Leah Brownstein at 2015 Arts & Sciences Exposition

As noted elsewhere on this blog, Leah Brownstein has been working on an independent study on Game Design, Gamification, and History with Phillip Payne and Dennis Frank. Thursday Leah presented her work at the The Arts and Sciences Student Research and Creative Endeavors Exposition. The independent study gave Leah the unique opportunity to help us plan our game design assignment for History 206: Introduction to Public History offered next fall. Games and gamification is exploding in education so we're looking forward to using it the public history class. Leah's insight as a graduating history major proved extremely valuable in the planning process.

Leah at Expo

Friday Afternoon Gaming

 As mentioned in previous posts, the History Department and History Club hosted a game event as part of Leah's independent study on game design and gamification in history.  We had a good turnout, as you can see in the pictures, as folks played a variety of games including traditional winner-take-all games like Risk and cooperative games like Flash Point,  Ticket to Ride proved popular although, sadly, there were no takers for Settlers of Catan.  We'll have to fix that in the future.  We also broke out a micro game and a Civil War themed combat game.  While this was part of an academic event, perhaps more importantly lots of people had lots of fun with some pizza.

Game On

Join us March 20 in the basement of Friedsam Library where we'll be playing board and/or tabletop games starting at 2:30.  Since  we're going to be playing board games, it wouldn't be a complete experience without ordering pizza.  So stop by, role some dice and eat a slice.  This is a relaxed event, so if you can't be there at 2:30 that's okay.  We'll have a several games going so folks can hop in or head out as need be.

Why are we doing this?

This semester Leah Brownstein, Dennis Frank, and I have been exploring the academic side of games and how games can be applied in the classroom and history.  We're planning how students enrolled in History 206:  Intro to Public History (Fall 2015) can build games themed around the collection of the New York 154th Regiment.

There is a long history (get it?) of historically themed games.  Oregon Trail anyone?  Of course, video games have exploded and with that the historical trend has continued.  Assassin's Creed?  In recent years board games have made a comeback (more fun to play as a group in person?).  Gamification has also emerged out of primarily video games, which is using game elements for non-game purposes.  Even if you haven't heard of gamification you have seen it, almost anytime you get on the web and see a leader board, badge, patch, or similar thing.  LinkedInn has them.  Obviously, Facebook not only uses gamification but also has a lot of games available.  What I haven't figured out is how Angry Birds relates to history.  Yet.

Notes from a Summer Internship by History Major Leah Brownstein

Western New York is gifted with tremendous historical importance exposed through the many societies, museums, and public exhibits. Although there are many educational opportunities available to examine these various historical events, the rich history of Buffalo, New York is often overlooked by the public. Society’s lack of historical knowledge became discouragingly obvious to me as I began volunteering my time at the Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historic Site.

I spent the first three weeks of my internship expanding my knowledge of Theodore Roosevelt as well as of the early 1900’s. I then devoted the following two weeks to understanding, memorizing, and learning how to properly convey an enormous amount of information. After doing so and becoming familiar with the structure of the site itself, I began giving guiding tours as an official docent. My first day as a docent I nervously sat behind the circulation desk along with two other very experienced volunteers. We alternated leading tour groups through the exhibits.