1. Emergent cyberculture
Contexts for the digital humanities

2. Wireless and mobile devices
Pedagogies of
ubiquitous
computing

3. What it means, top-level
“A device ecology”
-Petra Wentzel, "Wireless All the Way: Users’
Feedback on Education through Online PDAs"
(presentation at the EDUCAUSE annual
conferenceAnaheim, Calif., November 7, 2003).

4. 2. What it means, top-level
Information and media use:
• content capture
• content access (downloaded or
copied)news or information
• social connection (different speeds, synch
and asynch)

5. Another way of looking at it
All of Web 2.0, just more so
• Social media
• Microcontent
• Accelerando!

6. new interfaces
• tiny but beloved keyboard
• stylus
• touchscreen
• mouse might wane
(http://let.blog.nitle.org/2008/07/21/the_mou
se_soon_to_decline_gartner/)

7. netbooks
• Replace the laptop?

8. ebook readers
• The Kindle and others

9. phones
• iPhone’s
triumph
• Media
• Networked
• Apps
• Touch
• Other
platforms?

10. Phones plus

11. tablets
• Tablet and tablets

12. GPS-enabled devices
• Gaming: geocaching
• Devices vs functions
• Ultimately: AR

13. Clickers
• Er, Personal Response Units
• The unsung campus success

14. implementing clickers
• Classroom pilot
• Faculty/admin meeting
demo
• Owning units: students
or institution?
• Combine with ppt

15. implementing clickers
Pedagogical themes
• Interaction
• Polling
• Anonymity yet universality
• Aimed at large size class, often

16. implementing clickers
Using results
• Hide, reveal, or share?
• Snap poll
• Discussion generating
Clickers for questions
• Binary or multiple
• Student-generated
• Assessment vs
constructivist

17. implementing clickers
Other devices
• Smartphone apps
• Web polls accessible through multiple devices

18. “Pens”
• OCR
• Audio
• One classroom use:
http://mediatedcultures.net/ksudigg/?p=206

19. mobile game players
• PSP
• Others?

20. • Mobile, but not wireless
• -cables
• -USB drives
• -flash cards
• -batteries and outlets (for now!)

21. 4. Campus strategies
• Nearly a decade of practice to access
• Diverse locations of support
• Multiple engagements with device ecology

22. 5. Pedagogies
Emergent pedagogies
• Information on demand
• Time usage changes
• Class/world barrier
reduction
• Personal intimacy with
units
• Spatial mapping
• Mobile, multimedia,
social research

23. Learning spaces
In the classroom
• one leading pilot
space for wireless
• mode: lecture/lab
Campus
• other sites: library,
residence hall
• new learning spaces
• chunks of campus

24. Realtime search and news
Volokh Conspiracy, April 2007

25. Realtime search and news
“Students who have superb search skills have
introduced useful material or questions into
discussion. In a few cases, I’ve had students find
pertinent archival video in response to the drift of
the conversation which I’ve then put up on the
classroom projector.”
-professor Tim Burke, Swarthmore College
http://weblogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/2009/05/06/
the-laptop-in-the-classroom/

26. • Backchannel
• Smartmobs
• CPA
• Laminated
social layer
• Privacy?
Social practices unfolding
(dotguy_az)

27. Some practices
– Assignment to class: quick finding of facts (Randy
Stakeman, Emerging Technology workshop, 2009,
Colby College)
– Assignment: more extensive Web research (search,
assess, discuss, present)
– Scribes: one per small group, more than 1 per class
III. Pedagogies

28. Multitasking
• threats: distraction, wandering index/stimulus
• generational issue
• practice: shells down, machines open

29. Multitasking
professor Tim Burke, Swarthmore College:
“I am sure there are students in my classes who have
multitasked during a lecture or discussion. I’ll be honest
with you. I’ve done the same on my laptop when I’ve
been in the audience during conferences or lectures,
usually email. I’ve done that in response to being bored,
but I’ve also done it as a kind of thoughtful doodling
while feeling quite engaged and interested in what the
speaker is saying and taking copious notes…”

30. Multitasking
“…So it doesn’t worry or offend me that a student might
be doing the same. If it’s because they’re bored, that’s
an issue with my presentation. (Though I’m not going
to take responsibility for getting universal engagement:
you can’t get blood from a stone, and some students are
stones.) If the audience is still being thoughtful, taking
good notes, and retaining information while
multitasking, why should I care?”
http://weblogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/2009/05/06/the-
laptop-in-the-classroom/

31. III. Pedagogies
Campus life
• Informal learning
• Social organization
• Emergency alerts (voluntary)
• That privacy issue

32. IV. Examples
Mobile study journaling
John Schott, Carleton College, 2006

33. “The mobile phone is the primary connection tool
for most people in the world. In 2020, while
"one laptop per child" and other initiatives to
bring networked digital communications to
everyone are successful on many levels, the
mobile phone—now with significant computing
power—is the primary Internet connection and
the only one for a majority of the people across
the world, providing information in a portable,
well-connected form at a relatively low price.”

34. NITLE
http://nitle.org
Liberal Education Today
http://let.blog.nitle.org

35. Gaming
Long history of gaming
• Predigital
– Chess, go, Senet,
mancala,
backgammon, dice,
cards
– Kriegspiel
– Cold War games
Digital
• Spacewar
• Zork to IF boom
(1980s)
• 1990s rebirth

36. Gaming in 2008
Physical platforms
• Console
• Cell phone
• PSP
• Extended forms (DDR)
• New forms: Wii
PC
• CD, DVD
• Browser
• Downloadable
…And these can be
combined

37. Size: huge
– (WoW: 10
million
subscribers,
January 2008)
Player range:
genders, classes,
nations
Interface, device
driver
Eve Online, from site

38. Growing content diversity
• Current events
(Kumawar)
• Political argument
(September 12th,
FoodForce)
• Religious gaming (Left
Behind: Eternal Forces,
2006)
• Literary gaming
(Kafkamesto, 2006)
(BBC Climate Challenge; Ayiti:
both 2007-present)

39. Genres
• First-person shooter
• Puzzle
• Platform jumper
• Strategy
• “Adventure”
• Sports
• Minigame (Koster
fractals)
New forms
• Katamari
• Portal
• Augmented reality games

40. Economics of games
Who creates games?
• Businesses
• Governments
• Nonprofits
• Amateurs
Scales
• Large games
– $millions
– EA, Microsoft
• Modding
– Back to Doom, hacking,
View Source
– Neverwinter Nights
• Casual games
Other economics
• Gambling
• Gold farming
• Currency trading

41. Offshoot:
machinima
• Tools
– Counterstrike, Halo
– Second Life
– The Movies
• Art movement
– Machinima Academy of Arts and Sciences (
http://www.machinima.org/)
(Koulamata, “The French Democracy”, 2006)

42. Virtual worlds
Antecedents, early digital: science fiction
1984: William Gibson, Neuromancer
1992: Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash
“’Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced
daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation,
by children being taught mathematical concepts. A
graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks
of every computer in the human system…”
-Neuromancer

43. Antecedents, digital: the MUD, Adventure (1970s-present)
(LambdaMOO, 1990-present)

44. Antecedents, predigital: Theater of Memory
(from Philippe Codognet, http://webia.lip6.fr/~codognet/)

45. Avatar spaces
-Activeworlds
-Atmospheres
-There
(Activeworlds, 1995-present; image via www.virtualworldlets.net)

46. -Habbo Hotel
-Cyworld (Club Penguin, 2005-present)
2d-3d worlds
-Runescape
-VMK

47. Google Earth
-Keyhole DB
-2d: KML
-3d: Sketchup
-reach
-Geotagging
photos: videos
Mirror worlds

48. Augmented Reality
“Human Pacman,” Adrian David Cheok, circa 2005
-mobile devices
game players
general use tools
-science fiction
explores (Vernor
Vinge, Rainbows End)

49. Interactive Fiction
Speaking of text
adventures:
• 1980s boom:
Infocom
• Ongoing art form
• Nick Montfort,
Twisty Little Passages
(“Dead Cities”, from Lovecraft Commonplace Book project 2007
http://www.illuminatedlantern.com/if/games/lovecraft/)

50. Interactive Fiction
Speaking of text
adventures:
• Inform 7, free
IF editor
(Richard Liston, Ursinus College, classroom example 2008)

51. Narrative
Where is storytelling in a
game?
• Sequence of activities
• Cut-scene or cinematic
• Writerly player
• Encyclopedia world
(Murray, Manovich)
• Ludology vs. narratology
Linearity?
• Game on rails
• Branching outcomes
• Multilinear
• Open-ended

52. Alternate reality games
• Permeability of game
boundary (space and
time)
• Focus on
distributed,
collaborative
cognition
• Increased
ephemerality
(Perplex City, 2003-2006)

53. Political ARGs (ex: World Without Oil, May 2007)
()

54. Gaming and education
“Video games… situate meaning in a multimodal
space through embodied experiences to solve
problems and reflect on the intricacies of the
design of imagined worlds and the design of
both real and imagined social relationships and
identities in the modern world.”

55. 21-century boom
• James Paul Gee
(author of preceding
quote)
• Marc Presnsky
• Henry Jenkins
• John Seely Brown
• Mia Consalvo
• Constance
Steinkuehler
• Kurt Squire

56. James Paul Gee’s argument
• Semiotic domains; transference
• Embodied action and feedback
• Projective identity
• Edging the regime of competence (Vygotsky)
• Probe-reprobe cycle
• Social learning (roles; consumption-production)

57. Gee on Rise of Nations
More implicit pedagogies:
• “Fish tank” tutorial
• Strategic self-assessment

58. Multimedia literacies
• Gee: multimodal principle
• Selfe et al: multimodal literacy
• Bogost: procedural rhetoric
Dean for American game (2004)
Archived at
http://www.deanforamericagame.com/
play.html

59. Multimedia literacies
“…within games, there are in fact multitudes of literacy
practices – games are full of text, she asserted, to say
nothing of the entirely text-based fandom
communities online that take place in forums, blogs
and social networks.”
Constance Steinkuehler,
FuturePlay 2007, Toronto
Quoted in http://www.gamasutra.com/php-
bin/news_index.php?story=16264

60. Pedagogical functions
Summary by Jason Mittell, Middlebury College:
• Skills
• Simulations
• Politics (criticism, activism)
• Media studies (psych, cultural studies, media)
– NITLE brownbag, January 2008

61. Which educational theory?
• Ian Bogost: behaviorist versus constructivist
Image from Scot Osterweil, presentation to Learning from Video Games: Designing Digital Curriculums
(NERCOMP SIG , 2007)
Issues summoned up:
– Media effect (violence)
– Transfer across
domains, platforms
– Subjectivity and
assessment
– selection

62. Which educational theory?
Issues summoned up:
– Media effect (violence)
– Transfer across
domains, platforms
– Subjectivity and
assessment
– selection
Responses:
– Better media
– Instructor facilitation, by
various media
– More research needed
– Research and collaboration

63. So how is gaming used now?
Classroom and courses
• Curriculum content
• Delivery mechanism
• Creating games
Peacemaker, Impact
Games
Revolution (via Jason
Mittell)

64. So how is gaming used now?
One assignment: compare with documentary
records
• Gap between game and reality
• Spin or ideology
[img credits]

65. Game studies
• Serious Games
• Conferences
• Scholarly articles and books (MIT Press)
• Games Learning Society conference,
http://www.glsconference.org/2008/index.html

66. Scholarship
•Harry J.Brown, Videogames and education (2008).
•Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardrip-Fruin, eds. Third
Person: Authoring and Exploring Vast Narratives
(2009).
Game studies

67. How is gaming used now?
Libraries
• Collections
• Game night
• Creating
games
Defense of Hidgeon,
Games Archive:
University of
Michigan

68. Classroom uses

69. Pedagogy: virtual worlds
Ancient Spaces project, University of British Columbia
Machu Picchu,
Arts Metaverse,
Open Croquet

70. Pedagogy: virtual worlds
Second Life,
Bryan Zelmanov
Pedagogy: social software
“Emotional bandwidth”
(Linden Labs)
• Social presence
• Self-expression

71. Game studies
• Serious Games
• Conferences
• Scholarly articles and books (MIT Press)
• Games Learning Society conference,
http://www.glsconference.org/2008/index.html

72. Game studies
Liberal arts instances
• Aaron Delwiche,
Trinity (image)
• Christian Spielvogel,
Hope
• Harry Brown,
Depauw

73. Liberal Education Today blog
http://let.blogs.nitle.org
Prediction Markets game
http://markets.nitle.org/
NITLE
http://nitle.org