Gaming SMALLab

New York Team
Katie Salen • Game Design
Katie Salen is the Executive Director of the Institute of Play, and Associate Professor in the Design and Technology program, Parsons the New School for Design. Co-author of Rules of Play, a textbook on game design, as well as The Game Design Reader (MIT Press, 2004 and 2006), she recently completed an edited volume for the MacArthur series on Digital Media and Learning called The Ecology of Games and is serving as co-editor of The International Journal of Learning and Media (MIT Press). Katie just completed a stint as lead designer on Gamestar Mechanic, a game developed by Gamelab to teach young people the play and practice of game design fundamentals. She lectures and writes extensively on game design, design education, and game culture, including authoring some of the first dispatches from the previously hidden world of machinima. www.gamersmob.com

Mike Edwards • Game Development, Programming
Mike Edwards is a designer and a geek. He has worked with everything from high-traffic e-commerce servers down to surface-mount microcontroller chips. A 2008 graduate of the Parsons Design and Technology MFA program, his thesis had him working with a team in Malawi to create devices that help diagnose malnutrition in children and pregnant women. He has built games on themes as diverse as epidemics, ecology, math, and New York City history. He is currently conducting research into SMALLab, an embodied learning environment. He has even hacked a bathroom sink.

Kan Yang Li • Game Development, Programming
Kan Yang Li (Kyle) is a life-size dreamer. He came to USA to learn more about interactive design, he has interned in Nike, National Gallery of Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, worked for Skyler Claymation, and U2 2005 world concert. From product design to motion graphic, from still portrait to rock concert, he dreamed it all and he did it all. He has a bachelor degree in Multimedia design and two Master degrees, one in America Art History and the other in Design and Technology. Currently, he is all about making fun games, because he has found the place where dream, passion, and reality can finally come hand-in-hand.

Claudio Midolo • Game Development, Programming Intern
Claudio Midolo is currently a graduate student at Parsons the New School for Design where he explores the possibilities of interactive systems in the realms of aural visual creativity, tools for curiosity and the tension between digital and analog dimensions. During the summer 2008 he was invited to the 2008 MobileMusicWorkshop in Vienna to present the soundFishing project and to the Node08 Digital arts forum in Frankfurt to perform with the wiiwiiwiiwii audio visual interface. He’s currently working on his thesis research and design project called Lossy Light Memories, dealing with the loss of values and emotions that has taken place during the transition from analog to digital photography.

Michie Pagulayan • Project Management Team NYC
Michie Pagulayan is currently an Assistant Professor at Parsons Communication Design and Technology Department – wearing many hats, including producing and coordinating various significant research initiatives. With over a decade of advertising and marketing experience from both the agency and client sides, she is still convinced that the corporate mothership might beam her back up one day. Always searching for the next learning, wishing for adventures to be unrelenting, and constantly yearning to work with great minds who share the same passion and enthusiasm in pursuing that which makes a difference. She considers herself a gaming novice, but her interest in meaningful play led her to SMALLab.

Andres Richner-Maldonado • Curriculum Design, Assessment
Andrés A. Richner-Maldonado graduated from Princeton University with a BA in Psychology then spent the next decade teaching different subjects at various locations in diverse levels of education, picking up an MA in Instructional Technology along the way. His teaching adventures include stints as a high school English Literature teacher in his native Puerto Rico, a Lecturer in Spanish Language at the University of Pennsylvania, and a TA in a grad school course in Emotional Intelligence. His interests include world cinema, writing fiction, and playing tennis (real or video game). He currently works in Manhattan as a Middle School instructional technologist and has justco-designed and started teaching a Spanish language course titled Explorando Nueva York which melds technology use with field trips around the city.

Arana Shapiro • Curriculum Design, Assessment
Arana Shapiro started her teaching career in Inglewood, CA for three years and her strengths as a constructivist educator and curriculum creator were soon sought after by The School at Columbia University. Arana’s desire to bring new media technologies into the classroom prompted her to migrate from the classroom to the technology team at The School and to the Lead Educational Technologist position at the Ross Institute, where she integrated technology into K – 12 classrooms at both The Ross School in East Hampton and Ross Global Academy.

Arizona Team
David Birchfield • Project Lead
David Birchfield is an Assistant Professor in the Arts, Media and Engineering program, a trans-disciplinary program for graduate research and education. He serves as the lead for AME’s K-12 Embodied and Mediated Learning group. In this role he has spearheaded the realization of the SMALLab, he has coordinated of research and outreach activities for a team of interdisciplinary collaborators that spans eight ASU departments and includes a network of school and community partners. With a background in digital media and performance his more specialized research is focused on interactivity and experiential media system design as applied to creative and educational spaces. This work includes algorithmic composition, paradigms for real time interaction, interface design, and generative mechanisms for media. He has created media art works that span from interactive music performance to generative software to robotic installations to web-based and public art projects. His scholarly and creative output has been presented in exhibition and performance venues throughout North America, Australia, Europe, and China. His community engagement efforts have impacted thousands of K-12 students and educators in schools and informal learning environments.

Aisling Kelliher • Media Design, SLink Development
Mina Johnson-Glenberg • Assessment Lead
Colleen Megowan-Romanawicz • Science Learning
Art Glenberg • Embodied Learning, Assessment
Alice Robison • Design, Assessment
Sibel Uysal • Assessment
Jay Hardin • ASU Program Manager
Jim Gee • Games and Learning
Betty Hayes • Games and Learning
Tony Brewer • Applications Programmer for SLink and SCREM
Shawn Cook • Graphics Programmer
Andrew McCord • Computational Modeling, Data Visualization
Loren Olson • Dash Author, Web Technology Support
Kelly Phillips • SMALLab Integration and Support
Christopher Martinez • ASU Grad Student Researcher
Sarah Hatton • ASU Grad Student Researcher
Lisa Tolentino • ASU Grad Student Researcher