Apps AR-and-ARGs

Gamification. Marketers love it, game developers love to hate it. I hardly know what to make of it. At its most basic definition, it is the application of game-play mechanics in nongame settings. It is increasingly used by marketers to sell more products and encourage desired consumer behaviors.

Greetings! I'm Scott Nicholson, author of Everyone Plays at the Library: Creating Great Gaming Experiences for All Ages , and an associate professor at the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University. During the 2011-2012 academic year, I was on sabbatical as a visiting professor at MIT, where I worked with the GAMBIT game lab.

Do you like to connect with educators who already pilot game-based learning in classrooms for years? These educator bloggers have put down meaningful amount of experience and resources in their blogs or wikis. They chronicled the endeavor or organized useful knowledge online, which is the most efficient way to share the real lesson learned.

"An alternate reality game (ARG) is an interactive narrative that uses the real world as a platform and uses transmedia storytelling to deliver a story that may be altered by participants' ideas or actions. "

"Make An Alternate Reality Game! by Jane McGonigal on Jun 04, 2008 Tips for young game designers."

Linden Lab's newest tool allows anyone to create an interactive game.

Here's another AR building platform (like ARIS), but unfortunately, FreshAir isn't free like ARIS is. But I think it's worth checking out.

Four videos of people discussing games for learning, education, and changing the world. Speakers include Katie Salen, James Paul Gee, Daphne Bavelier, and Jayne McGonigal.

"Thus, in this paper we investigate "gamification" and the  historical origins of the term in relation to precursors and similar concepts. It is suggested that "gamified" applications provide insight into novel, gameful phenomena complementary to playful phenomena. Based on our research, we propose a definition of "gamification" as the use of game design elements in non-game contexts.

"To celebrate this year's Keep Toronto Reading One Book selection, "Fahrenheit 451," the library is launching KTR 451, our first alternate reality game (ARG)."