4 April 2024 - kudos:

Catching up on grading today, and I’ve been laughing out loud at some of my students’ Hypothesis annotations of class readings. I’m so glad I use this instead of discussion board responses: It’s so much more organic and creates more social presence in online classes.

🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'New Catan game has overpopulation, pollution, fossil fuels, and clean energy'

2 April 2024 - kudos:

Interesting! I haven’t been into Catan for years, but this could bring me back. link to “New Catan game has overpopulation, pollution, fossil fuels, and clean energy”

on Scrabble, French, and what it means to learn

19 January 2024 - kudos:

In the summer of 2015, New Zealander Nigel Richards won the French-language world Scrabble championships despite not speaking a word of French. I heard this story on a Radio Télévision Suisse news show repackaged as a podcast (probably Le 12h30, but I can’t remember exactly) and wrote myself a note that if I ever got a chance to teach a class on games and learning, I would use this story in it.

assessment statements in my Spring 2024 graduate syllabus

6 January 2024 - kudos:

I ended the Fall 2023 semester with a lot of anxiety and frustration about grades, and there was enough of both that I wound up making a lot of changes to a graduate class that I was sure I was going to keep mostly the same from last year. Not all of these changes were assessment-related (I replaced a lot of readings and shuffled content around some), but I also more-or-less threw out the assessment structure that I’ve been using since 2019 to replace it with something minimalist and closely tied to the course’s learning objectives.

🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Fantasy Morality - Existential Comics'

4 December 2023 - kudos:

Good joke here—and one I may share with the students in my games and learning class next semester. link to “Fantasy Morality - Existential Comics”

27 November 2023 - kudos:

I have been feeling bad all semester for the students who signed up for my data science class because they enjoyed my games and learning one. I’m the same professor in both, but games and learning is very fun-focused and sociocultural, whereas data science is a firehose of stats and coding.

🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Daybreak, a game about fighting climate change, is blindly optimistic - Polygon'

6 November 2023 - kudos:

This is an interesting review of a game that I hadn’t heard of but am now intrigued by. I wouldn’t mind playing an overly optimistic game right now, but I also appreciate the central critique of the game in the review. I think there’s value in recognizing the tensions that prevent us from defeating these obstacles as (relatively) easily as we can in a game. link to “Daybreak, a game about fighting climate change, is blindly optimistic - Polygon”

🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Anarchist Chess - Existential Comics'

9 October 2023 - kudos:

What I like about this comic is the way it shows that we build values we don’t agree with into games because games are more fun with conflict. link to “Anarchist Chess - Existential Comics”

LIS 618 course mentioned in University of Kentucky news

4 August 2023 - kudos:

I love hearing from former students about the great and interesting things that they’re up to—and especially when something they learned in one of my classes helped them along the way. In my experience, former students who are up to great and interesting things would often be doing those things whether or not they had taken one of my classes, but I still appreciate feeling like my teaching contributed in some small way.

a small victory for not policing students

21 March 2023 - kudos:

I’ve never been a fan of policing student behavior in my classes. I don’t take attendance, I’m pretty generous when it comes to late work and making up assignments, and I try to make participation in class something that’s organic rather than something structured and forced. In recent years, this hasn’t necessarily gone well. For example, the undergrad class I’m currently teaching has lousy attendance, and I struggle to get anyone except the 3-4 same voices to contribute to class discussions.

rediscovering some comments on computational thinking

6 March 2023 - kudos:

I keep a journal using the Day One app for macOS/iOS, and while I have some lingering concerns about platformizing (and even digitizing) my journaling, there are also some pretty neat aspects to using an app like this. First, it’s very easy to copy text from other electronic sources into the app, and that really helps me capture things that made an impression on me from day to day. Second, it’s also easy to search for, read, and even be reminded of old entries.

🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Games, Mysteries, and the Lure of QAnon | WIRED'

20 September 2022 - kudos:

This isn’t the first article I’ve read comparing Q to an ARG, but I may still send it to my students next semester. I’m also interested in the book this comes from… link to ‘Games, Mysteries, and the Lure of QAnon | WIRED’

🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Why Race Is Still A Problem In Dungeons & Dragons'

15 September 2022 - kudos:

Good article on an important subject. I may have to assign this to my students next semester! link to ‘Why Race Is Still A Problem In Dungeons & Dragons’

8 August 2022 - kudos:

Really leaning into ethics and justice elements of data science in my fall class, and I’m wondering how much pushback I’m going to get. I’ve taught about racism, sexism, and colonization in games in another class with very few complaints, but this feels different somehow.

28 February 2019 - kudos:

I recently had students modify a “life simulation” as an exercise in examining the values embedded in games, and their collective rage that choosing to read a book increases the “loneliness” score is so satisfying.