I am a professor of Game Design and Development at RIT and specialize in Games for Learning in Religion, Culture, and Policy.
I also have a Jewish studies background and run ConverJent: Jewish Games for Learning
My dissertation at NYU was in Jewish Education through Digital Media and Games.
I designed a mobile augmented reality game for teaching modern Jewish history and ran research on the process (see Jewish Time Jump: New York and Converjent.org)
I am currently embargoing the dissertation's publication until I have published in peer review journals and conference proceedings, which is why the dissertation is not currently available.
The key steps re: promoting Games and Torah are 1) becoming literate in game design (this involves playing many games, designing games, and studying) and 2) studying the literature from Games for Learning. The greatest danger of backfiring: making games that are not well designed, and game design is a very challenging discipline (there are now hundreds of university programs around the world in game design). Learners know immediately if a game is only thinly veiled traditional study. That said, one game-design literate teacher can encourage and guide students to design games. While I have run many workshops, I have found it challenging to bring teachers to game and game-design literacy as it often takes many years of study.
These references may help regarding Games for Learning (gamification is mostly a term used by advertisers and is highly frowned upon by Games for Learning scholars):
A number of short public articles that I have written about Jewish Games for Learning have appeared in Sh’ma, Contact (Steinhart) and the CCAR Journal and are available to the public at the Berman Jewish Policy Archive:
[
bit.ly]
I also run the initiative in Religion, Culture, and Policy at the RIT MAGIC Center
Magic.rit.edu/rcp where we use games and simulations for religious and cultural literacy
We are currently working on literacy in both Jewish and Muslim medieval legal systems and a number of other early stage projects
For basic knowledge of the fields, I recommend starting with a few of the starter texts:
James Paul Gee: What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, 2nd edition (note, Gee examines well made video games)
Kurt Squire: Video Games and Learning
Tracy Fullerton: Game Design Workshop, 3rd Edition (which I use with the undergraduates I teach)
Two key graduate level texts are Salen and Zimmerman’s Rules of Play volume and Game Design Reader volume.
And attending relevant conferences in the field: Games Learning Society, Games for Change, and DML (Digital Media and Learning)
My Jewish Games for Learning organization and consultancy is
www.converjent.org
I hope some of this is helpful.
L’shalom,
Owen Gottlieb, PhD.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/25/2015 08:55PM by mlb.
