Sessions at SXSW Interactive 2012 about Game on Monday 12th March

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• Play Time?: Kids and Game-Based Learning

  by Drew Davidson and Sara DeWitt

  There is a lot of talk at the government, industry, and producer level about the promise of games in education, but has anyone really proven true educational outcomes from informal gaming? In this presentation, Sara and Drew will share some of the most effective gameplay mechanics for teaching kids, discuss how challenges and rewards influence outcomes, showcase video of kids engaged in gameplay, present some of the latest theories for skill-scaffolding within games, and share outcome data from real educational gaming evaluations. Using specific examples, we will show how learning and well-designed games share important traits (like fun, frustration, failure and flow) that get kids engaged and motivated.

  • Education
  • Game
  • Game Mechanics
  • Learning

  At 11:00am to 12:00pm, Monday 12th March

  In Classroom 203, AT&T Conference Center

  Coverage audio clip

• Don't Shoot the Player While They're Learning

  by Katie Salen

  Designers of all kinds are key players in the game of change that so typifies the opening decades of the 21st century. Called on to imagine, build, guide, demystify, explain, provoke, enable and inspire, game designers deal daily in the currency of transformation—of places, practices, and perspectives. Play is a key strategy in developing a design practice that is agile enough to entertain a constant need for transformative thinking but substantive enough to throw its strategic weight around when needed. This talk will delve into a set of tasty truisms gleaned from professional game designers about what happens to play when approached from the perspective of learning. What they have to say will both surprise and inform.

  • Design
  • Game
  • Practice Development
  • Strategy

  At 5:00pm to 6:00pm, Monday 12th March

  In Ballroom D, Austin Convention Center

  Coverage sketch note