G4H 2006 End of Day 1: Games and Epidemics
Posted by Peter Smith on 06-10-03The contrast in interest in this topic presented in this presentation was striking. The presentation began with CDR Russel Shilling, a US Naval Officer currently assigned as a Program Officer for ONR, talking about how the Navy is using games to prepare for and predict the effects of a pandemic flu. Because a widespread out break of disease affects soldiers in the same proportions as they affect civilian populations it is important to pay close attention to the problem.
This was countered with a presentation from Yasmin B. Kafai, a Visiting Associate Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and writer of Minds in Play: Computer Game Design as a Context for Children's Learning. She explained Whyville, a virtual world in which an epidemic of Whypocks breaks out and the child inhabitants of Whyville must use science to learn how to stop the epidemic.