Gaming
Learning from Video Games: Designing Digital Curriculums: A NERCOMP SIG Event
Not so long ago, the stereotypical computer gamer was a geeky adolescent male who basked in the glow of a computer screen for days at a time, living on nothing but junk food and soda. But these days, as I observe my two daughters, I know that computer-mediated games can be a healthy pursuit and that they are now central to the lives of many youth. For example, my 10-year-old spends hours playing online Webkinz games to earn "cash†so she and her 9 year-old sister can purchase furniture for the house of their stuffed animals' avatars. The youngest also desperately covets the Wii, longing for something to do that's more "active and interesting†than TV.
My daughters are teaching me that digital games can be multi-faceted, social, compelling, and intellectually stimulating worlds. In comparing the richness of good digital games with the mind-numbing worksheets that my daughters bring home each day from school, it's apparent that educators have a great deal to learn from computer games. In early October, 2007, a group of NERCOMP workshop participants met in Southbridge to do just that.
Conference on Gaming and Simulations, Dickinson College
Dickinson College will be hosting a small conference entitled "Games
and Simulations for Situated Learning in the Liberal Arts Classroom"
You can read the full description here:
http://www.nitle.org/index.php/nitle/content/view/full/2011
The conference is open to librarians, technologists and professors from NITLE institutions. If you're not sure if your school is a member, you can check their list, http://www.nitle.org/index.php/nitle/about_nitle/colleges
Attendance is free, and we're offering a stipend of $750 to cover travel and lodging expenses as well.
If you're interested, please send an email to Todd Bryant at bryantt@dickinson.edu
along with a brief description of how you have used or hope to use
games or simulations at your college. Questions can be sent to the
same address.
The Horizon Report: A NERCOMP SIG Event
Beyond Google: What Next for Publishing?
While we have been busy attending conferences, workshops, and seminars on every possible aspect of scholarly communication, information technology, digital libraries, and e-publishing, students have been quietly revolutionizing the discovery and use of information. Their behavior, undertaken without consultation or attendance at formal academic events, urgently forces those of us in scholarly publishing to confront some fundamental questions about our organizations, jobs, and assumptions about our work.
Digital Gaming Teaching and Research at Michigan State
