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We now have enough teachers who have signed up
to participate in our ARGH project during the 2007-08 school year.
Here’s an overview of what teachers in our project will do, with many more details and explanations below:
- Get excited about augmented reality (AR) games!
- Attend a weeklong summer training session in July or August 2007.
- Adapt a game-based curriculum so that it aligns with your school’s standards.
- Teach a unit of approximately 10 45-minute instructional periods.
- Take your students on a fieldtrip to play an AR game.
- Participate in a Teacher Forum, posting your observations on teaching and learning with AR games.
- Attend a mid-year workshop to report on and hear about implementations of AR-based units.
- Receive a stipend of up to $1000 for work done beyond contract hours.
 In the AR games developed in our project, students take on real-life roles and encounter authentic challenges. Holding a handheld computer (triggered by a GPS device) as they walk in a real-world natural or cultural community, players see themselves as an icon moving on a map. At various locations they "meet" and interview virtual people and access virtual photos, statistics, and other documents that add to or “augment” reality they see in the ordinary world. Players thus experience a virtual world layered on top of a real-world context. Different roles receive different information, so that collaboration among players is essential. In the end, they use this information to identify various points of view, develop arguments, and present and defend their conclusions. View Games.
ARGH, a three-year research project (“Augmented Reality Simulation Games for Mathematics and Literacy Learning with Emerging Mobile Technologies”) funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Star Schools Program, is a collaboration among four partners:
With these partners, we are creating AR technology (a game engine and editor); place-based and space-based AR games; curricular frameworks, materials, training, and support for using these games in classroom units; and tools for researching what students learn and how teachers teach with AR. In our first year we have worked with more than 20 teachers and classrooms in Wisconsin and Boston.
When students play AR games, they:
- Adopt the roles of and begin to think like scientists, historians, and other professionals
- Work in teams conducting virtual investigations on complex problems
- Evaluate information, form hypotheses, and argue from evidence
- Develop mathematics and literacy skills through game play and classroom simulations
Our pilot studies show that students who play AR in a game-based curriculum:
- Are more engaged than with traditional instruction
- Build deep conceptual understandings and think of themselves differently as learners
- Use real-world experience to understand texts and statistics
- See themselves as active participants in their environment and community
We're looking for sixth- through eighth-grade language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies teachers in the greater Milwaukee and Madison areas.
Teachers must attend the summer and mid-year workshops and teach an AR game-based unit. Teachers who post extended reflections on the teacher forum will receive an additional stipend. Expectations will be explained in greater detail at the summer workshops.
At our 5-day summer workshops, teachers will:
- play an AR game (in Madison, a new game about Lake Wingra; in Milwaukee, a new game about Riverside Park at the Urban Ecology Center)
- systematically walk through curricular frameworks and materials
- discuss game-based pedagogies
- look at AR technologies
- begin using the teacher forum
- learn our expectations for teachers participating in this research project
The workshop for Madison area teachers will be held July 30 – August 3, 2006 from 9:00 to 2:30 (bagels & coffee at 8:30). The location will be the Academic ADL Colab at 222 West Washington Avenue (Suite 470) in Madison. Directions
The workshop for Milwaukee area teachers will be held August 13 - 17, 2006 from 9:00 to 2:30 (bagels & coffee at 8:30). The location will be the Urban Ecology Center at 1500 E. Park Place in Milwaukee. Directions
 Teachers can earn up to $1,000 for participating in the project: $300 for completing the workshop, $300 for implementing the curriculum during the 2007-2008 school year, and $400 for posting extended reflections to the teacher forum.
In order to earn the stipend for implementing the curriculum, teachers are required to modify our curricular frameworks and materials to create and teach a unit aligned with school standards, post brief daily descriptions of what happened in class to the teacher forum, and collaborate with the Local Games Lab research staff (obtaining consent forms, scheduling classroom observations, providing copies of unit materials and student work, and facilitating interviews). In order to earn the stipend for extended reflections, teachers are required to attend the mid-year workshop and post to the teacher forum in-depth reflections on teaching and learning with AR.
Yes. 2.5 Continuing Education Units (CEUs) for participating in the workshop will be available through the University of Wisconsin-Madison—there is a $7.40 processing fee.
Project participants can earn up to three graduate credit units from the UW-Madison for $282 per special student credit or $576 per graduate student credit.
Participation in the ARGH project may also be used to meet some of the content requirements of a teacher's Professional Development Plan. The project will address the following Wisconsin teaching standards:
1. Teachers know the subjects they are teaching.
4. Teachers know how to teach.
6. Teachers communicate well.
7. Teachers are able to plan different kinds of lessons.
9. Teachers are able to evaluate themselves.
10. Teachers are connected to other teachers and the community.
Mark Wagler
608-263-9885
Between May 25 and June 3, contact:
Jim Mathews
608-829-9650.
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