On 17th november Noordhoff publishers organised a day for teachers to be inspired with fresh and new approaches for their profession. 10 speakers pitched their ideas in 15 minutes in a competitive format. All videos are now online. You can find them here.
My entry in two parts can be found here and here. Hope you like it.
Knaplastig now published
Just released: “Knaplastig: lesgeven aan pubers”. A lightfooted serious booklet with practical tips and reflective humourous interludes to offer teachers snew thoughts and insides in teaching kids in their roaring puberty. Small contribution on my side. ISBN: 978-90-6607-031-8
You can find it here
Awards
Since our institution is an Art school we are part of a particular tradition: prices and awards. Art is often acknowledged through prices. And although we are more interested in solving problems through creative solutions, prices are still nice, especially for the students involved.
First, there were the Dutch Game Awards. Three games made @ KMT ranged in four awards; Vogels (Birds), a game that got a ‘special award’. The game helps people recover from brain injury in combination with a dedicated device to retrain motorprogrammes. Paper Cakes, a collaboration with tablet maker Wacom (‘best student game’ and ‘best original game design’), and I must say, a blast to play. And a game made at our faculty some time ago, but fortunately living on as a business is Mijn Naam is Haas, an educational language game for young kids (‘best serious game’) originally in collaboration with Radboud University Nijmegen.
First price at bi-annual Conference on Fun and Games 2010 in Leuven
Students Game Design and Development received first price in a Game Design Competition for their entry Reflection, a puzzle platform adventure game.
Price winning game Vogels (Birds) was also nominated for a Wozzie Award.
Personally, I felt honoured when the audience at this venue felt my 15 minute talk should come out first, although it was a terrible close call with Bjorn Prins, who’s talk on mindfullness and his charming (Belgian) deep voice brought us in the here and now in the most splendid way.
Post mortem on… a birthday party part III
So what happens with a form like this? How does it work in Real Life ™? Will expectations come through?
I always tell people that applying these game principles and design guide lines lead to astonishing behavioral patterns. It is almost as if a hidden big red button is pushed. This is what happened…
Post mortem on… a birthday party part II
In part two we will fill in the blanks in between the start and the finish. The final goal is for the kids to build a working 9V long wave radio receiver from a kit. In order to do so, they need some basic learning so they can do it themselves with as little additional instruction as possible.
Post mortem on … a birthday party part I
When asked for examples of the application of the design principles I promote I often mention ‘the birthday parties of my kids’. Known as weekend research, these couple of hours of childrens fun are a nice lab for small scale experiments. My last endeavour was for my son. He t turned 11, and invited 5 friends to his party. This is how the design heuristic applies to… the common childrens party.
Game has gone 'gold'
Just a quick note that our third year students project Stoomreizen for the Railway Museum has gone ‘gold’ on their new website.
Nice to see their work open to the public now.
Fear of Games
Once in a while The Beast Rears Its Ugly Head; violence in games. A tiring debate. This time the Minister of Justice vocalises his concerns. Should we not ban violent games?! The young pure soul is threatened and corrupted.
First of all, the introduction of any new medium (and yes, in this case I treat games as a mass-medium) leads to this kind of discourse. And it has been of all times. Plato and Socrates were concerned. People writing things down would mean the end of civilization as they knew it: the Loss of the Oral Tradition. The introduction of Photography in the 19th century lead to a frantic debate about the death of Painting. And more recently, television (and violent cinema movies) were a threat and inspired kids to do Evil Things.
Researchers have never been able to conclusively state that television and movies had a causal effect on some deviant behaviours of youngsters. Of course some research outcomes state this, other research state the opposite. The minister handpicked some publications in one camp, overlooking many others. His agenda might be influenced by matters of taste, christian values, but facts and figures are a different realm.
I think ignorance, a lack of knowledge, makes people fearful. The fear of the unknown and a feeling of a lack of control on the matter. I have introduced the notion of game temperature earlier on this blog, where you can rank games on a metaphorical temperature gauge. Why? Because I believe people fail to identify a difference between violence and arrousal.
Steamtravel update
This morning I had the final assessment of the student team. They did a wonderful job despite the incredible amount of first time experiences in a complex group project setting. As all designers know there is a gap between dreams and reality and not all their wonderful ideas made it in the final version. This weekend will see that last integration work and polish up, monday we will meet the wonderful people of the Spoorwegmuseum. We all keep our fingers crossed they will like it. As a supervisor, I think they maxed out their abilities given the time frame, the stage of their development (they are third year students after all) and their ambition. It was a difficult assignment to start with.
You might want to keep an eye out on this website where we will launch the application, probably on Monday or slighty later.
Check here later for the final result.
Steamtravel
Currently I am working on a project with students for the National Railway Museum. Although it is work in progress I am getting more excited with every day passing. The assignment is to unlock the more hidden gems of the museum in order to attract new visitors. A difficult assignment, especially since I work with third year students. But they are talented, devoted, and work overtime.
