{"id":99,"date":"2008-07-10T19:12:17","date_gmt":"2008-07-10T19:12:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/?p=99"},"modified":"2008-08-07T11:02:54","modified_gmt":"2008-08-07T11:02:54","slug":"would-you-mind-taking-a-photo-of-my-beaver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/would-you-mind-taking-a-photo-of-my-beaver\/","title":{"rendered":"Would you mind taking a photo of my beaver?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/07\/egorbeaver_train.jpg\" alt=\"Nicola Whitton\" title=\"Smiley train man\" class=\"alignleft\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I had a wonderful day out down in Birmingham on Saturday for the Grand Finale of <a href=\"http:\/\/emergentgame.org.uk\/\" target=\"_blank\">Emergent Game<\/a>, the brainchild of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npugh.co.uk\/\" target=\"_blank\">Nikki Pugh<\/a>. The emergent game is kind of hard to explain&#8230; part online, part real-world, it involves selecting a cuddly toy avatar, undertaking a whole range of <a href=\"http:\/\/emergentgame.org.uk\/missions\" target=\"_blank\">missions<\/a>, and doing <a href=\"http:\/\/emergentgame.org.uk\/category\/sapiens\" target=\"_blank\">loads of creative things<\/a> with technology.<\/p>\n<p>I was really amazed at the way that this game became so engaging so quickly, how easy it was to slip into &#8216;avitari talk&#8217; and how motivated I was to learn how to use lots of web applications simply to achive missions (and the kudos of my fellow ludens). When we finally met face-to-face over a cheeky beer it was like I had known these people for ages.<\/p>\n<p>I think the emergent game structure has loads of potential in educational contexts. In particular:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>the way that it is designed with players (ludens) and people who watch (sapiens) so that watching is seen as a legitimate way to participate;<\/li>\n<li>the design of missions so that they are scored in five qualities &#8211; character, creativity, collaboration, community and cabaret &#8211; and so that working together is both essential and rewarded;<\/li>\n<li>the way that the missions list could be expanded and, in fact, there were missions that involved designing additional missions;<\/li>\n<li>the creative way in which the players embraced a whole range of web 2.0 technologies to achieve missions, and supported each other when technical difficulties arose;<\/li>\n<li>how much the game made me laugh out loud &#8211; it was just so silly. I suspect that sharing a sense of humour is very  important to making something like this work.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Of course, I really should have spent more time at the beginning of the game when selecting my avatar, thinking through the consequences of choosing a beaver&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I had a wonderful day out down in Birmingham on Saturday for the Grand Finale of Emergent Game, the brainchild of Nikki Pugh. The emergent game is kind of hard to explain&#8230; part online, part real-world, it involves selecting a&#8230;<br \/><a class=\"read-more-button\" href=\"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/would-you-mind-taking-a-photo-of-my-beaver\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-games"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p71sY0-1B","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}