I said I would try to look into each of the games in the suite of games being developed by Epistemic Games. The first installment will address the game, Urban Science.
In college, I seriously considered a career in urban planning. I took a course in Urban Planning at UCLA as an undergrad and loved it. I decided to teach elementary in the inner-city instead.... yep...
I wish a game like this existed then (or now for that matter- see my previous post). Last semester (UST- MALT) I did a Webquest as an assignment (using the free WYSIWYG web creation software: Nvu) I decided to focus my project on urban planning. I had not yet heard of Urban Science or Epistemic games. It has similar features but arguably a wider view. The way I understand it, the students in the Urban Science game focussed on three neighborhoods, I asked students in my project to give a Powerpoint Presentation to the Mayor and City Council on the city's unique features, its patterns of settlement and development, its demographic trends, its resources and physical features, its image and reputation, and whatever is found to be interesting and relevant to the goal of understanding the past and present to help create the best possible future for the city. Both had the students present their findings to the mayor. The major difference is the Urban Science game intensive actually happened (and it is at a much higher level, of course).
Urban Science, "the epistemic role-playing game of professional urban planning" (to quote their blog), uses iPlan as its game engine. "Players use iPlan to interact with expert planners and virtual stakeholders, create land use plans using an embedded geographic information system, and build out their plan in Google Earth".
(I did a search for iPlan and this link was the closest to something that could be used for this. Further inquiry into this site revealed that iPlan is actually powered by IPIX : "Immersive imaging technology. Patented IPIX technology produces spherical images that let you feel like you are actually inside the scene". Very cool!)
Back to Urban Science. According to a write-up by Susan Troller of Madison, Wisconsin's Capitol Times, students "do field research in actual neighborhoods, armed with digital cameras and notebooks, under the guidance of graduate students in the educational psychology department".
In Urban Science there were several trial runs of varying lengths of time and age-groups. The one which impressed me the most in the book was a 10-hour intensive by high school students (the fact that huge gains could be made in such a short amount of time). But the one which receives the most press on the website is the 4-week summer intensive involving middle-schoolers. It is the one written about in the article above and in these two:
Wisconsin State Journal, by Alec Luhn and
Wisconsin State Journal, by Sam-Omar Hall
Assuming you read them, you no-doubt see the power in this kind of learning situation. The fact that they gave presentations to the mayor is impressive in itself. The quotes by the mayor seem a little harsh but this is perhaps an indication that these students were taken seriously and treated like real stakeholders.
In a later blog entry, one the game's creators followed up with one of these students. This student had the opportunity to use this knowledge at her school as they were exploring this very subject. She created a project which was head-and-shoulders above her classmates. Unfortunately, and tellingly, her teacher did not give her any feedback or use this as a starting point for discussion. When the game's creator who doing the follow up interview asked if she could see the project, the student said she received an A but then threw it away, a poignant example of how schools often impress upon students to care more for a grade than real learning.
The culture of education must be changed. These games are a step in the right direction.
Want to further explore planning for students? Here is a good pdf about youth planning outreach by the APA. that will help lead you in that direction if you are so inclined.
