Augmented Learning - Interesting New Book

The Teacher Education Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology lives up to MIT's reputation for making nifty techy tools. It's run by Eric Klopfer, who's recently written a book called Augmented Learning about one group of projects his lab is doing where they use computers to make educational games that interact with the real world. We often collaborate, so I've seen some of the projects develop in person and can vouch that they have ideas with a lot of potential. The book is full of not only details on his own projects, but a wide review of games, educational games, and many projects worldwide that seek to mix computers with non-virtual (i.e. walking around in the world) experiences to promote learning.

I think the project that fires my imagination the most in this space are several games they've worked on with museums. In his book, he talks about one called Mystery @ the Museum with the science museum of Boston. They made a mystery game where visitors had to wander around the museum to get clues. The little handheld computers that they used were aware of which room the visitor was in, and provided information relevant to that room (example: they would walk into a room and the screen would show a note they "found" in that room written in code. Then they would have to go to a museum exhibit on codes and search that exhibit to find out how to decode the note). One fun twist with this particular game was that they had parents do it with their kids. Apparently some parents commented on how it was the first time in forever they had a meaningful interaction with their kids that didn't involve a big argument. More broadly, location-aware games just seem a perfect complement to a science museum, or natural history, or even an art museum or a zoo - "augmenting" the experience with a game that forces you to interact with the exhibits in ways you wouldn't normally do, in an addictively fun way.

That's just one of many types of projects he talks about - there's tons more examples in the book of interesting virtual/real cross-over attempts, as well as a good deal of practical experience in how to make educational games successful and pitfalls to avoid. Not to shill for a friend but, well, I'm all for shilling, so you if you're interested, you can go to their website for more info or to pick up a copy.