“21st Century Skills in Starcraft is an 8 week entirely online course that uses the popular real time strategy (RTS) game Starcraft to teach valuable 21st Century Skills through a hands-on approach. With society becoming increasingly technology-based and fast-paced, it is important for professionals to be highly proficient in skills such as critical thinking, problem solving, resource management, and adaptive decision making. These skills are fundamental in Starcraft and therefore make the game a highly effective environment for students to analyze and take action in complex situations. Computer and video games of all types have become a major part of today’s entertainment and technology worlds. Also, online education is an area of intense growth with many employers and professions using online courses and workshops for career development. This course synthesizes the three threads of 21st Century skill development, gaming, and online education into an innovative and experiential approach that encourages students to identify, learn, and practice crucial skills and apply and relate them to real-world situations. It does not teach about Starcraft, but rather aims to utilize the game and the complex situations that arise within it to present and develop the important skills professionals will undoubtedly need in the 21st Century workplace.”

There’s clearly a lot of Gee’s thinking at work here, at least in the remove, and, by extension, a tradition of American pragmatist philosophy that goes right back to Dewey.

However, from another angle, isn’t this really just a course in remedial computational literacy? With really sexy, 32-bit reinforcement?

Via CrunchGear.

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.

Atari Hacks, Remakes, and Demakes: Special Topics in Game Design and Analysis, Spring 2010. Georgia Institute of Technology.

Hacks are works produced by making modifications to existing games by disassembling binaries, analyzing the meaning and purpose of the resulting source code, identifying desirable changes (whether slight or significant) and implementing those changes.

Remakes are recreations of earlier works, irrespective of the hardware platform of original creation or recreation. Remakes have a long history in other media, particularly in film and television, as well as in commercial videogames.

Demakes are retro-inspired reimaginings of modern games, as if they had been created on earlier hardware. Demakes are not necessarily created to run on older machines, but their design and behavior are constrained by the real or perceived constraints of vintage systems.

I adore the emphasis on technological production. Notice that it is not subservient to theory, or even distinct from it: Engagement with the technology is, in itself, an act of theoria, an act of contemplation.

Review the syllabus at Bogost’s website.

via Lori Emerson.