Nurturing Play-Makers & Active Investigative Agents: Schwartz Tag, Good Video Games and Futures of Jewish Learning

How can an experiential approach to education, in combination with a games-based orientation, help us reach often-elusive educational goals? In many ways the study of games and game design bring us back to tenets of education that we have long known, including the benefits of self-directed learning and project-based work. Games-based design and learning may provide a way to shift the discussion from “What should an educated Jew know?” to “How does a learner develop a taste for Jewish learning and living?

Introduction: Jewish Gamevironments – Exploring Understanding with Playful Systems

The study of Judaism, Jewish civilizationi, and games is currently comprised of projects of a rather small set of game scholars. A sample of our work is included in this issue

Design-Based Research Mobile Gaming for Learning Jewish History, Tikkun Olam, and Civics

How can Design-Based Research (DBR) be used in the study of video games, religious literacy, and learning? DBR uses a variety of pragmatically selected mixed methods approaches to design learning interventions. Researchers, working with educators and learners, design and co-design learning artifacts and environments. They analyze those artifacts and environments as they are used by educators and learners, and then iterate based on mixed methods data analysis. DBR is suited for any rich contextualized setting in which people have agency. (Hoadley 2013) such as formal or informal learning environments. The case covered in this chapter is a mobile Augmented Reality Game (ARG) called Jewish Time Jump: New York. The game was developed to teach modern Jewish history at the intersection of immigrant, women\u27s, and labor history. The data sets include digital player logs of moves in the field, pre- and post-surveys, semi-structured interviews, and participant observation, including observations of learners in the field recorded on video and audio

Your iPhone Cannot Escape History, and Neither Can You: Self-Reflexive Design for a Mobile History Learning Game

This chapter focuses on the design approach used in the self-reflexive finale of the mobile augmented reality history game Jewish Time Jump: New York. In the finale, the iOS device itself and the player using it are implicated in the historical moment and theme of the game. The author-designer-researcher drew from self-reflexive traditions in theater, cinema, and nonmobile games to craft the reveal of the connection between the mobile device and the history that the learners were studying. Through centering on this particular design element, the author demonstrates how self-reflexivity can be deployed in a mobile learning experience to tie history to contemporary concerns. What does it mean to bring self-reflexive techniques to mobile learning? What should we consider as we bring these techniques to bear on the mobile learning environment? How can we take advantage of the affordances of mobile self-reflexivity? The chapter explores these questions, and more, through the case of attempting to bring the self-reflexive technique to mobile learning; specifically, in a mobile ARG for leaching history

Who Really Said What? Mobile Historical Situated Documentary as Liminal Learning Space

This article explores the complexities and affordances of historical representation that arose in the process of designing a mobile augmented reality video game for teaching history. The process suggests opportunities to push the historical documentary form in new ways. Specifically, the article addresses the shifting liminal space between historical fiction narrative, and historical interactive documentary narrative. What happens when primary sources, available for examination are placed inside of a historically inspired narrative, one that hews closely to the events, but creates drama through dialogues between player and historical figure? In this relatively new field of interactive historical situated documentary, how does the need for player interaction and therefore the need for novel narrative elements interact with the need for authentic primary source material? How are demarcations made in the interactive text? How can a learner distinguish between historical fact and historical drama? How can the blurry line between these help learners to understand that history is in fact a constructed narrative and how might the situated documentary provide unique opportunities to teach aspects of the construction of responsible historical narratives? The game that is subject of the chapter is a situated documentary, specifically, a place-based, interactive mobile game and simulation focused on teaching early 20th century Jewish, labor, immigrant, and women’s history on location in New York City

Playing at the crossroads of religion and law: Historical milieu, context and curriculum hooks in Lost & Found

This chapter presents the use of Lost & Found – a purpose-built tabletop to mobile game series – to teach medieval religious legal systems. The series aims to broaden the discourse around religious legal systems and to counter popular depiction of these systems which often promote prejudice and misnomers. A central element is the importance of contextualizing religion in period and locale. The Lost & Found series uses period accurate depictions of material culture to set the stage for play around relevant topics – specifically how the law promoted collaboration and sustainable governance practices in Fustat (Old Cairo) in twelfth-century North Africa. Players work together to build communal resources whilst balancing the needs of their own family. The games align game mechanics and player problem-solving to highlight the governance aspects of the legal systems and provide tangible demonstrations of how religious legal systems provided prosocial governance structures

Jewish Games for Learning: Renewing Heritage Traditions in the Digital Age

Rather than a discontinuity from traditional modes of learning, new explorations of digital and strategic games in Jewish learning are markedly continuous with ancient practices. An explication of the close connections between traditional modes of Jewish learning, interpretive practice, and gaming culture can help to explain how Jews of the Digital Age can adopt and are adapting modern Games for Learning practices for contemporary purposes. The chapter opens by contextualizing a notion of Jewish Games and the field of Games for Learning. Next, the chapter explains the connections between game systems and Jewish traditions. It closes with a case study of current trends in Jewish Games for Learning in progressive Judaism. How can one view Jewish holidays as heritage game systems? How are texts of the Talmud and the social practice of studying Talmud related to practices of digital and analog games and game play? The Talmud section of the chapter examines rules systems in the Talmud, the theoretical model and case generation of Talmudic sugyot (passages or sections), and the practice of pairs-sacred study, hevruta, in which study partners, sometimes overseen by a senior scholar, seek deeper understanding of the text in a collaborative delving into text and argumentation

Finding Lost & Found: Designer’s Notes from the Process of Creating a Jewish Game for Learning

This article provides context for and examines aspects of the design process of a game for learning. Lost & Found (2017a, 2017b) is a tabletop-to-mobile game series designed to teach medieval religious legal systems, beginning with Moses Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah (1180), a cornerstone work of Jewish legal rabbinic literature. Through design narratives, the article demonstrates the complex design decisions faced by the team as they balance the needs of player engagement with learning goals. In the process the designers confront challenges in developing winstates and in working with complex resource management. The article provides insight into the pathways the team found through the challenges in the creation of the game

Jewish Time Jump: New York

Jewish Time Jump: New York (Gottlieb & Ash, 2013) is a place-based mobile augmented reality game and simulation that takes the form of a situated documentary. Players take on the role of time traveling reporters tracking down a story “lost to time” to bring back to their editor at the Jewish Time Jump Gazette. The game is played in Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village, New York City. Players’ iPhones become their time traveling device and companion. Based on the player’s GPS location, players receive digital images from their location from over a hundred years in the past as well as contemporary video footage. They encounter simulated historical events, interactive digital characters, and digital artifacts including primary sources and ephemera of the time. The game opens as players “land” in 1909 on the eve of the Uprising of 20,000, the largest women-led strike in U.S. history as shirtwaist workers are led by organizers like Rose Schneiderman and Clara Lemlich out into the streets in protest over working conditions. Players are tasked with gathering different perspectives from labor organizers, manufacturers, and journalists of the time, by partaking in dialogues with digital characters while tracking GPS clues on a satellite map of the park

Time Travel, Labour History, and the Null Curriculum: New Design Knowledge for Mobile Augmented Reality History Games

This paper presents a case study drawn from design-based research (DBR) on a mobile, place-based augmented reality history game. Using DBR methods, the game was developed by the author as a history learning intervention for fifth to seventh graders. The game is built upon historical narratives of disenfranchised populations that are seldom taught, those typically relegated to the \u27null curriculum\u27. These narratives include the stories of women immigrant labour leaders in the early twentieth century, more than a decade before suffrage. The project understands the purpose of history education as the preparation of informed citizens. In paying particular attention to historical themes that endure overtime, the game aims to draw connections between historical and contemporary narratives of diverse and disenfranchised populations. The study discusses new design knowledge for addressing such narratives. Self-reflexivity, the technique of revealing the means of production of the game technology itself can be used to spotlight contemporary issues of disenfranchisement. Supra-reveals, historical thematic foreshadowing, can help establish key links between themes of disenfranchisement of diverse groups in the past and those in the present. These techniques used together, and the subsequent curriculum, brought focus to teaching issues of diversity and disenfranchisement typically written out of curriculum