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Lucasfilm’s Habitat was one of (if not the) first graphic-based virtual worlds. I was too busy playing Curse of the Azure Bonds to notice it. Shame.
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Archive for May, 2008
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“With summer jobs in short supply, more young people are pursuing money-making opportunities in Web fantasy worlds.” Another reason why teaching 21st century skills to teens is so important.
posts that might have something to do with what I just said:
A few months ago, I asked if I was the only one troubled by Doodle 4 Google, the in-school marketing campaign art competition put on by the good folks at Google. Since then, over 16, 000 K – 12 students across the United States have spent valuable class time helping Google redesign their logo, just like Dennis Hwang does for special occasions and holidays. Unlike Mr. Hwang, the thousands of students working to “re-design” Google’s logo aren’t paid employees of the corporation. They’re just unpaid labour in Google’s latest marketing campaign to establish brand loyalty in young students, take over the learning and become the curriculum.
Check out the classroom product placement and unquestioning student/teacher adoration for the Google logo in the video below.
Continue reading ‘Doodle 4 Google continues in-school branding campaign’
Tags: adcreep, consumerism, corporations, culture, doodle4google, education, google, literacyposts that might have something to do with what I just said:
Yesterday was the Joan Ganz Cooney Center Inaugural Symposium, Logging Into the Playground: How Digital Media Are Shaping Children’s Learning, in New York City and thanks to the wonders of streaming media and virtual worlds like Second Life, I was able to take part in the action.
The site’s blurb described the event as:
Key leaders from the fields of research, industry, policy, philanthropy, and education will convene to examine how recent research and experimentation with interactive media such as games, mobile technologies, and other platforms can accelerate children’s literacy learning. We will also be releasing recent research and reports from the Center, including a national survey conducted with Common Sense Media that examines parents’ and educators’ attitudes regarding digital media use in young children. Another highlight is the early release of a white paper by noted games expert, James Paul Gee.
The whole day was packed with great speakers, from PBS, EA Games and many NGOs, each outlining their plans for engaging learners with digital technology from virtual worlds to talking books and everything in between.
For me, however, the most important part of the day was release of some great papers on digital learning, including James Paul Gee’s “Getting Over the Slump: Innovation Strategies to Promote Children’s Learning.” [pdf]
In the paper, Gee calls for the American education system to wake up and start some serious action to engage learners and prepare them for the digital future. In addition to calling for more funding of school programs and a revamping of how kids are assessed, Gee outlines a vision for “Digital Teacher’s Corp”, where teachers are “trained to help students learn to transform information for discovery and problem solving, not leave it inert in storage.” Gee also sees a role for the community in the learning of students through centres not unlike the Boys & Girls Club, where children can go to learn and build on their digital literacy skills. Personally, I see these centres working like the literacy tutoring centres, Once Upon a School Dave Eggers has helped create (and outlines in this fantastic TED Talk), but instead of magazine editors and writers, the place is filled with game designers who take the afternoon off to teach kids how to make video games.
Although the conference and the reports are all from US educators and based in the current education climate in the states, Canadian educators have the same lessons to learn. As our education system begins to move toward standardized testing, now is the time for provinces and school boards across the country to increase their funding of technology in schools and create innovative programming that is rooted in sound pedagogical theory but also designed for the future and the learners who will make that future.
Check out more about the symposium here.
Tags: education, gaming, literacy, media, rezed, technology, teensposts that might have something to do with what I just said:
Reluctant media king, author, blogger and web host of the Liam O’Donnell online empire, Jim Munroe is holding a very special screening of his lo-fi classic-to-be, Infest Wisely, to celebrate the release of the DVD of the movie.
Update: the screening is May 15th, not May 8th as I previously thought due to a severe lack of coffee and posting – always a bad combination.
Check out the trailer below:
Jim is one of those unique writers that is able to distill the hype, horror and humor of our evolving tech-obsessed culture and boil it down to reveal the civil liberty erasing bones beneath the glossy 2.0 surface. And he does it with little or no money and with a completely open source and creative commons powered agenda that makes a creative like me stand back in wonder. The route he’s taken to produce and release Infest Wisely is only the latest example.
Continue reading ‘Infesting wisely tonight, er I mean next week, in Toronto’
Tags: culture, infestwisely, media, movies, nanobots, nomediakings, tech, technologyposts that might have something to do with what I just said:
If I could, I’d wear this video as a hat and broadcast to all who see me.
Tags: netneutralityposts that might have something to do with what I just said:
Today is going to be a good day. The sun is shining and I have several great science fiction stories to read. They’re all part of the Visions of Science Imagine 2008 young writers competition and I have the honour of being one of the competition judges.
What is Visions of Science? From their website:
Visions of Science Network for Learning Inc (VoSNL) is a not-for-profit organization that advances the educational achievements and career aspirations of African Canadian and other under-represented youth in the fields of science, mathematics and technology.
In addition to running weekly science clubs and student science exhibitions, VoSNL also runs the Imagine short story and poster contest. Students from across Canada were challenged to write and submit a short science fiction story that features a protagonist who is a visible minority. The winners of the competition will be recognized at the upcoming VoSNL 17th Annual Science & Technology Symposium in Toronto on May 10th, 2008.
I’m honoured to be judging this year’s competition. Initiatives like Imagine give students the power and the voice to create their own narratives and place themselves into fabric of learning about science. This is a transformative act that not only empowers youth by seeing themselves and others like them in the context of science, it also shines a light on lack of representation in much writing for young people in North America. Despite living in an amazingly diverse society, a quick survey of children’s literature (new releases and old) will show you that the vast majority of the heroes in these stories are white (usually middle class, often private/boarding schooled.) This is especially true in the genres of science fiction and fantasy. Next time you are in the children’s section of your local bookstore, do a quick scan of the covers and see how much diversity is staring back at you. I would bet it is depressingly little.
This is one case where you can judge a book by its cover, because this is what young readers do. If they don’t see themselves represented, it becomes just one more hurdle to turning that learner into a passionate reader.
Taken further, it becomes clear that this homogeneous blanketing of the heroes of childern’s literature is one of the many reasons why today’s youth don’t see themselves reflected in the curriculum. The result of this is disengage from school.
For these reasons alone, I am excited, honoured and eager to dive in and get some sci-fi reading done. As a sci-fi fan and writer, I am really looking forward to seeing what the imaginations of young people have created. So far, all the stories are great and full of surprises. But I know one thing for sure: picking a winner is not going to be easy.
No tag for this post.posts that might have something to do with what I just said:
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“Legitimate online video services have already been slow in coming to Canada, but because of download limits being imposed by the country’s major internet service providers, they may never really get here.” This is what a non-neutral net looks like.
posts that might have something to do with what I just said:
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If you’re reading this, then you like the internet. Let’s stop it from becoming TV.
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