Violence and Learning

I've still got some strong and some ambivelant feelings on violence and games and learning. For those of you that didn't get a chance to get to it last Tuesday, here is Grosman's Killology website:

http://www.killology.com/

In contrast to that is Jenkins article that says we need all the games we can get, in order to engage students in 21st century learning, and not deskill and bore them when they get to school. He briefly mentions the digital divide, saying that poor kids with no access are being left behind.

http://www.projectnml.org/node/306/

Then I found this article on Jacoby's new book that seems to say that partly due to the information explosion and partly due to American culture, hardly anyone thinks knowledge is important anymore, just opinions matter.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/14/books/14dumb.html

I now thinking everyone needs survival skills in today's world. News media coverage tells me that self defense skills are part of what is needed in this violent world, and some of that could be practiced in a computer environment. The other piece is that research and information evaluation skills will be critical, because you don't need to remember everything when you can easily look it up!

Doug

Academic Institutions in Second Life

The link on the class website to the research article on academic institutions in Second Life used INSEAD as one of its case study samples. If you haven't visited it yet, I highly recommend it. They've truly embraced the idea of classrooms without walls and thinking of creating "infrastructure" that cannot exist in the real world. I know this concept has been a challenge for many teams.