MacArthur Foundation

Thanks to Natasha Boskic for this:

1. Jane McGonigal (2010) URGENT EVOKE: Help us run a 10-week crash course in changing the world, Avant Game, January 11, 2010

Jane McGonigal has announced on her blog a new ARG, a “crash course in changing the world”. The game will start in March and the goal will be to address issues and find solutions for hunger and poverty, education, climate change, etc. The game will last for 10 weeks and each week the players will be presented with a new challenge.

The designers are looking for game assistants at the moment: http://blog.avantgame.com/2010/01/urgent-evoke.html

2. John Rice (2010) Five Video Games for ESL and Language Development, Educational Games Research, January 11, 2010

As an addition to his article “Virtual ESL”, that will appear in TechEdge, John Rice writes in his blog about five video games that are particularly well-suited to ESL acquisition and development: Second Life, World of Warcraft, My Word Coach, Webkinz and Whyville: http://edugamesresearch.com/blog/

3. Gavin Ogden (2010). Applications Open For Sony’s G.I.R.L. Scholarship Program, EDGE, January 20, 2010

To help educate more women about video games and prepare them for the production and design, Global Sales and Marketing, Sony Online Entertainment offers for the third time G.I.R.L. (Gamers In Real Life) Scholarship in the amount of up to $10,000 toward tuition and other educational expenses. http://www.edge-online.com/news/applications-open-for-sony%E2%80%99s-girl-scholarship-program

4. Bjorn Billhardt (2010) Engaging with Games and Simulations, Training Industry Quarterly Winter 2010

The article offers five strategies for making games and simulations successful in corporate environment. Billhardt’s paper focuses on creating a meaningful game for the task at hand, presenting challenges that give opportunities for failure as much as for success, and allowing people to compete against each other, rather than against the computer. http://www.trainingindustry.com/ezine.aspx

5. John A. Weiss. Jr. (2010) Gaming in the classroom? New class says yes, The Michigan Daily, January 21, 2010

One more course about games at the undergraduate level has become part of the regular offering at the University of Michigan School of Education. http://www.michigandaily.com/content/2009-02-16/videogames-and-learning-new-class-u-studies-videogames

6. Reimagining Learning Digital Media and Learning Competition, HASTAC and MacArthur Foundation

This is the third year of the Digital Media and Leaning Competition initiated by HASTAC and sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation. It “challenges designers, entrepreneurs, practitioners, researchers, and young people to put participatory learning to work on behalf of science, technology, engineering, math and their social contexts in the 21st century”. The online application system was open January 15, and the due date for the preliminary application is January 22, 2010 http://www.dmlcompetition.net/index.php

News on Virtual Worlds: NMC March Symposium and MacArthur Foundation Awards

Natasha Boskic writes:

I attended the NMC Symposium on New Media & Learning at the end of March (2009) which was completely done in Second Life.

It was an extraordinary experience with good presentations, with things running smoothly and on time. A variety of speakers with diverse topics made the sessions interesting in their own way, even for the novice users such as myself. We had an orientation to Second Life environment and the conference venues prior to the symposium which helped a lot. Many presenters tried to do something with the audience, and the collaboration turned out to be very successful, such as working in Google doc and other google applications, or “composing music” (creating sounds) with our avatar’s movements, just like using a wii. The sessions were video recorded and they are available to the public, under “Symposium Program”. Almost a hundred photos from the symposium have been posted in flickr

The other “news” I have is about the MacArthur Foundation. A few days ago, they announced the 2009 winners of Digital Media and Learning Competition. Nineteen projects from around the world were awarded $2 million to explore how digital technologies are changing the way that people learn and participate in daily life. The proposals were submitted by individuals, for-profit companies, universities, and community organizations for projects that employ games, mobile phone applications, virtual worlds, social networks, wikis, and video blogs. A short description of the projects is available at: http://www.dmlcompetition.net/. There is one project from Canada, “History Game Canada” (Queen’s University).

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News on Virtual Worlds: NMC March Symposium and MacArthur Foundation Awards

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