to Spring into new Patterns of Action.

We are called to provide protection, stoke the fires of the mind, calm the storms of unreason, of hot emotion and riot. We are leaders, provocateurs, and cheerleaders. We are game-makers. With our knowledge, let us game the future, now.

Jonathon Richter, Co-Editor

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ENGAGEMENT and RENEWAL ARVEL SIG continues to grow. Our membership is strong and the public is increasingly aware of and participating in our activities that span a variety of media channels – including this “super” newsletter. We are getting better at eliciting the research-related contexts to be found in games, virtual worlds, AR and emerging forms of “immersivity” – and highlighting such situated knowledge for you, our audience. We are looking at a number of exciting new options with cooperation from the American Educational Research Association’s Executive Council (more on THAT as things develop ;).

Yes, ARVEL SIG continues to get more relevant, more comprehensive, and to integrate the very immersive media which we profess to study.

Jon Richter’s alt “Wainbrave Bernal” in SL and 8-bit versions

To Know is the beginning For the win…

By Jonathon Richter Don’t just join ARVEL – do something mARVELous this year!

So here I am, back sooner than I ever thought possible, writing to you as Chair. Well… Interim-Chair, anyhow. Our ARVEL SIG Chair, Dr. Lisa Dawley, asked me to sit here through the AERA Conference in Vancouver, B.C. while she and Dr. Chris Haskell adroitly manage the next beta release of 3D GameLab. While I won’t be able to enact what Lisa would do, should she be able to be in two places at once – I’ll do my best to steward ARVEL through the Annual Conference as best as I’m able.

With the capable help of our Executive Committee and the fantastic line-up of speakers presenting on immersive learning research, I think we’ll be ok.

Now, as we grow and take more tangible form, we’re looking increasingly for YOU to become an active participant in the SIG. Here are just a few things that you can do: • • • • •

•

Submit a paper proposal for AERA 2013 in San Francisco!

Lead an ARVEL Ning Forum Discussion; or Present at an upcoming ARVEL Inworld Discussion; Build our Knowledge Base by contributing to our ARVEL Research Wiki; Submit an overview of the immersive projects or research going on at your institution for publication in the SuperNews; Or even volunteer to be a part of our ARVEL Editorial Board!

The ARVEL SIG is expected to grow and become even better this coming year. We have big plans! Join us and maximize your benefits!

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Movie Review

Source: http://blog.80millionmoviesfree.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/catfish-movie-photo.jpg

2010 documentary film Catfish (Joost & Shulman) depicts a classic mistaken T heidentity storyline with a 21 century twist as it follows the developing

“…and Angela confesses that all the various personae were fragments of her personality, usually enacting some fantasy of what her life would have been like if she had not made the choices she had.” Source

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romantic relationship of Nev, a twenty-something New York City photographer, and a woman he met on Facebook. The blurred line between the real world and digital realities complicates this as Nev struggles to make sense of and identify appropriate actions to what he is finding. These blurred lines are particularly problematic when it comes to issues of identity because of the multiplicity and situatedness of networked identities. The fact that our society is struggling with these issues can clearly be seen in the wave of news reports of teachers posting content on social media websites that is deemed inappropriate for the identity of “teacher” in our society.

A key to being able to better address these new issues we are facing in social media is to see what is going on. The Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project is a leading source for exploring ways the Internet is changing society. Publishing fifteen to twenty reports a year, many reports in recent years have been focused on usage and perceptions of social media. More information about the Internet and American Life Project can be found at http://www.pewinternet.org As digital technology is changing at a pace we have never before seen, it is important that we, as educators and scholars, be proactive rather than reactive.

HASTAC is a consortium focused on the possibilities for learning and communicating in new technologies. This organization has a purposeful emphasis on what’s next. HASTAC prides itself on fostering new ideas and innovation by hosting competitions and sponsoring graduate and undergraduate digital scholars.

More information can be found at http://hastac.org. By Jonathan Bartels

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|Augmented Reality Is Augmented Reality Overrated?

34% of respondents stated that AR technologies were easy to use and useful. By Patrick O’Shea Recently, there’s been a good deal of discussion about the utility of Augmented Reality technologies.

This thread of discussion has its roots in a recent survey by Ypulse – billed as “Media, Marketing and Technology for the Next Generation” according to their website (http://www.ypulse.com). According to this survey, only 34% of respondents stated that AR technologies were easy to use and useful. This has lead to a general discussion throughout several marketing websites that have begun to question the utility of AR to the younger generation. For example, Marketing Vox (marketingvox.com), GoMo News (gomonews.com), and the Mobile Commerce Press (qrcodepress.com) all dedicate time and space to describing these results and trying to divine their meaning for marketing trends.

Now, granted, these sites focus on the marketing utility of the technology, which wouldn’t seem to hold direct meaning for educators, but the statistics Ypulse have reported indicate not only that students don’t see utility in the technology for marketing purposes, but also that these difficulties stem from a general lack of understanding about how these technologies work (for example, students don’t seem to understand that they need an app on their mobile devices to access these materials). The difficulties that these respondents see with how the technologies work would be highly pertinent for educators who are hoping to use these tools in their classrooms.

The question, however, is “How do we interpret these results for education?” Do these results mean that education’s efforts to use AR are destined to be fruitless, aside from the “wow” factor of using a new and inventive tool? Obviously, it’s impossible to tell the future, and as the editor of the AR section of the ARVEL SuperNews, I’m not exactly an objective observer of these trends.

Having stipulated that, though, I can say that I see a couple substantial differences between how these tools are used in each setting that would support greater usability in classrooms than in general marketing.

First, as the difficulties seem to be associated with confusion about how the technologies work, classroom settings are better situated to provide guidance on how to make these tools function. Teachers and

Mobile AR apps to reach 1.4B downloads by 2015 Study: http://www.juniperresearch.com/r eports.php?id=279

technology personnel can set up the hardware and software ahead of time to ensure that the proper tools are available, and can then subsequently train students on the use of these tools.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, the marketing efforts that leverage AR tend to focus on “oneoff” interactions that are designed to provide information about products or experiences. While informative, and potentially interactive, these initiatives would appear to be discrete and disconnected to any larger context for the information that is presented.

Educational initiatives, however, have a greater potential to embed the AR technologies as a tool for providing contextualized information and interactions.

Of course, I don’t want to be Pollyannaish about these tools. The future will tell whether AR actually becomes a useful tool in educational settings, and it’s by no means a given that it will provide substantial benefits (although, the same can be said of any educational tool). However, I can say that I see a path for these tools to provide engaging, motivating, and contextualized learning opportunities that are substantially different from traditional educational practices (for example, utilizing AR tools to facilitate data gathering interactions within a mystery narrative). In other words, it’s WAY too early to determine whether AR is overrated as an educational tool.

One thing is clear, though – the answer to that question will depend on the quality of the curricula that are designed to leverage the tools, rather than the students’ perceptions of the tools themselves. –P.O.

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Software & App Google Reviews Sky Map http://www.vuzix.com

http://www.google.com/mobile/skymap/

Vuzix is a company that produces sunglassbased viewing technologies. The recent SMART glasses, introduced at CES, provide see-through HD displays, which can be used as augmented reality data displays. This technology provides a tool to display content in a user-friendly way, but is dependent upon content development to ensure quality educational experiences.

This application, available only for Google Android devices, will turn your Android phone into a viewfinder through which you can view the sky, including stars, planets, constellations, and satellites. This technology utilizes geolocation information and the internal gyroscope to allow anyone interested in learning about heavenly bodies to view that information in relation to their position.

Image: WRAP 290AR+ maxReality Bundle Source: http://www.vuzix.com/consumer/products_wrap920ar.html

Image Credit: p. 28

Quick Response

http://www.qrstuff.com/

http://tourwrist.com/

The Quick Response (QR) code is a flexible device that allows a device to “trigger” various events through the camera function. This technology allows the device to take a picture of the code using a QR Code Reader app, and depending on what data is encoded within the design, the code can cause the device to perform actions such as opening a webpage, calling a phone number, sending a text message, or simply presenting a block of text (among other activities)

Tour Wrist is an augmented reality application that allows for the development and presentation of 360° panoramic images. These images are tied to specific geolocations (but can be browsed from anywhere), and utilize the internal gyroscope within the device to allow the user to view the entire 360° image by turning the device. This is an excellent app for providing virtual fieldtrips for students who may not be able to visit diverse locations due to costs or other constraints.

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|Special Feature Interview With Matt Dunleavy About Hard Fun, Collaboration and Thinking

By Jonathon Richter Jonathon Richter: Hi Matt.

Thanks so much for agreeing to visit with us. We’re really excited about your upcoming presentation as Featured Speaker at our ARVEL Business Meeting in Vancouver. Tell us a little bit about yourself‌ Matt Dunleavy: Great to be visiting with you. I am excited to be talking with you and grateful for the opportunity to share my work.

Currently, I am an Assistant Professor in Instructional Technology at Radford University in southwestern Virginia. This is my fifth year at RU and I love it. I received my Ph.D. in 2006 in Educational Research, Statistics, and Evaluation at the University of Virginia, where I focused on the impact of ubiquitous computing on student learning and the classroom environment.

My research interests are focused on the intersection among 1-to-1 computing, instructional gaming, cognitive science, and social constructivist pedagogy. Prior to completing my formal education, I lived overseas teaching English as a Second Language in Cameroon, Central Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer and then independently in Taiwan, Republic of China. In my free time, I love to spend time with my wife, Sarah, and our two children Sophia, 4, and Christopher, 18 months.

J.R.: Matt, please describe GAMeS Lab and the work you do there: M.D.: I established the Gaming, Animation, Modeling and Simulation (GAMeS) Lab in December of 2007 to research and develop mobile learning initiatives.

Our first successful grant award came in the fall of 2008 from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to research and develop augmented reality curricula within the Radford Outdoor Augmented Reality (ROAR) project (http://gameslab.radford.edu/ROAR).

The second component of the GAMeS Lab is the iLearn project (http://gameslab.radford.edu/ilearn/), which is funded by a Virginia Department of Education grant awarded in January of 2010 to explore how the iPod touch and the iPad could be used to enhance effective teaching and learning.

J.R: So what excites you the most about your research?

M.D: From my perspective, the most exciting aspect of my research is the

Matt Dunleavy emergent and unpredictable nature of mobile learning. Devices like the iPad, which is just two years old, are changing how we learn and teach in and out of the formal school day. Technologies like augmented reality, which is still emerging as a platform and field of study, is radically changing how we interact with our environment and with each other. This is a very exciting time to be involved with mobile technology and to explore how it might enhance our ability to learn and teach.

J.R: How did you get involved with Games Research?

M.D: From 2006-2007, I was a Postdoctoral Fellow in Learning Technologies at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the director of the Handheld Augmented Reality Project (HARP). During this fellowship, I researched the strengths and weaknesses of augmented reality to enhance student engagement and learning in the 6-12 grade classroom environment.

Working with teams from University of Wisconsin at Madison and MIT, we explored how AR could be delivered through various game and simulation narratives. This was really the first time I had used games as a teaching tool and I was immediately hooked on exploring its application within education.

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The mechanics and stories embedded within good games have provided a wealth of information and design principles that I am continuing to explore to this day within AR experiences.

Finally, the game content and structure are designed to allow for multiple entry points on which teachers may build in future iterations.

device-to-student ratio provided within most AR learning environments, in which each student is interacting with a GPSenabled device to participate in the activity. This unique affordance enables educators to incorporate collaborative pedagogical techniques and experience design approaches such as jigsaw and differentiated role-play, which lend themselves well to inquiry-based activities requiring discussion and negotiation.

J.R: On the research methods and tools that you employ, can you give us a bit more specific detail on the sorts of evidence claims about learning that you make?

J.R: What advice would you give to others looking to pursue this sort of research?

J.R: If you would please pick a particular learning game and walk us through it a bit – tell us briefly about the game’s design for learning and the fun – and highlight a few of the issues that you encounter there as a researcher?

M.D: Sure. Outbreak is an AR game that attempts to guide students through a collaborative scientificinquiry experience focused on an epidemiology narrative. Outbreak presents the students with the following scenario: A deadly strain of a mystery disease has broken out in Thailand. The World Health Organization and the Center for Disease Control are quickly overwhelmed and world's scientists turn to the Internet to plead with the global community to pitch in and help. Everyone needs to lend a hand if we are to survive and you and your classmates as leading experts in your respective fields of botany, zoology, and entomology have been recruited into the cause to stop the disease.

Only the right combination of plants and animals will complete the chemical puzzle and the students must work in teams using their ARenabled smartphones to collect and analyze the data in their school playground to create the antidote.

Outbreak is based on Virginia Standards of Learning for middle school Life Science and the unit could easily be adapted for secondary Biology students. In addition, the game structure and content are designed to allow teachers the ability to make alterations based on different academic standards, different content areas, and different current events.

M.D: We use a design-based research (DBR) approach to explore the feasibility and practicality of using AR in the K-12 environment for teaching and learning. As applied to AR development, this formative research uses an approach of progressive refinement where AR designs that have been informed by learning theory frameworks as well as video game design principles, such as immersive narrative, role play, and mini-puzzles, are field tested in real world contexts with typical users to determine which design elements work well in practice and which elements need to be revised and retested. At this early stage in research and development, we are trying to determine the design principles that leverage the affordances of this emergent and nascent pedagogical and technological tool.

That being said, the most frequently reported affordance of AR is the ability to present to a group of learners multiple incomplete, yet complementary perspectives on a problem situated within a physical environment such as a school playground or a park. This affordance is a direct result of the 1-to-1

M.D: My advice is to get involved as quickly as possible in exploring this new tool as we have a great deal to learn and it is huge opportunity to make a meaningful impact on the field and shape the direction of mobile AR learning. We first need to figure out the optimal design principles or heuristics for AR learning and this can be done at a very small scale by a motivated team or individual without a great deal of resources.

J.R: Looking three to five years into the future, what do you see as pressing for educational research in immersive learning?

M.D: Imagine a world where you walking through the Internet.

Imagine a world where your entire physical environment is embedded with location-based and just in time information presented to you via a

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heads up display on your eyeglasses. This form of AR is coming and it will be the new storytelling and gaming platform.

Your world will soon be embedded with stories you can experience as you explore a new city, school playgrounds and parks will be embedded with simulations and games teaching us about the compelling narrative, science and history that surround us on a daily basis. Figuring out how to leverage this for learning and teaching will be the most pressing educational research opportunity for immersive, mobile learning.

J.R: Anything else you’d like to add?

M.D: I am thrilled with this opportunity to share our work and we are always looking for more partners who would like to explore this emerging medium. We are releasing a public version of an augmented reality development platform called FreshAiR this summer, which will allow average users without any programming skills to create and deploy their own customized AR experiences to any iPhone or Android-base phone. We developed this platform with an NSF DRK12 grant and you can get more information by contacting me directly or visiting our software site at playfreshair.com. Thanks.

J.R: Thank you for your time Matt. We can’t wait to meet you in Vancouver.

Matt Dunleavy is the invited Guest Speaker to ARVEL’s Business Meeting at AERA 2012. Join us on Monday, April 16th at 6:15pm-8:15pm, Sheraton Wall Center, Floor 4th Level, South Galiano

Credits for the 3 pictures used in this article: @Radford University, 2012

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Augmented Reality | Emerging Tech | Video Games | Virtual Worlds

2012 AERA Annual Meeting Vancouver, BA “Non Satis Scire: To Know is Not Enough”

The Scholar’s Journey: The Quest Are You Ready to ENGAGE?

Sat, Apr 14 8:15am-10:15am, Sheraton Wall Center, Floor 3rd Level, North Junior Ballroom D Applied Research in Virtual Environments for Learning SIG Workshop 12:25pm-1:55pm, Sheraton Wall Center, Floor 4th Level, South Granville Affordances and Constraints of Virtual Worlds for Formal and Informal Learning (Symposium) Sun, Apr 15 12:25pm-1:55pm, Sheraton Wall Center, Floor 3rd Level, South Orca Research on Teaching With Simulated Virtual Tools and Spaces (Roundtable) 2:15pm-3:45pm, Sheraton Wall Center, Floor 3rd Level, South Azure Second Life to Support Learning Across Contexts (Roundtable) Mon, Apr 16 2:15pm-3:45pm, Sheraton Wall Center, Floor 3rd Level, South Beluga Research Explorations in the Use of Virtual Worlds for Learning (Roundtable)

Matt Dunleavy

4:05pm-5:35pm, Sheraton Wall Center, Floor Lower Lobby Level, North Gulf Island BCD Assessing Learning in Embodied Mixed-Reality Environments (Symposium) 6:15pm-8:15pm, Sheraton Wall Center, Floor 4th Level, South Galiano Applied Research in Virtual Environments for Learning SIG Business Meeting Guest Speaker: Matt Dunleavy, Professor of educational technology and director of GAMeS Lab, Radford University Tue, Apr 17 12:25pm-1:55pm, Sheraton Wall Center, Floor 3rd Level, South Beluga Games for Learning: Research Outcomes and Student Experiences (Roundtable) http://arvelsig.com @arvelsig on Twitter arvelsig173@gmail.com

ARVELSIG Sessions Details Saturday, April 14 8:15am to 10:15am

Applied Research in Virtual Environments for Learning SIG Workshop (see page 19 for details)

Sheraton Wall Center Floor 3rd Level North Junior Ballroom D

12:25pm to 1:55pm

Affordances and Constraints of Virtual Worlds for Formal and Informal Learning (Symposium) Chair: Selen Turkay (Columbia U.) Discussant: Sabine Lawless-Reljic (Ashford U.)  Collaborative Learning in a 3D Virtual Environment, by Mihwa Kim (Columbia U.) Science in Second Life: Embodying Scientific Inquiry in a high School, by Selen Turkay (Columbia U.) Grounding Learning in a Motivating Real-world Context, by Xin Bai (CUNY) On the Internet, No One Knows You’re a Dog: Teaching Communication Skills to Medical Students, by Susan Lowes (Columbia U.), Gillian Hamilton (U. of Arizona), Vicki Hochstetler and Jennifer Lower (Hospice of the Valley) Hanging Out in Desi: Straddling Multiple Universes Through Second Life, Devayani Tirthali (Columbia U.)

Sheraton Wall Center Floor 4th Level South Granville

Sunday, April 15 12:25pm to 1:55pm

Research on Teaching With Simulated Virtual Tools and Spaces (Roundtable) Chair: Joyce A. Pittman (Drexel U.) Effects of Virtual Manipulatives on Student Achievement and Mathematics Learning, by Patricia Moyer-Packenham and Arla Westenskow Utah State U.) Teacher Perceptions of the Practicality and Effectiveness of Immersive Ecological Simulations as Classroom Curricula, by Shari Metcalf and Amy Kamarainen (Harvard U.) Designing Smart Worlds: Automated Scoring of Learners’ Transportation Decisions in a Virtual Urban Commuting Simulation, by Benjamin Erlanson (California State U-Monterey Bay), Andre Denham, Kent Slack, Lijia Lin, and Brian Nelson (Arizona State U.)

Sheraton Wall Center Floor 3rd Level South Orca

2:15pm to 3:45pm

Second Life to Support Learning Across Contexts (Roundtable) Chair: Robb William Lindgren (U. of Central Florida) Design, Play, Communicate, and Learn: Examining the Value of Learning History Through Avatar Role Play, by Jenny Wakefield, Leila Mills, Scott Warren, Monica Rankin, and Jonathan Gratch (U. of North Texas) Investigating Second Life for Language Learning: EFL Teachers’ Perspectives on the Use of Second Life and Which Factors Affect Their Desire to Integrate Into Language Instruction, by Muhammet Demirbilek (Suleyman Demirel U.) Proactive Retrospective Installation in Second Life, by Chih-Feng Chien, Trina Davis, Patrick Slattery (Texas A&M U.) Using Second Life to Enhance Spatial Ability and Improve Chemical Education, by Zahira Merchant and Wendy Keeney-Kennicutt (Texas A&M U.)

Sheraton Wall Center Floor 3rd Level South Azure

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ARVELSIG Sessions Monday, April 16 2:15pm to 3:45pm

Research Explorations in the Use of Virtual Worlds for Learning (Roundtable) Chair: Benjamin Eric Erlandson (California State U-Monterey Bay) Exploration of Students’ Sense of Community in Virtual Learning Environments, by Terry McClannon, Amelia Cheney, Robert Sanders, Krista Terry, and Les Bolt (Appalachian State U.) Measuring The Effectiveness of a 3D Virtual Online Museum, by Greg Jones and Adriana D’Alba (U. of North Texas)

Sheraton Wall Center Floor 3rd Level South Beluga

4:05pm to 5:35pm

Assessing Learning in Embodied Mixed-Reality Environments (Symposium) Chair: Robb William Lindgren (U. of Central Florida) Discussant: Christopher J. Dede (Harvard U.) Interviews, Diagrams, and Movement Analysis: Assessing Learning in a Mixed-Reality Simulation of Planetary Astronomy, by Robb Lindgren and J. Michael Moshell (U. of Central Florida) Embodied Learning: Moving From Multicamera Mo-Cap to the Kinect, by Mina C. Johnson-Glenberg and David Birchfield (Arizone State U) Measuring Critical Thinking, Conceptual Understanding, and Cognitive Gain During Augmented Hands-On Informal Science Learning Experiences, by Karen Elinich (The Franklin Institute) Expert Evaluation of Student Presentations to Assess Learning in an Interactive Digital Dome: Opening the Gates of Horus, by Jeffrey Jacobson (PublicVR) Drawing and Self-Reflection as Formative Evaluation Tools and as Catalysts for Adolescents’ STEM Learning, by Karla Saari Kitalong (Michigan Technological U.) Using Augmented Reality to Connect Classroom and Museum Learning Environments, by Eileen Smith (U. of Central Florida)

Sheraton Wall Center Floor Lower Lobby Level North Gulf Island BCD

6:15pm to 8:15pm

Applied Research in Virtual Environments for Learning SIG Business Meeting Guest Speaker: Matt Dunleavy, Professor of educational technology and director of GAMeS Lab, Radford University

Sheraton Wall Center Floor 4th Level South Galiano

Tuesday, April 17 12:25pm to 1:55pm

Games for Learning: Research Outcomes and Student Experiences (Roundtable) Chair: Mehmet Dali Ozturk (Arizona State U.) A Literature Synthesis About Games in Education, by Albert Dieter Rizthaupt, Nathaniel Poling, Chris Atkinson, and Margeaux Johnson (U. of Florida) Fifth Graders’ Flow Experience in a Digital Game-Based Science Learning Environment, by Meixun Zheng (North Carolina State U.) Self-Regulation, Alternate Reality Games, and Problem Based Learning: Are Students Ready to Play to Learn?, by Chris Bigenho (Greenhill School)

Sheraton Wall Center Floor 3rd Level South Beluga

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Ask Chris Die; Parents from Hell – Part Deux; and The Exterminator: A Case of Vicious Aunts. Soon, you will be back to the intelligent state of ignoring everything these v(acuous)-idiots say.

--Grand Master Dede

Ask Chris is written by Dr. Chris Dede, Timothy E. Wirth Professor in Learning Technologies at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. It will become the most popular column, known for its uncommon common sense and humorous perspective.

Send your questions for Chris to arvelsig173@gmail.com

DEAR CHRIS: My parents told my teacher that I was a 'vidiot'.

Apparently, I play too many videogames and that makes me one. If I quit right now, can I hope for my brain to re-wire intelligent connections again? ~ Jimmy Suaze, Seattle, WA DEAR JIMMIE: If you are taking seriously anything your parents say, you are in bad shape.

Evidently, videogame playing has eroded the critical thinking mechanism fundamental to being a teenager, which is that your parents don’t know jack about anything important in life. You need to shift to videogames that enhance a critical perspective on adults, like Die, Zombie Teachers,

DEAR CHRIS: I am a co-PI on an NSF-funded grant to develop a video game to improve science literacy in middle school students. We've got a good idea and have the resources to do this project - but I can't get my fellow co-PI to do his work. He doesn't write things down, he doesn't show up to meetings, and I'm having to do more of the workload all the time. The thing is, I really want this project to succeed. What should I do? ~ P., from East Coast DEAR P. from East Coast: You are fortunate to have a Co-PI who is “walking the talk” by giving you a science inquiry experience in your grant project. I’m sure it is difficult for him to feign indolence and irresponsibility, kissing off his duties while you stagger along under increasingly heavy burdens. But only through such a strategy can he help you to do problem-finding, the vital front end of inquiry and the key to science literacy. Hey, how can you inflict the unknown on helpless middle school students, giving them nightmares about making meaning out of complexity, if you don’t experience the angst yourself? This is gamification at its highest level – the guy is a genius, not a loser! Show a little gratitude for this Vygotskian mentoring, and stop whining about

workload.

--Dread Lord Dede DEAR CHRIS: Our research team is struggling with the tension between learning and fun. We have a game that teaches the History of Knowledge to college undergraduates. They start with the ancient Greeks and explore ontological and epistemological questions - up through the Enlightenment, applying the "lens" of the time to a variety of presented challenges. The thing is, the more realistic we make our game, making it more like the real world, reflecting the actual issues that people of respective times dealt with the less students appear to enjoy it. Conversely, the more fun we make it, the less generalizable the assessments appear to be. Can you help us address this seeming paradox between Fun and Learning? ~Gale, Austin, TX DEAR GALE: You sure have a lot to learn about fun – I almost fell asleep reading about your ontological and epistemological questions. Clearly you need to watch the movie “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” (1989) a few more times, to understand how to make history relevant to kids today. And, by the way, throw in a few Cheech and Chong movies to truly get the sense of exploring philosophic real-world challenges while stoned off your gourd – after all, the key to conceptual breakthroughs is creativity (i.e., seeing life twisted). This is a deep axiological insight, by the way – a dimension your game lacks. You fail to grasp the heart of the argument gamers make: if the assessments show that something fun is not learning, then the assessments are what is messed up, not the game!

--Grand Master Dede

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Science Fiction and other unrequired-butnecessary reading for Immersive Educational Researchers by Shari Metcalf

This issue’s sf column features Cory Doctorow – author, activist, journalist, blogger, and co-editor of boingboing.net. His two recent bestselling young adult science fiction novels are Little Brother (2008) and For the Win (2010). Both are outstanding projections of technological trends, particularly as pertains to augmented and virtual environments and youth culture.

Little Brother is a novel about the dangers of technological authoritarianism, and ways to use technology to take back control. The story takes place in the near future in the city of San Francisco, and tells the story of 17-year-old Marcus, who decides to skip school with his friends to play an alternate reality game (ARG) through the streets of the city. The Harajuku Fun Madness ARG has just posted a new clue set, so Marcus and his friends subvert the school’s gait-recognition cameras and RFID's (radio frequency ID tags) to sneak out and follow clues to a set of GPS coordinates to access a hidden WiFi access point signal.

Speculative

Research the Future!

Cory Doctorow

Genre:

Prophets of Science Fiction

Suddenly they hear explosions and sirens, and are caught up in the crowds fleeing from a real life terrorist attack on the San Francisco Bay Bridge. Marcus is arrested, detained, and interrogated by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), who suspect him of being an enemy combatant because of the gear he carries and his initial unwillingness to hand over his phone’s password. After days of harsh interrogation and intimidation Marcus is released, but soon learns that one of his friends is still imprisoned.

Marcus and his friends band together to form an underground resistance movement, identifying and circumventing the DHS security measures that are overtaking the city. They use the power of open-source, encrypted tools to defy authority, rally support and get the word out through chat rooms, message boards, and flash mobs.

Doctorow explains high tech surveillance techniques and ways to circumvent them in great detail. High on suspense, and tackling themes of civil liberties and social activism, the novel resonates with, and explicitly references, earlier protest movements like the Yippies of the 1960s – upgraded through the use of millennial technology.

What non-scholarly though important readings would you like other Immersive Academics to read? Send your suggestions for Shari to arvelsig173@gmail.com

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Science Fiction and other unrequired-butnecessary reading for Immersive Educational Researchers by Shari Metcalf

For the Win, Doctorow’s second young adult novel, takes us into the fascinating and real phenomena of gold farming –buying and selling virtual “gold,” the in-game points, artifacts, leveled-up characters, and other virtual currencies earned in MMORPGs. For the Win introduces us to a large cast of intriguing characters who populate this enterprise, from third world gold farming teens exploited by profit-hungry bosses, to white collar executives of gaming companies who manipulate the system for massive economic gain.

Speculative

Research the Future!

Matthew Fong is a poor teen with great skills as a gold farmer who works for an oppressive boss in Shenzhen, China, who later escapes and teams up with Jiandi, a girl who broadcasts an underground radio show online to millions of Chinese factory girls. Mala is a poor teen in Mumbai, India who games at a local internet cafe; she and her gaming “army” are hired by a corporate businessman and told to attack other players who may be gold farmers for a rival business. Leonard Goldberg is a teen from a well-off family in the United States who

Interview with Ken McLeod about Makers, For the Win, and UK riots. Source: http://craphound.com/ftw/

Genre:

Prophets of Science Fiction

Download for free becomes friends with Matthew and other Chinese gamers he meets online. The storylines come together through Big Sister Nor, a girl in Singapore who has started a trade union called the IWWWW (Industrial Workers of the World Wide Web, a pun on IWW); its members use the games to organize under their bosses’ noses.

For the Win, like Little Brother, takes old conflicts and expands them to a technological future. Here the work is virtual and global but the workers are locally oppressed, and the power of the internet means that support can be rallied from distant continents, video sharing can expose the brutality of oppressors, and message boards can raise the voices of millions.

Again, Cory Doctorow brings significant expertise to the topic, and provides clear and interesting background on the economics behind gold farming, including the volatile price fluctuations of virtual currencies. MMORG fans will also appreciate the colorful descriptions of imaginative new gameverses, including trolls vs elves in Svartalfheim, a Lewis Carroll-inspired Savage Wonderland, and giant robots in the post-zombie apocalypse of Zombie Mecha.

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|Video Games Non Satis Ludere Notes from the Game Developers Conference

By Moses Wolfenstein If you’ve ever attended the AERA Annual Meeting, you know that it’s a massive conference. Last year in New Orleans there were over 13,000 education researchers in attendance (www.aera.net). That is in fact a lot of people, and yet this year the annual Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco saw nearly twice that many attendees with roughly 22,500 games industry affiliates in attendance for some portion of the event (www.gdconf.com).

Apart from the fact that the scale of both of conferences is enormous, and that each is considered to be the premier event for their respective professional communities, these two events seem to have little in common at first blush. As an academic event AERA consists almost entirely of researchers, while GDC attendees represent a much more heterogeneous set of roles. At the same time, the actual demographic constitution of GDC is distinctly less diverse than AERA, especially when it comes to gender. Of course, the crucial distinction between the two lies in the fact that as an industry conference there is a persistent focus on the business of games at GDC, while the parallel concern at AERA is probably best represented by the portions of the community concerned with policy.

For all of these differences, there are in fact deep similarities as well. Both events bring together the best minds

in their respective fields to tackle persistent and difficult questions. Due to the massive scale of these events, many productive moments happen during sessions but the most intense moments of knowledge sharing and intellectual interaction happen in the corridors outside of sessions, over a meal, or at parties and receptions.

Features of this sort are likely to attend any event that takes place on this kind of scale, but in addition there were three characteristics of GDC this year that more directly invoked current trends among the AERA community.

First, as with education the games industry is hungry for meaningful data, and as with the education community there is a push back from some members who are wary of over quantifying practice.

Second, there was a persistent thread of debate at the conference focused on the questions of what games are and what purposes they should serve.

In wrestling with these questions game developers struggled to determine “what they know that they know” about games and players much as education scholars strive to answer the same questions about teaching and learning.

Third, game developers are increasingly asking some of the same types of questions as education researchers as they seek to better understand what makes a game successful, and similarly are turning increasingly to the work of psychologists and cognitive scientists in their quest for answers.

In this last vein, Naughty Dog’s Richard Lemarchand’s talk titled Attention, Not Immersion was a particularly relevant effort at capturing existing research that is as significant for learning as it is for gaming. While the title of Lemarchand’s talk draws our attention to and problematizes the oft discussed phenomenon of immersion, he was quick to point out that the construct of engagement which we discuss on a very regular basis in education research troubles him as well. Citing Salen and Zimmerman’s Rules of Play (2003), Lemarchand emphasized that there is an “immersive fallacy” that often emerges in discussing the power of games for both play and learning. This is the notion that the player is so immersed in the game that they perceive it as reality. Jim Gee has of course offered us a more accurate construct when he discusses the concept of “projective identity” (2003), but the immersive fallacy persists to some extent when discussing games as both entertainment and learning experiences.

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Lemarchand utilized the concept of the immersive fallacy as a means of launching into a broader critique of the concepts of player immersion and player engagement as meaningful for understanding what’s actually going on in great gaming experiences.

Personally, this squares with a critique I’ve had around a great deal of education literature that focuses on learner engagement as a means of trying to evaluate the quality of learning experiences. Lemarchand didn’t put it in these terms, but I’ve always seen engagement as a secondorder phenomenon, and hence not terribly useful in designing or evaluating learning experiences. As the title of his talk indicates, Lemarchand draws our attention to psychological research on the topic of attention instead, emphasizing that game designers can benefit more from tweaking game design in ways that gets and holds player attention by leveraging reactive/bottom-up and goal-driven/top-down processing. I believe that education researchers, and especially education researchers doing applied work with digital technology, will similarly benefit from considerations of learner attention as they strive to design tools and environments that produce effective learning.

Lemarchand’s talk was certainly a highlight of GDC for many of the researchers in attendance, but as I noted previously many of the most interesting and compelling learning opportunities took place outside of the conference sessions. Game designers were actively and passionately engaged in debates about what games are at the conference, and if you’re interested in the takeaways from a couple of attendees around that conversation I recommend reading Raph Koster and Tadhg Kelly’s blog posts (see references) on the topic. Similarly discussions around the topic of player

perspective on the design practices that support the creation of games.

GDC provides one particularly immersive opportunity to do so, as well as an opportunity to find out the ways in which game design professionals are taking up many of the same issues education researchers are engaged with, and bringing their own perspective to bear in the process. ~M. W. Richard Lemarchand, Naughty Dog co-lead designer

References data, particularly in relation to microtransactions, were evident both in sessions and around the conference more generally. As a researcher, it was evident to me that as with education game designers are currently in the midst of a sort of data renaissance, and that similar blind spots occur as they seek ways to understand the massive amounts of data that their players generate. For a really good read on this issue that predates this year’s GDC, I recommend taking a look at Ian Schreiber’s post on metrics and statistics (2010). While Schreiber’s introduction to the basics will likely be old hat, he provides a nuanced discussion of the use of quantitative tools that is frankly often lacking in both educational and game design circles.

GDC is not a cheap conference to attend with the 2012 all access pass priced at $1,475 assuming you made the early bird registration deadline this year. However, it’s a conference that’s fully worth the cost of admission at least once if your work is concerned with video games. As we approach this year’s AERA conference with its theme “to know is not enough”, GDC is a reminder that if you work with video games and learning “to play is not enough” either. Understanding the capacity of games as a tool for learning means pealing back the lid on the black box of game play and getting some

American Education Research Association (2011). Retrieved from http://www.aera.net/AnnualMeetin gsOtherEvents/PreviousAnnualMe etings/2011AnnualMeeting/tabid/1 1257/Default.aspx on March 21, 2012.

Game Developers Conference (2012). Retrieved from http://www.gdconf.com/ on March 21, 2012.

Kelly, T. (2012). Equivocitis [Terminology wars]. Retrieved from http://whatgamesare.com/2012/03 /equivocitis-terminology-wars.html on March 21, 2012 Koster, R. (2012). “X” isn’t a game!.

Retrieved from http://www.raphkoster.com/2012/ 03/13/x-isnt-a-game/ on March 21, 2012.

Salen, K. & Zimmerman, E. (2003).

Rules of play. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Schreiber, I. (2010). Level 8: Metrics and statistics. Retrieved from http://gamebalanceconcepts.wordp ress.com/2010/08/25/level-8metrics-and-statistics/ on March 21, 2012.

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Game Reviews

Game Journey Joystiq Score 5/5 Gamespot Score 9/10 Common Sense Media Rating 5/5, Ages 10+ Review by Ryan Martinez

Game Bastion Joystiq Score 4/5 Gamespot Score 8.5/10 Common Sense Media rating 5/5, Ages 11+ Review by Dennis Paiz-Ramirez By now you’ve probably heard of this award winning title by the Indie company Supergiant games, but if you haven’t this game is definitely worth a look. Bastion is an Action RPG set in a post apocalyptic world. By assuming the role of a protagonist, known only as “the kid”, players must make their way through a shattered land in order to restore it to its former state. Aside from being a solid game over all, Bastion excels at telling an immersive story generated in part by the payer’s actions.

Given the emphasis most educational games place on narrative to convey educational goals, Bastion gives us a model of turning otherwise linear stories into dynamic experiences. By paying attention to the player’s actions, and providing real-time feedback in the form of narration, Bastion strikes a balance between designed experience and player agency that is sometimes lacking in games of the same genre. Although it requires a moderate level of twitch gaming skill at times, Bastion is a must for any researcher, or practitioner, interested in the role of story in games. Bastion is available for Xbox 360, Mac and Windows via the Steam client, and can even be played in the Chrome web browser.

Writing a review of Journey and some of the benefits for learning it provides is a difficult prospect. Journey is most certainly a video game, but there are certainly a few people including some game developers who will say it is anything but. You start off in a desert setting, traveling around the space and learning the basic movements through a series of small, but doable, challenges. It is at this point you see a figure running towards you. Many gamers would be inclined to shoot at this figure, but there is a no-‘shoot’ function. When you fumble to find the talk function, you quickly realize your chatter is relegated to a small music piece and an icon above your head. Slowly you start to understand that this character is not an enemy, but rather another game player randomly paired with you to solve a series of puzzles. Many times throughout your game you will see your partner disappear, only to find a new one running towards you. Any type of communication you were able to agree on with your former partner is lost on your new companion, starting the process anew. But you must communicate, because in order to solve some of the puzzles, you need to rely on one another. Some of these puzzles can be extremely difficult.

This is where Journey provides two of the most important educational concepts not always covered in a school curriculum; that of communication and empathy.

You need to figure out a system of communication with your unknown companion as you cannot speak with them online or through text but only through that one sound.

You must rely on one another to progress through the game, and so when you do fail, you do so as part of a team.

My own experiences playing with Journey illustrates both of these concepts. I was paired up with another player to solve an incredibly challenging puzzle, the play area so vast that it required a lot of exploration.

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After figuring out a primitive communication template with my player, we embarked on solving the puzzle.

Eventually my thumb grew tired pressing the controller button repeatedly, and I felt no longer useful to my partner. I quit the game, but I felt incredibly guilty having let my partner down after spending all that time building a rapport and working together. I’ll never know this person, but at that moment there was a connection and a loss.

Though this game is not difficult disciplinary knowledge, the simple collaboration was effective. Some games simply evoke meaningful emotions. Journey is one of those games.

Game Reviews

Journey is currently only available on the Sony PS3 through the PlayStationÂŽNetwork.

Game: Star Wars: The Old Republic Joystiq Score: N/A Game Spot Score: 8/10 Common Sense Media Rating: 1/5 , Ages 15+ Review by Barbara Z. Johnson If you have a Star Wars fan in your household, you have probably heard of this online multiplayer role-playing game from BioWare and LucasArts, which extends the rich narrative and choice structure of the Knights of the Old Republic single-player games into the online, multiplayer realm. This game is interesting to educational researchers because of the way it blends narrative story telling and player choice with social and group gaming activity. This is one multiplayer game in which group activity, which awards social points, has a direct effect on the quality of gear that a player can purchase. Teams are easy to pull together in this game, and there is a refreshing variety of group encounters that include everything from simulated team sports (Huttball is a riot) to more traditional group combat and player-vs-player battles. As with many group role playing games, the teamwork and strategy required to achieve many game goals are a good way to teach people of all ages to contribute their character's abilities and their own ability to collaborate in order to succeed.

As with the other games in the Knights of the Old Republic series, a player's choice of actions in the game affects a character's moral alignment, either toward the Light Side or toward the Dark.

These choices also affect the type of equipment that can be purchased, aspects of the narrative, and how non-playing characters react to the character. This can be an interesting challenge and opportunity to discuss moral choices in difficult circumstances. Characters on the Republic side can choose evil actions, and those on the Imperial side can choose good ones. It is an interesting activity to work at making a Light Sith or a Dark Jedi to see the ramifications of choices and actions.

However, in many ways, this is a very traditional role playing game, and as the folks at Common Sense Media point out, much of the activity in the game focuses around the classic combat between good and evil. In this case, however, the narrative puts the combat into context more directly than any other MMORPG that I have played, and I have occasionally been able to use the decision system to avoid some combat situations. If you work with teens, you will probably have heard about this game since it released over the winter break. New buzz may be surfacing now because a major new patch will open up a new system, called the Legacy system, which will allow players to craft not only characters but families of characters that can share abilities and experience. Be prepared for some interesting family trees that will mimic the drama and pathos of the movies!

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|Virtual Worlds InWorld Discussions Bring Educators and Researchers Together Every Week.

New and experienced virtual world educators and researchers come together to explore what works and what does not, and to share rigorous methodologies for successful studies.

By Sabine Lawless-Reljic

ARVEL SIG Immersive

Methodologies were always important part of the discussion. Janet Salmon proceeded to explain how she critiqued Richter and Stanko’s case using the E-Interview Research Framework (3/21), while Donna Davis provided us with a detail of the ethnographic approaches she uses in researching SL cultures and relationships (2/29).

Learning is growing: the Inworld Discussions are now weekly, ARVEL sponsors several virtual events, and ARVEL TV records it all.

Indeed, the Inworld Discussions series has been scheduled every week since we came back from the winter break. On January 18, ARVEL welcomed Thomas Convey and his team from Hawaii to discuss their work on using virtual environments for training people with disabilities in Patrick O’Shea (SL: Dionio Outlander) Inworld Discussions also hosted talks that brought employment skills. Alice Krueger, president of Virtual Ability resources as well as methodological frameworks.

Inc., presented three weeks later on what she and her team do Richter organized a tour of CLIVE Island, the to provide individuals with diverse disabilities.

MERLOT resource to virtual educators (3/7) as well as contextualized each arm of the ARVEL SIG for educators’ support in research, in the classroom and within an innovative community of practice. Jatila van der Veen introduced us to the Planck Mission simulations for astronomy and cosmology education (04/04). On 04/11, Justin Reeve took us on a tour in his OpenSim-based world to experience his giant underwater observatory. “We hope to integrate [Justin’s sim] into our upcoming project building certified badges for NOAA high school science learning in 3D GameLab” says Lisa Dawley (ARVEL LinkedIn, 4/03).

Alice Krueger (SL: Gentle Heron) In addition to ARVEL Inworld Discussions, ARVEL ARVEL Inworld Discussion also showcased a series of talks TV was busy with numerous conferences. ARVEL useful to teaching and learning strategies in virtual settings: featured the livestream coverage of the SITE 2012 1) Salwa Khan’s work on instructor social presence in adult pre-conference virtual kickoff (3/4) and sponsored courses conducted in Second Life (01/25), the 2012 Virtual World Best Practices in Education 2) Candace Chou and Rama Kaye Hart’s research on threeconference (VWBPE) (3/15 to 17). dimensional immersive learning strategies (2/15) 3) Jonathon Richter and Taryn Stanko’s exploration of Many discussions are scheduled til June. Don’t miss individual work identity and routines in virtual worlds them !

(03/21)

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The Hypergrid Adventurers Club visits jump4000 on Jan 19, 2012

Immersive in Action

ARVEL caught up with members for pictures of events and projects in virtual worlds and games. The Hypergrid Adventurers Club has been quite busy exploring the vastness and diversity of worlds developed in the OSGrid.

Minecrafters are not only busy avoiding 8bit zombies, they build awesome projects at Minecraft in School. Educators suit up for quests in the World of Warcraft guild called “The Cognitive Dissonance.”

And Pooky Amsterdam’s weekly show remains a favorite with VWBPE’s luminaries on The 1st Question.

Chimera Cosmos learns the rules of prim-sitting on Apr 5, 2012

Minecrafters at Minecraft in School on Jan 13, 2012

Share yours for the next issue! arvelsig173@gmail.com Cognitive Dissonance Educator’s Guild on Jan 15, 2012

English class with Second Life students and on-site students on Feb. 7, 2012

The 1st Question, VWBPE Special Edition, March 16, 2012

The Hypergrid Adventurers Club visits Dune world on Jan 10, 2012

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ARVEL Home

Participants Blogs

Dr. Larysa Nadolny • Desk Lamp, 12/17/2011 • Gold Fish Trophy, 12/14/2011 • Setting Sit Targets the Easy Way, 12/03/211 • Drinking Water Fountain, 11/26/2011 • Fire Extinguisher, 11/26/2011 • Base for Island #1, 11/09/2011 Gamasutra •What Makes a Game? 03/29/2012 •What You Need to Know About Developing Games for BlackBerry 04/02/2012 •A Producer’s 10 Lessons Learned the Hard Way 04/03/2012 •Intuition, Expectations and Culture: Learning from Psychology to Build Better Game Interfaces 04/04/2012 •The Real Data Behind Movies Becoming Games. 04/05/2012 •Understanding User Research: It’s Not QA or Marketing! 04/06/2012 Edutopia •A New Community and Resources for Games for Learning 03/30/2012 •What Apple’s Edu-Announcement Could Mean to You 01/20/2012 •Head in the Clouds: The Benefits of Celestial Storage 02/03/2012 •On Twitter: To Follow or Not to Follow 03/06/2012 •You Just Attended an Awesome Conference. Now What? 03/15/2012

RSS Feeds

Blog Alert

Hack Education

•The Truth About Tablets, 02/01/2012 •Zuckerberg’s Hacker Way and Higher Ed, 02/01/2012 •Career Readiness, College Prep, a Pearson-Incubated Startup, and the Opportunity Gap, 02/01/2012 •Visualizing (Two Very Different) Education Social Networks: Gates Foundation and Educon,02/01/2012 •The LMS Instructure Makes Its Move into the K-12 Market, 02/01/2012 •Stanford Professors Daphne Koller & Andre Ng Also Launching a Massive Online Learning Startup, 01/31/2012 •Evaluating Educational Research, 01/31/2012 •Weekly Ed-Tech Podcast with Steve Hargadon, 01/31/2012 •Weekly Ed-Tech News Roundup: The State of the Union, Stanford vs. Thrun, and more, 01/28/2012 What’s John “Pathfinder” Lester tweeting?

• @divacanto TY for adding Pathlandia to MISearch homepage. I think that search engine has great potential. http://bit.ly/Hx9KYn #opensim Apr 07, 2012 •Digging in with @atlassian's Confluence for doc and knowledge management at #ReactionGrid. I am very impressed. http://bit.ly/HQPVz4 Apr 05, 2012 •This new book looks fascinating. "Engaging the Avatar: New Frontiers in Immersive Education" http://nordicworlds.net/?p=2395 via @NVWN Apr 05, 2012 •RT @neilmart: Fab pres from last week's Follow the Sun Conf by @Pathfinder - Integrated Reality & Next G Virtual Worlds http://bit.ly/I6ZcAw Apr 05, 2012 •Using Virtual Worlds to Reduce Stress http://bit.ly/HIrqD2 #ReactionGrid Apr 03, 2012

>>>> Send us the link of a blog that you follow. We will feature it here in the next issue.

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Augmented Reality In January 2012. John Goto and Matthew Leach presented the Joseph Wright AR, an augmented reality montage of the 18th century painter’s paintings and porcelain figures from a local factory in Derby, UK. The montages can be experienced online or at the Derby Museum and Art Gallery where the pictures are displayed. This project was supported by D-MARC, Derby Museum and Art Gallery and Royal Crown Derby Museum. Go here to choose from all Goto and Leach’s travels in AR: http://johngoto.org.uk/augmented-reality.html

Machinima Machinima: The Art and Practice of Virtual Filmmaking, authored by Sonicity Fitzroy and Lowe Runo, with foreword by Persia Bravin is due to be published in March 2012 by McFarland books. Rysan Fall (SL name) is one of several featured artists in the book. Here is one of this early work, a Billie Holiday tribute titled “Strange Fruit”. It’s a slightly historical account of the time and shows how Black people were treated, and how far we’ve come…(source: The Best of SL Magazine March 2012) http://www.youtube.com/FallFilms#p/a/u/6/Q7Wo4 RAmJcU

Emerging Technologies

Art Reviews

Artist Glyph Graves pushed the boundaries between virtual and physical realities by programming and scripting his own hack for the Kinect to map and move his real life physical body and movements onto virtual objects in SL. “Faceted Existence” is an exhibit that uses a Kinect interface to control the spheres that move when Glyph moves his RL head., not his avatar’s. Watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9q5N1X5Cs30&featu re=colike

Linden Endowment of the Arts The Linden Endowment of the Arts is an official Linden Community Partnership program whose purpose is to help new artists, cultivate art in Second Life, and foster creativity, innovation, and collaboration within the art community. Browse and teleport to the exhibits: http://lindenarts.blogspot.com/p/lea-land-endowmentexhibits.html

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Email us your art, how-to, movie reviews, pictures, questions to Chris, new products, events & grant competitions to arvelsig173@gmail.com Picture Credits: Front page: Kavon Zenovka, http://cognitivedissonance.guildportal.com: Page 3 Credits are also hyperlinked on each picture Terra Nello Spazio Image: Idea go/ FreeDigitalPhotos.net Stars Image (+p.8): http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/ images/view_photog.php?photogid=809 Satellite Launcher Image: digitalart/ FreeDigitalPhotos.net A Neon Grid Effect Backdrop With City Image: Victor Habbick / FreeDigitalPhotos.net Female Android Head Image: Victor Habbick / FreeDigitalPhotos.net Page 23: Game Developers Conference http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7191/6817764436_71270c 1564_m.jpg and http://www.gdconf.com/img/about/gdc2012.jpg Page 25: Bastion http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/8/87209/182152 4-box_bastion_large.png Journey: Ryan Martinez’s screen capture Star Wars: Old Republic http://www.starwars.com/img/explore/videogames/the-old-republic_product_2.jpg

Club Photo Hypergrid Adventurers Club, John “Pathfinder” Lester, http://becunningandfulloftricks.com/tag/hypergridadventurers-club/ Minecraft in School, Lucas Gillispie, http://edurealms.com English Department, Laviece Ward, Wake Tech Community College, Raleigh, NC ChimeraCosmos’s work: http://www.koinup.com/ChimeraCosmos/work/427874

Upcoming Issues / Submit your work to the ARVEL SuperNews!

January – March: Engagement / Renewal April-June: Embodiment July – September: Preparation and Design October – December: Assessment Membership Call Has your smartphone become an augmented reality extension of your life – coloring everything you do and see? Or maybe you find yourself passionately talking about your involvement in virtual worlds or augmented reality, but your friends could care less?

The solution is simple. You need to virtually hang with people who know what it means to get your first frag. You need people who understand that HUD doesn‘t stand for ―Housing and Urban Development.‖ You need ARVEL. What‘s ARVEL? It is ―Applied Research in Virtual Environments for Learning‖ – a special interest group of the American Research Association (SIG#173). Joining ARVEL is inexpensive ($10) and can be done by going to https://www.aera.net/MemberPortal/Renewal /PubSales.aspx. We are a group of researchers and practitioners who are passionate about the promise that virtual worlds, simulations, and augmented reality hold. Come and join us!

By Dennis Beck, Membership Officer

ARVEL Stats(*) ARVEL SIG/AERA: 136 members AERA_ARVE_SIG173_Announce list is automatically updated from the official AERA membership list ARVEL NING: 436 members (open to everyone)

ARVEL Contacts General Info, Membership, SuperNews: arvelsig173@gmail.com JOIN ARVEL SIG http://arvelsig.ning.com/ http://twitter.com/ARVELSIG (use the hashtag #arvelsig) ARVEL on LinkedIn ARVEL TV

ARVEL locations in VWs ARVEL in 3rdRock Grid (Tierra Paz 125,80,25) ARVEL in ReactionGrid (Ontos2 50,82,46) ARVEL in Second Life (CAVE 12,241,42) ARVEL in SmallWorlds Do you own some space in a VW? Contact us to establish an ARVEL headquarter in your VW. (*) As of 04/04/2012

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