Fall Institute 2015 Agenda

Please Note: This page has been archived.

Download a PDF of the printed flyer.

[highlight]Sunday November 1, 2015[/highlight]

2:00 AppFest East

A chance for small, underfunded publishers or students to come and set up a “micro booth.” There is no cost, there are no strings. Attendees of Dust or Magic who arrive early can come and hunt for the next Minecraft, Duck Duck Moose, or Club Penguin.

Visit the AppFest East Registration form.

Handout & swag table. There is no selling or PR activity permitted at Dust or Magic, however, anyone is welcome to send promotional materials (handouts, fliers w/download codes, white papers and so on) for the attendees. These are kept on a seperate “swag” table clearly marked as “promotional materials.” Again, no cost and no strings. Send no more than 65 copies to Dust or Magic, 120 Main Street, Flemington NJ 08822 by October 23; we’ll put them out.

5:00 pm – Welcome

“The State of Children’s Interactive Media” panel with Claire Green, Robin Raskin, David Kleeman, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Scott Traylor, Tonda Budge Sellers, and Mark Schlichting. This year’s panel will be moderated Chris Byrne.

This year’s essential topics:

Experts emerge from every crevice during the Dust or Magic review of the year (art by Daren Carstens).

The children’s interactive media space has become fuzzy and crowded. Where’s the open water?
Here come the Chromebooks.
What is Steam and why should you care?
Examples of the dust and the magic from the past 12 months.
Paying attention to the constant forces: character development, quality, narrative glue, sanding…
Reviewing the reviewers and the givers of the awards. Who deserves an award?
New VR visual pipelines to a child’s mind: Oculus, Morpheus and Hololens (and others) are coming early 2016. What do they mean for children?
Wearables. The Apple Watch has moved the “quantified self” into the mainstream, with “taptic” and “force touch” UI mechanics that are now reality. How can they be used to reach sensori-motor learners? This is starting to get interesting.
ROI (Return on Investment) App publishing and distribution in iTunes vs. Google Play vs. Amazon; issues related to ROI, and other non-iTunes options.
App Maturation, resulting in better scaffolding… for example… Action Graphing.
Key examples of dust. What went wrong, and why.
Large group and small group screen play. What does screen size have to do with it?
Will it be good bye, good buy or Hello Barbie in 2016?
Video games, smart cameras and other interesting forms of interactive media.

6:00 Putting “Education” in Educational Apps, Part 1 by Kathy Hirsh-Pasek
“Children are in the midst of a vast, unplanned experiment, surrounded by digital technologies that were not available but five years ago. At the apex of this boom is the introduction of applications (“apps”) for tablets and smartphones. So-called “educational apps” – which as of July 2014 stand at 75,000 in the App Store (Apple, 2014), are largely unregulated and untested.” Kathy will introduce the topic, which will be expanded on tomorrow by co-authors Jennifer Zosh and Jim Gray.

6:15 Dinner at the famous Lambertville Station Restaurant, where we’ve dined informally for 15 years. (Note: this is in the old train station depot located by Bridge Street, with the train car attached).

Welcome and Introductions

8:00 Making Magical Characters with Puppets and in Apps, With Muppeteers Michael Frith and Kathryn Mullen.

Kathy and Michael will discuss the different aspects of bringing characters to life throughout their careers.

Michael K. Frith worked with Jim Henson’s Muppets for 21 years as Director of Creative Services and Executive Producer. He was co-creator and conceptual/puppet designer of Fraggle Rock and Between the Lions.

Kathy started on “The Muppet Show” and was a core Muppet performer for 10 years.

She played leads in Fraggle Rock and The Dark Crystal and was a co-creator and principle puppeteer on the PBS reading series Between the Lions. She now writes and directs for No Strings Productions.

Please note that this session can go very late. It is OK to take a nap, or run up to to your room. If you’re coming from a different time zone, it helps to book a room at the Inn.

Recently, Michael has started thinking about interactive screens and app design, and has been working with Emmet O’Neill and Bob Tedeschi to create an app based on Leonardo DiVinci. The app, and the app design process will be demonstrated during this multi-media mashup of ideas, props, and app design.

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[highlight]Monday[/highlight]

November 2, 2015

7:30 Breakfast

8:30 Quality Attributes. Part of the annual, and ongoing crash course on child development applied to interactive media, by Warren Buckleitner

9:30 Designer Micro Jam. Small groups will work together to explore emerging opportunities and upcoming challenges, from ROI (Return on Investment) to improving a play pattern. With Daren Carstens and Barbara Chamberlin.

10:30 Demos and Nice Touch

11:30 Jennifer Zosh: Continuing the “Putting the education back in ‘educational’ apps” part 2. A Discussion

How do we think about the potential educational impact of current and future apps? Apps designed to promote active, engaged, meaningful and socially interactive learning (4 pillars) within the context of a supported learning goal emerge as those that are not just called “educational” but that are truly educational. With help from Jim Gray.

12:00 Group Photo; a non-augmented, non-virtual lunch

1:00 Sharen Lerner’s Stories of Dust and Magic

Sharon Lerner is an Emmy Award-winning writer/ producer who helped develop Sesame Street and Between the Lions.

1:15 David Kleeman — Thoughts on VR. World traveler David Kleeman — just back from Cinekid in Amsterdam — will give us the headlines of a Dubit study on children’s VR, and make sure you know what to expect in 2016. It will all lead up to:

The Grand BrainSprint: “What ways do you think VR could be used in to enhance a child’s life?”

In the classroom
In libraries
Special needs
Entertainment
Informal education
Dangers/misuse or drawbacks

2:30 Demos

Field Trip: Mediatech

3:00 Bus trip to Mediatech Foundation: Meet some real kids.

4:00 Demos

5:00 Bus leaves exactly at 5:00 PM to return to the Inn at Lambertville Station.

6:00 Dinner (on your own. Your chance to venture to another state — Pennsylvania — and cross the river from George Washington’s point of view)

8:00 Evening Talk by Scot Osterweil
Doom and Gloom: an Optimists Perspective

Why most of the talk about STEM and 20th century skills misses the point.

Scot Osterweil is the Creative Director of The Education Arcade at MIT. He has designed games for both academic and commercial environments, and his work has focused on what is authentically playful in challenging academic subjects. We’ve given him the evening to explore a topic of his choice. We’re in good hands.

10:00 – Demos, free play and late night discussion.

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[highlight]Tuesday[/highlight]

November 3, 2015

7:30 Breakfast

8:30 The power of asking “what will happen if I try this?”

By Jens Peter de Pedro, the creative designer at Toca Boca.

How to give young children the tools to understand the power of creation, testing and the chance to say “what will happen if I try this?”

Dust or Magic Speaker Series: Mini Talks the World Needs to Hear

This series of talks generates some excellent YouTube content, and helps messages of how to make magic (and avoid the dust) to the world.

9:00 Remco Pijpers , Mijn Kind Online, Netherlands.
Topic: A conversation on quality children’s content from a Dutch point of view. Remco is the author of the book “Positive Digital Content for Children.”

9:15 Barbara Chamberlin, New Mexico State University Game Lab.
Topic: Using a Design Advisory Panel: Getting Great Feedback from Brilliant People. In addition to the beta testing the Learning Games Lab does with members of their target audiences, they’ve had great experiences asking colleagues to formally review products as part of a “Quality Assurance” panel. Barbara Chamberlin will share strategies she uses to select expert reviewers, structure and support feedback so that it is most useful, and how she helps her team make sense of what they hear. All in 15 minutes.

9:30 Break

9:45 Claire Green, President of the Parents’ Choice Foundation.
Topic: Reviewing the Reviewers. It’s time to pull back the curtain and shed some light on the world of ratings and awards.What types of bias harm or help the reviewing process? Who and what lurks behind the editorial? As background, have a look some of the questions raised in Amy Jussel’s recent posts.

10:00 Mark Schlichting, Living Books Creator and President of Noodleworks.
Topic: “The Magic of Audio.” This is an exploration how sounds help you make great apps. This is a follow up on Mark’s talk on Secrets of Animation.

10:15 Kimberly Sorenson, Curriculum Director of Waterford Learning with three decades of classroom time with 8th graders.
Topic: “Making Sense.” A description of the brain’s journey from novice to expert, and the implications this has for instruction. This talk has implications for stuff like motivation, executive function, the transition from direct instruction to constructivism, the relationship between the right and left side of the brain, and the acquisition of wisdom.

10:30: Raul Gutierrez, What we learned (and are still learning) from making The Everything Machine

11:00 Review with Stephen Gass: key ideas to take home, planning and thoughts for 2016.

11:45 Evaluations

If you’re staying in the Inn, make sure you checkout of your room by 10:00 AM. It is OK to store bags in the Riverside room.

12:00 Lunch

12:20 Transbridge Bus #1 leaves to Newark Liberty, arriving 1:35 PM (for early flights). Note that departure is from the Hess Station, 5 blocks from the Inn.

1:30 Dust or Magic limo bus departs to Newark Liberty International Airport, arriving 2:45 PM

1:55 Transbridge bus departs to Newark Liberty Airport, arriving 3:15 PM

5:50 PM last Transbridge bus departs to Newark Liberty Airport, arriving 7:15 PM (departs from the Hess Station, 5 blocks from the Inn). You can buy tickets from the Valparaiso Deli, Rt 165 & Rt 518, 609-397-1116

Speaker details

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