What interests me in educational software  2/18/07

I've had versions of this post rattling around in my head for a while because I couldn't come up with the perfect situation to articulate them. I can't keep doing that-- perfect times for things are too rare, and too dependent upon multitudes of imperfect attempts that let you see the right time to move. Cats become good hunters and pouncers by pouncing off the edges of tables when they are kittens. Anyway.

I think that a lot of "educational software" as it stands now is pedagogically moribund, intellectually misguided, or worse. This state of the field means that schools often don't see using software in school as worth it-- they'll have to invest significant time in learning the software, adapting their curricula to it, and arranging the class schedule to accomodate it, only to have it do what the teacher is already doing. Most software out there is supplemental, good for reinforcing what the school is doing or, on occasion, creating interest in something the student could learn more about. More often, it earns the (often derogatory) term edutainment.

Despite the very sound reasons that this state has developed, I don't think that this has to be the case, at all. Much of the software out there that is considered educational is delivering what someone has deemed sufficiently educational content. It's teaching the student phonics, or greek history, or what it is like to live in Sri Lanka today. While those are good things in the right time and place, they're not what computers are best at, according to Steven Johnson (and many, many others).

What computers are good at is process. Computers take input, do things to it, and produce output. As the user varies the input and runs it through the computer, the user learns a lot about the process the computer is putting the data through. As a spreadsheet user gets frustrated with Microsoft Excel and tries different things to get their spreadsheet to turn out as intended, they learn how Excel is manipulating their input. As a gamer tries to ride a horse over hills in Shadow of the Colossus or get from city to city in World of Warcraft, they're learning how SotC or WoW restricts their movement, allows some inputs (actions) and not others. They're learning how to use the rules of the world to accomplish what they want.

Truly educational software, whether or not it's intended or labeled as educational, teaches its user about its processes. Learning those processes and analyzing them looks a lot like what educators call "critical thinking" and laud as a primary goal of enlightened curricula. Kids learn unasked from games, but then are bored by what they're asked to learn in school. Software could be bridging the gap, by giving students rich situations to playfully practice what they're told in school. It's rare to use software in schools in that way, though, and this is one thing that interests me about educational software.

Examples of how that might happen form the core of my interests in educational software. I'm interested in:

• games that communicate concepts rather than facts or situations
• games that are sandboxes, space for simulations and safe practice of challenging processes to learn
• tools that facilitate better writing, reading, thinking, and presentation
• tools that facilitate or augment what teachers are already doing

I'm going to be writing about many topics related to this in textuality.org since it's the core of my passion. Sorry if I didn't explain and defend each of the assertions in this post, as many clauses here clamor for comment. I think this will be one of those posts that I end up using to spin off many future posts, a clause-as-link at a time.

Metamorphosis  2/18/07

Good bloggers write their lives, from the daily details to the deeper ruminations. They share with their readers as their interests change and their blogs follow. I tend to do the opposite: I disappear and emerge new. Hence, as I realized that freelancing wasn't working for me and shifted interests over this last year, I retreated. I locked up-- textuality.org is about hypertext, information architecture, and maybe education; if I wasn't reading and writing about that, perhaps it shouldn't go on t.org.

I think that was the easy, but wrong, route. I'm still interested in hypertext, and how people use linked and dynamic text to discover and forge meaning in their lives. I'm still interested in how technology can turn people from readers to writers and how it can help them see the 'meta' side of their lives, not just the details and how they fit together but the systems that make the details fit together.

That retreat was also largely due to a shift in career. As I began t.org, I moved from Boston to New York and began freelancing on databases. A year in, I shifted away from databases. I wasn't sure where to go, but several opportunities to work in Game Design and educational software came up. I followed them, and here I am now, with things to think and say again but in a new field.

I'm still interested in hypertext, information architecture, and education. Now, though, I've got a specific set of fields to apply that interest to. Hypertext and my interest in it has taken root in educational software, writing software; my interest in dynamic and linked narrative has taken root in game design and digital games. It's my life equivalent of a chapter break, I suppose. For textuality.org is the link to Page 2 or the Next Section. I hope that if you're still reading, you'll follow that link with me.

Hamlet  7/9/06 - Hypertext by Mike Young

Hamlet! A Game in Five Acts, by Interactivities Ink, is the first Thespis game I've seen on the market. I picked it up at Ubercon in 2005 and have only played it once through properly. It's not flawless, but it's fun and it's a narrative game, and it's vaguely collaborative, and I'd teach it in an English class, for pete's sake. That's awesome.

To summarize quickly, in Hamlet! as a Thespis instance, you have story elements, lexia perhaps, which you might 'read' or 'play' at any moment. What structures the story is that lexia have constraints on when they may be played or read. Certain plays present the prerequisites for others, or represent an event which makes other plays impossible.

In Hamlet, all actions are on the table at all times. Each player starts the game with a secret goal which takes the form of a set of character 'endings'. One player might have the "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Aren't Dead" ending, for instance, where R&G survive and Hamlet dies in England. Another player might have the "Happily Ever After" ending where Hamlet and Ophelia get married and everyone likable doesn't die. Players take turns which are called scenes, during which they can make a certain number of actions occur. Most actions have constraints, so the "Hamlet practices swordplay" action can't occur while Hamlet is in Denmark, and while "Hamlet duels with Laertes" might happen almost anytime, the chance of Hamlet winning improves the more often the "practice" action has occurred.

When all goes well, what you end up with is a game that resembles a play written by committee in some wonderfully ridiculous ways, with players scheming and collaborating to lay out sequences of scenes which move toward their often contradictory endings. If a player's ending becomes impossible (Hamlet dies, making "Happily Ever After" look pretty Grimm), then the player joins the crowd trying to make the new play turn out like Shakespeare did-- with everyone dead. It's a nice "zombie army" device that keeps players active to the end and makes the whole thing somewhat collaborative.

Read more in this entry...

Thespis might need a computer

Games + Learning + Society Conference 2006  6/26/06 - Event

I didn't go to the Games + Learning + Society Conference 2006, and I am kicking myself for it. I came up with a bunch of reasons why it might not be what I was into, or why it might be above my head, back when I could have registered. By the time I realized it would be awesome, it was well beyond my solo means.

This, then, is an entry made possible by my friend Alecia Magnifico, who is a student at UW-Madison in the group that sponsored the conference. She gathered a bunch of links and sent a minor bibliography for what her panel would talk about.

Read more in this entry...

GLS 2006 'Official' Links

GLS 2006 Blogs

The Marathon Trilogy  6/6/06 - Hypertext by Bungie

Wikipedia describes the Marathon Trilogy of games as a series of "science fiction first-person shooter computer games from Bungie Software...." which in 1994 "introduced many concepts now common in mainstream video games," including "dual-wielded weapons, friendly non-player characters, and most notably an intricate plot."

It's that last bit that intrigues me from a hypertext standpoint. The gameplay was novel at the time, and all the more remarkable for being released first on the Macintosh, but it was the plot and narrative which held fans' attention and led to "The Marathon Story Page" where fans were explicating the plot and finding new details and connections more than seven years after the series concluded.

Bungie Studios eventually released the tools used to create the game as well as the game source code itself. Fan communities continue to create new scenarios, stories, and levels for the engine today.

Read more in this entry...

The Marathon Story

Marathon as a hypertext in form

Marathon as a hypertext in content

Marathon vs. other games

Tinderbox Technique: drop-stamp adornments  3/9/06

I've been revamping the architecture for t.org behind the scenes, and some nifty features are coming out of my explorations. I'm used to working in the Outline View, which is strange because I'm a very spatial thinker. After watching Mark Bernstein take notes in Map View at eNarrative 6, though, I decided to give Map View another shot. I soon came up with one technique that you could easily adapt to your own files: adornments that act like stamps. This and the pen have made the Map View just as useful to me as Outline View.

As of Tinderbox 3, adornments can have actions. This is huge! Since adornments cover an area of the map view (without taking up space in other views), this means that you can make a section of a Map View a functional 'drop box'. Make a note; drag it so that it touches the adornment; the action is applied to the note. Now drag it wherever you really want it.

Read on for the hows and whys and examples.

Read more in this entry...

An example: canvassing the web

The quick how to: assigning actions to adornments

CFL: RPG and Hypertext Design  3/7/06

This is a quick Call For Links. I'm currently designing a role playing game setting, and all the reading on RPG design has me thinking. Similar challenges arise in writing interactive fiction, writing 'literary' hypertexts, planning a session/story/adventure for a role playing group, and designing digital games with interesting plots. If you have a link, please write (and say whether you're comfortable being credited by link and how).

• How do you give the reader/player authentic agency while still propelling the narrative in a meaningful direction? (Can you?)
• What RPG devices, especially game mechanics, facilitate or restrict narrative agency?
• What are useful techniques for adapting an existing story or setting written around a single protagonist to make it interesting for a group of collaborative players?
• What are useful techniques for making a hypertext or interactive fiction appealing to a multitude of reader/players with a variety of goals and modes of play?

I'm looking for good readings specifically about the parallels between hypertext and RPGs. There seems to be a lot of thinking about one side or the other (especially about digital games), but I've found little on the interaction of the two pursuits. If you have a link, please write me. I'll make a follow-up post soon about what I've found.