“Mum, you’re not playing a game!”, my eighteen year old daughter exclaimed when she suddenly came into my study.  I quickly showed her my Digital Game-based Learning course book and explained that it was a module for my MSc in E-Learning course.  I think that sums up my starting point with games – playing games is not something associated with me and I am embarrassed to be caught playing a game!  

I was playing PacMan and it was the first time I played that game.  I was successful in getting to Level 2 at my first attempt but I did not realise that when I ate a large sphere and the ghosts turned blue that I could try to ‘eat’ them to earn extra points. I only learned that (and the fact that those things were ghosts) by later googling to find out more about the game. [Note: My getting to stage 2 at my first go was just beginners luck. I found it more difficult subsequently!]

I had a harder time with Donkey Kong.  The up key did not appear to work when I tried to make the man climb the ladder so I decided that I would have to make a number of points jumping over barrels before I could make it to the next level. But that did not seem to work. I got very frustrated and would have given up if I were not on the course. So again I googled ‘Donkey Kong pattern’ and gathered that the man could go up the ladder.  I realised that he had to be positioned exactly in front of the ladder in order to go up it.

Having done some of the initial reading about the definitions of digital or videogames, I realise that I have played some before. In particular, I have played minesweeper on my phone as well as brick???.  And I have played solitaire on my laptop.  I never thought of them as digital games – mainly because I didn’t play with anyone else – they were solitaire games. (And yes, I just used the word ‘game’.)  But I did not go out of my way to get those games – they came with my phone/laptop and I only played them when I was in transit when I was tired of reading.  But I enjoyed playing them (as long as no one I knew saw me playing them!).

I stumbled on this paper - http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/123238095/abstract - which introduces the concept of uLearning (ubiquitous learning).  I've seen some nifty demonstrations of augmented reality and GPS-enabled phones, and I reflect on the ideas of "location of play" and "public performance" in the Newman paper from Readings Week 1.

This is a very brief blog post to kick off my blog for the Introduction to Digital Game Based Learning module which kicks off on Monday. Since I haven't used the Holyrood Park blogs since IDEL it's going to be quite weird returning here to post updates. (Right now it's also a little challenging - my home broadband has given up the ghost and my new provider/line problems may take a while to correct so I may seem unnaturally shy online for the first week or so since I'll probably still be posting after work from the office.) 

At this stage I'm tremendously excited about beginning the course having started to read through Gee (with Whitton lined up for next week) and having seen all the wonderful nostalgic gaming references in the introductory posts to the WebCT discussion boards. It's been a long time since I played games regularly but for a while now I've been wanting to dust off my thumbs and see what's new so the idea of doing this and learning how to use games for learning seems fantastic. I'm especially keen to find out how I can take learning objectives and training ideas and make those into a compelling and fun computer game so I'm already thinking about possible ideas for the final assignment even if it is jumping the gun a little.

 

My first blog post and it's for all to see!