A great book! I'm very excited about the possibilities!
I did a little more looking into the specific games and will report on my findings as I find them ;) I hope for any feedback.
I'm really excited about the ideas in the book. The games themselves, however, I'm a little disappointed in. Why? Because they don't really exist. At least not in the sense that they are available. Check out the following comments on the Urban Science blog (one of the few epistemic games co-created by the author of the book):
Please let me know where I can preview the game, or use it.
Thanks,
Mark
Comment by Mark Derison 01.17.07 @ 11:52 am
Please let me know where I can preview the game, or use it.
Comment by michael 02.04.07 @ 6:06 am
Did you notice the dates? No response in a year's time?
Yes, they exist in a lab or a hard drive somewhere in Madison, no doubt.
And they have been used. And VERY SUCCESSFULLY. So don't get me wrong. I don' mean to be to hard on these folks. I believe they are leaders way out ahead of the rest of us. I'm just really crossing my fingers that they and others find ways to get these games to a larger audience.
Here is another (unanswered) comment on their blog:
Hi David,
I’m about half way through your book now, and finding great material in it to talk to my staff and administrators that I work with about.
Regarding your work (primarily in the summers) with middle school students, has anyone else picked up on this and started running similar summer school classes themselves? I think running classes solely based on engineering/design games with teachers as facilitators that primarily participate in “desk crits” with kids would be very doable in our school district. Are there any tools, guides, or leading school districts in this concept that could give us ideas as to how to make this happen?
Forgive me if these resources are given later in your book - I haven’t gotten there yet! Awesome work - thanks for sharing!
Comment by Tim Goree 05.05.07
This is exactly my point of this entry. These games are not available and yet there are people out there who believe they are doable. People enthusiastic and ready to use them.
And for good reason. The book and the website are very convincing. Here is a quote from a review found on the website:
A must read for anyone who cares about learning.
--Seymour Papert
And while I agree that the theoretical and philosophical ideas in the book as well as the practical demonstrations of using "epistemic games" are very impressive, I care about learning and I read the book, and I want to see these games. Are there others? Well, the games mentioned in the book are all made by the same group of people there in Madison. Used on lucky Wisconsonians, while the rest of us are left to scratch our heads.
So the point is that these games are works-in-progress. They are not available right now. The good folks at Epistemic Games are moving ahead with game designers, etc. Maybe we'll hear something from them soon that we can use. They were used in very experimental ways in a university setting. They require much guidance and materials that aren't software-based, such as grad-student mentors. Sorry to get hopes up by getting on board. I guess we'll all have to wait. More than anything, this book and these ideas are calls to rethink learning and the possibilities of creating epistemic frames similar to professional practicums where we can greatly improve real learning. I'm just a trying-not-to-be-technophobic teacher. But I hope others will get going and make these games. When they do I'll be waiting in line to use them. And I'm sure many others will as well.
http://epistemicgames.org/eg/
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