What do you like about MiLK?

“It’s fun, better than going to school”

“The way we get to interact with the environment”

“I think the physical side of it is what makes it so great”

“The fact that you can create your own game, publish it, and then it is amazing that people can do it so simply and get text messages back when I/we haven’t even touched a phone.”

Other Comments:

“This is so much fun, so much better than sitting in a classroom.”

“It is important to use mobiles and games and technologies in education mostly because a lot of people in those year levels have access to that technology and can use it very easily. And they are familiar with that type of stuff so they wouldn’t be sitting there going how do I do this?”

“This technology is still a big part of communication after school…you are still using it all the time and you still have access to it”

“Having a deeper knowledge of the space that you are working in kind of helps because it helps you set guidelines a lot easier, but then again if you are working in a space you’re not familiar with you learn a lot more about it because you actually have to go out and look for that stuff.”

“It’s a good way to interact with things that many people wouldn’t usually. I know a lot of people that wouldn’t even bother looking at the signs on the plants and when you transfer it into this game it makes them look at it, makes it a bit more interesting for them and helps their learning experience.”

“Building the game you have to look for things you want to add into it and you kinda look for stuff, even if you don’t put it in it, it still registers in your head and you remember it…We take in a lot more…this way you are going around, you are experience it.”

“We’re learning in a way that is more suited to our generation…this way we can have fun by going around and looking at the stuff in the real world.”

“Because it is technology we understand we enjoy it a lot more”

“MiLK a way for teachers to learn how we want to learn.”

“I think it is a really fun way to learn. When you first start doing it you just think it is really fun, but afterwards you realise you learn a fair bit.”

“Three simple words; teenagers, learning, willingly. We actually want to use MiLK “

“It’s really cool to have that adrenalin rush of letting other people play your game.”

“MiLK Rocks!”

“When you walk out of the classroom you actually still think about it, it is not like it just goes over your head.”

“The reason why most people probably prefer MiLK to learning in the classroom is because when you go home most teenagers go on the internet, and while you are already on there you think, ok is there anything that I have to do for school, I mean you don’t automatically go home and look through history books…its convenient in that way.”

“I believe milk is a new and very exciting way to learn about poetry using the technology that we all know and love. We have been privileged enough to experience this extremely productive and technologically advanced course, which promotes learning, as it enters our everyday life.”

“I think this is important because the students get to really have control over what they do. This way they get to learn not only the answers but also how to develop the game; this makes the students care more about the subject.”

“It was fun to create and at the same time I believe that I learnt a lot from the proccess of gathering information and creating the game.”

“Being the ‘creator’ involves a lot more thinking, planning and research than being the participant.”

“It is much easier to answer a question as you may only know the part answer, but as the question writer you must fully understand the topic.”

“MiLK could accommodate other subjects like Geography, History, Science and no doubt plenty of others, as all these subjects can work well within the format that the MiLK Project presents.”

“It was a fun and interesting experience and I believe advancements in programs such as MILK, are the portals into a better future.”

Teachers from Aspley State High School will be introducing MiLK to several classrooms in TERM 1, 2008. On November 1 2007 Deb, Sherwin and Colleen of the MiLK team ran a teacher training workshop. The ten teachers who attended the workshop came from varied disciplines ranging from Drama and Visual arts to Physics and English Studies. The school is a rather large public high school situated in Northern Brisbane.

WELCOME Aspley State High… we’re very excited about releasing a brand new version of MiLK to your students.

Currently researchers at the Gamelab Institute of Play are piloting MILK in New York and Chicago. For this pilot we have adapted the system to work with WEB ENABLED mobile phones as this is more conducive to the current conditions/capabilities/attitudes in US schools (please note that the UK and Australian schools will be sticking to SMS for now with occasional pilot studies using web enabled mobiles.)

We are know sharing our MiLK system with researchers at the Gamelab Institute of Play in New York. Currently Katie Salen and her team are working with students in New York and Chicago to experiment with ways of using MiLK to cooperatively compose mobile game events for a variety of learning contexts.

“The Institute will work in partnership with you to develop a set of demonstrations for the platform, exploring the kinds of experiences that it can support, particularly from a game design perspective.
We will also assist in the development of identifying and designing a set of processes/resources to support the use of MiLK by teachers and students, and will look into the development of supplemental technologies that might extend the MiLK experience.
… we’d really like to think about how to integrate MiLK at an infrastructural level in the new school we are designing, and this initial phase of research will help us better understand how to do that.”

Katie Salen Executive Director, Gamelab Institute of Play (nonprofit organization.)
19 W. 24th Street, 12th floor, New York, NY 10011