This individual papers session, ”Flouting Magic Circles”, will include the following:
Promoting embodied learning through virtual and real world gaming experiences
Embodied experiences can be important for changing attitudes, deepening understanding, and increasing science process skills. The Field Museum is interested in best practices for using and combining digital and analog moments for learning. Recent studies support the use of digital tools, particularly virtual worlds, for embodied learning. Other studies show that physical role-playing activities can lead to embodied learning. The choice of virtual or physical experiences to trigger embodied learning should tie directly to learning goals. In this workshop, participants will replicate activities from “I Dig Tanzania” that facilitated embodied learning: one that was most effective as a role-play and the other as a virtual world activity. External analysis documents the affective and content gains made by our teen participants. These results and participant feedback will be used to initiate a conversation about the importance of embodiment in achieving learning goals, particularly those that relate to attitudes and process.
Audrey Aronowsky, Beth Sanzenbacher, Mark Childs, Anna Peachey, Krystal Villanosa, Johanna Thompson, Kenneth Angielczyk
Augmented Reality and Neighborhood Narratives
An increasing number of people are utilizing their smartphones to craft mobile, geo-located stories and games. Many avail themselves of authoring tools such as 7scenes and ARIS, which allow authors to create end-user experiences that run like locative apps on most devices. While these experiences can be both novel and enjoyable, their emphasis on the screen often detracts attention away from the real world spatial features of a situation. This workshop will explore the idea of digital/physical “seams” as an alternate way of crafting mobile narratives. We will conduct a series of design and playtest activities that build off of the augmented reality application, Aurasma, to better understand how emphasizing the seam between the digital and the physical might have pedagogical and creative benefits.
LeAnne Wagner, Ingrid Erickson
Two-Way Play: Early Research Findings of Learning with Kinect Sesame Street TV
Microsoft Studios has recently released Kinect Sesame Street TV, a new form of media for television that merges traditional means of watching episodes with game like physical actions via the Xbox and Kinect. This paper presents an overview and early findings of an initial study that investigated how ideas of embodied cognition and comprehension can be leveraged to understand the experiences of three and four year old participants, and explore the ways in which bidirectional television can facilitate new meaning-making. Early research took place at Microsoft Research in Redmond, WA, and analysis is continuing at [removed for blind review]. The findings inform the development and design of other interactive television products and programs for early learners. The presentation also breaks down directions for future analysis, showing how initial findings illustrated a need for deeper research and analysis in the nuanced ways young children learn and demonstrate knowledge.
Meagan Rothschild
Richard Halverson, Discussant
