So, Phil Bell, my new adviser, has weekly meetings with all his students. Wow.

Anyway, he gave me some feedback on my answer to exam question 2 (the lit review one) and suggested I read some more stuff and edit the essay a bit to reflect a more focused application of the theories I named as applied to games. I could look at this in two ways… oh damn, I have to revise or yay, someone gave me feedback and I can learn from it. 🙂 I’ll go with the latter, but can’t help but think that I wouldn’t be in this sort of position if I had access to a group project outside of classes from the get-go as it seems pretty clear that students in collaborative projects have the support needed to deepen their understanding of stuff. Or am I wrong?

I think I might have to send an email out to the Madison-MIT crazy ass network to ask if anyone wants to form a virtual reading group with me as it is pretty clear to me that I am playing (and failing) at a catch up game with people who can just talk to someone else doing games research in everyday contexts.

Anyway, also in the meeting with Phil this week, we discussed possible dissertation topics. One that I might’ve mentioned before is to look at a group of players across off-screen and on-screen contexts to see if their teamwork and general interactions and relationships are similar/different. The easier route to take, however, might be to analyze the mountain of data I collected for my WoW paper with different theoretical lenses, paying particular attention, for example, to the social dynamics and power relations at play. I could even attempt to quantify and measure certain things like level of communication events or types of utterances on different nights. Stuff to think about. Which would help the games research community more?

One thing I noticed while at GLS was that a lot of folk seemed to be talking about similar things from different angles. Here’s a list:

1. participatory culture and new media literacy (Henry Jenkins and Alice Robison)
2. ludic bureaucracy (Thomas Malaby)
3. gamer mindset (Jim Gee)

The common theme in all of these topics is that gamers and people in general are in a new age where the traditional ways of structuring and organizing things no longer applies. The gamer mindset focuses on exploration, transgression, pushing the system, trial and error, emergent phenomenon, etc. all of which is essentially a subset (I think) of living in a participatory culture. It’s not really a knowledge economy, but more of a social economy. Your positionality and network and the skill you have in plying that network will get you far in life. The old bureaucracy is being replaced by one that doesn’t attempt to control and order everything; instead it supports emergent actions and movements.

This of course has huge implications for how I teach the technology class to future teachers that Yen-Ling and I run… How do we prepare teachers so that they can prepare their students? It’s hard enough just trying to expose new teachers to the gamer mindset, Web 2.0, etc. How do we help them develop the skills necessary to help kids develop a critical view of the world they live and participate in?  In other words, I think our teacher ed program is working under the old model too much.  Kids and adults will need, if not already need, equitable access and sponsorship to new technologies.  Participation now depends more than ever on social skills and cultural capital and the skills involved with content creation and mediation.  Yet our schools and teachers are still emphasizing knowledge and facts rather than processes and usage of knowledge.

Richard Carey wrote a blog post about GLS and included links to other people blogging.

Here’s a summary of all the ones I could find off his list:

• 2¢ Worth on:
  • cheating
  • some quotes
  • PMOGs
  • UK survey of teachers and COTS
  • classroom strat guides
• Lisa Galarneau’s post with her slides from her presentation on 21st century skills
• Lee Wilson’s comments on the opening by Jim Gee
• Filament’s presentation
• The Shifted Librarian (she’s awesome!) on:
  • gamer mindset
  • building a strat game for your virtual school
  • designing local games for learning
  • playing to belong (including my presentation)
  • blurring game boundaries
  • individual lessons learned
  • participatory culture
  • MMOs and learning
  • gaming literacy

Also, check these out:

• Research Quest
• Flickr stream of GLS photos

Gaming Literacy

Ah crap.. my laptop is almost out of juice. I might have to go offline for a bit and transcribe hand-written notes… gasp.

[Edit:] Ok, I did indeed have to write stuff down by hand. What follows is my attempt at a transcription; sorry for the delay.

Immersion vs. Learning – Michael Wagner

Michael is from the dept. for interactive media and ed tech at the Donau-Universität Krems from overseas! 🙂 Awesome seeing someone from outside the U.S. involved in the dialog about literacy and games. Michael introduced the Game Based Learning Paradox: games are great for learning but that also means violence and aggression might be being learned, too. This is what I had to grapple with in my general exams, too.

Continue reading GLS day 2, late afternoon →

Narrative, Contingency, and Humor

Narrative Engagement: Games as Mnemonic Devices for Process Learning – Jay Laird and Ann McDonald

Jay and Ann are more practitioners rather than learning scientist theorists. They say that a mnemonic system can be used over and over to remember something and that players could use to remember and navigate a system. Things have to be accessible and relevant for them to be meaningful for players. I’m wondering how much of their concepts overlap with memes (Lankshear and Knobel) and unit operations (Bogost).

Continue reading GLS day 2, early afternoon →

Henry Jenkins and Alice Robison presented a talk about identity play and participatory culture this morning. Check out their current project at projectnml.org

The assumption that kids are digital natives is a false notion since lots of kids don’t have the cultural access and sponsorship needed for new media literacy, even some who have physical access to technology. So the idea of digital natives is problematic in that it hides inequalities among kids and it presupposed a generation gap between kids and adults. Here are three challenges:

Continue reading GLS day 2, early morning →