Dissertation ideas and some (gasp) feedback on my exams!

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?

Games Learning Society wrapping thoughts

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.

GLS day 3 (the aftermath)

I’ve been meaning to post photos from Saturday in Madison soon… this space reserved.

[Edited Thursday… finally!]

So, after a night of way too much beer…. (and I should note that when I say way too much I mean our tables had 2 pitchers courtesy of Kurt too much which basically went undrunk… undrunken.. undrinked…? whatever. and NOT that I had way too much beer since as most of my friends know, I don’t really drink beer.)

Anyway, after a night of way too much beer for our tables, Moses and I walked to his place (partly alongside Kurt and Josh). When we got there, we were setting up the air mattress and stuff when his roommate entered (about 2:30-3:00 AM) with not one, but TWO women he had picked up or something… they went to his room and he came out to the kitchen to fix up a cocktail once they got settled. While passing us on his way to the kitchen he said something like, “holy shit.” Whispered incredulously. This was a proper time to use “holy shit” if any, I thought. We figured he was implying that he was just about to do what many men fantasize about. Ha.

Ok, so I digress from the trip to Madison. You’re probably more interested in hearing about the arts fair the next day. 😛

All the people I met at GLS

I met a ton of people for the first time at Games Learning Society. Here’s a brain dump of who I can remember (I’ll link to each of them soon… running out of steam right now… 😦 ):

• Rebecca Black
• Samantha Blackmon
• Ian Bogost
• Ted Castranova (well, technically, we didn’t meet, but I saw him…)
• Mia Consalvo
• Ben DeVane (and wife Amanda)
• Josh Diaz
• Julian Dibbell
• Elonka Dunin
• Shree Durga
• Debbie Fields
• Justin Hall
• Erica Halverson
• Chris Holden (and wife Sarah)
• Tori Horton
• Aaron Hung
• Dan Hunter
• Shawna Kelly
• Lane Lawley
• Thomas Malaby
• Dan Norton
• Nathaniel Pope
• Alice Robison
• Lauren Silberman
• Dave Simkins
• Bert Snow
• Doug Thomas
• Bill Tomlinson
• Mark Wagler
• Dave White
• Lee Wilson
• Moses Wolfenstein
• Suze Woolf
• Eric Zimmerman
• Renata
• Matt
• Dana and I think her boyfriend from Florida
• Carole?
• Tim?
• a bunch of people at the LAN party whose names I’ve forgotten

And people I’ve previously met:

• Lisa Galarneau
• Jim Gee
• Betty Hayes
• Henry Jenkins
• Liz Lawley
• Brett Shelton
• Kurt Squire
• Constance Steinkuehler (big wit baby!)

And, of course, people I go to or went to school with:

• Laurie McCarthy
• Tom Satwitcz (now at U of Georgia)
• Jen Stone (former adviser, now at U of Alaska Anchorage)

Games Learning Society 3.0 round-up

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

GLS day 2, evening

After the conference was over, I met up with Moses to drop my stuff off at his place since he kindly offered an air mattress for me to crash on for the night.  BTW, ladies, Moses is the man.  Guys, you too should know; Moses is like the coolest man in the world.

Anyway, a bunch of folks went off to some party but Moses and I happened to meet up with a guy named Josh Diaz before Moses had to take off for said party.  So, I ended up hanging out with Josh, walking around the capitol talking, and having dinner with him at The Old Fashioned.

I forgot to take a photo of dinner, but here’s an image someone else took of the same menu item, The Old Fashioned House Burger. It was amazing. Perfectly cooked medium, with two thick crispy strips of bacon, smoked cheddar (good cheddar–but I’m a cheeseburger snob), and a medium cooked egg–not too runny, not too dry. The egg added a surprising complexity and binding flavor to the whole affair, making for possibly the best burger I’ve ever had. I’ve had egg on burger before, but previously it was greasy as all hell. This time it was fantastic.

GLS day 2, late afternoon

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.

GLS day 2, early 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).

GLS day 2, early morning

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:

GLS night 1, dinner and a party

Dinner at the Overture Center for the Arts was fun! I met Rebecca Black, Bill Tomlinson (whose EcoRaft project I posted about earlier), Dana and her friend from Florida but originally from France so he had a cool accent, and a couple of other people whose names I’ve forgotten already (again, though I think they were Greg and William, and one of them knows Beth Kolko pretty well…).