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November 13, 2012
The Digital Edge is invested in situating digital media and learning strategies in social context, including exploring the factors that contribute to a student’s future orientation. In related blog posts, both Vivian Shaw and Alexander Cho explore this topic based on the Digital Edge team’s field work in an Austin-area high school.
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October 26, 2012
During my fieldwork in Sackboy Planet, an online community of LittleBigPlanet2 players, I frequently observed community members sharing their designed levels with others and for various purposes.1 Usually, players share their levels-in-progress on the website’s for
Read More...October 19, 2012
I recently traveled to Athens, Greece and experienced the cab ride from the airport into the city centre as a trip through an alien landscape. This was partly due to the general lack of sleep and fresh air that accompanies trans-Atlantic travel, but was wholly amplified by the view out the car window. Every roadside billboard we passed—and there were many—was either sun bleached to the point of unintelligibility or completely empty. And not the hopeful empty symbolized by a crisp, white surface awaiting an eager advertiser but the sad emptiness of one left ragged and stripped by the crash.
Read More...October 12, 2012
eSports are a specific category of computer games. eSport games like StarCraft II are intentionally designed by the game developer to be both highly competitive (“difficult to master”) and also easy for fans to watch. eSports is an emerging market participated in by professional gamers, coaches, sponsors, event organizers, and celebrities. An eSport is an emerging sporting genre entering public spheres occupied by traditional sports like football and soccer.
Read More...October 9, 2012
One of the more compelling aspects of connected learning is the opportunity for students to create personalized learning pathways that establish important links across the different nodes in their learning ecology. I had a chance to witness the power and potential of connected learning during a three-week summer digital media and design camp that we conducted with students at Texas City High School (TCHS).
Read More...October 4, 2012
World of Warcraft (WoW) is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game with a subscribership of 10.2 million1. The player is offered a variety of options when choosing a character. There are two factions each with six races (and the recently added pandarens which can play either faction), two genders, and there are ten classes and each class can have one of three specializations. There are many choices just to select your character. Then there are professions to choose and play style choices (like whether you want to join a guild), and the list goes on.
Read More...September 29, 2012
Last month, I blogged about the 2012 Ravellenic Games as a Ravelry community event that encouraged participants to craft while watching the Olympic Games. The event was a huge success and was a source of inspiration and learning for many of the 10,000 participants who scrambled to start and finish projects, learn new techniques, and overcome many obstacles to cross the finish line and earn a badge.
Read More...September 21, 2012
In my previous posts[1] I’ve talked just a bit about some of the design principles that our work with the game designers at MediaMolecule (Mm) revealed. The purpose of this post is to foreground a system of design principles underlying the LittleBigPlanet2 game that are relevant to the design of connected learning environments.
Read More...September 12, 2012
While news about sexism in gaming came as a shock to many media outlets in recent months, researchers of gender and game culture were not surprised.
Read More...September 7, 2012
According to a StarCraft self-reported community survey, only 1.8% of respondents are female.1 That is a very small number. Why are female gamers nearly absent from the StarCraft community site?
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