1. Games and Simulations, Pedagogy, Education and other wonderfulness
CS4HS - Symposium
August 20, 2012

2. Where I think we are going…
Introduction
Who’s here and what are your interests
Why games are important for society
Why games are important for learning
Why games don’t fit in traditional classrooms
Directions to explore for your projects

3. Start- Who am I
Who am I?

4. Bill Crosbie Assistant Professor : Raritan Valley C.C. Game Design &
Development
2007-Present
Co-Chair IGDA
SIG - Education

5. Bill Crosbie Previous 12 yrs – Rutgers University Code monkey
New media specialist
Instructional designer

6. ? Who is here? Teacher Public/Charter/Private Developer
Do you play games?
Do you think games are a distraction from what is important?

9. Games are important for society

10. James P Gee

11. James P Gee

20. Games are important for learning

26. Challenging activity that requires skill

27. Merging of action and awareness

28. Clear goals and feedback

29. Concentration on the task at hand

30. Paradox of control

31. Loss of self consciousness

32. Time seems to ‘warp’

33. Experience becomes an end in itself

34. Summary of Flow Challenging activity that requires skill
Merging of action and awareness
Clear goals and feedback
Concentration on task at hand
Paradox of control
Loss of self consciousness
Time seems to warp
Experience becomes an end in itself

43. Why games don’t fit in traditional classrooms…

44. Why games don’t fit in traditional classrooms…
EASILY
Why games don’t fit in traditional classrooms…

45. Play is for
Learning
not for
teaching

46. Play is voluntary

47. Limited ability to set goals and direction

49. Learn through failure

50. Players will have a wide variety of emotional states

51. Encode meaning in gameplay

52. Need to be willing to let go of the reins

53. Directions to Explore

54. Play games

60. Design games

61. Creating games is NOT about
Programming
Art
Music and sound
Content
Technology
Need good programmers
Need good artists
Need good audio engineers
Need to understand the content deeply
Need to understand all aspects of your delivery technology

66. Come do a Game Jam with us

69. Thank you! bcrosbie@rci.rutgers.edu Rvcc.crosbie@gmail.com

74. Summary of Flow

75. Seven Ways to Design for Play
Choose appropriate problems
Process, not content
Design for multiple tries and play styles
Open-ended systems
Change your evaluation metric
Iterative design process and testing
Don’t marry your technology