I would like to invite you all to wonderful West Lafayette, IN for our Serious Games forum (October 11-12). The forum brings together teachers and scholars who study commercial games that have persuasive ability and serious games in the more traditional sense. The participants are coming together to talk about issues of race and gender in games and the creation of games; cognition, education, and literacy skills and gaming practices; and the use of online virtual worlds as educational environments.
Our featured speaker is James P. Gee and panelists include Mia Consalvo, Sheri Graner Ray, Sarah Robbins, and Alice Robison. It is going to be a great conversation. If you can see your way clear to join us (or send your students) please do so. More information can be found online at http://www.purdue.edu/discoverypark/dlc/gameforum.
As always, please feel free to contact me directly for more information!
Games Research
I think it's a pretty good idea to have a games research forum. Commercial games are more and more important in today's society, they are everywhere. Lots of money is generated by this industry, but also it has a lot of influence on players. They have positive and negative effects, some are educational, but some carry some pretty bad ideas. I made a school research on freeware games available on google games directory and on a freeware rpg games website. I was quite amaze to find that almost all games carry great valors like friendship, determination, even compassion, but also some pretty bad ideas like the need to get vengeance and the fact that it's ok to do everything to get what you want. Video games are a pretty interesting subject for sure. Are they good or are they bad, that's everybody own opinion i guess :)