For your consideration, I commend to you — without comment– the following article, from the closely-followed Opinions page of the Wichita Eagle. “Are Video Games Causing Achievement Gap?” by John Richard Schrock, “trainer of biology teachers.”
Advanced readers will want to be sure and identify by name each logical fallacy that appears in the op-ed.
I have started to build an information website to accompany the new course I’ll teach this fall at Georgetown, CCTP628: Arcade Theory. As of now, only the course description is available, but I will add more in the coming weeks.
I’ve just discovered Boing Boing’s ongoing “Games to Get” series, a great collection of (mostly) indie studio games for various platforms. Many of my latest obsessions are there: Plants vs. Zombies, Chime, Clash of Heroes, Drop 7. Definitely worth reviewing.
HASTAC (The Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory) is definitely worth getting to know: I’ve been to two of their conferences, and they are terrific. Today, their blog calls attention to a new Call For Papers (Trento, Italy, Sept 2010) that is interesting chiefly for its desire to blend game studies with STS:
CFP: Digital Game Play as Sociotechnical Practice … What STS theories can be used to understand Digital Games as sociotechnical phenomenon? Is the concept of practice and the practice-based approach useful to investigate Digital Games? Is there a relationship between power as inscribed and imposed by artefacts and the technical dimensions of Digital Games? What rules are inscribed into Digital Games technologies and what social worlds do these rules describe? What contribution can the study of Digital Games make to the STS discipline at large? And what contribution can an STS approach make to game studies? Can we foresee an after-method approach for Digital Games?
Update (7 Feb): For a sketch of the Haitian information infrastructure, check out Michael Deibert’s post from Slate, Haitian Radio Returns to the Air.
I wonder how others feel about this newly-listed MIT Media Lab course (spring 2010). On the one hand, there’s a lot here to be admired: The course is clearly the product of agile thought. It is problem-based, socially-relevant, interdisciplinary teaching without a net. Laudable.
MAS963 | KrikKrak
A project-based class to develop new technologies and educational tools to help revolutionize Haitian society. We will explore viable contexts for promoting self-expression, communication, literacy and numeracy, and digital governance, given the challenges within the society. Topics will include sensors, language, music, computational methods of teaching and learning, civic engagement and social media. “
But then there’s that phrase: “tools to help revolutionize Haitian society.” What does that mean, precisely? Revolutionize? For whom? At whose behest? I am no expert on Haitian history, but I imagine that outsiders with a revolutionary agenda have always played a big role in Haiti.
Participants will choose a societal problem, devise a solution, then spend the last week of April in Haiti field testing and documenting their solution.
So maybe Haiti is doomed to have us help. Still, half a semester’s worth of earnest grad school conversation about Haiti does not an expert make. I’ve no doubt that there will be all sorts of IRB oversight and so forth, and yet: Maybe we should hold off on experimental tools for digital governance until we staunch the flow of slaves, introduce clean water, and otherwise ease the direst poverty in the Western hemisphere. So far, we’ve been spectacularly unsuccessful in revolutionizing Haiti.
NB: The course is part of a larger initiative within the MIT Media Lab called Krik Krak.
As the world responds to this disaster, we pause to think about applicable roles of energy and communication technologies in the long nation re-building efforts to come. What began as an IAP workshop at the Media Lab focusing on the January 12th crisis in Haiti will continue as a lecture series, a string of projects and continued discussions on the history, re-construction and nation-building of Haiti.
Update: According to @JohnathanStray, the Habermas account was a ruse. I’ll bet Rheingold is rolling his eyes.
So, this is fun.
Matthew Kirschenbaum, over at UMD, is an Associate Professor of English and the Associate Director of MITH, the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities. His blog is chock full of interesting stuff, and his tweets are prolific.
A year ago, he published a good little article in the Chronicle on why humanities students must be taught to code, an issue that is near to my heart (cf. Ulmer, “Academic Discourse in the Age of Television,” and Moulthroup, “Rethinking Scholarship in the Days of Serious Play.”)
Today, he’s published his syllabus for a graduate course on simulation (PDF download). The readings are literate, diverse, comprehensive. It looks like a marvelous class.
Obama Administration Asks Ballmer About Gaming the Budget
Via Kotaku (via USAToday), word that Erskine Bowles has contacted Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer to chat about a game built around balancing the U.S. budget. It’s an interesting idea that’s actually been done (and done well) already. In 2008, MarketPlace, from American Public Media, launched Budget Hero:
The “serious games” advocates will want to believe that Pres. Obama has decided to solve our budget woes by crowdsourcing them. But simulations are simplifications, so an effective — and broadly approachable — budget-balancing simulation is not going to create real “budget heroes.” So it’s worth wondering: Given that most of the country believes that the Government is now taxing them more heavily than ever — despite the fact that taxes are actually lower this year for most of us — is the Administration hoping to leverage game technology in order to demonstrate policy procedurally?
Just remember, guys, if you’re hoping to reach the nation’s early-adopters: iPads won’t do Flash.