As I read over Will’s and Trevor’s posts, I’m definitely keen on hearing more about games and archives.  Will, I sincerely appreciate your approach (casting evidence as treasure, as you put it, and sculpting a motif of discovery).  While I’ve only dealt with this in an imaginary space (alas, no programming background), I’m also convinced that we need, especially when it comes to education, to challenge the paradigm of passive spectatorship in archives/museums, virtual or otherwise.  And while taxonomies/data sets are clearly integral to the programming side of digital archives, I’d also like to see this epistemology of deduction supplemented by an affirmation of digressive exploration. For my digital humanities class, I spent the latter half of this past semester envisioning some sort of scheme that would cast digital museum objects as catalysts to discursive exploration– using an object as the impetus to radial or rhizomatic imagining/research/discovery rather than as the “here we have a Colonial hornbook, and here…,” dead-end culmination of un-embodied (and dare I say sometimes uninspired?) classroom discussions.  I meant to make it game-like, but I think it ended up more art-project than anything else.  I’d love to sit in on this session and hear what sorts of things people have done with this topic!

I’m also interested in joining up with Marjorie, et al., as they discuss digital history and civic engagement.  While I can’t anticipate whether discussion will head more toward digitally integrative pedagogies for pedagogy’s sake or on-the-ground installation/modification of web tools, I’d like to lobby for place-based pedagogy (in association with digital tools, of course!) as a framework for engaging and enlivening local history, especially in rural areas.

And what about combining the two and making local history one great, exciting scavenger hunt that could really bring home– literally!– the impact of local objects on local history (and vice versa)?  Sounds like this sort of thing is in the air…I’m looking forward to discussing!

I’ve been thinking about an Omeka plugin that would encourage K-12 and college students to play in the archives. How can one play in the archives? Playing and exploring are very similar. Playing is about exploring a possibility space. When a cat plays with a string, it is exploring the spatial possibilities of the string, possibilities largely defined by physical constraints. Similarly, when one plays a game of soccer, she is searching for those constrained actions that lead to the highest score. As playing takes on more specific goals (and constraints), it becomes a game. Playing and gaming is not always fun; sometimes it’s tedious work, especially if the exploratory actions are not linked to explicit and immediate rewards. So again, how can we play in the archives? Moreover, how can students play in the archives, so that they can learn how to think historically?

During THATCamp, I’d like to brainstorm some potential answers to these questions.

One answer, I’ve come up with is a treasure hunting game bundled into an Omeka plugin. The idea is that students break into teams, and then collectively search the virtual archive for certain items, adding them to their team basket. Before the treasure hunt begins, teachers must create one and assign it to their class.

To create a treasure hunt, teachers explore the archive, and tag archive items with questions, answers to which are partially or fully answered by information contained in the archive items. After students sign up for a treasure hunt created by their teacher, they are randomly assigned a team. Each team of students is assigned a random set of questions for that treasure hunt. The students must search the archive for items that help answer their questions. To answer a question, the student must write a textual answer and link it to archive items in their team basket. The archive items serve as evidence for their answers.

Different students can play different roles in this search game. Some students will search the archives, adding interesting archive items to the team basket, while other students will craft language to answer their questions, supporting their claims by linking them to collected archive items.

What is playful about this treasure hunt game? First, it reframes archival research as a social experience, where students experiment with different ways to jointly browse the archive, collectively looking for clues, hints, and connections to the questions at hand. Second, it recasts evidence as treasure, encouraging students to re-imagine research as a creative process of discovery and persuasion.

Extensions to the treasure hunt plugin include:

1) allowing the students to help construct the treasure hunt

2) allowing teachers to share questions and treasure hunts

3) allowing teachers to attach hints to items

4) devising competitive metrics between groups (shortest time to answer all question, highest number of votes per question, teacher’s favorite, etc.)

We may also want to think about how games such as “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?” structure historical thinking.