It has been a while since I last published a post. Yes. This year has been pretty hectic so far. Can’t believe that it is already September! Since January 2019, we have completed three projects (Beaconing, CreativeCulture and Crowd4Roads). We have also started a few more and are continuing to contribute to the various research, development and practice of playful and gameful applications and experiences in education. The team has been particularly prolific in producing published articles. On top of the projects we have been involved in, I have also finally completed and submitted the draft of my manuscript on ‘Game Science in Hybrid Learning Spaces’. The book draft is currently being reviewed by Routledge’s ‘Digital Games and Learning’ series editors (Taylor and Francis Group). So here hoping for the green light!
So yes – I will provide more updates and also insights into the findings and outcomes from the projects, publications and the book draft. So watch this space!
A few key highlights or insights this year so far:
- Educators (teachers) should be at the centre of educational interventions. The sense of ownership and autonomy, and the empowerment of teachers to continuously review, reimagine and redesign their practices are essential for promoting adoption as well as effective interventions with relevant outcomes. In order to mobilise young people, we need the upskilling of school teachers, who play such a vital role in the education ecosystem as it is considered as one of the most effective and direct means of achieving all of the SDG4 targets (UNESCO, 2017). This insight is reflected in both the Beaconing project in 10 countries and the CreativeCulture initiative in Malaysia Borneo – where play, games and gamification are used as pragmatic and holistic tools for experience design.
- Player-data interaction is an interesting way for promoting collective sensing and crowd sourcing. There is value in the connection between real data and gameplay, such as the basic procedural generation of game levels (including terrains) for the Crowd4Roads’ game – a game that relies on data collected via the SmartRoadSense app. This opens up opportunities for gameplay to manipulate various types of data.
- Play as an instrument and playfulness as an attitude – essential experiential and exploratory tools for preparing young people for the tomorrow’s realities. Resilient individuals and communities are important for responding to the changing and evolving social, economical, technological and political landscapes. We have been building on playfulness as a strategy for the past 3-4 years through the Remix Play summits, This year’s summit (#RemixPlay3) will focus on ‘Playful Inspiration for Social Innovation’ showcasing insights from live initiatives in the community across the various countries.
- Curiosity doesn’t kill the cat! Curiosity opens up opportunities for ‘intentional’ (from an educator’ point of view) and incidental/emerging experiences! The magic circle of educational inquiry blends the formality of contexts – towards lifelong learning.
There are various other insights that I could share on here but I shall leave that to the following future posts.
And since I’m still on annual leave, I shall press pause now… till then.
Sylvester Arnab 