http://digitalplay.info/blog/2009/11/spotlight-on-digital-play-innovators-1-jane-mcgonigal/
To launch a new series entitled ‘Spotlight on Digital Play Innovators’, here’s a brief profile of Jane McGonigal, Director of Game Research and Development at the Institute for the Future, whose ground-breaking work on alternate reality games (ARGs) has led to a lot of excitement about how the power of games can impact the real-world.
Her ARG The Lost Ring, which ran at the same time as the last Olympics, was a great example of how these sorts of games can engage huge audiences and be be both collaborative and creative without losing elements of competition. The idea revolved around devising the rules of play to a lost sport. Now the game is over, but you can get an idea of the kind of creative content that was produced by people while the ARG was running by browsing the archives.
EFL CLASSROOM IDEA – SUPERSTRUCT
Another game that Jane was involved in is Superstruct, which can be used with students in the English language classroom. The premise is for players to imagine what their lives will be like in the year 2019. Although the description on the site tells us the game is now finished (it ran for 6 weeks from October 2008), students can still register and interact with the content. You could also use the game in the classroom for discussion and as an impulse for writing.
If you want to get students to use the site, they can register in a matter of seconds (if they have an email address) and the next step if to create a profile by answering the following questions about their life and world in 2019 (which could also be done in the classroom instead):
- Where do you live?
- Who do you live with?
- What do you do? Where do you work?
- What matters to you most?
After comparing answers, the next step is to watch one or two of the Superstruct videos with students and ask them to react to them to come up with possible solutions to the problems.
OR/AND
Students could prepare video diaries such as the one Laura (one of the participants in the ARG) prepared:
If the students react well to this, there are other missions for them to follow on the site.
Find out more about how to play the game by watching Jane’s introductory video:
HOW GAMES CAN CHANGE EDUCATION
Jane is particularly interested in looking at how games can change the way that we learn and work in the future, something which she explains in more depth in the short video interview below.
She also explains the potential that collaborative gaming such as that promoted through XBox Live can contribute to the development of collective intelligence and other skills.
Jane talks about the future challenge for education and the world of work to take advantage of the potential of such gaming systems. Surely there are possibilities for language learning and teaching here. What do you think?
More about Jane McGonigal (follow her on Twitter here) and her work here:
- Articles and Papers by Jane McGonigal
- Boing! Boing! Video: Emotion, Gaming and Dance
- Video – Explosion of Opportunities offered by Games
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