information. games.

Moving

2008-05-02T13:13:00.000-07:00

I had intended to use this blog as a space to work through ideas and process them before using them to develop my writing in other venues. I guess you could say I was using it to play at being an author.

Well, as much as my writing does need work, I've decided to practice some other skills as well. So I'm hosting my blog on my own domain now and trying to learn a little php and mysql. I'm taking baby-steps. My new blog is up and running and I'm happy futzing with the details.

On the off chance that anyone is actually reading this, new material will be posted at: http://www.informationgames.info. I hope to see you all there.

Web 2.0: An unlimited resource of something

2008-04-03T08:11:00.000-07:00

Two-pointopians rejoiced at the news yesterday (AP wire report) and it seemed as if a blow had been struck against the cult of the expert. A 5th grade student visiting the Smithsonian noticed an error on a display that had been up for 27 years. A sign incorrectly referred to the Precambrian as an era, the boy dutifully pointed this out on a comment card and the paleobiology department acknowledged that the kid was right and corrected the display.

At first glance, this looks like an excellent anecdote to trot out when crowd-sourced resources such as Wikipedia are brusquely dismissed. One could hardly invent a more apt sound-bite than the combined authorities of the Smithsonian shown up by a schoolboy. Thus the smug disdain of the educated elite who dismiss publicly-authored documents in favor of the authority of established experts is refuted. Well, until today's news anyway.

Counterpoint quickly comes in the form of comments on a peer review 2.0 project at MIT Press that showed, unsurprisingly, that open review isn't yet ready to provide us with a replacement for good old peer review. (Chronicle, Ars Technica) So perhaps the revolution is not so quite so revolutionary after all.

I'm pretty squarely on the fence when it comes to crowd-sourcing, Web 2.0, or whatever we are calling it today. All of my bookmarks have been converted to del.icio.us and Facebook has become my favored means of communication must faster than I'm comfortable with. So clearly I'm an adopter. I find some of these new tools and new ways of communicating both useful and fun. On the other hand, one of the major aspects of my job is helping students understand why their professors demand they use peer reviewed sources. Our peer review systems are far from perfect, but they provide a service the academy cannot live without. Plus, I always chuckle when I read the Annoyed Librarian skewer technological evangelism. Of course, she doesn't really deal with the technologies themselves, just the uncritical adulation they inspire amongst librarians (myself included). Whatever we decide to call the new technology's participatory culture, it doesn't replace our existing authority schemes. It's new, it's fun, it's interesting for certain, but just how useful is it? When my cell-phone beeps at 4am telling me I have a new facebook friend, should I call that progress?

It will likely take us some time to figure out what exactly to make of the new participatory culture. We know it is something, I just don't know how to correctly assess its value. I'm behind the times and haven't read Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody yet, but I'm sure when I do I'll understand a little better. For a counterpoint I guess I'll have to go back to Marshall MacLuhan soon. A look forward through the rear-view mirror will be rewarding, I think. He predicted the "global village", but let us not forget it was a dystopian vision. We have a need for critics who understand new communication methods without getting swept away by irrational exuberance. So many criticisms of Web 2.0 seem based in nostalgia and snobbery, rather than in an engagement with and an understanding of what is actually going on that I have difficulty crediting otherwise valid points.

Returning to our heroic school-boy who set the Smithsonian's Paleobiologists straight, I think we can draw one solid conclusion about crowd-sourced review from his story. Notice the following section from the wire report:

While no previous visitors to the museum had brought up the error, it has long rankled the paleobiology department's staff, who noticed it even before the Tower of Time was erected 27 years ago, she said.

"The question is, why was it put up with that on it in the first place?" Ramsdell said.

A closer look at the story shows that the kid didn't know anything that experts didn't. He didn't have access to a better source of information, he just cared more. Hats off to him for it! For 27 years, no one with the expertise to know that the Precambrian was not, in fact, an era had the necessary amount of pathos to do anything about the error. With new media technologies and the internet, pathos is an unlimited resource. So while crowd-sourcing may not be a replacement for peer review, it is, at least, an excellent source of copy editing.

Why I'm interested in researching games and pedagogy

2008-04-02T18:13:00.000-07:00

(Originally Posted at gameslearningandlibraries.ning.com)
For quite a while, I was very happy to keep my pastimes and my work separate. Bicycling, motorcycle travel, GPS geekery, and zombie survival strategy don't really intersect with my professional life, so why should computer games? So during the day (and often into the nights) I would be an instruction librarian and in my free time I'd play games and contribute to an on-line gaming community. In fact, being on the tenure track meant that my gaming had to be strictly rationed. There wasn't (and isn't) much time for play.

Still, there were intersections. Our campus recently began a lower-division program. Previously, our students were juniors, seniors, and graduate students only. Preparing for our new students included reading the research on educating the students formerly called millennials. I began to wonder if these students' reluctance to trust published materials over Web 2.0 collaborative materials had something to do with the way gamefaqs, visual walkthroughs, and gaming communities provide more accurate and more up to date information on games than published game guides do, and are free to boot. Growing up with this experience likely has some lasting effect on how students evaluate information sources. (I still think this would make a great study, if anyone wants to put together a survey and try to get something published, let me know.) Occasionally, other connections would be made. Online conversations about Bioshock with college students helped me frame my own about teaching strategies for presenting critical thinking and textual analysis to my students. Playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and then re-reading the Strugatsky brothers' Roadside Picnic and then tracking down Tarkovsky's Stalker created an interesting web of themes and settings across media and made a great case for the maturation of games as a media format and / or art.

Still, I rarely mentioned games or gaming at the reference desk or in the classroom. Then I played Portal. Then I thought about how Portal teaches players how to use the Aperture Science Hand-Held Portal Device. Then I listened to the developer's commentaries and heard game designers talking about assessment, scaffolding complex learning goals across multiple lessons, designing assignments to reinforce particular skills, and engaging students in their learning . Here was a game doing many of the things the smartest instruction librarians I know have been encouraging us to use in our information literacy instruction. A realization came: Valve is doing it better than I am. Librarians have something to learn from game designers. My guilty pleasure just may have a place in the academy.

So I've integrated my hobby into my profession. I've had a conference proposal accepted to analyze Portal for teaching techniques, and another, with a colleague, to discuss integrating techniques games use to teach players into how librarians teach patrons. Currently I'm doing a lit review and reading how my colleagues are doing great work in this area. (I'm behind the curve, but I'm catching up!) I'm using examples from my own research w/ students, mainly because saying "video games" gets the attention of 19 year olds much more effectively than saying "information literacy". I'm using the excellent example of visual walkthroughs to influence how I design handouts and class web pages.

Summing up, I've been thinking about games and libraries because I'm interested in student learning. I've realized that the core ideas behind some of the library instruction buzzwords (assessment, scaffolding, project-based learning, community learning) are being put to excellent use by game designers. I need to develop a better understand of learning theory and information literacy. Studying how games teach players seems to be an excellent way to understand how librarians can best teach our patrons.