Dear GGHA Alumni Members of Canada’s History Community:
I enjoyed our reunion in Ottawa in April. I was really impressed and motivated by your projects, plans and enthusiasm for history and education in general. I was in awe of the brain power, creativity and commitment to learning represented by everyone present. My thanks and gratitude go out to Joel, Joanna and the rest Canada’s History for their amazing planning and organization of all parts of the weekend.
I am hoping that you can help me. I will be completing my Masters of Educational Technology at UBC in the fall and I have just started an independent directed study in games for learning. The final deliverable for this course will be the mobile game or interactive story for students attending Vimy 100 next April.
I am looking for people to offer suggestions, critique and other feedback in the design process. Involvement would be non-committal and completely determined by your interest and time. Communications will take any combination of: surveys, Google groups, email and group Skype sessions. You could, of course, participate as much or as little you wish.
The history community can provide unique insights into how students typically approach events and issues outside of the classroom and on educational tours. I value the perspectives, experience and intuition that you can bring to this project.
My focus question is how student learning on historical tours can be enriched through place-based, locative, mobile games and interactive stories that is difficult to accomplish through other means. Specifically, I am interested in the affordances that come with the combination of mobile technologies and game design, including: portability, social interactivity, context sensitivity, immersion and embodiment. The game will include an environment where students:
- confront issues by interacting with historical characters in significant locations
- collect and document digital artifacts (photos, videos, voice recording, game objects)
- communicate and collaborate on problems or quests
If you are interested in helping me on this study and project, please complete the form below and/or email me directly. I will be maintaining a blog and website that documents all part of my process at: http://etec580cbrumwell.weebly.com/blog
Thanks,
Craig