Games, Learning, and Second Life
by Alphaville Herald on 23/06/05 at 12:45 pm
Terra Nova has a preliminary report from The Games Learning and Society conference, with notes from the talks by Henry Jenkins and James Gee. Almost on cue, there is an interesting related post by Zero Grace on Clickable Culture. It does seem like games are promising environments for learning, but Second Life seems disappointing in this regard. I’m not sure why, but it is worth reflecting on the issue.
Tony Walsh
Jun 23rd, 2005
I think one of the issues with Second Life and education is that learning the interface and social conventions almost requires a class in itself. If you’re motivated or able to get over this learning curve, there are a lot of opportunities available for those interested in pursuing them. Prof. Megan Conklin of Elon University has been looking into this sort of thing lately. She headed the controversial Radiks family of students in SL early this year.
Urizenus
Jun 23rd, 2005
I was thinking it would be cool to recreate the world of Beowulf, complete with the dragon, Gendel, and Grendel’s mom. Maybe I’ll put together a grant proposal for that. If I have a free minute one year.