feminist blogs

With the aging of the Baby Boomers there is more and more of a demand for tools for maintaining or mental agility. My own mother was searching out a copy of the game. She didn't get it because she was chasing down the sale price...and no I didn't buy it for because I was offering up my old DS fat to the cause.

While Nintendo bills the game as neuroscience in their advertisements they back off and say that "it's just a game" when called to task for it.

A new article in Seed Magazine on games and the elderly brain brings Brain Age into question as a tool and concludes that while Brain Age is not what it claims to be there are software tools, like PostitScience available that do improve brain function for the elderly and schizophrenics. The problem is that the software is pricey and requires a PC. I would love to see more research done on games like Brain Age or see software developed for handheld devices like the DS and financially accessible to the elderly and poor.

Image from the Nintendo Brain Age site

via Seed: Mind Games

This could be fun! Digital Game Based Learning (2001) Don’t Bother Me Mom I’m Learning MA Teaching Taught HS Math Ran a School Games2train.com (serious training in a games environment) Goal is to do a reading teacher game Engaging Today’s Digital Learner Education and Learning in the 20th AFTRB- another fucking three ring binder Training is top down. We decide what students will get and how they will get it What’s different about the 21st century? Change (world, students, and engagement, change, education) Are you changing to meet these challenges. Do you see education happening in the classroom or in the world?

So I wimped out a bit on the bread. I made a 2nd batch with all white flour just in case the first loaf didn't turn out right. Better safe than sorry, right?

I've been thinking a lot about language acquisition lately. Lisa and I have been talking about learning Spanish. Not the academic classroom Spanish so much as conversational Spanish. Taking a conversational class somewhere in town would make good sense. At the same time I've been thinking about how to do this in other ways. Language acquisition through video games has always been an interesting idea to me. MIT grad Ravi Purushotma (06) and graduate student Dan Roy (07) have done work on using COTS game Grim Fandango (a personal favorite of mine from Lucas Arts) and The Sims 2 (EA) to teach Spanish and German respectively. It has long been my thought that COTS games are definitely the way to go when thinking about games in the classroom. Many games now allow for extensive modding and have the benefit of multi-million dollar development budgets. This is something that educational/ edutainment games don't have the benefit of.

as my granny would say. Yep, snow in April. The world is coming to an end. The driving rain of the morning turned to snow by the afternoon and the dog wouldn't go for my suggestion that he just stay inside and hold it until the weather changed. *sigh* The odd wintry mix has inspired me to do some cold weather cooking. I checked the deep freezer and found both chili and beef stew. Did some thinking and decided to mix up a batch of No Knead bread to serve up with some kind of soup/stew for dinner tomorrow. I used half whole wheat flour so we'll see how that turns out. Since this process takes about 24 hours total there will be no whipping up a new loaf if this one fails miserably. I'll have to run out and find bread at the store.

On a more scholarly note, as I start prepping for my C&W presentation I am struggling with the ethics of using game ROMS and emulators for research purposes. My talk is going to cover some hand held games and I can't think of any easy way to record game play that would make decent video. The only thing that I can think of is using emulators and recording the game play from my computer. So the question is...is it still wrong if I already own the game? If a ROM runs in the forest and no one is around to catch me doing it is it still illegal? :-)

This week we had the TLT (Teaching and Learning with Technology) Conference on campus and I had a dissertation defense at the same time as one session that I really wanted to go to today. Sarah "Intellagirl" Robbins was going to be talking about her work in Second Life.

My solution email Sarah and ask her out for coffee. She graciously agreed and we spent a couple of hours having a great conversation. I appreciate her letting me hold her up from heading home to her family. Feeling not quite so bad about having to do the defense today after all.

I have been playing lots of flash based games over at Kongregate and one of the things that I have found most useful. There is a series of 4 (so far) games called "Understanding Games". Episode 1 deals with rules, representations, and interactivity, Episode 2 deals with player motivation to continue in a game and fun, Episode 3 (my favorite) deals with the concept of learning in video games, and the latest installment, Episode 4 deals with player identification in games. While episode 4 isn't as game-y as some of the previous installments it does cover some basic and important concepts.

Got an hour or three to spare? Head over to Kongregate and play around a bit.

via joystick101

Just in case video games aren't enough to stave off Alzheimer's I decided to learn a new knitting technique as well. And because I can't do anything the easy way I decided to do a fairly difficult pattern to learn it. I'm making these socks:

Entrelac socks. I'm not making them knee highs of course, but there is something about the socks that made me really want them! After I cussed a lot and depended on the kindness of friends I got them up and going:

I am still working on my research, but there is nothing really new that I am really want to share yet. If you want to learn more be sure to come to my C&W session in the "D".

Just a quick post to announce the relaunch of Joystick101, the games and education blog. One of the great things about the relaunched site? Yep, you guessed I'm one of the contributing authors.

Aside from my participation, there are some very smart people over there talking about games to grab your attention. Check it out early and often!

So it's that time again. When we think of Cs we think of knitting (and crocheting and tatting and any other fiber related craft) :-)

How would folks feel about a Wednesday Happy Hour for knitting. Last year we talked about taking the yarn bus up to Flying Fingers, but it seems that the bus has been damaged by a freak tornado that touched down in the driveway of the shop. (no shit, it really happened)

I would love to do a 6-8 dinner/drinks type thing again (but I doubt that I can trick my partner into coming this time). I don't know New York as well as I know Chicago so I would love to have a suggestion for a pub near the conference hotel.

We're currently digging out of the foot and a half of friggin' snow that we got yesterday! Yesterday a neighborhood kid, one of my neighbors (with his snowblower), and I spent a couple of hours digging us out of the 4 foot drifts that had us barricaded in the house. Of course it continued to snow and there's about 6 inches of fresh snow covering our drive and walkways.

The dog is pissed. He wants to go out and play. I tried to take him out yesterday, but visibility was so low that I didn't see the waist high drift that we walked into. That was an ugly situation. As it warms up a bit I plan to go out and clear a path through the backyard to an area that has less snow so that I can put him out for a few minutes here and there during the day (for his sake and mine).

Right now I am going to knit and play games to entertain myself. BTW I've been playing the PC version of Oblivion and working with the TES Construction set as a part of a pedagogical brainstorm. Look out for more on that in the future.