Difference between revisions of "Abdikadir Abikar"

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Abdikadir Production 3'

My name is Abdikadir Abikar, and I am currently living in Kenya, in one of the Dadaab refugee camps. I am an incentive (ICT) teacher in Ifo Secondary School. I have finished my high school and completed my diploma in education at Kenyatta University, I have also finished, an online B.A. Student, Faculty of Liberal Arts, York University. Lastly enrolled to Master of Education program at York University. I am happy to be part of this course and hope to gain experience from you guys. I like gaming course because I have a bigger picture from my homeland and I am hoping you will help me achieve my dreams. I have a bigger picture in my homeland where I am hoping to develop a city planned app for playing hope you will help save my dreams. I am also excited to host you guys in my website and feel at home.

Production 2

ABDIKADIR BARE ABIKAR

STUDENT NO: 213772773

PRODUCTION 2

REFLECTING ON AND ANALYZING DARFUR IS DYING

In this assignment, I want to reflect on an online game that I played called “Darfur is Dying”. This is an online game that is designed by; inter FUEL, LLC. According to the description of the main page of the game it is noted that “Students at the University of Southern California, winners of mtvU’s Darfur Digital Activist contest, created the winning prototype. The game was developed in cooperation with humanitarian aid workers with extensive experience in Darfur”. According to also Bogost (2011) and Thumlert et al, (2018) on production pedagogy noted that games “do things” with and share digital games - interactive visual novels and critical empathy games, role-playing simulations and non-linear multimodal narrative adventures. The authors argued that production pedagogy can enable learners to reengage with and drive their own learning, both within and beyond formal educational spaces (Thumlert et al, 2011). And this is a true note that the Bogost strategies are used as a vehicle to reengage the child into learning, and enable players to feel empathy for people suffering in Darfur. Game Play: Playing a child, and by moving across the Sahara desert to get to the nearest river to fetch water for drinking and for cooking food, as you play the game, you feel the struggle of the player. Challenges include hiding from armed militants. The game will allow you to interactively follow the instructions when you are inside the camp; the instructions will allow you not to die, but survive and get food to eat and water to drink. And all that depends on how your co-ordinations like eye to hand or brain work with the options given, as you learn about the game conditions (and how they reflect conditions in Darfur). The Game was designed so that the player could understand,and experience through simulation, the conflict in the Darfur region of Western Sudan, where genocide was occurring since the start of the conflict in February of 2003: Nearly 3 million people have been affected by the conflict - and instability in the region continues to this day. More than 300,000 people have died from the conflict and related diseases, and 2.5 million civilians have been displaced by the conflict. In this game, you need to collect food and build a shelter inside a refugee camp or forage for water outside of the camp (Lesser, 2018, November 02). These were the conditions and hardships the Sudanese were experiencing and playing this game may support awareness in order to reach people and save them from all the challenges they are facing in their own homes, as well as free them from the killings of the Janjaweed militants. Darfur is Dying is a survival game, and was meant to help the Darfur community to get support from Western communities and to educate people on the crisis in Darfur. At the same time, the game simulates how to survive: to get water for drinking and food for eating, because if they don’t, all of the Sudanese in Darfur would die: this is not ‘real’, but playing the game would allow one to know the possible routes to overcome such difficulties in southern Sudan. Through game play, we learn problem-solving skills and understand the context, history, and plight of those in Darfur; those who play Darfur is Dying would learn best tactics to overcome such obstacles in ‘real life’, if in similar circumstances.

This is a perfect game to play for understanding the tragedy happening in Darfur. Though well-intentioned, however, not many of the people in Darfur would have access to online services; for example, people living in rural areas would have no access to this kind of service. I checked it on play store and could not find it, so there is a need to upload the game content into the play store so that many people would be able to play offline. In turn, it would also educate many other internal communities to get to know the challenges they are facing. If this game is redefined and uploaded for offline or was translated as a board game? This would help many young children living in southern Sudan get freedom.

My opinion towards Darfur is Dying game is that it is a good model in relations to my planned rebuilding Mogadishu city game. My game is based on the idea that Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, has also been in war for so long that I think using gaming to teach the civilians the way out of war and conflict is important, and developing a game model to reconstruct the capital city is one idea I hold on to. Besides that, using Darfur is Dying as a reference, I would also look into the challenges like how accessible it will be, either through the use of mobile devices or as an online like the Darfur is Dying game was played. And lastly my planned games is a little bit different in that it is not a survival game designed by NGOs to educate and support activities, but a world-building game, where the goal is not survival, but reconstructing a stable Mogadishu. My game will educate players outside of Somalia and Dadaab, the game is designed for Somali players and youth so they can envision and strategize building a new future. And not to free community or to get water to drink and food to eat but to rebuild a fallen state or city.

References

Lesser, M. (2018, November 02). Darfur Is Dying Review for Teachers. Retrieved from https://www.commonsense.org/education/game/darfur-is-dying. Darfur is Dying. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.gamesforchange.org/game/darfur-is-dying.

Production 3

Abdikadir Production 3

ABDIKADIR BARE ABIKAR STUDENT NO: 213772773 PRODUCTION 3 27TH JANUARY, PROFESSOR: KURT THUMLERT A REFLECTION ON "PRODUCTION PEDAGOGIES, LEARNING THROUGH GAME DESIGN:

In this assignment, I want to reflect on an article by Kurt Thumlert, Suzanne de Castell, and Jennifer Jenson on using production pedagogies as a tool for learning through game design. The article began with the authors coming up with an idea, of using production pedagogies as a tool to use in schools for teaching, as it noted that production pedagogies are premised on the view that people learn best, and most profoundly, through designing “networked” cultural artifacts that have use-value, and that matter to their makers (de Castell, 2016). Their approach on digital making involved learners in self-directed, interdisciplinary modes of situated inquiry, where actors collaboratively research, deconstruct models, and co-construct new knowledge and art as they create, “do things” with, and share digital games - interactive visual novels and critical empathy games, role-playing simulations and non-linear multimodal narrative adventures. The authors argued that production pedagogy can enable learners to reengage with and drive their own learning, both within and beyond formal educational reservations (Thumlert et al, 2018). And thus I was a practical recipient of this pedagogy when I joined a course on cultural technology with my friend in the Dadaab and other students from Toronto, where we studied together and shared a lot of different experiences one of making with technologies. Our technology project is a working tool that can be used in our schools for teaching and learning. According to the writers they noted that production pedagogy for teaching had been marked as an important driver in our educational contexts where digital competencies are promoted in relation to innovation while, at the same time, critiques of society-technology impacts are consideredand forms of civic engagement are supported (Thumlert et al, 2018). The pedagogy as a method has really helped me realize my dreams as a provisional teacher, as it facilitated my studies as a teacher and support learners to make and design technartefacts that matter to them. Through this pedagogy, I learned the art of using comic life to teach and learn to design my thoughts through the use of graphic texts. I tried using these tools with learners and it helped me get more experience in using new media and that is why it is a good move and a starting point to help in our learning situation in Dadaab. In my winter course, another form of delivering stories using as a tool so this pedagogy is practical in the field of education educators can use it to activate richer teaching and deeper learning in our schools. Children at early stages need to be given a form of education that will intensify their talent and capacities, so if this pedagogy is used it would educate many learners to see their potential talents and put them into action. If learningis controlled with boundaries like what, Ingold described as an era of delivery which are governed by “expert the students only do what the “experts” want to be done, and this “hylomorphic” view making prevent scents creative input by students (Ingold, 2010). This symbolizes the curriculum of Kenya (the 8.4.4 system) where learners are taught within already finished systems for decades, with no improvements or adjustments, and this limits and lowers the potentials of the future children, and it also kills creativity and autonomy(Nolan & McBride, 2014) as well. It is also noted in the article that “production pedagogy was the vehicle for teacher candidates learning and doing, and the model to carry forward into interdisciplinary classroom practice, where modes of inquiry and design aims are proposed and negotiated by students themselves, with their own justifications for research and making(Thumlert et al, 2018). And this is a pedagogy that we require in our future schools for children to enjoy learning. Learning should not be a reformatory, like a predictable situation for the child, but an interactive situation that will allow the learners to learn new things, and learn as they make knowledge(for example, as a graduate student, last semester, I was struggling with video making, so our professor gave us ideas for how to do the video making and we finally made an impressive video, so the same strategy can be applied to the learners: it would work as it has worked for me, and we learned through trial-and-error and interacted with several video making tools, and sometimes we failed but learned through overcoming mistakes, and later succeeded Every immeasurable item or goal? in this world has some challenges, and the challenge to use this strategy in our future schools is that you must be connected to technological devices and knowing the basic skills of a computer, and thus it may ignore some communities and people who are living in the rural areas. This is what the authors did not apprehend very well, but they need to make more clearly consideration on how to support the struggling communities in the world. As a game designer in the future, I am hoping to make use of the production pedagogy method as a starting point for myself and see if I can apply it with a Mogadishu game, that I am proposing as my final project, since most kids can get cell phones I would try to use a mobile-friendly game for rebuilding Mogadishu. This will empower me to be the future practitioner of production pedagogy in Somalia. And as practicing teacher, I would also integrate comic life and video making into my teaching of computer studies to make learning interesting, for students, and I have already started using the comic life in some parts of my teaching, and many students are enjoying of the use of comic life. If my future Somali game works, then this will be one way to work toward imagining a new Somalia, and this teaching methodology will, eventually in the next generation to come, help students make their own studies through production pedagogy.

References Ingold, T. (2010) “The Textility of Making”, Cambridge Journal of Economics, Vol. 34, No. 1, pp 91–102. Thumlert, K., Jenson, J., & Castell, S. D. (2018). Learning through Game Design: A Production Pedagogy: Building A Modular Online Learning Environment. ICERI2016 Proceedings. doi:10.21125/iceri.2016.1048.