On Monday I helped kick off the Pre-Conference workshops at Alan November's Building Learning Communities week in Boston, with a four-hour workshop on using video games, text-based games, alternate reality games and consoles as a stimulus for creative writing, art, design and the sciences. The updated notes from Thinking Out Of The x(Box) are now available.
I was ably assisted from 6000 miles away by a Skyping Tom Barrett, who shared his experiences having just come off a four week Myst writing project. His use of one-to-one laptops and Google Docs to coordinate collaboration was interesting, especially since the group back in Boston shared my initial view that 30 laptops in a classroom would have killed the energy visible in Tim Rylands' class. The jury's out (permanently perhaps), and Tom's Google Doc work shows that great things are possible either way.
The updated notes for the session (minus the ARG stuff - that deserves a post on its own, to come soon) are available now, including some of the amazing Guitar Hero work done by Ollie and colleagues at MGS and the Nintendogs project that covered a term last year in Aberdeenshire. Enjoy and, if you decide to set out on an adventure with games in your classroom, please do tell me about it here.
Ewan - I'm currently attending a Teacher Game Institute at the University of Denver. http://p4games.org/ . I've blogged about my 4 weeks at http://mhobkirk.wordpress.com . This has been a great experience, as the folks here at DU have taken a holistic approach to game making. I'd be happy to answer any particular questions you might have.
Posted by: Mari Hobkirk | July 16, 2008 at 03:58 PM