Come join us at the First Conference on Public Archaeology!
The Data Literacy Program will share two new Data Stories this week at the Florida Public Archaeology Network’s (FPAN’s) Conference on Public Archaeology. And if you’re in Pensacola, you can playtest them both!
L. Meghan Dennis and Paulina F. Przystupa–members of The Alexandria Archive Institute’s (AAI) Data Literacy Program–are preparing for FPAN’s Conference on Public Archaeology at the University of West Florida’s Downtown Campus. Held in Pensacola, Florida on September 22-23 2023, the DLP Duo will lead an in-person workshop exploring how to utilize interactive games for archaeology education.
The conference aims to “provide a dedicated space for public-minded archaeologists and cultural heritage practitioners to share their experiences and expertise.” And we of the DLP are definitely “public-minded archaeologists”!
For us, the conference provides a great chance to share our new Interactive Series Data Stories. At the conference, we’ll present and playtest those Data Stories in the workshop “Interacting With The Past: Using Online and In-Person Games To Teach Archaeology And Heritage”.
In the workshop, we’ll address a few of the themes for the conference, such as “harnessing digital advances for outreach and education” and “community science and heritage site stewardship”. If you want to know more here’s our abstract:
In this workshop, we share how to harness digital advances for outreach and education by introducing attendees to online platforms for creating short educational games for the public. The workshop is provided in two parts. The first part introduces the value of games as educational tools, how to use them through a participant-led Data Story playthrough, and how this digital format advances educational outreach with specific communities. The second half has participants play through a real-life gaming experience designed using the same principles as the online example. This section demonstrates how digital storytelling principles can be used at in-person events, while exploring important archaeological topics. To engage with themes of community science and heritage site stewardship, this live-action role playing section has attendees play as specific stakeholders at an archaeological site, exploring various aspects of stewardship and how the public involves themselves in heritage.
While we won’t livestream the workshop, we hope you can join us in person. Why? Because attendees get to playtest our two Interactive Series games. The first is FAIR Finds, a piece of interactive fiction about Finable Accessible Interoperable and Reproducible data. And in the second half we’ll switch gears, to a role-play mystery game. We called it A Glorious Mystery: Rosaries and Robbery and it will explore how archaeological stakeholders interact with each other.
This is the splash screen for the Twine game FAIR Finds that we’ll debut this week.
We hope you registered early and if you can’t be there with us in real life, don’t worry! We’ll be sharing these Data Stories soon. That way people can locate FAIR Finds and solve A Glorious Mystery all on their own. Hope to see you there!
