Notes
Notes from the discussion with David and Chris about ARIS and mobile storytelling. Feel free to comment!
- Last few months everything’s been exploding
- Chris
- 3 years ago Chris was on Kurt Squire’s team here at the UW
- Lots of research on augmented reality
- Design oriented class
- Picked a project
- Proposed a smartphone platform with place-based activities
- What if you had a mobile device that worked like a radio – you could just pick a station and see what’s around you?
- What if you could do that with a phone, tap into stories and things around you that people have built?
- Picked a museum
- Normally you just see a plaque for a painting
- What if you could see the artist themselves and be able to interact with them?
- Chose a quest based structure so they give you something to do
- Ultimately it didn’t work that well. Learned a lot about design though.
- Wanted to keep it going though, grow out of it
- Open source platform
- History
- Engage gave them $8000 with the idea that they could use it for Kurt’s class in the future
- David and an L&S developer roughed it out
- MacArthur gave another $100,000
- A new form of story – the Situated Documentary
- Dow Day
- We have real history here
- Changed the script a little by introducing a non-historical character – the player
- Quests to get started
- Hub and spoke dialogue system – A little like a choose your own adventure game
- You see the different, irresolvable opinions, and see how things are coming to a head
- There are augmented reality moments where the user can superimpose the historical on the current
- E.g. they can stand on Bascom and watch a video of protestors – filmed from the exact spot they’re standing in
- Includes historical documents – videos, photos, scans, etc.
- Make the player feel like they’re there
- David – “I feel like we’ve really hit the mark when we see someone run” – that they get that caught up on the story.
- Mining
- More game than story
- Play as a miner living in 1850, trying to make a living
- It’s a shared virtual world – if I take one copper, you can’t, it’s gone
- The experience of the student is created in real time
- There isn’t a strong story built in, it’s about the player’s story. What they choose to do
- “Creating an environment for people to create their own stories”
- Bike-box
- ARIS can also gather information – here it was attached to bikes and allowed users to tell stories from various parts of the city
- Constructing (in real time) location based narratives
- One particularly moving example was a story about the user’s experience with the Catholic church in their youth
- Many others gave creative fictitious stories
- Couple hundred different pieces were contributed over a 3 day period
- Now it’s about the editor
- Drag and drop – even kids can do it
- There’s enough room for complex creation
- Funded by the Pearson Foundation
- The Smithsonian is interested
- It works ok having David and others build stories for them
- But it works best to have people/groups build their games themselves
- It requires/helps develop a depth of knowledge to create a good game
- Users at the Smithsonian will be able to build their own games
- MN historical society
- They’re already design experts, particularly with physical experiences
- Tornado room – look out of a little window and see things blowing around, theatrical lighting, etc
- Near that is a WWII bomber that you sit in to get the experience – you can hear the sounds of war from all directions, can see explosions out the windows
- They’re partnering with us to design a narrative that gives a unique experience through a shared environment
- They want one where the physical and virtual environments can interact
- Big push – how can we do things so the learners are doing the designing?
ARIS Global Game Jam 2011 – earlier this week
- ARIS is now stable/robust enough to be usable anywhere
- Goals – See what the medium’s capable of, grow the community, and get a system of feedback
- 3 day event – 9am-5pm
- Bookend events – Kicked off with a welcome/intro. Ended with a final shared presentation of what was made.
- Goal: pick one attainable game and have it done by the end
- Took people, taught them for a couple hours, some were playtesting by the end of the day
- Used Adobe Connect to communicate
- 4 countries
- 100 participants – about 50 in Madison
- People from all sorts of different backgrounds, all sorts of different goals
- Unique learning experiences for the kids
Some of the designs
- One group wrote a game with characters of all sorts of extreme political views – the player must find books to balance out those views (real books at the library) that you deliver to these virtual characters
- Oregon middle school made the Henry Vilas Virus
- Go around the zoo, find the virus that is making the animals sick
- Spain
- Researchers in Spain made a game about Botany
- Connect a microscope to the phone, get microscopic views of plants
- That group translated ARIS into Spanish/French in the past
- Another group retold a real movie through the locations it was filmed in downtown LA
- 20 games showcased
- 127 games made during the jam (including failures/successes/prototypes)
- That doesn’t include the training/test games
- 5000 people hours making games
- People are sick of groups trying to sell them mobile learning
- Our strategy – crank out a lot of these prototypes and see what works best
- Focus on doing new stuff
- Will be part of the upcoming Engage Adaptation Award
- Solving real world problems with ARIS and/or Case Scenario Builder
- Different model
- All on the cloud
- No one owns it (or can)
- People working on it all over the world
Questions?
- Will David/Chris/ARIS be at GLS and NMC? – yes
- Things are really picking up – In the last month they’ve presented to about a dozen groups
- Since it’s open source, anyone could start going with it?
- Yep. Can download ARIS free from the app store, and use the Editor online for free
- If you’re a developer, you can find all the source code online, grab a copy
- Changes you make get folded into the main version
Learning Through Story 
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