This weekend I finally feel like i got a better understanding of ARIS...and just in time for me to start thinking about the paper (yay!). So, I don't know how or why ARIS decided to work with me, but it did, and for that I am so appreciated.
Yesterday I got a chance to play Dow Day - a situated documentary. The game starts in library mall. Throughout the game I was presented with quests and challenges. In this game, ARIS lays a background for the player. It sets the scene, telling the player that it is October 1967. I was then given a role, reporter for the capital times. In this situated documentary my goal was to investigate protests that were taking place on campus. Similar to the UW campus tour, there are different quests and using the gps feature, i was directed to move around the campus to different locations. At each location i met with virtual characters and investigated what was going on with the protests. One unique aspect of this game was that ARIS actually overlays actual historical video footage from the protests in 1967 onto the current scene. For example, when looking at the top of Bascom Hill, ARIS showed protests occurring on the hill from '67 at the exact same camera angle. This is the first time i realized how ARIS could augment reality to create a unique learning experience.
I didn't play Dow Day for very long because it was extremely cold out yesterday, but i did learn a lot more about ARIS than i have over the entire semester. After having a successful hands on experience with the game i decided to research the application further online. I have been reading articles, blogs, tweets (basically anything that mentions ARIS) all semester to try to fully understand this networked game. I've read many of David Gagnon's, ARIS creator, writing and yesterday i actually discovered his blog. I found it very interesting. I decided to incorporate an excerpt from Gagnon's blog in my post today because i think its definitely worth sharing.
"Mobile is undeniably a new media form. Some even argue it is the most ubiquitous communication technology on the planet as of 2010. What’s interesting is that the new breed of mobile devices not only offer new affordances such as location services and multi-touch interfaces, but they also are capable of containing things we are used to such as web browsers, podcasts, text and animation. I’m willing to bet that the first line of adoption is going to be (and already seems to be) a matter of creating mobile interfaces to our current learning assets." - http://davidgagnon.wordpress.com/2010/02/10/what-might-mobile-media-afford-education/
I think Gagnon is right about mobile learning experiences and the endless possibilities something like ARIS offers to the learning environment.
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