Tuesday Morning Keynote from FuturePlay2008

Katie Salen from Parsons School and the Institute of Play gave the morning keynote. 8am is very early and the room was a little empty. No reflection on the speaker, some folks just slept in I think. The crowd picked up before the talk was over.

Big news - they're starting their own (public?) school based on game design. Teachers and game designers working together to develop curriculum. I am so jealous. And I feel very jealous. Such exciting projects with all kinds of people working together.

other points - that I can work with) - interaction = participation. Even MMO's and multiplayer games come down to interaction between 2 people so everyone feels they're participating. Games bring goals to that participation. Performance towards the goals of hte game is assessed throughout the game. You gan skills to do better as you play and you learn other more general skills.

people (kids especially) learn collaboratively how to play games. they watch each other, they try stuff out and ask other players what to do differently, to improve

when kids make games they learn content - makes sense. And they want people to play their games so they take extra trouble to make sure it's a good game and accurate info.

sites to check out

• institute of play
• galaxyzoo - a crowdsourcing game to locate galaxies in a mass of astronomical data
• once upon a story card game (I think I had this in my amazon cart and didn't know why till today)
• game bucket - a table that cross references board/card/video games with NYS learning objectives
• GameStar Mechanic - a game that eaches game design