Critically Crafting Digital Places

A curricular resource by Oscar Keyes and Luke Meeken, focusing on critically experiencing, making, and sharing digital places. Particular attention is paid to the ways colonizing norms are encouraged by many digital places, and how digital places may habituate non-colonial and anti-colonial sentiments and actions toward digital and physical places and lands.

We've taught this content with middle and high school students, in-person, but it could also be used for self-teaching, or for remote teaching. Elements of it could definitely be adapted for use with younger learners.

Two versions of the curriculum are available, using different tools. The PlayCanvas-based curriculum is designed to be better-suited for remote learning, while the Unity-based one is more suited for in-person learning.

Also included below are archived older versions of the curriculum.

Critically Crafting Digital Places

(Using PlayCanvas)

This online version of the curriculum uses all free, browser-based tools, such as PlayCanvas, Mixamo, and TinkerCAD, which are suitable for both remote and in-person teaching on a variety of devices, including Chromebooks, laptops, and desktops.
This curriculum also includes materials fostering critical thinking about the colonizing, conquering, and violent behaviors encouraged in commercial digital places (like games), and considering the how imagining the histories of digital places helps us think more deeply about our placemaking.
PlayCanvas, as a web-based game design tool, allows students to collaborate on a shared project online, co-creating digital places.
While PlayCanvas is a free tool, the storage space on free accounts is somewhat limited, restricting the size of student projects. Projects made by free accounts are also publicly viewable by default. In our experience, PlayCanvas has been very generous in setting up free or reduced-rate "premium" accounts for teachers to allow for student privacy and more memory for projects.

Critically Crafting Digital Places

(Using Unity)

This Desktop version of the curriculum uses all free, tools, such as Unity, Blender, and TinkerCAD.
Many of these free tools need to be installed directly onto a Windows or Mac computer. As a result, this option may be preferred for use in a physical computer lab/studio classroom.
This curriculum also includes materials fostering critical thinking about the colonizing, conquering, and violent behaviors encouraged in commercial digital places (like games), and considering the how imagining the histories of digital places helps us think more deeply about our placemaking.
Because Unity (the game design software used in this resource) is installed on the computer, it allows for larger projects that can be saved to the computer's hard drive, and which can be run using all of the computer's resources. However, it may not run as well on more modest/older devices students may be using at home in a remote-learning setting.
Because many of these tools require installation, they are not compatible with Chrome books, and this version may not be a good fit for remote-learning as a result.
Note: Because we have not taught in-person since 2019 (thanks, COVID!), some aspects of this tutorial may not reflect the newest versions of Unity or Blender - we will be working to update these tutorials soon.

Archived Older Versions of Crafting Digital Places

The structure is largely the same, but each flavor uses different tools. Choose the option that works best for your setup, or mix and match between tools:

Crafting Digital Places: Desktop/Laptop Edition

The Desktop version of this curriculum uses all free tools, such as Unity, Blender, and TinkerCAD.
Many of these free tools need to be installed directly onto a Windows or Mac computer. As a result, this option may be preferred for use in a physical computer lab/studio classroom.
Because Unity (the game design software used in this resource) is installed on the computer, it allows for larger projects that can be saved to the computer's hard drive, and which can be run using all of the computer's resources. However, it may not run as well on more modest/older devices students may be using at home in a remote-learning setting.
Because many of these tools require installation, they are not compatible with Chrome books, and this version may not be a good fit for remote-learning as a result.

Crafting Digital Places: Net Edition

The Net version of this curriculum uses all free, browser-based tools, such as PlayCanvas, Mixamo, and TinkerCAD.
Because all of these tools run in a web browser, this version of the curriculum is ideal for remote-learning setups where students may be using less powerful devices, or Chromebooks.
PlayCanvas, as a web-based game design tool, allows students to collaborate on a shared project online in ways that Unity does not.
While PlayCanvas is a free tool, the storage space on free accounts is very limited, restricting the size of student projects. Projects made by free accounts are also publicly viewable by default. In our experience, PlayCanvas has been very generous in setting up free or reduced-rate "premium" accounts for teachers.