Place-based Learning

Place-Based Learning

johnmartin@wisc.edu

Wednesday, March 6, 13 1

Sometimes being in a certain place at a certain time can provide a HUGE opportunity to learn. I didn’t learn nearly as
much about state politics in 4th grade Civics class as I did the past two months.

• Ed Tech, C&I,
Learning Sciences
• sociocultural
• embodied/
experiential
• playful
• (ﬁll out the survey)

engage.wisc.edu

ARIS (arisgames.org)

My education and background steer me towards a hands-on, collaborative philosophy of learning, and I see computers
as a great means to that end. My job (as I see it) is to push for the creation of environments and activities tht motivate
effective learning — where “learning” includes and encompasses teaching and research.

pedagogy andragogy

IT user

group individual


In these three scales, I’m pretty far on the right side

pedagogy IT group

andragogy user individual


Or rather, at the bottom. I feel it’s our duty as educators and technologists to respond to needs that originate from the
bottom up, rather than design and parse out content, tools, etc. from the top-down.

the true centre of correlation of the school subjects
is not science, nor literature, nor history, nor geography,
but the child's own social activities.

“My Pedagogic Creed” by John Dewey. School Journal vol. 54 (January 1897), pp. 77-80.


Because we’ve known what motivates people for a long time. But we haven’t been able to do it. When the end of child
labor laws landed hundreds of previously-working kids in classrooms with one teacher, the management model was a
reasonable coping method. And “school isn’t supposed to be play. It’s supposed to be hard.” (We learn the most by
playing, and sometimes play very hard!)


Remember this guy? He had something to say about computers as revolutionary learning tools.


That was Seymour Papert. In the 1980s, he said that computers could revolutionize learning, but not until every learner
had one. One computer per classroom was like having one pencil per classroom. How useful would a single pencil,
shared among 30 kids be? Would they each learn to use is as naturally as we now do?
— how many of you have your own computer?
— more than one?
— one in your pocket or purse? (If so, please turn off the ringer)


You’re not alone. As our “dumb” phones’ service contracts expire, we replace them with computers that, incidentally,
make phone calls. I don't need to tell you that smartphones are amazing. In fact, the "phone" part of them is increasingly
less important
— how many have smartphones?
— does anyone spend more time on it “phoning” than “non-phoning” (texting, Facebook, Twitter, MP3s, web, etc.)?


I use mine to chart my sleep at night. Then at 2:10am, when my dog needs to go out, I (of course) check Facebook and
email while I wait for him to come back in. I can share on Facebook, so all my friends can understand why I’m tired and
grumpy (yeah, I know, and I never do. But I *could*!)


These are fiercely-personal, incredibly-intimate, always-with-us, hyper-connected, devices. They solve our bar
arguments about the dog's name in 'Old Yeller' — we used to spend months on these arguments, now someone pulls
out their “phone” and ruins it. Luckily there are plenty of things to argue about.


All of these arguments and conversations happen with others, of course. They’re not designed by a pedagogue for
"anytime anyplace" learning. They emerge situationally in the "here and now".

A good learning environment is in many ways the opposite of this Time cover. It’s dirty and there are things — real
things— to mess with, and real problems to solve, and real people — people that you care for, if even for a moment —
to interact with.


"One sees the environment
not just with the eyes,
but with the eyes in the head
on the shoulders of a body
that gets about" (Gibson 1979: 222)
with^others


SITUATED EMBODIED LEARNING: So it's not about a creating learning activity to fill a GENERIC time and place, but
about creating activities for SPECIFIC times and places — or, and this is my angle — creating activities that put them in
specific places and situations and environments where they want to engage in learning activities. That's a different
angle, I think, than the angle taken by a lot of folks who look at mobile learning. It's very temporal and geographical.

Spike


(Spike) (Yes, in the movie they referred to him as “Ol’ Yeller” but his real name was Spike. The argument would be
stupid if it were only “What did they call Ol’ Yeller in that movie Ol’ Yeller?”


Some of you may have been among the 14,000+ who have read this...


My doctoral research focused on these three, working with Kurt Squire and the Games+Learning+Society research
group (you may have read Jim Gee’s book on “What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy” — if
you haven’t, please do!)

Noah: “If I lived in the
Greenbush and could go back
in time, I would try protesting
to the city one last time. Or
maybe I would even do
something heroic like running
in front of a bulldozer or
chaining myself to my house
so they couldn’t destroy my
home.”


THE GREENBUSH — In 2005 I worked with some sixth-graders who had, the previous year, studied a neighborhood in
Madison, WI that had undergone "urban renewal" in the 1960s — the heart of it was bull-dozed.

They interviewed old residents, became friends with them, and a few of them created "The Greenbush Game" in which
you play a young Jewish resident in 1959 who runs around the neighborhood doing errands.

Start

1 17 16 15

Greenbush Game 2 1
(2005) 8-9 6-7 5 2-4
10 17
16
3
15

Samuel

11 14
4 14
12 13

5 13
3/27;

6-7 8-9 10 11 12


The neighborhood is gone, but sidewalks remain where streets used to be. So you run errands, and as you walk, the
game beeps and you see houses and storefronts on screen, and have conversations with virtual people, and hopefully
get them to sign a petition to stop the plan for urban renewal (It’s in Madison, Wisconsin — there must be a protest).

The strength of the activity is not in seeing grainy lo-res pictures on a sun-glared screen, or in having virtual
conversations, it’s in actively participating in a story, thereby making that anonymous space a personal place connecting
other’s experiences to your own experience (this one!). It's about looking up from the image of a garden in front of a
house, and seeing that there's a parking lot there now. What was lost? Was it worth it? Why or why not?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Start
!
!
24 8
1
Saving 8
2
Lake Wingra 23 7 9
(2007-09) 9
3
! 10 !

11 6 10
22 5
12 4
16 13
24 17 15 14 11
21 23
22 18
19
!
21 20 !
20 12

!
19 18 17 16 15 14 13

! !

GAMES TO TEACH. For four years after that, I was part of a grant that looked at place-based games for middle school
kids. We focused on Science, Scientific Thinking, Civic engagement, reading, and persuasion. "Saving Lake Wingra"
was a 10-day curriculum centered on a 2-hour place-based experience on an urban lake, where kids in teams of three
(environmental historian, landscape architect, and watershed ecologist) are tasked to study the lake and make a
recommendation for its future.

• Different NPCs will talk to you, depending
on what role you are playing. Pass the PDA 7
to the appropriate player.
8
• Try to ﬁgure out their points of view, the
agenda that they're pushing, and why.
1
• Look for evidence (that they give, and in
2 your own observations) to support or
refute their claims.
3 • Use that evidence later (in a few days) when
you make your own claims.
6
• They all have opinions (some more than
one), and will try to persuade you.
4
5

B
o
W
Montgomery Lataya Pete Julia A


As they move through the area, players meet up with all sorts of virtual stake-holders — a jogger, a condo developer,
picnickers, an anthropologist, people fishing, people removing invasive species, a surly old man on a "pleasure drive"
8 The Mills Lot Landing notes, and
— each with their Lake opinion and Company isolated the marsh agenda for the lake. The kids observe, take across from W
own Forest Land each making a case for their
go back to their classroom rest of the lake. Now,on that very along
from the and research based turtles nest experiential, situated experience.
and just upstream from the bridge is a pr
und the shore, and redwing blackbirds are abundant. that provides access to the Gardner M
n (across from the parking lot). The UW-
eight 7 Wingra Creek Dam & Portage lie along Wingra provides many additional educational r
of Drive. Wingra Creek is a drainage ditch running to about Lake Wingra and the surrounding

The Mystery Trip


MYSTERY TRIP. Additionally, for the past 17 years I've helped run a deep woods camp in Maine. For my dissertation,
in 2006 I had a group 11-13 year-old campers write a loose narrative to structure a 4-day trip in the woods and
mountains surrounding the camp. For the next 3 years campers “played” that narrative for that trip.

lake Trip Goals
mtn
1. Fill four day trip
(Tue 9am - Fri 2pm)
swamp mtn 2. Camp at different
site each night

3. Explore as much land/
streams diversity as practical
mtn
4 miles

4. Low impact / Stay out
mtn of heart of Wildlands
(wildlife only)
mtn
5. Be Safe

lake 6. Have Fun

mtn

4 miles


Basically, it goes like this: campers canoe across the lake, start hiking up a mountain, and as soon as they're far
enough out of sight of camp that they can't really know better, the "communicator" that I gave them starts buzzing...

You left camp about an hour ago. The hike is going well. You feel a buzzing in
your backpack. You take out your Communicator, and read a message from
the Assistant Director...

It’s John. His face is It’s John. His face is
John Martin, looking
scratched and bloody, scratched and bloody,
really really tired.
battered and bruised. battered and bruised.
After you left, camp was I’m not sure why they attacked. They’re setting up some kind of
overrun by men in green. Head up Great Pond Mountain. base station here. There’s all
I’ll try to communicate with you sorts of radio gear.
We tried to fend them off.
there. Stay out of sight, and off
If you can get to one of the
There were five of them on the open faces — and don’t
nearby peaks, you might be
Noah at one time, and Addie take the main trails; I think
able to intercept a transmission
took out eight or so, but the they’re monitoring them.
with your Communicator.
sheer numbers overcame us.
Go! and be careful!

Photo by 2008 Mystery Trip Group

and I tell them how camp's been invaded, and I escaped after a struggle, and I'm not sure what's happening, and they
should consider staying off the main trails because the invaders are coming after them too!

1. Camp is under attack!
lake mtn 2. Stay off trails!
5
4 6 3. What we know...
4. Camp here.
swamp mtn
Enemy is transmitting.
7
Capture signal.
protected wildlife area
5. Signal garbled.
streams Must triangulate.
3 mtn
s 6. Camp here.
mtn 8 Get signal.
2
mtn 7. Get signal.
13 10 8. Will decode.
11 1 9
9. Camp here.
lake Decoded!
12 10. Avoid snipers! (s)
s mtn
11. Get stashed canoes.
Head to middle of lake.
12. Transmit anti-signal.
13. Mission accomplished!


And what is a simple 13-page story turns into an epic adventure because they’re given 16-square miles of unstructured
space to “fill-in-the-blanks”

narrative motivated bushwhacking

JB15: You think that you don't want to
go on the trails because the other
camp would be there waiting for you...


So for 4 days they do essentially the same hike that we've sent boys out on since 1921 — but now they're invested in a
story!

And because they're playing this "behind enemy lines" type role, they don't just follow the trail mindlessly talking about
girls and baseball until they come to a junction.

greater understanding of place

JB16: I learned that trees aren't
actually that spread out; they're a lot
closer together [logged and replanted
years ago]; and there are a lot more
animals out and stuff. We saw a
porcupine climbing a tree on GPM.


But instead every step becomes a decision between thorns (raspberries!) or hornets or swamps or cliffs or mosquitoes
or sun or shade or vistas (lookouts!) or cover or anice place to stop and have their PB&J lunch.

And they pull the map out, and learn to use a compass and landmarks, and debate about directions, and help each
other over logs, and do all the things that we dream of teaching them!

greater understanding of self

ZM4: There was some hard
bushwhacking, which I thought was
kind of fun actually [because of] the
fact that you're the ﬁrst person who's
ever traveled along these paths. And
jumping from rock to rock at times ...
I'm like "Whoa! Don't fall down that"
Of course Jake was really tired and
was following me, and I didn't want
him to fall in it.


Not because WE are teaching them, but because we put them in a story that motivates them to venture off the beaten
path, take smart risks, and work together.

unfolding narrative intensiﬁed experience

AW13: On a regular trip you just want
to get to the next campsite, but on
this you have to get to this mountain
to stop the radio signals then you have
to go to this one and that one. ... so
you could ﬁnish the game and see
what happens next.


And eventually they finish the story, save camp, and are welcomed as heroes!

Make Your Own!

Event Event Event Event

Event Event

Event Event
Map of Area

Event Event

Event Event
Guiding Problem


STRUCTURED DISCUSSION: In the program, I threatened that this would be a structured discussion, so I’m about to
discuss the latest mobile learning project I’m involved in, ARIS. And while I talk about ARIS, you think of a place-based
story. Use this template as a starting point. Here are a few ideas....

State Street Design


Map out cool places along a street

surve illance

Be subversive. My colleague, Jim Mathews’, high school students figured out how to get across their HS grounds without
triggering any surveillance cameras.


Map out local graffiti

parking

Direct people to the best free parking spaces (except your secret spot)


Find cheap food


or places to do forbidden things


Document how a neighborhood is changing


Make a mobile suggestion box to report problems and ideas, and email Facilities & Planning and building manager with
the specific location of the problem (burned out lights, icy sidewalks, vandalism, etc.)

Ok. Keep thinking while I talk about the cool project I’m involved in now...

arisgames.org
G o t h e re n o w !
• Open Source
• Server-based
• iOS (via App Store)
• Narrative-centered
• Create, pickup, drop items
• Uses A/V capabilities
• GPS + QR Codes
• Add modules - e.g., bird call,
ﬁeld guide, Bike Box


ARIS: David Gagnon is a whiz kid programmer and colleague, who, in 2008, saw the work we were doing for place-
based games using the MIT Outdoor Augmented Reality platform (now called MITAR), and he made an iPhone app as a
class project. I jumped on the team and we’ve been developing it since.

It is open source and free. It is robust, solid, and has a pretty slick drag-and-drop editor (seen in this slide).
We would love to grow the community of users and developers, so please join us in developing on it!
And if you know a smart Android developer, we'd love to see it ported.

H enry
Mall
His tory


The example from the previous screen is a recent example of a project to highlight the range of amazing science done
at UW-Madison over the years...

hid answer in
the bushes. but how do
squeak! show ya later we catch the
poop?!
I’m a feces
bucket!

Ate something There are mice squeak!
wrong. Gotta all over my
poop. cenotaph!

I’m a
preventing SCID
magical time
(boy in bubble
talisman!
diesae)

Strange force knockout

ﬁeld of some
mice developed here.
And escaped!! Collect
them all!
squeak! kind
why am I here?
and half invisible?
Got
varmit
problems?


To tie it all together, we wrote a highly fictionalized “get the ghost from the past back home” story that highlights a lot of
the fun and quirky bits. Here’s an overview of some of the “events” and characters involved.

ROB OTS!


Another example of a game that simply gets people to move through an environment is “Robots!”


There are no big learning goals in this “getting warmer; getting colder” game to find these road-striping robot stickers in
Madison streets. It just gets players to be more aware their environment. (UPDATE: I saw one in Chicago too! They’re
part of an art project called “Stickman” and they’re in cities all over the world!!! Google it!)

Dow Day!


Our most developed experience is “Dow Day” — based on riots that occured in 1967, when students at UW-Madison
who were protesting the Vietnam war found out that Dow Chemical, makers of napalm, were recruiting on campus.


The player takes on the role of a student newspaper reporter whose job is to cover the riots.


He gets the assignment from his editor,


Interviews different folks (legislator, recruiter, protesters, police, etc.) to get their perspectives,


Moves through the actual place that the riots took place in,


And compare now to images and media from the actual event.


It’s a powerful portal to a place


where, 40-some years ago, protesters were beaten and arrested.

Mentira


MENTIRA. At the University of New Mexicon in Albequerque, Julie Sykes and Chris Holden created a hybrid approach
(virtual and real) for teaching Spanish, through a Situated Soap Opera that brings the students into local communities to
learn the language.


an amazing story unfolds!


There’s a group of developers in Spain doing some cool stuff around a huge complex. It’s called Birdmovil, and they’ve
got film clips from activities in tha past ...


as well as contemporary photographs. It looks like a cool place, though I haven’t been there yet.

Middleton History


Jim Mathews created a Fictionalized Historical Inquiry for the town in which he teaches high school.


It includes shady characters who share secret maps and portals to past,


And a clock tower — er, portal— from 1856, with a secret code


that when entered into ARIS...


sends you back in time,


where things are the same, but also a bit different...


And you need to make your way through the new environment with what you have.

Have 10 Cents?
and
Answer = Yes

Don’t have 10 Cents?
or
Answer = No


in order to figure out what to do next.


And the paper helps you figure our the rest of the game, (right)?

So that’s the gamey/toury side of ARIS. There’s another side as well.

WeBIRD (Field Tool)


We’re also working on specialized Data Collection tools, based on ARIS, such as WeBIRD, which records birdsongs,
analyzes the spectrogram (Mark Berres’ algorithm), identifies birds, gives you more info on the birds, and documents
your sighting of the bird on Cornell’s National eBird database.

We can do this for invasive species as well, with a module developed for plant identification.

71


Oh, and it all exports to Google Maps and Earth, so you can have a bunch of students do their own thing, and come
back to the classroom and see and discuss the collective results.

Cra vens


If you don’t have iPhones or iPads with 3G, you can create iPod Touch experiences anywhere with wifi covereage.
The mapping feature helps create what I call “Inside-Out” place-based activities. Simply scan a code associated with
an object (in this example, a doll from Cameroon), and get transported (to Cameroon) via Google Earth or Google
Maps. With Google Maps, you can do more research later, and share what you’ve done with the rest of class.

ARIS Mobile Game Jam
APRIL 18-20, 2011
(Open to anyone, anywhere! Email for info!)

johnmartin@wisc.edu

engage.wisc.edu
Wednesday, March 6, 13
glsconference.org
So if I got my timing close, we should have a lot of time left to bring this all back to you! What have you got for me?
73

We’re looking for ideas, fresh perspectives, challenges, and those “have you ever thought of?...” questions and
comments.

Check us out at arisgames.org
Get our free ARIS app from the iTunes App Store!
Email me at johnmartin@wisc.edu

Thanks!!

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