English Language Arts

Horizns – an augmented reality, collaborative storytelling game

| Matt McGowan

Horizns logo 1_croppedHorizns is my thesis project for the M.A. Program in Digital Media Design for Learning at NYU, created (in 2015) using the ARIS (Augmented Reality Interactive Storytelling) platform.

Here’s the back-of-the-box description:

Playable by anyone aged 12 and up, Horizns is a narrative-based, augmented reality (AR) game ultimately designed for collaborative storytelling in grades 7-12 ELA and/or Social Studies classrooms.

Players begin by participating in the (fictional) “Horizns Rewards Program,” an AR tour of the history of Times Square, NYC. The plot takes a dark turn, however, as players must “dystopify” the world around them; and everyone’s best chance at escaping a dire future means interacting with the dystopian visions of others.

If you’re interested in my (six-minute) talk introducing Horizns to attendees of the ECT-DMDL Design Expo (5/15/15), you can find it here. [Warning: Contains spoilers! ;-)]

My general aim with this project was to make something that was a) genuinely constructivist and constructionist; and b) a genuinely engaging gaming experience. More specifically, as far as learning theory goes, the  game’s design is ultimately driven by the notion of “Social Imagination,” which Maxine Greene defines as learners’ “capacity to invent visions of what should be and what might be in our deficient society, on the streets where we live, and in our schools” (Releasing the Imagination, 2005, p. 5). And for a bit more on the theory behind Horizns‘ design, please feel free to check out my Design Expo poster (pdf).

“What Is an American”? 3D-printed monuments of unsung heroes from the American Revolution

3D monument models atop a library bookshelf
| Matt McGowan

During the 2018-19 school year, The Town School’s the 4th-grade faculty significantly reworked their Social Studies curriculum. The result was a year-long consideration of the question, “What is an American?”

For their culminating project, 4th-graders researched lesser-known participants in the American Revolutionary War–especially enslaved Africans, Black freemen, First Peoples, and women. Then, in their Technology class, using Tinkercad and working in small groups, students designed monuments to commemorate the “heroes” they had researched.

Once 3D-printed, we placed the monuments on wooden bases (which were cut and painted by the school’s Facilities Department). Affixed to the front of the bases were QR codes, which linked to Google Docs that contained information (composed in 4th-grade Writing class) on the historical figures’ wartime contributions.

The final product was displayed in the school’s library for all visitors to see and interact with.

“Through My Eyes” – Oculus Rift + interactive fiction (+ Harry Potter)

| Matt McGowan

Created for:

Project length:

  • Medium-long (approx. last quarter of the term, final group project design document).

Team:

  • Diondra Arroyo
  • Enid Brown
  • Kelsey Buttendorf
  • Jullie Harten
  • Matt McGowan
    • my principle contributions: “Persona,” “Context Scenario” and “Narrative Flowchart”

Challenge:

  • As a group, produce a full, thorough design document on a project of mutual interest.

For our final project, my group came up with an Oculus Rift-driven, interactive fiction learning game experience titled “Through My Eyes.” Here’s the concept brief:

Through My Eyes - concept brief
(Layout by Jullie Harten)

The full design document is here:

“Through My Eyes” – full design document

and these are my principle contributions:

Persona:

TME - persona
(Layout by Jullie Harten)

Context scenario:

TME – context scenario (pdf)

Narrative flowchart:

(Page layout by Jullie Harten)
(Page layout by Jullie Harten)

Choose Your Own (Grammatical) Adventure – Ambiguous Pronoun References audio narrative

| Matt McGowan

Created for:

Project length:

  • Short (one week).

Team:

  • Matt McGowan (solo project/assignment).

Challenge:

  • “Create an audio piece that uses narrative to help teach a topic you know well, but that is typically narrative-free.”

For my “typically narrative-free” topic I chose ambiguous pronoun references, an error I saw time and again when I taught undergraduate composition and literature courses. Here’s the audio narrative (with me reading the script):

And here’s a brief sketch of the target audience, learning goals, and applicable learning theories:

Target audience

Middle school-age, language arts class.

Learning goals

By being immersed in a narrative environment, students will listen for and learn about the lack of clarity that can result from ambiguous pronoun references. As the narrative is audio-only, in addition to learning the grammatical issue addressed, students may also improve their listening (and therefore audio-processing) abilities.

The attached example merely shows one player-student choice for one example of an ambiguous pronoun reference. Further examples/encounters will allow for a certain amount of branching of the storyline. Player-student choice is not about making the right decision, but rather exploring different options for editing and/or rewriting so as to avoid this grammatical problem.

Learning theories

Affective Learning: The relative immersiveness of the (focused, audio-only) narrative aspect of this lesson is designed to engage and motivate students on a certain emotional level.

Gamification: The mild (chose-your-own-adventure-style) gamification of the lesson is designed to increase student motivation and encourage review via replayability.

Information Processing Theory: The focused, deep listening that students are required to do for this lesson should aid in the development of their listening skills–that is, their ability to process, store and eventually draw from information and stimuli that the audio narrative provides.

Self-determination Theory: The choose-your-own-adventure-style format enables students to have a certain amount of autonomy in the way they progress through the lesson.

Audio credits:

“StoryPix” – a digital storytelling card game

StoryPix app - Interpret path - order images
| Matt McGowan

Created for:

  • Digital Media Design for Learning (DMDL) degree; Cognitive Science and Educational Technology II course (Fall 2013).

Project length:

  • Medium-long (approx. last quarter of the term, final group project design document).

Team:

  • Robyn Berland
  • Heather Kim
  • Matt McGowan
    • my principle contributions: “Summary of Project,” “Points of Viewing Theory,” and “Wireframes.”
  • Cooper Wright

Challenge:

  • As a group, produce a full, thorough design document on a project of mutual interest.

The full design document for this project can be found here:

“StoryPix” design document (pdf)

But here’s an excerpt from the “Summary of Project”:

StoryPix is a platform-agnostic, digital card game designed for middle-school-age children and older. It is an image-based storytelling environment that both visualizes and verbalizes the multitude of ways that people interpret the world. Like other social media platforms, StoryPix users will share images with the intention of telling their “story.” Unlike other social media platforms, StoryPix users will be encouraged to present their images in a more deliberately sequential manner, to present them more like a story, and to create an interpretation of the visual stories of others.

The learning objective of the game is to encourage players to think about their own and others’ thinking. Players will create a story constructed from a series of “cards” or “frames,” static images being either self-created or found (photos or drawings). These images are then sequenced to tell a story (as do, for example, comic strips and photo essays). Players then add a title (of no more than three words) and a descriptive, narrative text (of no more than 200 characters) to accompany their picture sequence. Once a story is completed, the player “publishes” the story and shares it with another player. The recipient of the story, however, only sees the story’s title (not the original narrative text) and a “stack” of images/cards/frames that have been “shuffled” and placed in a random order. The recipient player must then guess the originating player’s story in the original order of the cards and send their guess back to the originating player, along with their own (under 200-character) narrative text. Recipient players are allowed three tries to “get it right.” Players also have the option of sharing one story with multiple recipients, allowing the creator of the visual story to view the multiple ways in which their story is being interpreted. Finally, the player has the option to publish their story, giving other friends or the community a chance to interpret the story as well.

and a few of of the wireframes we included:

“The Great Mural of Our People” – a MinecraftEdu + Makey-Makey design

Drawing of Stonehenge builders rolling stones
| Matt McGowan

Created for:

Project length:

  • Short (one week, design document).

Team:

  • Matt McGowan (solo project/assignment).

Challenge:

  • Integrate tangible computing into another assignment done during the semester.

I elected to add a tangible element to the design I did for the course’s “Empowering narrative-making in others” assignment earlier in the term–a MinecraftEdu-based project entitled “The Great Mural of Our People” (the text of which is here, for comparison’s sake). Here’s the result of adding Makey-Makey to the mix–wherein students design simple, interactive machines that simulate laborers operating the same machine together:

NARRATIVE AND TANGIBLE COMPUTING – “THE GREAT MURAL OF OUR PEOPLE” (pdf)

image reference: https://farm8.staticalickr.com/7300/10697026416_7bc9c692ef_z.jpg
image reference: http://amitron2001.tripod.com/Mad_fools/topic_4.htm
image reference: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-isle-of-man-12386804