15 Years of Games For Change

The organization Games for Change is hard to describe as being just one thing: they throw a Festival that happens every year in NYC, and that's been the backbone of the organization, but around that has grown a really important community of artists and activists, educators, computer scientists, developers, funders, and game studios who believe deeply in the power of games for improving the human experience. Sometimes that's about empathy for other humans, sometimes it's about zooming in on something remarkable, sometimes it's about simply tapping the playfulness in all of us. When I think of Games for Change - some might call them Serious Games - I think of titles like Dys4ia, a flashgame by the legendary Anna Anthropy - quoting from Wikipedia, "to recount her experiences of gender dysphoria and hormone replacement therapy". There are hundreds of titles, and many would argue that the boundaries between "serious games" and others is really about your game design practice, more than genre. They can be blurry, when you put them up against Educational Games, or even virtual environments where the outcomes aren't purely a play for revenue.I've been really lucky to be a part of this organization's evolution as a participant at the festival, as a partner to their student game design challenge in my role at Mouse, and as a member of the community that gains so much from the vision they put forward 15 years ago. I feel like an Anniversary gift is in order, and while I didn't send chocolates to founders - Ben Stokes, Barry Joseph, Suzanne Seggerman - it felt like the next best thing to spend some time with G4C President, Susanna Pollack, and give you a chance to hear from two winners at this year's festival.3 Conversations, 15 years of Games for Change - enjoy.Notes from this episode:Games For Change: http://www.gamesforchange.org/Attentat 1942: http://attentat1942.com/Attentat 1942 Gameplay: https://youtu.be/kLct7kVW1sMCharles University: https://cuni.cz/About Assassins Creed, Origins for Education: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/16/arts/assassins-creed-origins-education.htmlSTEAM: https://store.steampowered.com/Technology Student Association: http://www.tsaweb.org/Play Garrett at Chameleon School: http://tsabms.bsd.k12.pa.us/VideoGameDesign/Team903/2018 G4C Student Challenge Winners: http://www.gamesforchange.org/studentchallenge/awards-2018-student-challenge/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Om Podcasten

The show is about learning with technology, the realities and exciting potential.Enjoying the show? Please take a moment to rate us, and leave a review wherever you've accessed the podcast. Find our listener survey at facebook.com/nosuchthingpodcast drop a like on the page while you're there.The music in this podcast was produced by Leroy Tindy, a guest in episode zero. You can find him on SoundCloud at AirTindi Beats.The podcast is produced by Marc Lesser. Marc is a specialist in the fields of digital learning and youth development with broad experience designing programming and learning environments in local and national contexts. Marc recently served as Youth Studies Practitioner Fellow at City University of New York, and leads a team of researchers and technologists for NAF (National Academy Foundation).Marc is the co-founder of Emoti-Con NYC, New York's biggest youth digital media and technology festival, and in 2012 was named a National School Boards Association “20-to-Watch” among national leaders in education and technology. Connect with Marc on BlueSky @malesser, or LinkedIn.What's with the ice cream truck in the logo? In the 80's, Richard E. Clark at University of Southern California set off a pretty epic debate based on his statement that "media are mere vehicles that deliver instruction but do not influence student achievement any more than the truck that delivers our groceries causes changes in nutrition." * So, the ice cream truck, it's a nod to Richard Clark, who frequently rings in my ear when I'm tempted to take things at face value. "Is it the method, or the medium?" I wonder.The title, No Such Thing, has a few meanings. Mostly, it emphasizes the importance of hard questions as we develop and document the narrative of "education" in the US. For Richard E. Clark, the question is whether there's such a thing as learning from new technologies. For others, it might be whether there's a panacea for the challenges we face in this field. Whatever your question, I hope that it reminds you to keep asking--yourself, your learners, others--what's working and how so.* Clark, R. E. (1983) Reconsidering Research on Learning From Media. Review of Educational Research 53(4) 445-459. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.