CLRN Blog
Blog Archive by Principle
Not long after I first participated in the StarCraft community, I fell in love with it. I admire its members’ activism, congeniality, and camaraderie. The players built the community infrastructure including organizations, learning ethos, social networks, and other programs. The StarCraft II community reveals one possible model of how peer-supported and academically... read more
Guest blogger biography: Gabriella Anton is currently a research specialist and the project manager of Studio K at the Games+Learning+Society Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her current work focuses on examining the educational and computational thinking benefits of learning game design. More broadly, she’s involved in the study of interest-powered... read more
In exploring the fandom of a young boyband called One Direction (1D), I am often struck by the serious forethought and complexity woven into the lighthearted artifacts produced by the band’s fans. The fan artifacts they make include fanfiction stories, book covers, song remixes, and gifs. In this blog post, I’d like to zoom in on some of these production practices... read more
As a CLRN Research Fellow, I spend a lot of time thinking about Connected Learning and what it means for schools. At its core, Connected Learning is about equity and empowering students to become change agents in their communities now, and not just when they reach adulthood. But what does connected learning look like in practice, in a school setting?... read more
This blog post follows the journey of one fan, Henry Jenkins IV, a writer for the television show Cult and several other upcoming shows, from the beginning of his fandom to his current career. Jenkins, from a young age, was very interested in the drama and storytelling of professional wrestling. These academically-relevant creative practices housed within his... read more
Guest blogger biography: Amanda Ochsner is currently a PhD student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Interim Research Manager at the Games+Learning+Society Center. Amanda’s research interests focus on learning in online game communities. She is also working on a team project for the design of an online space for young women to learn computational literacies... read more
By Lone (right) and mitosis (left) on TeamLiquid.net
Consider a circle drawn on a track field to have a radius of 5 feet. If you had to run across the circle within a span of 1.5 seconds, what is the maximum cord length that you could traverse within the span of that time?
Or rather - can a zergling run past a widow mine without blowing up?
This was a... read more
Compiled by Courtney Santos and Amanda Wortman
The 2013 Digital Media and Learning Conference (DML2013) at the Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers in Chicago, IL on March 14-16, 2013 offers many opportunities to connect with researchers, including members of the Connected Learning Research Network, and to make inquiries into the role of connected learning in... read more
In November, as I drove from L.A. to San Francisco, I picked up an audiobook of the Hunger Games. After all, I was starting an inquiry into teenage girls’ fandoms and fanfiction practices. Having read literature on fanfiction and learning, I felt prepared to hack into the very roots of popular teen fandoms. My audio-archival research did little good, however, since... read more
In early February of this year, I visited a middle school near a historic district in Chinatown. The school is one hundred years old with a rich colonial history. I met Gary, the head of information technologies at the school, who is also a math teacher. Gary mentioned to me he wants to develop an app to help their 800 students learn about the school’s heritage... read more
