LiveBlogging just one session from Games4Change at New School in NYC: not word for word, but the highlights are here....
Diana Rhoten (Cyberinfrastructure @ NSF)
Connie Yowell (Digital Learning @ MacArthur Foundation)
Lucy Bernholz (Blueprint Design)
Alison Knox (Microsoft)
Connie Yowell at MacArthur Foundation:Much of what I've learned about games....comes out of the Games4Change community. I've benefitted extraordinarily from these conversations.
MacArthur announced a $50million, 5 year digital media initiative: focused on how to use handhelds, games, social networks and what it means in the lives of young people today to rethink learning. In games we are focused on 1) research, 2) learning environments, 3) reshaping institutions through this visualization. In a concrete way, how do we solve problems? No one foundation can fund all of this but we think carefully about how to partner. I hope that we will have a new set of research techniques and practices to study human behavior in virtual worlds.
NSF:High performance
data visualization
virtual organizations
Learning and workforce development: Cyber education program (nomenclature is wrong here...go to website)
$250,000 - $1,000,000 for development on programs at the K-20 level to train students to become cybersaavy, use computational tools, access remote information, science and engineering education. I expanded this solicitation to train AND teach. We have a virtual webcast workshop next month.
Areas for the future: Less about training, but thinking about cyberlearning. Within the foundation funding comes from other directorates, education and research within NSF. Games for informal learning, not so much the explicit educational aspects funded in the past. We are in the pedagogical problem-solving, collaborative learning environment.
How can we build teams that have the technology, infrastructure, content and science in one package? Collaborative funding and how do we make these teams functional and work for you. We want to study more of the ripple effects and we are looking at better methodologies from Ted Castronova. We need METRICS!
Elsa from Microsoft:Not the Gates Foundation, from Microsoft corp: we are interested in games for learning and social change. Microsoft has a citizenship world with two pillars; we consider ourselves a social venture company. There is a lot of room with collaboration! Partners in Learning is our program: $450million in 100 countries, 65 million students reached.
3 areas- digital literacy for all
- more competitive workforce
- improved quality of life
We often work with state and municipal governments. We have some smaller grantees around the country like Global Kids; we needed to be with the entrepreneurial startups that pull us into the independent games community like Taking it Global. Our goal is to help these groups go to scale.
As you are looking for funders, utilize the web and look at how it helps you to scale quickly.
IssuesHow do we know that the quality of the game will be good?
Who will test it?
What are the metrics, what are the evaluation tools?
What is the meaning that students are getting from this space?
Lucy at Blueprint asks the panel: Any notable funding models?NSF: We often fund universities directly but we've opened it up with some of the work we are putting forward. Getting a lot of inquiries from small research nonprofits, partnering with industry and universities. Collaborative proposals are coming in more frequently now.
Microsoft: The applicants collaborate, but also the funders are collaborating now. Making a priority for our organizations to work together to fund, common metrics; we need to work together to create these standards and agreements.
NSF: MacArthur and NSF and will be recruiting others (HP, Microsoft): LETS HAVE COLLABORATIVE FUNDING INITIATIVES! Private philanthropy, private industries and researchers coming together.
MacArthur: We've engaged with Lucy and Blueprint on how we handle metrics but we haven't shared our metrics policies with other orgs yet. The challenge and joy of this grantmaking is that we rarely partner with industry and forprofits; this work will not go forward without these collaborations. The grant we gave to UWisc was also given to Eric Zimmerman, GameLab and Parsons to get design done quickly -- funding blended ventures gets it done much faster. It's a different kind of expectation around getting the work done. IP and royalty issues will need new models and we will have to figure out how to create these partnerships so that everyone can benefit while game designers have a sustainable revenue moving forward. From a traditional foundation perspective it is no small move for our older organization to make us move: kids make things happen. The raising up of kids voices: TIG and GK, how are kids thinking and what are they doing?
Additional questions about metrics, IP, partnerships yielded good notes on Creative Commons use, creatively thinking about new language, research and opportunities to study within these new environments.
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