 Online Learning Update Ray Schroeder, editor, COLRS - Online@Illinois SpringfieldOnline Learning Update - a blog published daily since 2001 by Ray Schroeder, Professor Emeritus, University of Illinois at Springfield |
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Friday, August 15, 2008
Overcoming the Fear of Gaming: A Strategy for Incorporating Games into Teaching and Learning - Rafael Alvarado, EDUCAUSE Quarterly
Of the many compelling genres of new media that currently vie for faculty attention, none seems more risky to the traditional academic than gaming. (By "gaming" I refer primarily to immersive computer-based video games such as The Sims, Civilization IV, and World of Warcraft.) Although digital storytelling, podcasting, blogging, and collaborative writing with wikis are each revolutionary in their own ways, they rely heavily on traditional oral, written, or cinematic forms already familiar to academics. Although these forms originate from the "Wild, Wild Web," they have penetrated academia in part because they have "domesticated" variants—even if their perceived "coolness" by association with the web is played up to attract students and technologists or down to comfort parents and administrators. Not so with digital games. As many advocates of academic gaming point out, gaming is the new rock 'n' roll—a lightning rod that inspires overblown fears of moral decline among critics, infatuation and often excessive use among consumers, and lofty hopes for social change among advocates.
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