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Tag Archives: civic engagement

Reimagining Education: Games for Civic Engagement

Posted on June 24, 2013 by Gene Koo

At last month’s Reimagining Education event convened by the U.S. Department of Education and the MacArthur Foundation, I led a breakout group that brainstormed a game to encourage civic engagement. We set the following boundaries to direct our thinking:

  • It had to target young adolescents (middle school aged)
  • It had to be scalable
    • … therefore it had to be both accessible and “safe” for teachers in typical school settings, e.g. who may not be well-versed in activism and need to avoid being “political”
  • It had to be easily piloted for minimum cost

With these criteria, we quickly coalesced around a range of possibilities, all of which featured the following properties:

  • Hyper-local and location-based
  • Built around mobile technology
  • Lighthearted, preferably fun
  • Aiming to demonstrate relevancy and provide immediate efficacy

Out of this, three concepts bubbled up:
Reimagining Education - Civic Games
Prompted

Two of our ideas had kids documenting the world around them using mobile devices. Inspired by the experiments of Ben Stokes at USC and by the now-mothballed website “This is Broken,” we imagined youth armed with their camera phones taking pictures of things that respond to various prompts, e.g. “This is broken,” or “This could be better,” or “This is great!” The end result would be a civic map of a place from a youth perspective.

The Prompted app would then ping anyone who walked by a location where a picture had been logged. It might prompt a question – “What would you do?” followed by a yes-or-no voting mechanism on possible actions, or a lightweight discussion.

Common Ground

Another take on youth-created civic map was for participants to be able to look through photos taken by peers and begin to, in some fun or gamified way, tag and organize them. The focus would be on helping youth discover ideas or views they have in common as well as seeing other points of view.

Infrastructure

The third concept was a “Civic Mine” that operated more as a set of tools that might, in addition to the ideas already described, also include story builders. What particularly caught our group’s imagination from this concept was being able to “flash forward” into some possible future where a particular problem was solved, or “flash back” into history when a similar problem was previously addressed.

Next Steps

The technology for developing a minimum viable product (MVP) for Prompted and especially Issue Sorter is already in the pockets of most kids today – mobile phones equipped with cameras, plus off-the-shelf systems like Flickr. In fact, an MVP has already been piloted and proven by Games for Change founder Ben Stokes during the course of his work at USC. Adding a geo-prompt or a sorting function would be a fairly simple task.

Indeed, none of the technology presented here is all that challenging. The trick – as with most educational interventions – is to figure out how to get teachers in real schools to use it as part of an ordinary class experience.

Reimagining Education : Civic Games

Graphic notes from our workshop session.

Posted in Archival, Blog, Educational Games | Tagged civic engagement, off-topic

Canadian Civic Engagement Game

Posted on November 29, 2011 by Gene Koo

I just learned about Persuasion – the Game of Civic Engagement, which is put out by CTO, the Ontario Educational Communications Authority. In it, your avatar walks around a neighborhood and chats people up about a civic issue facing that neighborhood. It looks like the main mechanic for the game involves clicking on neighbors, which spreads information. Apparently, when enough information is spread, you have a better chance of making the civic change you want. (Interesting model of social change).

iCivics has a similar civic engagement game, Activate, which has a different model of social change, one that involves awareness-raising, fundraising, and pressuring officials.

Posted in Archival | Tagged civic engagement, iCivics, off-topic, review

US Deputy CTO Beth Noveck on gaming and open governance

Posted on July 16, 2009 by Gene Koo

The Obama administration is looking seriously into how games and virtual technologies can advance national policy priorities, from energy use to financial literacy to citizen diplomacy, announced White House Deputy CTO Beth Noveck at the United States Institute of Peace‘s presentation, “Smart Tools for Smart Power: Simulations and Serious Games for Peacekeeping.” As one of the Obama administration’s lead personnel on government openness, Noveck focused on citizen collaboration and civic engagement, but as founder of the State of Play conferences at New York Law School, she also spoke to games and virtual worlds in their own right.

Beth NoveckSome of the key areas that the Administration is exploring include:

  • How might web-based games spur development or help to deepen the ties between the US and the Muslim world?
  • Can games tackle major ed challenges – learning readiness, dropout rates, literacy, STEM
  • Topical priorities: STEM, child obesity, adult basic skills, youth entrepreneurship, energy audits

As far as the power of games, Noveck mostly focused on virtual technologies, noting that “seeing oneself on the screen is critical… When we see ourselves – what does that mean for our ability to coordinate socially? What does it mean for decisionmaking and peacemaking?” She notes that it’s “amazing” to be able to sit in certain White House meetings where everyone is at least familiar with the concept of World of Warcraft. (No one asked if Obama himself is among them)

Weighing in on a long-standing argument in the “Serious Games” movement, Noveck noted that “serious games” should neither mean dull nor pedantic. She does state, as do many educators speaking to learning, that there ought to be many means of civic engagement as there are people who want to engage, so that there’s not just one single path to getting involved.

Noveck also spoke to strategies for how the government can undertake these initiatives, specifically, how to foster partnerships or other mechanisms (contests?) and how to measure impacts and outcomes. One recurring issue whenever White House technology is discussed is how the government can afford to take the risk of experimentation, especially given that gaming is considered highly risky (thus the need for the “serious games” appellation). One of the strategies is likely to foster “copycats” who improve upon the rudimentary experiments that the White House fosters, which Noveck says is already happening. At a minimum, there is hope that the CTO’s office can be a hub of innovation where civic-minded people and organizations can gather to share innovative ideas and make them happen — perhaps even, Noveck suggested in answer to a question, a “center for gaming.” (“Let’s talk,” she said to the questioner).

Related posts:

  • Video Games and Democratic Participation
  • My.BarackObama.com – 2008 Game of the Year
Posted in Archival | Tagged civic engagement, off-topic

Video games and democratic participation

Posted on April 21, 2009 by Gene Koo

As President Obama recognized in his Open Government Directive, transparency is only the first step towards a more vibrant democracy. The bigger problem has always been fostering widespread participation. After all, one of the most vexing problems facing today’s government – regulatory capture of an agency by special interests – flourishes despite, or perhaps even because of, the openness of the administrative state. The rulemaking process is open to the citizenry, but the public just doesn’t care – at least not to the degree of special interests.

The response from civic society is to proliferate an alphabet soup of their own special interest groups, from the AARP to the NRA. These organizations serve two vital functions: (1) developing expertise and (2) aggregating collective interest, primarily through membership dues (money) as a proxy.

We’ve reached the limits of this corporate, civil-society-as-special-interest, system. New, digitally networked communities suggest a more fluid and inclusive model of public participation. And, I argue, video games are worth studying for their ability to help us overcome the twin problems of expertise and collective action.
Continue reading →

Posted in Archival, Theory | Tagged civic engagement, games for change, off-topic, political games, politics, systems-thinking, transparency

Do Wii bowl alone?

Posted on February 12, 2009 by Gene Koo

//flickr.com/photos/gwen/3095564209/Once upon a time, video game arcades functioned as a third place, a Starbucks for teens and tweens, mostly boys, but also girls and adults. With rising prosperity, we could afford not only consoles that beat the pants off did the arcades’, but also bigger living rooms to store new piles of gaming hardware. Fifteen years ago it would be hard to imagine Rock Band succeeding on the scale that it did, simply because many of us lacked the space for its peripherals. Today, dance pads, balance boards, drum kits, and all of that assorted game cruft is part of middle American life.

Clearly games did not become anti-social: we buy Rock Band because we want to play with friends. Rather, as play withdrew into the privacy of our homes, it became uncivil: while we strengthen relationships with our friends, we’re less likely to invite strangers to our homes to fill in the missing bass role, or jump into a quick round of Mario Kart.

Or perhaps not. For one thing, some games have found a niche in that consummate third place, the bar. Although rarely front and center, Guitar Hero is sometimes there in pubs where Centipede used to be. And of course, we might say that civil society has become virtual: what has done more to bring people into voluntary associations in this century than the MMO? And finally, of course, I shouldn’t wax nostalgic about the virtues of the archaic arcade. I quite recall them being dismal places.

Still, perhaps as Americans turn away from (or are turned out of) McMansions and run out of money and space for bulky video game hardware, perhaps we’ll see some renaissance of the arcade concept — game nights held in that third place between public and private.

Posted in Archival | Tagged civic engagement, off-topic

Our Fair City: using games to scaffold real-world interventions

Posted on November 25, 2008 by Gene Koo

Our Fair CityRecently I’ve taken an interest in turning real world actions into gameplay, using MyBO as an example. While other games we’ve discussed have focused on “moral learning,” this class of games instead aims to shape or nudge behavior through game-like features.

Well, I’m now working on one such game that would support civic activism, particularly on location-based issues. It emerged out of a campaign to turn Boston into a “Fair Trade City” by convincing local stores and institutions to offer Fair Trade products like coffee, chocolate, and bananas. Because the campaign uses teams to build public support and to persuade stores, it seemed natural to frame the campaign as a game in which the rules scaffold valuable actions. For example, teams win points for identifying stores that already carry Fair Trade and for persuading new stores; however, it costs points to “claim” a store for persuasion, which they can also accumulate by signing on supporters. (Essentially, we want to model the idea of gathering up enough supporters to “attack”

Despite the fact that the software is only 40% complete, participants seem really motivated by it. We’re now seeking funding to launch the project, and would really appreciate any suggestions or feedback you might have on the concept. Our Knight Foundation application is publicly available for comment, and it can use your ideas. Or feel free to contact me directly. I’ll try to post more about the game design and how it intertwines with the real-world goals of the campaign.

Posted in Archival, Theory | Tagged activism, civic engagement, games for change

My.BarackObama.com as Augmented Reality Game

Posted on November 16, 2008 by Gene Koo

My.BarackObama.comIt featured minimal graphics, no sound effects, and deeply flawed gameplay. Yet one of the most important game titles of 2008 was played by thousands and helped change the face of American politics. I’m writing about My.BarackObama.com.

Game designer and scholar Ian Bogost considered it a washout election cycle for political games. McCain had his “Pork Invaders” arcade gimmick, and Obama bought ads in Xbox Live (largely an indulgence). But I would argue that 2008 represents a watershed moment for video games, a moment when the medium showed that it can, indeed, change the world. My.BarackObama.com (“MyBO”) didn’t just communicate ideas. It encouraged people to go and do something.
Continue reading →

Posted in Archival, Theory | Tagged ARG, augmented reality games, civic engagement, games for change, Obama, political games, review

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