Alice Petty
I am a Near Eastern Archaeologist whose area of specialization is the language, literature, history and material culture of ancient Iraq.
In 2004, I began working as a subject matter expert for the Federation of American Scientists' Discover Babylon project, an inter-institutional collaboration to design and construct an educational video game for middle-school students about the origins of writing and literacy in the ancient Near East.
My experiences working with the FAS have sparked my interest in the potential high-tech future of the Humanities in general, and Archaeology and Ancient History in particular. My current scholarly interests include the ways in which virtual reconstructions are comparable to conceptual (re)constructions and interpretations of the past. I am currently employed as a post-doctoral fellow in the Humanities at Stanford University.
The Federation of American Scientists
The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) is a 503(c) non-profit, founded in 1945.
We address a broad spectrum of issues in carrying out its mission to promote humanitarian uses of science and technology. We are proud to count 68 Nobel Laureates in chemistry, economics, medicine and physics on our Board of Sponsors.
Our Information Technologies Project works on strategies to harness the potential of emerging information technologies to improve how we teach and learn.
Project Goal
The Federation of American Scientists' (FAS) learning technologies activities are designed to build constituencies to work in support of increased learning science and technology R&D funding, new research management methods and identify opportunities for collaborations to build research capacity and infrastructure. FAS employs a variety of approaches to do this: design and create prototype games and learning tools; undertake and publish major studies; write policy analyses; hold workshops and conferences; present briefings for members of Congress or Administration officials; and assemble design teams and community leaders to undertake local activities and form research partnerships.
FAS' interest in computer games is to build on the insights gained from the Learning Science and Technology R&D Roadmap project. The Roadmap integrated the advice of
approximately 100 researchers to define the state of the art in learning science and technology and to identify key research challenges. The work, supported by the National Science Foundation, the Department of Education, foundations (Hewlett and Carnegie Corporation) and private industry (Hewlett Packard and Microsoft), identified key R&D areas for next-generation learning systems: pedagogy and instructional design, building physically correct interactive simulations, dialogue and question management, learner modeling, and tools for assembling and constructing learning systems from these components.
Educational games are an important component of FAS' educational learning technologies program. By building and evaluating a prototype learning game in house, we are addressing two key areas identified in the Learning Science and Technology R&D Roadmap: 1) design of games for learning; and 2) adapting simulations to learning environments. We have built two games and one simulation trainer with gaming elements – Immune Attack, Discover Babylon, and Multi Casualty Incident Responder.
Immune Attack
Immune Attack is an educational video game being jointly developed by the Federation of American Scientists and Brown University, and was funded by a through a competitive grant from the National Science Foundation. This project builds on a 3-year effort to produce a computer game that can be used for teaching high school students and college
freshmen about immunology and infection in an engaging manner with validated instructional content and effective educational elements.
The game serves three purposes: namely, to educate regarding the human immune system; to increase interest in biology and science; and to demonstrate that many features of video games (challenges, simulations, high-end graphics) can be used to teach complicated subjects.
Immune Attack offers stunning three-dimensional graphics and gripping interactive and motivational experiences, while combining realistic depictions of biological structure and function with advanced educational technologies. Unlike many previous educational media and materials, this game is intended to be as fun and compelling as the computer games currently played by many adolescents and young adults. Students are motivated with a series of increasingly difficult challenges in a compelling gaming environment in which success depends on a sophisticated grasp of complex immunology concepts.
The protagonist in the game, a teenaged prodigy with a unique condition in which the immune system is "present, yet non-functional", must pilot a microscopic nanobot to save her own life. She must teach her semi-functional immune system to fight off diseases and bacterial/viral infections by programming individual cell types. This programming is accomplished through the successful completion of various educational minigames, each of which teaches a central immunology principle. Once completed, these minigames confer added ability to the selected cell type.
The game is set in different biologically realistic tissue structures, with the nanobot being able to latch onto and control certain cells. A growing array of controllable cell types and programmable commands are available as the game progresses. Play is split up into several levels, which feature increasingly virulent infections or diseases to overcome. A level is completed upon achieving certain goals - usually the eradication of the infection or disease.
Immune Attack's initial release included two play levels (approximately 40 minutes of game time) and covered the innate immune system. The next version of the game will cover both the innate and adaptive immune system. Additional play levels are planned for later releases of the game.
Educational content is conveyed via three means; 1) Through interactions with the environment and characters within the game, such as the various cell types, 2) through minigames which have the player perform certain tasks which occur naturally in the immune system, and 3) by use of a built in "Q + A" tool which can answer questions and offer explanations using both an included knowledge database and an information messaging system.
Discover Babylon
Discover Babylon was developed alongside Immune Attack.
Mesopotamia's diverse contributions to world heritage in terms of writing, mathematics, literature, and law come alive in Discover Babylon, a joint project of the FAS Learning Technologies Project, UCLA's Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative, Escape Hatch Entertainment, and the Walters Art Museum.
Located in what is now modern Iraq, Mesopotamia was the birthplace of written language, the first cities, the concept of the 360° circle and the 24-hour day, not to mention the earliest known laws and literature—yet its contributions are not well known to many Americans.
Targeted at ages 8 –14, Discover Babylon© will use sophisticated video gaming strategies and realistic digital environments to engage the learner in challenges and mysteries that can only be solved through developing an understanding of Mesopotamian society, business practices, and trade.
Features of the game include:
- Accurate historical and scientific information
- 3D photorealistic simulations of temple complexes that will allow the user open-ended exploration and discovery
- Contextualization of museum artifacts used by avatars in the virtual environment
- Multi-player game technology
- Question & answer management tools to stimulate learning
- Compelling, age-appropriate challenges and assignments for the player
Discover Babylon© was designed to facilitate public understanding of the significance of this material for world culture, science and mathematics. It explores new ways to reassemble and restore the material culture now spread across many different museum and library collections, contribute new research on information management, and encourage interdisciplinary collaboration.
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