Episode 1: StarCruiser

• See pictures from the team's visit to Galactic Starcruiser!
• Pop & Play, Season 3, Episode 5: Star Wars: The Next Generation Strikes Back with the Massenas and Gabe
• Pop & Play, Season 2, Episode 1: Role Playing Games with Matthew Berland and Antero Garcia
• Rita Gold Early Childhood Center

Haeny Yoon:

Welcome to Pop and Play, where we're always popping and playing every day in every way.

Nathan Holbert:

Woo-woo.

Haeny Yoon:

Just kidding. Okay, anyway.

Nathan Holbert:

So Haeny, we are here at the beginning of a big adventure. A new adventure that you and I are going on together.

Haeny Yoon:

Yes. One of us is excited, the other one is going.

Nathan Holbert:

Excited. Going? Okay. Where are we going?

Haeny Yoon:

We are going to Starcruiser.

Nathan Holbert:

I thought you were going to say a galaxy far, far away.

Haeny Yoon:

Ooh, that would've been good.

Nathan Holbert:

That's all right.

Haeny Yoon:

So Nathan, I honestly thought Starcruiser was actually a cruise ship, that I just recently found out it's not. So what the heck is Starcruiser?

Nathan Holbert:

Important note that this is not actually a cruise, but it is a simulated cruise in space. So we're going to go with other guests onto a starship and we're going to be interacting with each other, but also with actors from Disney and experiencing kind of our own Star Wars story where we get to engage in the theatrics and the heroes and the villains.

Haeny Yoon:

Otherwise, known as live-action role play.

Nathan Holbert:

Oh, look at you coming out with the sophisticated terminology.

Haeny Yoon:

What is live-action role play, tell us?

Nathan Holbert:

Am I being quizzed? Is this-

Haeny Yoon:

Yes.

Nathan Holbert:

Live-action role playing, sometimes called LARPing, is when you take on characters, you take on identities that aren't your own. Maybe they're connected to your own in some way, or maybe you're trying out something totally different from your own identity. But that you engage in some playful experience, story building, combat. Whatever it is that you want to do, you take these identities and you engage in some sort of a playful experience with others around those new identities.

Haeny Yoon:

Yes. My understanding of it too is that you're completely immersed in this environment. So basically you spend two and a half days being somebody else and engaging in the experience. I think engagement is key, right? You have to engage.

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah.

Haeny Yoon:

You can't be disengaged.

Nathan Holbert:

Well, I think we might get to that in a minute, but I think you can engage at different levels. And that's something I'm curious about. But you said something I wanted to ask you about before we move to that, and that is we're going to spend a few days as someone else. And I'm curious, Haeny, could you tell me a little bit about who you are going to play as?

Haeny Yoon:

So we were supposed to make a backstory because that backstory helps us stay in character and to understand the choices that our character would make. Okay, so my character's name is Kalara Fizzlebop, courtesy of ChatGPT, and my husband Neil. So Kalara Fizzlebop, she's half human, half Jawa. This will go with my costume.

Nathan Holbert:

Half human, half Jawa.

Haeny Yoon:

I have prepared.

Nathan Holbert:

That is not a thing, I love that.

Haeny Yoon:

It is a thing. It is now a thing, okay. So I'm from Tatooine, I'm a teacher, and my catchphrase is, "In this galaxy, we learn and thrive together." So me.

Nathan Holbert:

Is that a catchphrase?

Haeny Yoon:

That's my catchphrase, yeah.

Nathan Holbert:

In this galaxy, we learn-

Haeny Yoon:

We learn and thrive together.

Nathan Holbert:

... and thrive together.

Haeny Yoon:

Oh my God.

Nathan Holbert:

Okay.

Haeny Yoon:

What about you?

Nathan Holbert:

Wow.

Haeny Yoon:

Because you have this awesome outfit on. Describe for our listeners what this outfit is?

Nathan Holbert:

I'm wearing part of a costume that I've been constructing for the past few days for this event, and it is mostly just a jacket. So it's a shirt that I found at goodwill. And I modified it by stitching some new hems and getting rid of buttons and things. I've stitched it so it's always in pulled up sleeve mode, which is quite nice because I-

Haeny Yoon:

Oh, that's permanent?

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah, I can un-stitch it, but yeah-

Haeny Yoon:

Nice.

Nathan Holbert:

That's stitching that I did.

Haeny Yoon:

I have to say, this is the most fashionable you've ever...

Nathan Holbert:

That is so mean and so true. I weathered it, so it's got some little oil stains.

Haeny Yoon:

Cosplay is dressing like a fashionable person.

Nathan Holbert:

That's my costume. And then in terms of my character, so it's funny that you mentioned that you're a teacher because my character has some teaching qualities as well. And my character's name, which I also got from ChatGPT just a few moments ago, is Nailin Voss.

Haeny Yoon:

Nice.

Nathan Holbert:

And I'm from the planet of Nashira, actually it's a moon, it's like a smuggler moon. So it's not a great place to live, but very urban. And I'm a mechanic, I'm a droid mechanic.

Haeny Yoon:

Oh, I'm actually really good as a droid mechanic as well.

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah. As a Jawa, you would be. I live and work in an area near the docks where a lot of refugees are, and so part of my shop is also apprenticing young refugees that are on the smuggler moon.

Haeny Yoon:

You're a teacher mentor?

Nathan Holbert:

So yeah, we have two characters. We're going to be going with two other guests on this cruise. Professors Alex Bowers and former guest, Tran Templeton. I know you're a little hesitant to go on this trip. Is there anything you're excited about or you're curious about? Is there anything you're looking forward to with this?

Haeny Yoon:

I think I had the reaction of, "I have so much work to do, I don't want to do this." And I had a reflective moment about that because we've talked so much on this podcast about how wasting time... Not wasting time, but a divergent path or doing something that's out of the realm of your real work. All of that is really important to informing what you're doing as the center of your work. So that was it, I don't doubt that it's going to be fun. But I do feel like I challenge these people to get me fully engaged and immersed in this experience. I think I'll have fun, but I think it's going to require a lot of effort on my part to really be into it.

Nathan Holbert:

I think that's fair, yeah.

Haeny Yoon:

And I'm wondering if they can really engage me and make me enjoy it without feeling like I put a lot of effort and energy into it.

Nathan Holbert:

I'm very curious, related to your point, how they pull someone who's a little resistant to engage in. I'm curious about the mechanics of that, it'd be really fun to see it. I'm not worried about getting into it myself, I'm already into it, as you can tell.

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah, I'm a little worried about that. But I think the larger question of what do we do with resistance is a really good question. Because that's relevant to classrooms, that's relevant to play, that's relevant to anything that we try to get young people engaged in, is that there's always going to be resistance and how do you move or shift the tide of resistance?

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah. How do you invite people to let go of those stresses or the fact that this seems weird? And encourage them to start telling their own story with others?

Haeny Yoon:

How does LARPing have any place in any part of the rest of our lives? Why are we doing this?

Nathan Holbert:

I think it's related to a lot of the themes that you and I have been talking about now for couple seasons. Obviously, we talk a lot about play. But this notion of play that keeps coming up is the ways in which identity becomes part of that. Both my identity as someone who's playing, but also play as an activity and a space for trying on other identities or taking my current identity and expanding it in different ways. So for me, I feel like this conversation is really about what does it mean to play with identity and what are the different ways you can do that?

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah. And I think that play allows you to uncover something about yourself that maybe you kept hidden or maybe you didn't try out or maybe you just didn't claim yet.

Nathan Holbert:

Yes. Yeah. Great. Well, I'm excited about this adventure. I hope you can also enjoy it while we're there and yeah, it should be fun.

Narrator:

Welcome to Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser. We are excited to welcome you aboard to begin your fully immersive experience and your very own Star Wars adventure, your journey is about to begin.

Haeny Yoon:

So it's a little tough to hear, so we're going to break it down for you. After we boarded the ship, there was a lot of setup. But not far into the journey, we, and by the way, we, I mean Alex and Nathan basically, began interacting with the actors on board. It was clear Alex knew what he was doing because on the one hand you have Alex who's talking about kyber crystal caches. Caches? What is it, caches?

Nathan Holbert:

I think caches.

Haeny Yoon:

Caches. And igniting sparks. And on the other hand, you have Tran who's like, "What's the force?"

Nathan Holbert:

But pay attention here to how the actor responds, not only to Alex, but also how they respond to Tran, who still has a lot to learn. Pretty skilled if I say so myself, managing with amateurs and experts all in the same breath.

Actor:

How's everyone doing in the whole team so far?

Alex Bowers:

Excellent.

Actor:

Good.

Alex Bowers:

As I was just telling [inaudible], this card I believe leads to a kyber crystal cache that perhaps might ignite spark.

Actor:

Hopefully the fire's not too big that's been lit.

Alex Bowers:

Well. And there was one kyber crystal that made me feel one with the force. Or perhaps together as a group, the force was with us.

Actor:

I see.

Tran Templeton:

What's the force? 

Actor:

What's the force? You've never heard of the force before? That's okay. Actually, you would be surprised. After the history of the galaxy with Order 66, do you know about the history of that?

Tran Templeton:
I don’t.

Actor: 

So Order 66 was an unfortunate event where they pretty much decimated and destroyed all remnants of the Jedi, history of the Jedi and their way of life.

Haeny Yoon:

The actor gave us all a rundown of the history of the force and the Jedi.

Nathan Holbert:

Some of us maybe needed that more than others.

Haeny Yoon:

But for those of us who were asking not so basic questions like, "What's the force?" They didn't just dump information on us. They told us a story connecting the history of the world with our current adventure.

Nathan Holbert:

Once we got settled into our room, it was finally time to begin the real journey. This journey was long, two days in fact. But we'll let you follow us along for a few minutes of our adventure.

Actor 2:

But before I get started, I do have a question. Are we ready?

Audience:

Yes.

Actor 2:

Are we ready?

Audience:

Yes.

Actor 2:

Ignite your lightsabers. All right, focus up. Focus up. All right, let's Engage. Move together. High left. Good. High right, high right, high right. Yeah. Up, up, up, up. You're centered? High left, hold up. All the way. Beautiful. That's it. Up, up. Good. Last one. Last one. High right. High right. High right. Yeah. That was so good.

Tran Templeton:

I like how the space feels, it feels pretty real. Yeah, I like all the games. I like the way they feel. I like the fact that this-

Nathan Holbert:

Cervac table. Yeah.

Haeny Yoon:

This feels like a scene out of Mandalorian, like real.

Tran Templeton:

Yeah, and the holo cards. Just these tiny effects that make you feel like you're in another world.

Nathan Holbert:

It's really high production value, it's like everything feels like they really thought about all the details.

Tran Templeton:

Yeah. Yeah.

Tran Templeton:

So that's what I like, it's the feel of it.

Nathan Holbert:

Morning everybody. Day two on the Galactic Starcruiser yesterday was a lot of fun, found out a lot about kind of how to play the game, how to interact with the different cast members and get involved. And the more you talk to them and the more you sort of try to invite yourself into whatever's going on, the more they kind of engage and pull you in and make you part of the story. And then next thing you know, they're sending you lots of comms and they're sending you objectives and all sorts of kinds of things are happening. So today I'm excited to check out what happens with some of those stories that we started. I've got a heist, don't tell anybody. I'm going to be on a heist later today to despair or whatever I'm supposed to say. Star Wars out. 

Actor 3:

Now who is ready to pull off a heist?

Audience:

Yeah.

Actor 3:

All right. So we know what we're here to do, right? We are going to repatriate, the [indistinct], so this is for Gaya?

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah, for Gaya.

Audience:

For Gaya.

For Gaya.

Yes. Finally. 

Actor 3:

Let's not videotape this, we would…

Nathan Holbert:

Okay, it's recording now. So you don't have to say anything that you don't want to say.

Haeny Yoon:

Okay, I'm not going to lie, it's a little rough, it's a little rough.

Nathan Holbert:

You know what would make you feel better?

Haeny Yoon:

What?

Nathan Holbert:

A big hug from Chewbacca.

Haeny Yoon:

I don't even think that's going to solve the problem, but thank you. I think it's because I came here with the assumption that anybody is willing to, I go back to that toe-dipper, swimmer, diver analogy and that anybody can do this. And so I was like, "Fine, I'm totally willing to see if that is correct and I am a toe dipper." And-

Nathan Holbert:

Being a toe-dipper, you're not necessarily always going to be pulled further in.

Haeny Yoon:

Yes.

Nathan Holbert:

But you might stay a toe-dipper.

Haeny Yoon:

Yes, and I think that's what this experience has showed me.

Nathan Holbert:

I think that's a reasonable observation. I feel differently in how I experienced it, but I think that-

Haeny Yoon:

Say more.

Nathan Holbert:

Maybe this is it as I'm saying, maybe it's that we're only likely to be pulled so far, and as somebody myself who's really interested in Star Wars, and has been for many, many years.

Haeny Yoon:

Yes.

Nathan Holbert:

I'm willing to be pulled in further, but there's still a diver level that I'm just not going to get to, I'm just not personally prepared to get to. And maybe if you are not interested in being pulled in further, they might try or might not, but you could still stay where you're at.

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah.

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah, that seems possible.

Haeny Yoon:

In order to have fun, basically you have to be willing to engage and interact. But right now I just feel like I have to hype myself up and be like, okay, fine, fine, I'm going to try to go to this secret cargo room when I don't really want to go to it, but feel obliged to.

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah, that sounds right.

Haeny Yoon:

We did say though, how I was telling Mr. Chen, I was like, I remember when I was a second grade teacher, I think I would write basically LARPing simulations. I would be like, I'm going to teach the kids how to do the stock market and I'm going to make bull and bear cards, and then I'm going to do this, and then I'm going to cut out things from the Wall Street Journal and then I make scenarios. That was fun-

Nathan Holbert:

That's crazy, that's awesome.

Haeny Yoon:

I made so many of those and then-

Nathan Holbert:

Been a gamemaster all this time.

Haeny Yoon:

I was a gamemaster all this time. So I understand that that's engaging and fun, right? But I don't know, I feel like I have to have a personal investment, but I do see that as a really good experience and I think that you could really engage kids that way. So it's not that I don't believe in immersive experience.

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah, right, right. So a thing that I think has to be said at some point, I don't know if this is the time or not, but is there's gendered experiences and there's gendered framings for each of these kinds of role-playing experiences that can be. And this one is a very, very specific experience that people encounter differently. And I think young boys like me grew up on this and so it's easy for us to feel like everybody loves this. We love it. How could anyone not love it? We love it. So that seems like totally a thing worth kind of thinking about too. I feel this feels like a success to me, not success in Haeny having fun on Starcruiser, but in us getting a sense of what this-

Haeny Yoon:

What this is like.

Narrator:

... is and how one could or could not engage with it, what the limits are of it. And also gives us a new look at play in this sort of immersive role play.

Haeny Yoon:

Yes.

Nathan Holbert:

All right. Something's happening, we're going to go check it out.

Actor 4:

We stand united together.

Crowd:

As one. As one.

Nathan Holbert:

At the grand finale, all of the distinct storylines each of us participated in came together and our journey came to an end. This was a sad moment.

Haeny Yoon:

Mixed feelings.

Nathan Holbert:

Okay, well, it was a sad moment for some of us.

Haeny Yoon:

But now that we're back planet side and we've had a chance to let this experience soak in, we are getting this squad back together in the studio with our friend Lalitha, to recap what this experience meant to each of us and to ask what do immersive experiences tell us about play?

Lalitha Vasudevan:

Okay, we are back for a special episode of Pop and Play. My name is Lalitha Vasudevan, your perennial substitute host for any and all podcasts here at the ye olde Teachers College. And I'm so pleased to be joined by four intrepid warriors who just have returned from a journey. We're joined here this morning by Alex Bowers. Good morning, Alex.

Alex Bowers:

Good morning, thanks for having me.

Lalitha Vasudevan:

Good to see you. Tran Templeton.

Tran Templeton:

Hello, as I say, in the land of Batuu, Bright Suns.

Lalitha Vasudevan:

Right back at you. And that chuckle you heard was Haeny Yoon.

Haeny Yoon:

Hey. Good morning, everyone.

Nathan Holbert:

We also call her Chuckles.

Lalitha Vasudevan:

And Shecky, over here is Nathan Holberg.

Nathan Holbert:

Hi, everybody. Good to see you again or hear you again or let you hear me again.

Lalitha Vasudevan:

So we are here today to debrief, reflect on, talk about your collective experience on Starcruiser. Does one need to know about Star Wars, Disney, cruises, immersive education, any or all of the above in order to know what Starcruiser is?

Tran Templeton:

I guess I'll start with just talking about what Starcruiser was to me, which was a space where I was really observing how other people understood their fandom, if that makes sense. Because an aspect, I don't remember Alex if you mentioned it, an aspect of Starcruiser is that many people are fans. It's clear because they come dressed up as Star Wars characters or their own characters who may exist in the Star Wars universe. I've never ever seen a single, I've seen a clip of Star Wars, but I've never seen any movies, I've never read anything about Star Wars. So I came completely a stranger to this universe. So for me, it was a space to observe people enacting their fandom. And I think I would have probably enjoyed it a lot more if I had been knowledgeable of Star Wars at all. So I'm just watching people mesmerized by it, and it's really nice to see that. It's kind of like watching... This is not to diminish anybody, but watching children live through something. And part of my work is watching children experience the world. So yeah, it was very interesting for me.

Lalitha Vasudevan:

So you introduced an important word for us to come back to, and that is that word of work. Why did you all go to Starcruiser? I mean, we don't have to go around, but I-

Nathan Holbert:

Alex made us.

Lalitha Vasudevan:

Okay. Alex, what compelled you? What was the invitation here?

Alex Bowers:

Sure, sure. When I originally went, what really astonished me about the experience is that, yes, the conceit is that you're in Star Wars in a cruise in space. Everything… All the windows look out into space. If a ship is flying by on one side of the ship, you can see it out every single window, your cabin, the bridge, every place. And the actors were absolutely fabulous immersive experience actors. And what I realized as I was going through this space, the people on the cruise all move from passenger to hero. And to some extent, some people are deeper into it, some people aren't.

And watching people, watching the cast work, watching the crew work with the passengers, really I saw a lot of great teaching moves. The kinds of things I see master teachers able to do, bringing people in, letting people paying back where they want to, seeing that some people want to just observe. That's great. Seeing that some people just want you to sit down next to them and ask how it's going. Versus people who want to absolutely super dive in. And so these and then having them pull people's own experiences back into the story and weave them in and yet hit their marks, hit their times, end on time, the story always end the same way. It really occurred to me that this is something that's really an interesting idea for what could happen in education. And so I came back in May, accosted Nathan with-

Nathan Holbert:

See, I told you.

Alex Bowers:

... the idea that this is an idea, what about us going? And that's where our journey then for September came from.

Lalitha Vasudevan:

So a couple of things that occurred to me as you were talking that I think is really helpful for all of us to know, but also for the listeners to know, is that you had many ways into the experience. You had the experience of being a person, you were bringing your own research perspectives around looking at pedagogical transformation in classrooms. But I also really think it's interesting that you yourself had had previous experiences in thinking about how to design these kinds of experiences for teachers.

And so I want to pause there for a second because I want to ask then the rest of the team, when you were given this invitation, what were some of the initial kinds of questions or ideas that came to mind? Because the other thing I will go ahead and let the audience know is that each of us around the table have brought an interest in thinking about different ways to curate meaningful and engaging experiences with different groups of people, be it children, our graduate students, adults, teachers we work with. So I know that there was a kind of built-in interest in this broader concept, but when you were invited to consider Starcruiser 2023, what were some of the things that brought you to say, yeah, let's do it? What was your connection you were making to your ongoing thinking?

Nathan Holbert:

So when Alex accosted me as he delicately puts it and started telling me all about this crazy experience, my first reaction was, "That sounds great, I love Star Wars, I wish I could have done that." I wish my mom had bought me a ticket to get to go to Starcruiser.

Alex Bowers:

Yes.

Nathan Holbert:

Because it sounded great, it sounded really fun. And I am maybe the opposite end of the pull from Tran and that I grew up watching Star Wars. And then of course, as we talked about what it actually is, it definitely aligned with and resonated with a lot of the work I do around play and around specifically creating environments and spaces that are generative for people to explore and play with identities and play with their interests. There's a good way to get me to wrap it up, and that is that I saw it as a game designer and I was enamored with it as a game.

And so I was like, oh look, they've made it feel like the way this is shaking, the way this is moving, it feels like I'm in a spaceship. Oh, this person's trying to get me to move here and that's why they've given me this task because they have this other thing. So I was looking at it as mechanics of a game and we were all players and pieces of that game space. And so I found it really interesting and fun to look at it from that way. A thing I'll just add on top of all of this is it's hard to just in words create a picture of how immersive the space is. I mean, it is incredibly high production value, it feels like you're in space. Everything kind of feels like they've taken you there and there's no cracks in that. Now you can know because an adult that you're not in space for sure. And if you start looking, you can notice some cracks if you're really looking for those cracks.

Haeny Yoon:

And if you're sitting by Tran, you notice them all too, which is like, "I know I'm in a school bus."

Tran Templeton:

When we left at 5:00 AM, the day that we left, Haeny and I left, they put you in this launchpad and you get in there and loud music plays, the loud Star Wars-

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tran Templeton:

I guess the theme song. Space is flying by and she's looking really grumpy. And I looked at her and I said, "You know we're standing still, right?" And she was like, "I know."

Lalitha Vasudevan:

I want to hear the rest of what you were saying, but I think this is an important point. And that is you did bring your full selves to this. And as ethnographers, we are attending to all of the layers of materiality and relationality and context that is around us. And so that's hard to shed. Tran, early on, you said you were sort of had an observational stance towards a lot of this, were you often in that space of observation only, and were there moments of letting go of that?

Tran Templeton:

I went on Starcruiser because it was going to be a different experience. And when we work with pre-service teachers, we always talk to them about the value of putting yourself in experiences that you don't know as a way to know more about other people's perspectives. And I think you can never know fully what somebody else is because I will never know what it's like to be a Star Wars fan ever even if I started watching Star Wars now, because I think there's lots of layers to that in terms of watching it from childhood and all that. So I did spend a lot of time observing, observing the space and the people interacting, observing Haeny and her own reactions to it because she was somewhat on the end of the spectrum that I'm on. I was definitely drawn more to the games part of the-

Haeny Yoon:

Oh, she loved the games. She actually pushed me out of the way in one of the games where we were partners.

Lalitha Vasudevan:

Can you describe one to me?

Haeny Yoon:

Yes. Please, tell her.

Tran Templeton:

Was it called bridge control?

Nathan Holbert:

Bridge training.

Tran Templeton:

Bridge training is, it's a massive space that simulates the front of a ship, it's massive. And in bridge training you do sets of exercises. So one might be blocking, I don't have the language for this. And this was also a very awkward part of the trip was not having any language but blocking aliens or I don't know.

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah, it was like little mini-games, like little like, oh, okay, you're the person that's going to shoot the aliens. Oh, you're the person that's going to retrieve these objects. And so there was four I think mini-games.

Tran Templeton:

So I would say the games, I was also very drawn to a card game. And I will say that games are a great way for me to not have to engage socially with other adults. And at the Sublight Lounge, there was a 13-year-old.

Haeny Yoon:

But you really like games too though, don't you?

Tran Templeton:

I do. I really, really like games. There's a 13-year-old also playing the card game. I think those spaces where I could retreat into doing something by myself or with a child, I did that.

Lalitha Vasudevan:

I think that's interesting too because it gives us, you've also talked a little bit about the materiality, the kind of impressive scope, the design, the intentionality, but I appreciate the point about games embedded within the experience as another tether or on-ramp into it that if you didn't want to do the kind of performative engagement with the actors that let's say that felt one step too removed or one step too far, that part of what I'm hearing you all say is that the kind of version of immersion that existed was maybe layered and had different ways you could do it, but that it wasn't everybody immersed in the same kind of way.

Alex Bowers:

Yeah. And for example, it's a crew. The conceit is you're on a cruise, and so they actually have all the cruise things you can do in the atrium. There's a space bingo, there's space Newlywed Game and Sabacc, the card game is being played all the time. But one of the things, going back to my point about what I saw for education in this experience, is that you see in the education research literature around serious games or educational games or gaming and education is that there's some researchers who say the reason that games are fun is because you can fail. And the reason that school is boring is because we try to make it so you can't.

And one of the things that just astounded me on Starcruiser, like bridge training, everybody knows we're not going to fail, the ship's not going to blow up. It's a building in Orlando, it's a fake space cruise. But at the same time how they instrumented this space, how it's orchestrated, how the actors are so high level, pulling you in by name and being the number of times the captain said my name this last trip, I was like, "Whoa." And pulling you in that way in really good ways that teachers do. While you know can't fail, it feels like you're contributing and people have fun without failure, which I thought was such a fabulous innovation.

Lalitha Vasudevan:

I think it's also really helpful to hear, Alex, you talk about the importance of personalization for you. And I think about some of my students I've taught previously, some of whom for whom personalization was really key, and for others it was like, stop using my name. So I just want to kind of bracket that because I think it's so important when we are designing educational experiences to be able to have that variation. And it seemed like maybe this one did have that. And you brought up the metaphor of a cruise again, this was your big revelation, Haeny. Can you say a little bit both about-

Nathan Holbert:

No water.

Lalitha Vasudevan:

... waterless cruise but cruise nonetheless. And so I wanted to give you a chance to both talk a little bit either in response to thinking about this kind of immersion observation, tension that we've talked about, or a little bit more about what brought you in and where you are right now as you've had this revelation?

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah, sure. I think the conversation around the perspective that you come in with, if you're a game designer, you're going to be so attentive to that. Tran is totally an outside observer who's very much into games. So it's not surprising that that's the thing that she really latches onto. So I was thinking about what's my angle, what's my perspective coming into this? And so obviously I didn't have an aversion to Star Wars. I've talked about this on the podcast where I got into Star Wars because kids are really into it and I felt like I needed to take it very seriously, I can't understand what they're saying. So I feel like that was my entry into it. So going into Starcruiser, I felt like I actually knew something about it, and I got in there and I was also lost. I am like, "What is happening right now?" I found that I got really into people's outfits because that's what I do in real life. I just look at people's outfits all the time. And I was like, "I'm going to do what I know, which is look at people's outfits." So I was really into that part of it.

And I think I've had this conversation with each of you at some juncture or point, is I walked away from that thinking there are certain kinds of play that are very meaningful for certain people and I think about that with young children, that might not be very meaningful to me, that I might not actually even enjoy that much. But I think the part that I have to take seriously is that it means something to somebody else. I think about how much it means to Alex, and I'm like, I do not understand that level of real affinity and identity making and the real personal affective dimension of what that kind of play does, but it's meaningful for somebody else. So I can't expect everybody to play exactly like the way that I do, right? And so I think that's the part that's so complicated when watching children play, right? It's sometimes you usually ignore it because it's not meaningful to you or you think it's dumb or it doesn't have any import for your life, but there's something really, really powerful about being there. So I don't know, I'm still thinking and processing.

Lalitha Vasudevan:

You mentioned this is why it's so important in how we regard children. But I know one of the things in the conversation about why even go to Starcruiser was motivated by creating experiences for teachers. And I think the same probably is true of teachers, thinking about how we leverage the broadest palette of experiences, not to kind of water down something, but recognizing that certain things are going to hit certain people. And maybe you've already been thinking about this. What is it that you've taken with you that is continuing to inform how you're thinking about play, design, and education? I want to start with Tran and I'm going to end with Alex. I think Alex, you've thought about this a lot even before you went on this last cruise.

Tran Templeton:

Voyage. It's a voyage.

Lalitha Vasudevan:

Voyage, thank you. Even me, I'm struggling with the words. Yeah. So what is it that you're carrying with you as you think about this experience in its relationship to your own work that might be connected to play, design, education?

Tran Templeton:

I think that I've been thinking about the impossibility of engaging everybody in a specific topic or theme. The scale of it and the number of people there makes a difference too. I don't know what there could have been to engage Haeny more that was still within the universe. So-

Nathan Holbert:

Space Kardashians?

Tran Templeton:

I'm not even sure that would.

Lalitha Vasudevan:

Although that is an interesting question.

Tran Templeton:

But I'll say that Haeny and I did play on our own in the cabin. And that was probably-

Haeny Yoon:

We did make an influencer video whilst doing face masks.

Lalitha Vasudevan:

See-

Nathan Holbert:

Check the show notes.

Tran Templeton:

That were provided by the ship.

Haeny Yoon:

That were provided by the ship.

Tran Templeton:

So the ship provided something, some provocation, although I think that provocation was maybe not what they intended, but I think that's something to think about too. Putting things out that we don't necessarily know what people are using it for, that's what we do with children. We put materials out that we don't necessarily know how they're going to be used. And then the children take those objects up in their own ways. And so I think the example of me and Haeny making fun for ourselves in the cabin reminds me of the ways that even within school spaces, I always think about how institutionalized forms of fun or play never go as well as individual's uptake of their own fun and play. So I think that reified that for me.

Lalitha Vasudevan:

You made me think about this one time I was working with a bunch of fifth graders and we made this long trek from West Philly to the Philadelphia Art Museum. And the thing they loved the most was climbing on the statues outside. And if I asked them six months later, "What did you like?" "Oh my God, the museum was so fun, we climbed on everything." And it was really a sobering moment because I thought, oh my gosh, I spent so much time prepping you and thinking about it. And we saw the armor and the swords, all this stuff that they really engaged with. They're like, "Oh, it was so fun to climb that lion." I was like, "Okay." I couldn't have predicted that the thing that wasn't even on the agenda was the thing that connected the most. Now I have almost a decade of experience with basically planning a whole thing and then having the bus ride be the coolest thing.

Nathan Holbert:

The refrigerator box be that.

Lalitha Vasudevan:

 Correct. 

Nathan Holbert:

Just to add onto that though, because I think I love that point, Tran, and I think that I would say it seems likely, and I'm coming to this conclusion partly based upon the conversations we've had with some of the designers now as well. That they're very attuned to the fact that there are a huge number of possible ways you might play in this space. And it seems to me that they're designing to put as many of them in front of you for you to choose as they can. And sometimes those clearly crash and burn, sometimes it's the face masks that end up being the thing you play with and sometimes it’s Sabacc and sometimes it's an actor. But it does seem like there was some sense of design there that let's throw everything out there and one of these hopefully will hit, which I think is interesting.

Haeny Yoon:

Maybe adding on to that too though, I think my big takeaway is in early childhood we have this thing called emergent curriculum. And shout out to Kuan Leu who did his- a wonderful dissertation on emergent curriculum. But I think one of the things that he talks about in his work is that ultimately as teachers, we make choices about what we're going to take up. Even if we're trying to give as many kids as we can, maximum agency, even if we're trying to listen really hard to what children are doing, we're making choices, right? We're selecting which children we're going to hear. We might hear all of them, but we're also still making decisions about which thing we're going to take up.

The designers also had to make choices, this is not going to be for everybody. It's going to be for people who want to come to Star Wars, who have a loved one that's close to Star Wars. If this is going to be a meaningful experience that I'm going to pay a couple of thousand dollars to come to. And so I think those same implications are true for teaching, we definitely make choices, we are limited by the kinds of funds or access that we have. We decide whose ideas are going to be taken up. We in the midst of prioritizing certain ideas, we obviously will not take up others. And so for me, that's a big question to think about, right? It's a huge question. And I don't mean to get so serious talking about this, but-

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah, that's great.

Haeny Yoon:

I think that's a big takeaway for me.

Lalitha Vasudevan:

Yeah. Well, and I think it's especially important in light of, I think the various ways in and what each of you has carried with you. And I want to turn to you, Alex, because I think you went in and you continue to have I think this really in-depth and studied and enthusiastic kind of engagement with it. You've sat now with these three interlocutors that you went on this trip with and you've heard the different takes on it. And I wonder if incorporating those ideas, what do you take away from this now third iteration, either as it lives in your thinking and imagination about the work that you want to be able to do or in your own kind of engagement with the experience?

Alex Bowers:

What I take away from and take with me from this experience and thinking about applications to education, is that it's ultimately about identity and choice. The thing that for middle schoolers, what's the thing you don't really feel like you have control over? You feel boxed in, you feel that you're on a path usually, many students, not everybody, but many kids do. We've got a loneliness epidemic going on right now. And what happens on Starcruisers, you make instant friends. The person standing next to you, you get to play with immediately. And as you go through the experience, many people, not everybody, but many people get to begin to see that there's many choices you can take and you can make different choices.

And as you make these different choices, different modes of activities, open, close. And what I take away is that in education, being able to give students an experience, a memorable experience where they get to see models of, get to play with, get to see that identity and choice can matter in their life and that they could make different choices and that they could begin to maybe take on different identities and see that perhaps there's a different direction they could go. Maybe you could see yourself as a scientist in a way that you've never seen yourself before. And you can take on and play with that identity for a little while and then begin to walk away and say okay.

Lalitha Vasudevan:

So we've covered a lot of ground. We've talked about how you come into this, an experience, what you're taking out of it, what is an immersive experience? Given what we've discussed, what are you left thinking about in terms of both the nature of immersive and the value of immersive?

Nathan Holbert:

Well, I don't have a definition, but answering this question makes me kind of want to answer your previous question a little more directly too, about what I take away. Because I think this notion of immersive is actually a really exciting place for us to start playing. And it's a space that's existed for some time and there's a whole community and a whole profession. And there's knowledge that that community has built around how to do immersive theater, immersive experiences, immersive play.

And I think that world has, for the most part, been separate from the educational space. There's been the occasional kind of bleed across, certainly, and in the gaming world there's been some of that bleed there. But I think for the most part that those two communities of knowledge have been separate. And I think one of my takeaways is that there's a real need and I think a real exciting possibility of trying to connect what we know about cognition, what we know about identity, what we know about classrooms and the structures and the culture of those spaces to what this profession knows about engagement, about emergent storytelling, about identity exploration in that field.

And so for me, it's really exciting to... And again, I can't take that identity of my own off to be seeing it from a game like, oh, it's really exciting to start imagining how we would design something like this. What would be the important components of it? How would they interact? We can't hit everybody, we don't in any design experience make everybody huge fans, but how can we think about creating a new space for people to play in that they haven't had an opportunity to play in before? And what are the possibilities that might come from that?

Haeny Yoon:

I'm going to say something controversial.

Lalitha Vasudevan:

I like it. Do it.

Haeny Yoon:

So I feel like young children at play are always immersed-

Lalitha Vasudevan:

Totally.

Haeny Yoon:

There isn't anything different about when they're really engaged in play, they're always immersed in it. And so I feel like, I think I've said this before, is that I'm not sure if it's more different kinds of space, more materials, more time, even any of those conditions that make the biggest difference. It's actually just learning from what kids are doing and then maybe we take that as a point of access. And so, I don't know, Tran, I know you probably have more to say about that.

Tran Templeton:

Well, I did write down young children's classrooms are immersive-

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah.

Nathan Holbert:

The young is important here, I just want to make sure that's-

Tran Templeton:

The young is very important, yeah.

Haeny Yoon:

Yes, of course.

Tran Templeton:

And because I think there's elements of choice, there's an abundance of materials that are curated. If it's a classroom that practices an emergent curriculum, those materials are curated for the children in the space to be open-ended so that children can take those materials and imagine together or on their own. When I look at an early childhood classroom, I do see children who choose to be on their own or choose to be in their imaginary worlds. So I think it's happening already, but it's happening in spaces where we don't often look.

And what I appreciate most about young children is a cup doesn't need to be a cup, a ball doesn't need to be a ball. And that's what's so interesting. That's the difference for me between Starcruiser, which is not saying anything about Starcruiser and an early childhood classroom, is that everything designed in Starcruiser seemed to have, seemed to have a particular intention. A lightsaber is a lightsaber, I've tried to think of different ways that my lightsaber could be something different. How could I use my lightsaber in the classroom? I can't quite, I welcome any help on that. So I'll end with that.

Nathan Holbert:

I think just to pick that up, I know we don't have a whole lot of more time, but I don't think that's a very controversial statement. I think it's a totally reasonable and correct statement. And I think what's important to put it in context though, is we have so many different fields of work that are almost, to put it in a dumb way, about trying to recreate young children's classrooms at different levels, different domains, different places. And my area of work around constructionism is really about how do you give people agency, how do you give them materials that they can create with, they can have that sense of exploration and play with.

And I think one thing that's exciting about this type of work is it has some answers to that. They have some design insights, they have some kind of experiences around ways you can try to achieve some of that young children's immersive play in a middle school classroom for a bunch of adults on a vacation for all these different categories. So I totally agree with that statement. And I think what's interesting here is that it's trying to do that and achieves that in some kind of small ways with groups that aren't used to feeling comfortable playing in the way a child is.

Haeny Yoon:

Right.

Lalitha Vasudevan:

I think one of the things I just want to call our attention to is that the immersion gets schooled out of us and we're always trying to recapture it. And maybe Starcruiser for some people is the invitation back into learning how to be immersive. But I think all of you are engaged in doing work that is trying to provide more invitation, more inroads, and more reimagining of spaces to embrace immersion and play.

Haeny Yoon:

Thank you, Lalitha.

Lalitha Vasudevan:

Thank you.

Nathan Holbert:

Thank you all, this was great.

Haeny Yoon:

That was a great conversation.

Lalitha Vasudevan:

Whoop-whoop. 

Nathan Holbert:

May the force be with you.

Tran Templeton:

You didn't do a woo-woo.

Haeny Yoon:

Woo. Woo.

Nathan Holbert:

Good journey.

Haeny Yoon:

Woo. Woo.

Nathan Holbert:

Woo. Woo.

Haeny Yoon:

Pop and Play is produced by Haeny Yoon, Nathan Holbert, Lalitha Vasudevan, Billy Collins and Joe Riina-Ferrie at Teachers College Columbia University with the Digital Futures Institute. Audio recording for this episode by Jen Lee. This episode was edited by Billy Collins.

Nathan Holbert:

For a transcript and to learn more, visit tc.edu/popandplay. Our music is selections from Leaf Eaters by Pottington Bear, used here under a Creative Commons Attribution non-commercial license. Blake Danzig provided our social media and outreach support. Follow @popandplaypod on Instagram and TikTok for more of what's popping, like the Trashies with Ioana Literat. Thank you to Meier Clark and Abu Abdelbagi for support with our website and additional materials. And thanks to you for listening.