ENGL 680M: New Media

Allen H. (in our department) is looking to sell his XBox 360 Premium so that he can buy a shiny, new black XBox 360 Elite. He seems to be looking for $250 obo, he can be reached via email at akhunter(at)purdue(dot)edu. I didn't know if any of ya'll wanted a new XBox to keep your new Wiis company

Innovate, published as a public service by the Fischler School of Education
and Human Services and sponsored, in part, by Microsoft is soliciting
manuscripts for a special issue on academics in virtual environments. This
issue focuses on the use of Multi-User Virtual Environments (MUVEs) as an
enhancement to K-21 education. A MUVE combines graphics and audio with the
ability to communicate with multiple users in real time within the context
of a 3-D virtual environment. MUVEs are not necessarily considered games,

I am presenting at a local art gallery tonight with Sue Thomas (of the trAce online writing project and De Montfort University in the UK) and we have been having some fascinating talks about transliteracy.

I am terribly impressed that some of you are getting together during studio day this week. We are our own best resources, right? I can't wait to get back and see the progress that ya'll have made. I have personally been doing lots (and I do mean lots) of talking about games, but have had no time to play them while I've been in Vancouver and am feeling deeply depressed about that.

How many of you have seen the meta-games on gaming over at Kongregate? I blogged it a bit back so that I would remember to share it with ya'll and forgot There are 4 games in the series and I highly recommend them.

You know who you are. Have ya'll seen the Summer 2007 issue of the Innovations journal with all of the SL case studies? Check it out.

Check out Everyvideogame.com

This site will let you play some of the old games that Bogost talks about in his book. 

Christopher brought up an interesting point in the comments of the what you playin' post. How do we find time for/justify our play time (especially to those clueless wonders outside of our areas) and probably even more importantly to ourselves. With several articles, a slew of presentations, and a book in the works I still find it EXTREMELY difficult to justify my play time...even to myself. While I want to get past this I am pretty sure that I don't want gaming to start feeling like work (even though playing Oblivion -a game that I LOVED- now does seem like drudgery!).

Anybody else feeling like that at this point of the semester? Having difficulty with thinking of games as an academic (and necessary) endeavor?

The Carnegie Mellon library system has released (in beta) two games meant to get at using the library system. The first game, Within Range, is not the most interesting but it asks students to re-shelve books based on LoC subjects and the Dewey Decimal System. Useful for helping them find books in the brick and mortar library but not riveting gaming. The second game, I'll Get It, is a much like Diner Dash (only in a library). You have to look up the patron's topic and choose from 2 books or 2 internet sources what you will bring back to the patron based upon their research question. This one is a bit more interesting especially since it goes in waves and gets more harried as time passes.

How effective is this? Can we teach students how to use a virtual library and expect them to extrapolate that out to the real world? Or will they simply google the topic and go from there?

via Dennis Jerz