NOTE: Audio from  a public dialogue between researchers and long time collaborators Jim Gee and Henry Jenkins held on Wednesday, April 18, 2007 at Cornell University is now available.

audio [mp3]

I have to admit that the eight life-sized video projections around a dim room populated by clusters of two or three people at computers flying their avatars to exotic Second Life destinations while seated at intimately-lit tables made me worry about what my avatar was wearing to the party rather than what I was going to learn. What about those aqua blue dragonfly wings? Where can I get a pair of those?

Poster for the April 18 event held at Cornell University and Ithaca College.

This is just what Cool Hunters Jim Gee, author of “What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy,” (University of Wisconsin) and Henry Jenkins, author of “Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide,” (Massacusettes Institute of Technology) would like me to be thinking about. Well . . . and maybe the code I would write to fulfill my personal desire for a pair of wings, in a nice mauve color
Jim Gee and Henry Jenkins speaking at the colloquium.

Gee and Jenkins were in Ithaca, N. Y. on April 18 to meet with faculty and speak at the Information Science Colloquium and Innovation in Teaching Speaker Series co-sponored by the Cornell Department of Communication, Cornell Information Technologies, The Roy H. Park School of Communications at Ithaca College, the Game Design Initiative at Cornell, and the Cornell Information Science Program. I met with them several times during the day to interview them for NSDL’s blogosphere.

I introduced them to the National Science Digital Library with the quick history elevator speech concluding with objectives for NSDL as an evolving participatory learning network supported by the NSDL data repository based on Fedora architecture. Jim in particular had many questions about Fedora’s ability to store “an entire game,” making parts of it available for smart visualization tools and other types of interactive applications that currently “all try to do different things using the same data”.

Since NSTA I have been wondering about what the “next big thing” will be in the cross-over between popular culture and education, so I asked these self-proclaimed “cool hunters” what they thought. This was really the only question that I need to ask to launch an ongoing discussion covering topics that included gaming, design, the role of technology, teaching, personification online, learning and the value of mass collaboration.

Jenkins immediately suggested a recent post from his own blog, “Confessions of an Aca-Fan” (Aca stands for Academic Fan of Popular Culture) entitled “The Merits of Nitpicking: A Doctor Diagnoses a House.” Jenkins explains a type of fan criticism blog in this entry: “Nitpickers examine their favorite programs through a particular lens — in this case, medicine — in which they have developed expertise.” In criticzing a popular TV show from a medical perspective Scott, a doctor, offers a scientific and medical view of the series.

He suggests that the popularity of shows like CSI and Star Trek can be used as springboards for discipline-oriented reflection and “nitpicking” as a way to potentially “deconstruct a popular representation.” He also speculates, “What gets added when we move from a single knowledgible critic like Scott to the incorporation of a larger community of interested people who might bring slightly different expertises to the table or who might have competing interpretations and evaluations of what is represented in the program?”

Gee and Jenkins concurred on the historical role of science fiction in generating imaginative thinking about scientific innovation and discovery. “What is the moment when we transform so much of ourselves (with cyborg-like technology) that we are no longer human?” asked Gee. “This is narrative that Japanese Anime, for example, has been focusing on for some time. What happens to race, to governments, to social systems when humans become non-human? These are conversations that students are interested in having.”

Gee, a dedicated gamer who is online in multi-player game spaces about four hours a day, says that online learning communities in game spaces are organized completely differently than schools. “Game spaces are collaborative problem-solving spaces. Schools provide students with verbal understandings that can’t be used to solve real-world problems. Schools should be able to connect understanding to students’ personal goals and objectives.”

Jenkins, who tries to spend about 2-3 hours a day watching TV and an hour reading comics defends pop culture: “Pop culture does not dumb things down. Kids want to be masters of games and the skills that allow them to leverage their knowledge while they are engaged in real processes.”

Both Gee and Jenkins, who represent loosely two ways to look at media-literacy–from interactive gaming and cultural-humanities perspectives respectively–believe that students should be empowered to “think like designers” so that their media experiences suite them perfectly.

“The facts come free in this type of activity, ” stated Gee. There is no need for rote learning if concepts and information are bundled in a game space. Students not only come away with the facts, but with a deeper contextual understanding of the facts in a situation.

“Gamers often do not ’see’ game content–they look for objectives and how they can be matched with tools.” Gee explains this ability to look through complexity to meet personal goals is a good example of model-based thinking. (to be continued)