Recreation Time

Literacy and Hackability

Colleen — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 19:58:15 +0000

The Pearson Foundation has released another potentially groundbreaking study on digital media and learning today: “The Digital World of Young Children: Emergent Literacy”

I have to admit I’ve only read the summary so far, but the big findings, in particular mobiles as the only platform for many youth raise an important question. If youth are increasingly dependent on mobiles as the learning platform, how will they learn to hack these tools to create their own apps? While this is the pinnacle of Mimi Ito et al’s “hanging out, messing around, geeking out” trilogy of digital media skills, it’s the one that, in my opinion, is essential for digital literacy. Learning how something is made is the best way to be able to think critically about what’s out there and make your own contribution.

A recent tweet by McKenzie Wark says it all:
“Rather than phones becoming tiny computers, we’re going to get computers that are just big phones: closed, proprietary, unhackable.”

What do we do about this? I think we need to speak up about it and get the smart new folks in the White House’s Education office involved! First stop, an iPhone hunger strike outside of Steve Jobs’ office… (see John Battelle’s excellent “Here’s What I hate About The iPad” for the rallying cry.)

Sent from my iPhone ;]

Can D.I.Y. Supplant the First-Person Shooter? – NYTimes.com

Colleen — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:51:39 +0000

Can D.I.Y. Supplant the First-Person Shooter? – NYTimes.com.

The Time Paradox

Colleen — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 20:59:28 +0000

FORA.tv – Philip Zimbardo: The Time Paradox.

This hour-long talk by Philip Zimbardo (known for the famous Stanford Prison Study) is a fascinating look at how our subjective sense of time shapes the quality of our life. He references games a bit, but after talking with Frank Lantz (Area/Code, NYU and BudgetBall collaborator) I think games like Budgetball, which focus on encouraging future oriented thinking through the compression of time, could really contribute to these ideas. Either way, it’s pretty interesting:

french new wave

Colleen — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 20:03:59 +0000

samples of french new wave imagery for a special top secret project…new_wave

RFID Rube Goldberg device – Boing Boing

Colleen — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 16:24:14 +0000

I particularly like the moment when we wait for the text message to be received.

RFID Rube Goldberg device – Boing Boing.

Assignment 2

Colleen — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 02:31:07 +0000

Hi all, here’s the second assignment, 7 in 7!1_2_77

Interface Syllabus

Colleen — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 18:50:16 +0000

for my students, the syllabus and first assignment!

Interface_Syllabus

1st Assignment

Re:Activism in St. Paul, one year later | Twin Cities Daily Planet | Minneapolis – St. Paul

Colleen — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 13:22:22 +0000

Re:Activism in St. Paul, one year later | Twin Cities Daily Planet | Minneapolis – St. Paul.

There’s a nice story in the Twin Cities Daily Planet about a staging of PETLab’s Re:Activism there this past weekend. The focus of the event was to commemorate the RNC protests one year later. The folks in St. Paul brought awesome energy and creativity to the event! We were also able to create a DIY kit so people can run instances of Re:Activism anywhere in the world.

twitter theory (tweory)

Colleen — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 01:40:35 +0000

Epeus’ epigone: How Twitter works in theory is a really nice introduction to the social dimensions of the communicrack that is twitter. I’m currently working on a variety of twitter-based game projects with the design group Local No. 12 and find the design constraints of working with 140 characters of text super interesting.

In the post I mention above, there’s a key observation:

“Using friends’ faces in ads is even more pernicious, as ads are by definition recommendations from people we don’t trust.”

This hit home for my Local No. 12 colleague Eric Zimmerman, when a game advert took over his account, turning him into an adverbot:

wow. that’s a way to lose your players. Thanks @jofsharp for sending on this post!

Spotlight on DML | “We Don’t Need More School”: Learning Game Design After School

Colleen — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 11:40:11 +0000

I just posted a story about PETLab’s game design curriculum for Boys & Girl’s Club. Check it out:

Spotlight on DML | “We Don’t Need More School”: Learning Game Design After School.