Old Is The New New

What alchemy would we need to work to make a course calendar one fraction as addictive as a Calico Critter catalog?

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I went birthday shopping for some four-year-old friends the other day and rediscovered the romance of the Playmobil playset. Or the action figure playset in general. I trust you know what I mean by a playset. It’s a toy building or vehicle, often opening up to a cutaway view, a proscenium stage on which our [...]

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I like talking about “history at play” or “playful historical thinking” more than “history games” or “serious games” because of some of the baggage that comes with the word “game.” I know that “game” is a capacious label, but more and more today the word describes a commercial product, a highly structured and packaged experience. [...]

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Last week I had the pleasure of taking part in a terrific two-day symposium on playing with, making, and teaching history, hosted by Kevin Kee and funded by The History Education Network (THEN/HIER). The Twitter hashtag was #pastplay, although as I remarked at the time, we were often too busy playing to tweedle. The first [...]

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Wikipedia’s evil twin. Also: Burt Reynolds, Betty White, and Norman Fell!

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Geocaching, and its low-tech granny letterboxing, are a kind of hobby treasure hunt, massively multi-user hide-and-seek games played in the great outdoors. Basically, players hide caches or letterboxes in out of the way places, then other players use clues or maps or GPS coordinates to find them. The caches usually contain a logbook, so you [...]

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An interesting interview with Sid Meier. We may think Civ is about history, but it is really about psychology: a diabolical Skinner box of operant conditioning.

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One of the challenges in designing games or activities for education is the interface between a game’s subject and its mechanics. Picture if you will the classic computer game John Kerry Tax Invaders, released by the GOP during the 2004 election. The gameplay is identical to Space Invaders, but instead of a ship you control [...]

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If you’re getting the idea that what I mean by “playful” historical thinking is better known as “bad” historical thinking, go to the head of the class.

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Vikings vs. Samurai!

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