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Black Cloud: Patterns Towards Da Future

Greg NiemeyerUC Berkeley, Art Practice

345 Kroeber Hall

Berkeley, CA 94720+1510 307-6145

[email protected]

Antero GarciaUC Los Angeles/Manual Arts HS

4131 S. Vermont Ave.

Los Angeles, CA 90037+1310 739-1885

[email protected]

Reza NaimaUC Berkeley, BioEngineering

354 Hearst Hall

Berkeley, CA 94720+1415 558-0429

[email protected]

ABSTRACTThe authors developed and tested a hyper-local air quality sensornetwork and a fictional game narrative to evaluate the pedagogical

potential of Alternate Reality games for high school students inLos Angeles. This study examined how Deweyan concepts oflearning can be applied to game play. The authors found that

students developed a unique language to discuss real pollutionissues within a fictional construct. Engaging in both civicengagement and educational rigor, student learning was situated ina framework of instruction John Dewey outlines as counter totraditional models of schooling. Despite limitations, includingsome authoritarian and competitive structures implicit in games,students found new reasons to communicate with real-worldadults in verbal and written form. Game-based learning inspiredsubstantial qualitative progress and high levels of engagementamong students, compared to traditional teaching methods.

Categories and Subject DescriptorsJ.5 [Arts and Humanities]: Arts, Fine and Performing, NewMedia Pedagogy.

General TermsDesign, Human Factors, Standardization, Languages, Theory.

KeywordsAlternate Reality Game, John Dewey, Climate Sensing, CO2,VOC, Interactive Art, SMS text messaging, High School, PublicArt, Charts, Situated Learning.

1. HYPOTHESIS In July of 2008 a revolutionary leap was made in scientificdiscovery. Through unknown circumstances, an amorphous,

gaseous body of pollution developed consciousness and madecontact with a group of high school students in South Los Angeles.This black cloud and the mysterious individuals investigating thenature of it recruited 37 students to help investigate the cloud due

to their expertise in the community. Over the next seven weeks,these students regularly communicated with the cloud, warnedtheir community of its polluting dangers, and recruited others toensure that the black cloud would safely disperse from the area

for the foreseeable future.

The events described above are absolutely true - at least within thefictitious world of the Black Cloud funded through the MacArthurFoundation’s Digital Media and Learning Competition. Blurringthe lines between fiction and reality, however, meant askingstudents to interpret the world around them in entirely new waysand to don new roles as they began a lengthy inquiry process intothe role of the Black Cloud and local air pollution. And while thescenario’s fictitious qualities may appear blatant, the alternativereality in which the Black Cloud was played was not all thatdifferent from the normal surroundings in South Los Angeles. Infact, throughout the seven weeks of game play, students were seeninvestigating actual environmental concerns in theirneighborhood, proposing changes, and looking critically atvarious data sets regarding air quality in their community.

Fig. 1: Cloudy Mc Pufferson, the game character.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies arenot made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and thatcopies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copyotherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists,requires prior specific permission and/or a fee.

MM’09, October 19–24, 2009, Beijing, China.Copyright 2009 ACM 978-1-60558-608-3/09/10.. .$10.00.

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Pedagogically, the Black Cloud game is rooted in Deweyan principals of classroom democracy, experience, and play & work.The main goal of the game is transforming students into agents ofchange. By making real world measurements of air quality andtracking down the true nature of a seemingly fictional talkingcloud, students explored their impact on the environment aroundthem. While the game allowed for more class participation fromstudents than what took place previously within the classroom,there are aspects of the project that require scrutiny. Further,though the events that are described in this report concluded inAugust, 2008, the Black Cloud game is currently being revised formore widespread use.

Examining student learning in this model, the Black Cloud raisesfundamental questions about how games fit into a democraticmodel of schooling and civic engagement. Using the Black Cloudas an example of gaming within a school setting, this paperattempts to investigate the questions: What is learning in thecontext of an alternate reality game? and What are the roles ofstudents and adults in such a game?

Overview of Black Cloud Game Play &

MethodologyConducted at a public high school in South Los Angeles, theBlack Cloud engaged historically at-risk youth. Located three

blocks from the University of Southern California campus andfour blocks from the 110 Freeway, the school serves a communitythat is predominantly 80% Latino and 19% African American.Established in 1910, the school received its name because of itsrole as a more vocationally rooted curriculum in contrast to thecity’s primary learning center, Los Angeles High School. Todaythe s choo l s e r ves a low - in com e , work ing c las sneighborhood. The 37 seniors that participated in the gameall came from Spanish speaking homes with English as theirsecond language.

Although issues of control are critiqued later in this paper, thisstudy is a collaborative model of research done in conjunctionwith the student participants. This Youth Participatory ActionResearch project locates students as the central agents of research,design, and execution in the game's design and outcome [16]. This

process was conducted in conjunction with the teaching of astandard 12th grade English class.

There were three sources for qualitative data throughout this process: coded classroom observations, students and adultinterviews, and assessment of student work products. The Englishclasses over the seven weeks of implementations were observedand fieldnotes were taken regarding all relevant aspects of thegame design. These notes were coded based on emerging patternsfrom a top-down coding model [6]. These notes, along with

corresponding interviews were then read recursively throughanalytic induction in order to assess learning from a Deweyanstance toward game play. “analytic induction” [6], [13]. One-on-one interviews were conducted with students, game participants,and parents. These interviews were approximately 30-60 minutesin length and notes were coded and triangulated with other datasources [1], [20].

2. EXPERIMENTThe Black Cloud game commenced when the game’s authorsrecruited students to investigate the nature of a mysterious cloud-like phenomenon that had gained cognizance. To this end, one ofthe adults participating in the game posted a flyer around ManualArts High School (MAHS) that promised free breakfast forinformation about a “Lost Pufftron” Such a device was quite

coincidentally hidden in the students’ classroom. The studentsfound the sensor, asked their instructor for permission to call it in,and received their reward. The breakfast was served by one of theauthors, and from the first bite, the students were immersed in analternative reality space where the line between what was “real”and what was “game” was significantly blurred. As will bediscussed later, this blurring initially stands in contention with

principals of democracy within the classroom. After the initial breakfast, students were enrolled in two opposing game teams byactors who represented a real estate developer and an alternative ,green grassroots community organizer. The actors engaged theteams in a series of game challenges related to air quality studies.

The Pufftron turned out to be a working climate monitoringdevice. The game challenges dealt with locating more of the

monitors, talking to real people about pollution, and deciding inwhich sense the black cloud of pollution existed. By the end of thegame, students explored the nature of the cloud, the impact of air

pollution on the environment around them, and the way theycould positively change their community’s air quality.

Interacting within what Jane McGonigal refers to as “distributedfiction” of a customized alternate reality game, students wereunknowingly participating in an emerging tradition and culture ofgaming [15]. The game’s setting and multiple scenarios relied onsituated student learning within specific contexts and identifiedkey roles for students to undertake throughout the gaming period[11]. Throughout, real data from the monitors energized fictionalgame dynamics. The resulting mix of game and reality was akin toefforts to present data with visualizations or sonifications, but inthis case, the data was dramatized through a fictional contention

between a real-estate developer, a green grassroots communityorganizer, their student volunteers, and the question of what aneighborhood should look like in the future.

The Pufftron Sensor DesignThe authors designed and produced a wireless cellphone-based airquality monitor which tracked 5 environmental parameters: Light,Temperature, Noise, CO2 and VOCs (Volatile OrganicCompounds). These parameters were mapped onto a simpledisplay device, a matrix of 5 x 5 LED’s on the front of themonitor. The higher the current measurements, the more lightswere on. Each light indicated a doubling of the levels represented

by the previous light. The function of these LEDs was to buildtrust. Participants could willfully change the environment and get

an immediate reading from the device. Popular interactionsincluded shouting at the device, waving markers, glues, andsolvants at the sensor, exhaling at the sensor, shining a bright lightat it, etc.

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Fig. 2: Schematic layout of the Pufftron LED indicators

The colors and placements of the LED’s were carefully chosen tosuggest, but not to reveal the parameters represented. Ourintention was to shroud the significance of the lights in a bit ofmystery to encourage emergent gameplay. Participants wereforced to research the lights, and, upon discovery, share theinformation through social interaction. This way, the participants

became the experts and the intellectual owners of the devices.

To align the monitor’s measurements with our game narrative, weintegrated the LED’s within a graphic of our game cartooncharacter, Cloudy McPufferson. The cartoon was prominent in allBlack Cloud materials as a personification of pollution. Themonitor was called a “Pufftron” because of the character’s name.

Fig. 3: Our cartoon character, Cloudy McPufferson

An Atmel 168 chip ran the devices’ program. The main tasks wereto convert analog input from the diverse sensors into digital data,and to average that data into a minute-by-minute time series. The

data was sent via serial protocol to a cellphone unit, whichtransmitted the data through SMS text messages to our website,www.blackcloud.org. This website was the main game interface,with various locks, puzzles, maps, and up to the minute multi-modal pollution data.

Fig. 4: A sample of the online charts (above)

The website itself went through many design revisions toaccommodate different stages of the game, and the system of

participant - data - monitor - location. In a first approach, theauthors created a map and graph interface, which allowed

participants to click on an icon in a Google maps API. That clickopened up a window with current pollution levels for that site.Through the course of the project, the authors privileged dataanalysis over location, and redesigned the website to allow forcomparison between many different data streams. The mapversion also suggested that monitors measured a certaingeographic area, but in fact, monitors more commonly measuredindoor air quality in a specific building. Instead of a map, animage of the exact location of the sensor, together with theaddress, gave a more accurate representation of the locationmeasured.

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Fig. 5: Illustration of the assembled monitor, with power

cord , ventilation holes and SMS antenna

The monitor was designed to be robust and maintenance free.Since much of the game involved moving sensors from one placeto the other, it was designed to operate on its own, with no useradjustments, plug and play. It was in a powder-coated aluminumcase so it did not require any careful handling.

Specific Game ChallengesDays into the Black Cloud game, students began pushing beyondthe boundaries of the classroom setting. They were alreadyencouraged to locate and discover clues both online andthroughout their community. Once students were immersed intothe game’s setting , the game’s various challenges took place.

Structurally, this meant students faced a new challenge each week.Though a full narrative account of each of these challenges willnot be given here, the key activities that were a part of the BlackCloud experience included:• Puzzle Lock - Students determined the five ways that thePufftron sensors measured air quality and used the information tounlock an informative website and video• Scavenger Hunt- In teams, students analyzed maps and sensor

data to locate the myriad sensors hidden within their community.• Twitter - Students discussed strategies, predictions, and the

fictive qualities of the Black Cloud as part of an online socialnetwork • Daily Polluter Reporting - Students created and published

informative environmental videos about their community on aseparate game space, the Daily Polluter, and solicited members of

their community to also participate.• Seed Bombs - Guided by the Los Angeles Guerilla Gardeners,students made “seed bombs” to help revitalize areas of theircommunity.• Pollution Taxonomy – Examining different forms of trash and

pollution in and around the school site, students invented theirown taxonomy of community detritus.• Ecotopia Postcards - After a brief lecture on the history behind

the word “utopia,” students drew their own visions of anecological utopia. These pictures were done on the back of

postcards and mailed to a local art gallery for exhibition.

• Building Ecotopias - Given myriad tools, wooden pallets, and

encouraged to find their own building materials in the discardedscraps in and around their school, student teams constructedmodel cities representing their Ecotopia visions of the future.• Exhibition and Recruitment - Presenting their postcards,model cities, and collected data, students recruited members of thegeneral Los Angeles public as part of the Black Cloud Citizen

Scientist League.

Fig. 6: Students building the basis of their Ecotopian City

from recycled palettes.

It should be noted, also, that gaining entry into the Black Cloudalternative reality can be viewed as the first challenge; a student inthe class needed to take the initiative to identify the Pufftronsensor and engage one of the principal characters in order for thegame to commence.

Pedagogically, the Black Cloud poses climate change as a mysteryto be discovered via new media. The Black Cloud puts students ina position of generating and disseminating new information abouttheir neighborhood. In other words, Black Cloud helps studentsestablish knowledge-based agency within their communities usingdigital media both for real-world data acquisition and for real-world communication.

3. DISCUSSIONThough philosopher John Dewey does not speak in depth to thenature of games, his writing about the differences and similarities

between play and work are essential to the analysis of this paper.In thinking about what entails “gaming,” Dewey’s chapter “Playand Work in the Curriculum” in Democracy and Education [4] is

a useful starting place for developing an initial understanding. AsDewey discusses the inauthentic divide between work and play hewrites, “From a very early age, however, there is no distinction ofexclusive periods of play activity and work activity, but only oneof emphasis.” As a traditional model of schooling emphasizeswork and mental exertion in contrast to play, games offeropportunities for students to escape from this stiflingenvironment. They reconstruct the possibilities of learning andhow it is felt by students immersed in it.

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An Evolution in Games: Technology and

Alternate Reality Though there is a growing foundation of literature related togaming in the educational context, most contemporary workrelates to electronic gaming such as video games and onlineactivities. James Paul Gee, for instance, theorizes the way thatvideo games are their own assessments and, as a result, primemodels for how education reform can move forward [10]. Thesetexts are both useful and relevant to the context of the BlackCloud game and to general discussion of gaming at large.However, what is lacking is a larger understanding of the role ofAlternate Reality Games and how these games offer uniquelearning opportunities. Though these games may not necessarily

be more complex than the kinds of challenges and assessments posed through video gaming, they do offer unique types ofchallenges.

At the heart of an ARG is a general shift in understanding gamespace and delineation between playing and not playing a game.ARGs utilize preexisting space in the real world as game space.Games often function within the preexisting contexts of real lifeand cast an additional fictional layer on top of society. For

example, in the Black Cloud, students looked at real phenomenaand real air quality measurements through the fictional layering ofthe mystery of a talking cloud and competing organizations.S im i la r ly , the gam e W or ld W i thou t O i l (h t tp : / /worldwithoutoil.org) asked players to imagine their realcommunity suffering from a sudden decline in global oil supplies.As a result, players submitted thousands of videos, texts, andimages from their actual community looking at the consequencesof a fictional catastrophe.

Though the way alternate realities function is generally similar,the Black Cloud model differed from other examples in the way ittargeted a select, finite audience as its primary group. While avidgamers are typically solicited and encouraged to voluntarily joinan ARG, the Black Cloud slowly immersed oblivious gaming

candidates into the game. This subtle coercion fit into a powerstructure that will be critically discussed later. However, it isnecessary to recognize that this emergence into an ARG is a novelone. While most ARGs find participants seeking out otherinterested players and investigating the mysteries, this was a gamethat slowly surrounded and inevitably asked students to plungeinto its activities. This aspect of the game was not easy to manage,

because the authors had to maintain both an English curriculumand a game plan. The two fictions, Expository Composition andBlack Cloud, were coordinated and helped students developliteracy, critical thinking, and research skills across several media:websites, books, text messages, field research, reporting andfiction writing.

Part of the game play within an ARG is the unfolding of the

game’s principal story. For example, describing the efforts ofallowing an ARG to reveal itself to players, one game designersaid, “Instead of telling a story, we would present the evidence ofthat story, and let the players tell it to themselves” [15]. Part of anARG experience is this sense of discovery that is not achievedwithin traditional literature. These immersive qualities are part ofwhat draws players to a game. As such, this sense of discoverydrives the Black Cloud’s opening - having students surrounded bycharacters and elements of intrigue. As understood by Dewey, theBlack Cloud environment “expands” a student’s understanding ofthe world around them [5]. The game is an attempt to fit into the

context-specific learning attributes of continuity and expansion.As Dewey explains that the world changes based on one’sexperience and growth, the immersive qualities of the ARG helpredefine and re-contextualize the student understanding of theworld around them. In transforming the world around themthrough ARG fiction, Dewey contends that, as a result, thestudents are also fundamentally transformed.

As a form of emergent gameplay, the Black Cloud furthers the potential of games to unleash civic agency within its participants[14]; students worked toward actual community change as a resultof gameplay. With this basic understanding, the Black Cloud'sgame model can be seen as a piñata; as students collectively hacktoward the pith of truth within the Black Cloud's fiction, they alsoachieve understanding of local environmental concerns, methodsto improve the air quality, and opportunities to disseminate theirknowledge to the larger public. That the Black Cloud's shell offiction breaks away to yield non-fictive, measurable changes.

Learning and GamingGaming, frequently, is achieved through work and that a division

between work and play is a false one. Play, as a concept, matures

towards results-oriented action over time. Dewey writes, “Withincreasing maturity, activity which does not give back results oftangible and visible achievement loses its interest” [4]. Thedichotomy between play and work is essentially a false one. Asone matures towards attempts at action, play and work should besynonymous with one another. That is, in wanting to understandthe nature of the Black Cloud, for example, a student should bestriving toward their goal through research, writing, andreflection. However, theses should all be elements of play as wellas of work for students of a secondary schooling age. Further, inlooking at contemporary research around video games and currentgaming culture in general, all of these aforementioned aspects oflearning that were embedded within the Black Cloud game areinherent to the successful nature of playing games.

Katie Salen writes that, “Gaming constitutes the sum total ofactivities, literacies, knowledge, and practices activated in andaround any instance of a game” [18]. As research on gamingmoves toward "an emphasis on creative production and the

principles of design, " it is necessary to recognize the way thatstudents are immersed within the process of participating in game

play and creation. Game play, within structured environments oflearning become yet another addition to a growing body ofmultiliteracies that students work from [17]. Finally, the way thatstudents developed tools - both physical and intellectual - intracking down the truth of the Black Cloud represents a synthesisof Vygotskian Activity Theory. The Black Cloud experience

becomes a communicable "tool" for student dissemination ofknowledge to a larger social body [12], [19].

Early in his chapter about play, Dewey writes that, typically, play

and games are “relief from the tedium and strain of ‘regular’school work” [4]. However, though this can be seen as a relieffrom “regular” work, Dewey’s statement also questions why isschool work strain? Why is it tedious? The Black Cloudacknowledges the school requirements mandate what teachersneed to accomplish within their curriculum. As such, blending theoften “tedious” English content standards with the playencouraged in the game’s alternate fiction is a reconstruction oftraditional learning; instead, learning becomes a model ofexuberance, mystery, and intrigue. The game model presents athird trajectory within the superficial play/work divide. Instead, a

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game can be viewed as an attempt to renegotiate studentunderstanding of “tedious” work. Instead, if executed properly agame can convey a sense of relief in learning, despite the fact thatthe same content is still being covered. With this elevated sense of

play, Dewey goes on by laying out the idea that play should beused proactively within a learning environment: “There is noreason … for using them [games] merely as agreeablediversions” [4]. Though not offering explicit examples, Deweyendorses game play as a means of education and learning.

The pragmatics of actually developing and beginning game playin a classroom are not within Dewey’s writing. However, based onhis substantive writing on democracy, civics, and learning, game

play within the classroom would need to foster individualdevelopment toward a civic engagement model of learning. Themeans of getting there, though not irrelevant, are not the foci of alesson. For instance, Dewey contextualizes an example of learningthat can fit within this model of game play: “Gardening … neednot be taught either for the sake of preparing future gardeners, oras an agreeable way of passing time. It affords an avenue ofapproach to knowledge of the place and farming and horticulturehave had in the history of the race and which they occupy in

present social organization” [4]. While the example may feel

specific to some aspects of the Black Cloud, it is important torecognize that gardening is a somewhat arbitrary placeholder: anyhistoric, technical skill or activity should be able to take on thesame kinds of pedagogical skills and learning opportunities thatare embodied in Dewey’s construction of a “manual training”education [3]. Students were not recruited to investigate thetalking cloud in order to simply access online social networks,construct models, or analyze scientific data; all of these aresituated within a larger construction of learning towarddeveloping environmental agency and critical reading and writingskills.

Like gardening, the online networking, taxonomy construction,and other skills that were developed throughout the Black Cloudare not the central focus. Instead, these different activities build

towards a larger, localized knowledge about air quality,environmental change, and ways to enact student agency. In amessage on Twitter in which he speaks in the same voice as theBlack Cloud, a student writes:

Fig. 7: [I believe that everybody should start getting moreinvolved on finding new ways on helping and making the

environment cleaner and safer for the future.]

To provide a bit of technical context, Twitter allows users to postshort updates (no longer than 140 characters) to an online, publicsite for other networked members to follow; students can updatetheir classmates, receive clues from the Black Cloud, and make

predictions or reflections to the site either online or through phonetext messaging. Though the statement appears rudimentary it

embodies several key factors about the learning experience forthis student in the game. The student developed online literacy asexhibited through making this post on Twitter, the studentmimicked the voice of the Black Cloud and appropriated it as hisown, and, finally, the student exhibits a statement that reflects anembodiment of the game’s initial goals. Like Dewey’s

presentation of gardening as a tool for larger forms of knowledgedevelopment, this student utilizes skills gained throughout theBlack Cloud game and models initial civic transformation.

This student’s Twitter message was not required as part of theclass or in the game. Once the student understood the mechanicsof interaction on Twitter he regularly reflected and played alongwith the Black Cloud fiction. Trejo’s post is exactly the kind ofnew media literacy development as well as progress toward thegame’s objective that represent the game design’s goals. However,while Trejo seemed to flourish within the Black Cloud gamingenvironment, not all students became as heavily engaged withinthe game. Opportunities for outside engagement were available -Trejo made several posts beyond the game’s occasionalrequirements. However, some members of the class neededfurther, structured guidance and explicit opportunities to deviatefrom any kind of game trajectory. The social network was a way

of helping familiarize the foreign concepts. Further, the way thatstudents were asked to investigate and interview people withintheir community helps account for ways that the game attemptedto follow Dewey’s guidelines: “Students should be introduced toscientific subject-matter and be initiated into its facts an lawsthrough acquaintance with everyday social applications” [5].

Additionally, in thinking of gaming as a more nuanced expressionof the interrelated activities of work and play, students are notsimply working toward a generic skill set. Instead, a skill - postingupdates on the Twitter network, for instance - is a means towardachieving a goal within the game. Though students may belearning to use a social network or build a “seed bomb” or interactwithin their community, all of these are toward the education ofenvironmental agency; this is the educative goal at the heart of

this game. Dewey writes, “While manual skill and technicalefficiency are gained and immediate satisfaction found in thework … these things shall be subordinated to education - that is,to intellectual results and the forming of a socializeddisposition” [4]. Like his previous quote situating gardening,Dewey helps delineate the way that a wide range of activities inthe Black Cloud sequence worked synergistically toward aspecific common goal. Further, that this goal was embedded in acommunity’s individual air quality measurements and studentexpertise of the area further connects the game’s principals toDewey’s bridge between school and society.

Similarly, students, when creating an “Ecotropolis” in teams (seeFigure 6), took on specific roles within their specified groups.Student, language in documenting this process points to the

situated nature of teamwork and collaboration. For instance, onestudent wrote in her assessment, “ ... My contribution to my city isto relate to my company’s ideology and represent it in the city

plan.” This student sees her role as crucial to a larger project andis also able to work in conjunction with her teammates. Similarly,another student wrote, “I was in charge of the plants of the city. Iused recycle cups to transplant them and to make them smaller tofeat in the city because they were bigger than the houses and wedid not want to live any place with homogenous plants. These

plants will keep C02 lower to be in good shape to live in it” [sic].Though the student’s reflection demonstrates her growth as an

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English Language Learner, it is also a useful depiction ofindividual and group dynamics within the game. This Ecotropolisactivity - one of the numerous challenges - is a useful microcosmof the game at large; students working with assigned roles towarda larger goal within the Ecotropolis project can be seen also in theroles students naturally undertook throughout the game. Students

became delegates representing their teams, spreading information, becoming key researchers, and also acting as publicityrepresentatives on behalf of their teams.

Fig. 8: Students making “Seed Bombs” in the schoolyard.

Participation as LearningUnlike traditional games such as chess or even video games, theBlack Cloud asks for students to change as a result of their

participation. By the games conclusion students should becomemore aware of their impact on air quality, strategies to improve airquality, and ways to communicate their expertise to the general

public. Though most games result in learning - one generally will

improve his or her chess skills the more games one is exposed to -the Black Cloud, by the nature of its game’s goal, fundamentallydemands a shift in students understanding. Regardless of whatstudent experience may have been prior to the game, the BlackCloud, as an immersive environment asks students to grow withinit such that they are different individuals by the end. Though thisfits into Dewey’s understanding of communication as a processthat changes not simply the person receiving dialogue but also the

person initiating conversation and their understandings of theworld around them, it is still a problematic model. As the game’scontext and set of activities is fixed prior to student engagement,the game’s developers ask for students to fundamentally transformwithout necessarily offering space for the students to transformthe developers or the game itself. This one-sided attempt at game

play, though feasible, is not one that is necessarily democratic.

Due to the way that games and play are able to stimulate studentinterest, often “the whole pupil is engaged, the artificial gap

between life in school and out is reduced, motives are afforded forattention to a large variety of materials and processes distinctlyeducative in effect, and cooperative associations which giveinformation in a social setting are provided” [4]. With these

positive learning attributes in place, the way games are construedin Dewey’s text is not unlike Gee’s definition of an “affinityspace” [8]. Understood broadly as a communal learningenvironment in which participants share expertise towards a

common goal or objective, Gee provides context of elevendifferent features that may be embodied in an affinity space.Contextually, the Black Cloud activities can be read as creatingaffinity space for students through the way that “people canconnect or ‘network’ their own individual knowledge,” “Contentorganization is transformed by interactional organization,” and“Tacit knowledge - [“knowledge players have built up in practice,

but may not be able to explicate fully in words] is encouraged andhonored” [8]. Like Dewey’s progressive theory of education,Gee’s affinity space does not center around explicit rules or

protocols. Instead, the interactions between players/learners andthe way these individuals understand leadership as “porous” helplay out an environment of collaborative student learning.

Unlike work, learning in this context is a direct attempt to “engagethe emotions and the imagination; [work] is a more or lessmechanical series of strains” [4]. However, in attempting toengross student emotions and imagination, the game alsosacrificed other elements of democratic education. In this sense,there was a felt tension throughout the game between maintainingintrigue and also finding space to adjust the game based onstudent voice.

The Role of the Teacher, The Role of the

StudentThroughout the seven weeks of Black Cloud game play thattranspired, adults and students maintained two very differenttrajectories in terms of behavior, game knowledge, and outcomes.On the one hand, the participating adult organizers maintained aspecific, nuanced understanding of the game’s mechanics,outcomes, and activities. On the other hand, students were notonly needing to rely on adult supplied clues and game facts, butwere not given prior context that they were entering into a gamespace or even playing a game. As a result, power and societalnature of the classroom tipped away from the kind of environmentthat Dewey outlines as “progressive” and into more traditionalmodels of student and adult relationships within the classroom.

Fundamentally, the game’s design can be viewed as authoritarian.Students only influenced the game through playing the game andinvoking changes - not actually designing the game itself. Assuch, though students were not aware of the entire game and it’sdesign, their gameplay and demonstrated interests shaped thedirection of the game as it progressed. This represents a keycontrast between perception of game play and design of the adultsand students. In developing the game further, student voice in thegame design is being embedded to help further flesh out the roleof students as active constructors of the experiential education. Assuch, students are using the general construction of the BlackCloud as a way to more largely understand the world around themand to make transformative adjustments to air quality and thecommunity.

Detectives, Citizen Scientists and the Situated

Learning MatrixThe major challenge of an ARG within a classroom setting is oneof role management. In asking students to play the game, asmentioned, we asked students to literally transform who theywere. In addition to becoming more civically minded about thecommunity’s air quality, we asked these students to shift their role

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in the community. Instead of acting as “students,” the young people became “detectives,” “citizen scientis ts,” “guerillagardeners,” and other roles. These were not simply rolesarbitrarily doled out to students. Instead, these identities askedstudents to re-visualize their community and their interactionswithin it. They asked for a fundamental shift in how theyunderstood the world and their place in it. With the neatlyreflecting pair of quotes, “All human experience is ultimatelysocial: that it involves contact and communication” and“Education is essentially a social process” [5], Dewey points tothe way identities, role playing and role acquisition formulate partof a larger pedagogical goal within the Black Cloud. Expectationswere for student interactions with one another and with otherindividuals within their community to help guide student growthtoward environmental game goals. As Dewey contends, thisinteraction and societal communication not only leaves studentimpressions on their community but also transforms students aswell; the palimpsests of ideas and concepts remain traced overstudent agency and ideology.

Ultimately, the way students interacted with each other and withinthe game can be interpreted as a “Situated Learning Matrix” [9].While the game provided the model for student interaction as

delineated as an affinity spec, a situated learning matrix embodiesthe way that donning an identity shapes student learning; Geeexplains that, “Because content is rooted in experiences a personis having as part and parcel of taking on a specific identity….Learning is situated in experience, but goal-driven, identity-focused experience.”

Though Gee connects this idea to video games, looking at howdonning an identity as a SWAT officer in the game SWAT4 encourages learning, the implications of identity are partially insync with Deweyan notions of identity. However, there is adistinction between the role playing in games and that in thesituated learning environment of a progressive school. Dewey’sdonning or roles and experiencing education through this role isdifferent from the idea of temporarily pretending to be a character

in a game. For Dewey, role-playing is more congruous with beingacclimated within and affecting change within a socialcommunity. Dewey does not seem to speak to the idea of

pretending or necessarily advocate such activities. Considering theway communication and individual experiences literally changeand shape society in Dewey’s writing, pretending doesn’t feel likea feasible learning model as much as becoming a part of thecommunity of practice for a particular skill set; instead of

pretending to be a detective or guerrilla gardener, Dewey wouldcontend that one actually becomes and embodies these roles.

Though a major critique of the game is the way that adultsmaintained power and fixed students within traditional in-class

power structures, the reasons behind such efforts are to helpfurther student interest. While such an explanation does not

necessarily justify choking student access to information, the position suggests a contention within the game’s design; inside thegame’s current model, there is a trade off between studentdemocracy and the game’s immersive, fictional intrigue. Inhanding over all elements of the game and revealing the hulkingtheoretical machinery and back-story behind the ARG curtain,students gain voice, but to what benefit? Presently, the gamedesigners are looking for ways within the Black Cloud that, “Theadult can exercise the wisdom his own wider experience giveshim without imposing a merely external control” [5].Unfortunately, Dewey’s statement here does not seem to sit well

within a game of exploring and pre-meditated conclusions. Whilethe Black Cloud can move toward a more open-ended model ofexploration with the same final game goal, balancing such an actwhile still making the game not feel like “the tedium and strain of‘regular’ school work” continues to be a source of game-designvexation.

Zimmerman explains, “In a game, the game designer makes therules. But the game designer doesn't directly create the player'sexperience. The way that the rules play out - once people enterinto the system and start playing around - is usually uncertain andsurprising, especially if you've got a good game on yourhands” [2]. This uncertainty is one that the Black Cloud designinitially disregarded; it is the underlying premise of democraticgame play that needs further expansion.

Finally, though the game design can be seen as constricting to ademocratic class environment it is also the responsibility of theteacher to help shape and guide student learning. While studentsare encouraged to develop and grow and shape the classroom,Dewey writes,

A genuine community life does not organize itself in an

enduring way purely spontaneously. It requires thought and planning ahead. The educator is responsible for aknowledge of individuals and for a knowledge of subject-matter that will enable activates to be selected which lendthemselves to social organization … and in which theactivities in which all participate are the chief carrier ofcontrol. [5]

Here the delineation of what controls student actions in the gameis up for interpretation. Through one lens, the Black Cloud gamecan be read as the adults controlling the game as they haveintimate knowledge of how students will reach their goal. On theother hand, adults may be guiding students through activities thatare chiefly delineating student actions. That both of theseinterpretations exist is problematic. Ultimately, future versions of

the game are to be ideally reframed so that students are moreclosely cognizant of the way activities - not adults - guide action,research, and inquiry throughout the game. As democratic equitywithin the Black Cloud was not fully present, the game needseven more structure to lead its participants towards a moreautonomous form of gameplay. Eventually, students - as authorsand participants within the game - will move toward tearing downthe temporary scaffolding of the Black Cloud game design,

propelling the interactive fiction forward on their own.

Writing the TextAs the Black Cloud game progressed, students became morecognizant of the fact that the Black Cloud game was not ahappenstance experience in which they stumbled and was aconsciously organized and designed curricular unit. Most of the

students were able to quickly accept the fact that the game waslargely a fiction upon which the everyday “real” world overlaid.Though a few students balked at the feeling of being duped at thegame’s onset, most students not only continued participating inthe game but also attempted to help “write” the central narrative’s“text.” That is, in looking at the story of the Black Cloud and itsability to communicate, students would help interpret the worldaround them through the lens of the Black Cloud’s actions. Forexample, after an earthquake was felt by the students participatingin the game, Trejo connected the event to the Black Cloud and an

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alternate story-line he had been posting on Twitter about the BlackCloud communicating to him in his dreams:

Fig. 9: Trejo connects imaginary events with real-world

events in a typical ARG move. He believes that the cloud

was warning him about the earthquake.

Collective Intelligence and the Student HiveGames, and Alternate Reality Games in particular, rely on whatPierre Levy refers to as “Collective Intelligence” (CI) as a means

of achieving the goals challenge [15]. Though originally defined by Levy in 1994, the term is applied by Jane McGonigal to theway groups interacted in an ARG she helped design, “I LoveBees.” Understood as a shared knowledge developed throughmass collaboration, collective intelligence situates studentexperience and student learning within a societal context. Relyingon the interest of avid gamers, “I Love Bees” demonstrates amuch more macro use of CI than what transpired in the BlackCloud. However, the understanding of a game design that tries “tocreate puzzles and challenges that no single person could solve ontheir own” is a useful lens through which to orient the nature ofstudent learning within the context a game. As a side note, it isworth pointing out that the “I Love Bees” title refers less to thatARG’s game play than to “make players think about themselvesas a hive mind.”

Collective intelligence fits into the social network that Deweyenvisioned a school to be a part of. School and societal activities

should be interrelated and part of the same system of experiences.For example, one of the Black Cloud designer’s challenges issituating the game’s curriculum within student experiences.Students, by donning the roles of environmentalists, researchers,and new media artists form networks to cull through and interpretthe myriad data they collect; no one student can play the gamewithout significant input from the other engaged peers. Theyembody the CI necessary to unravel the Black Cloud puzzle.Similarly, the literacy practices used throughout the game -texting, writing within specific contexts - are done so out of aFreirean understanding of literacy practices’ larger implicationswithin society. As such, the game reflects the understanding that

“educators have to invent and create methods in which theymaximize the limited space for possible change that is available tothem. They need to use their students’ cultural universe as a pointof departure, enabling students to recognize themselves as

possessing a specific and important cultural identity” [7]. Studentcultural practices such as text messaging, community expertise,and methods of engaging community members figured

prominently into gaming strategy. Disseminating these differentideas were also ways that students exhibited CI.

4. CONCLUSION: Patt3rns Toward the

FutUr3

In a message on Twitter in the middle of the gaming period,actively texting student, Trejo wrote:

Fig. 10: [If you find a pattern towards the future then you

would find your prediction to what ! s going to happen in life.]

Though initial work toward understanding a definition of gaming

and games, their role in learning, and the role of teachers andstudents is proposed here, this work is limited and demandsfurther elaboration. Proposing and facilitating real change throughalternative fiction poses numerous challenges to Deweyan

pedagogy, despite the way game play fits into Dewey’s concept ofwork and play being related. Sifting through the studentexperiences with the first Black Cloud iteration, this paper helpedclarify patterns of success to indicate the best practices that willguide Black Cloud game play in the future.

In his chapter “Theories of Knowledge” in Democracy and Education, Dewey writes, “If the living, experiencing being is anintimate participant in the activities of the world to which it

belongs, then knowledge is a mode of participation, valuable inthe degree in which it is effective” [4]. Within a game, active

participation towards a goal manifests as knowledge andinculcates all players. As such, the Black Cloud in-game characteris not a fiction. The Black Cloud is a living agent of knowledge

production. It

thrives benevolently and blurs lines between play &w0rk, l3arning & do1n9, tru7h & f1c7i0n:

cl0UDy s3yz 5TOp t3XT h3R3!!

5. ACKNOWLEDGMENTSThe Black Cloud Project was funded by the MacArthurFoundation, the Mellon Foundation, Pro Helvetia and theCalifornia Humanities Fund. We would like to thank FarleyGwazda, Laura Greig, Reza Naima, Nik Hanselman, RheaCortado and Eric Kaltmann for their hard work on the project.

6. REFERENCES

[1] Bogdan, Robert C. & Biklen Sari Knopp. 2007. Qualitative Research for Education: An Introduction to Theories and Methods. Boston: Pearson.

[2] Christopher, Roy. 2007. Eric Zimmerman: Play as Research.In R. Christopher (Ed.), Follow For Now: Interviews with

Friends and Heroes. Seattle: Well-Read Bear.

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[3] Dewey, John. 1897. The School and Society MW (Vol. 1, pp.5-20).

[4] Dewey, John. 1916. Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education. New York: TheFree Press.

[5] Dewey, John. 1938. Experience And Education. New York:Simon and Schuster.

[6] Erickson, Frederick. 1998. Qualitative Research Methods forScience Education. In B. J. Fraser & K. G. Tobin (Eds.)

International Handbook of Science Education.

[7] Freire, Paulo. & Macedo, Donaldo. (1987). Literacy: Reading the Word and the World . Westport: Bergin &Garvey.

[8] Gee, James Paul. 2004. Situated Language and Learning: ACritique of Traditional Schooling . New York: Routledge.

[9] Gee, James. Paul. 2008. Learning and Games. In K. Salen(Ed.), The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and

Learning (pp. 21-40). Cambridge: MIT Press.

[10] Gee, James Paul. 2009. Games As Their Test RetrievedMarch 10, 2009, from http://spotlight.macfound.org/main/

entry/james_paul_gee_games_as_their_test/[11] Lave, Jean & Wenger, Etienne. 1991. Situated Learning:

Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.

[12] Lee, Carol. 2000. Signifying in the Zone of ProximalDevelopment. In C. Lee & P. Smagorinsky (Eds.) Vygotskian

Perspectives on Literacy Research. New York: CambridgeUniversity.

[13] Lindesmith, A. R. 1947. Addiction and Opiates. Chicago:Aldine.

[14] McGonigal, Jane. 2003. ‘This is Not a Game’: ImmersiveAesthetics and Collective Play. Melbourne DAC.

[15] McGonigal, Jane. 2008. Why I Love Bees: A Case Study inCollective Intelligence Gaming. In K. Salen (Ed.), The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games,and Learning (pp. 199-228). Cambridge: MIT Press.

[16] McIntyre, Alice. 2000. Constructing Meaning AboutViolence, School, and Community: Participatory ActionResearch with Urban Youth. In The Urban Review. Vol 32,

No. 2.

[17] New London Group. 1996. A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies:Designing Social Futures. In Harvard Education Review. Vol66, Number 1.

[18] Salen, Katie. 2008. Toward and Ecology of Gaming. In K.Salen (Ed.), The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth,Games, and Learning (pp. 199-228). Cambridge: MIT Press

[19] Vygotsky, L. S. 1978. Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Eds. M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner, & E. Souberman. Cambridge: HarvardUniversity.

[20] Wolcott, Harry E. 2009. Writing Up Qualitative Research.Third Edition. Los Angeles: SAGE.

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