A Deeper Understanding

After the end-of-day discussion led by Dr. Idit Caperton, I started to think more about the purpose of our game idea. I wanted to get a real feel for the "what" and "why" of Mission:Impossib-oil. It is very easy to get excited and wrapped up in the Flash skills that we learn and use to create a socially responsible game a a learner. As a teacher, though, Dr. Caperton was right when she posed the questions about what idea in our games was hard enough for the audience to comprehend that it required a creative approach to teach or model.

When my partner, Neal Garvin, suggested the idea of oil spill cleanup, our research lead us to the Environmental Sensitivity Index (E.S.I.) as the "what." This is the practice of prioritizing cleanup and prevention based on three criteria: shoreline type, human resources, and natural resources. This was a practice that was going on all the time but, even as a science teacher, I didn't know anything about it. This leads me to the "why."

The reason I see this as being a hard subject for the audience to understand is that it involves interests that not everyone completely understands or appreciates. Most of us have been watching coverage of the oil spill in the Gulf and are inundated with images of tar balls on beaches, oil-covered wildlife, and "The Whale." Experts and laymen alike all have suggestions on how to fix it. Put the picture is so large, the options so fraught with pros and cons, and the interests involved are so varied that the big picture can be difficult to filter out. That big picture is that there is no perfect solution and no easy fix.