Tara McGowan's List: Gaming

• Nearly half a million people are employed in "virtual sweatshops" earning points and goods in online games to sell over the internet, a study has found.
• gold-farming, where a player attempts acquire gold, equipment or tradable skills, usually by actions like killing monsters, is growing rapidly according to researchers at Manchester University.
• the industry, which is largely based in China, although also includes Romanians, Indonesians and Mexicans, currently employs about 400,000 young people who earn an average of £80 per month.

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• Chong, meanwhile, became the world's first full-time TV gaming commentator, and later found himself heading the e-Sports unit of the JoongAng Media Network, one of South Korea's biggest media companies, with interests in publishing, TV and the Internet. In this role he now devotes himself to consolidating Seoul's position as the nexus of the gaming world.
• If he decides that he likes you, your Seoul entrée is assured. He can get you an audience with the mayor (who turns out to be a gaming evangelist, seeing gaming as a way to project Seoul's "brand image of the future").
• eoul's Teheran Road — the Wall Street of e-Sports — leading developers beckon you into their glass-clad aeries on Chong's O.K., and reveal secret test versions of unreleased games.
• e-Stars Seoul — an annual three-day "digital sports festival" scheduled this year from July 24-27.
• e-Stars Seoul is designed to bring the world to the South Korean capital in homage — to be to gaming what Athens was to the ancient Olympics.
• hometown heroes Jun (Lyn) Park and Park's archrival, Jaeho (Moon) Jang. Both are highly remunerated, 21-year-old Warcraft players. Jang, the five-time world champion, made around $130,000 last year
• When they walk into a cyber café — or "PC bang" as they are called in South Korea — customers crane their necks in astonishment.
• In 2006, South Korean promoters staged the World e-Sports Games in Hangzhou; the event smashed Chinese records for Internet viewing. "Over 2.3 million people were watching the final online at the same time,"

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• "'Gold Farming': Real-World Production in Developing Countries for the Virtual Economies of Online Games," by Richard Heeks, a professor of "development informatics" at the University of Manchester.
• gold farming" is the practice of purposely playing an online multiplayer game so as to earn in-game currency that can then be sold to other players for real, non-virtual currency
• He could have earned that gold himself by killing enemies or selling enough laboriously "hand-made" virtual crafts, or he could have hooked up with a gold-farmer broker somewhere on the wild Net and bought the gold with his real-world allowance.
• he regularly sees advertisements for "World of Warcraft gold" on his Gmail account.
• Hard data on the practice is difficult to come by, but according to Heeks' literature review, 80-85 percent of world-wide gold-farming takes place in China and "the rather wobbly-legged best guesses for 2008 are that 400,000 gold farmers earning an average US$145 per month produced a global market worth US$500 million; but we could easily more than double the latter to over US$1 billion. There are probably 5-10 million consumers of gold farming services."
• Gold-farming has come under criticism from "legitimate" game players, who feel that it ruins the gaming experience and contributes to in-game inflation, to the point that some players feel justified in killing any gold-farmers they run across while playing.
• virtual sweatshops that simply continue Western exploitation of low-cost developing nation labor.
• research by Nick Yee, a scientist at the Palo Alto Research Center, who proposes disturbing analogues between online and offline international labor relations.
• Yee insightfully [demonstrates] parallels between reactions to gold farmers, and the treatment of Chinese immigrant labour working laundry shops during the California gold rush of the mid-to-late 19th century:
• "The contemporary narrative starts to feel too much like the historical one -- Chinese immigrant workers being harassed and murdered by Westerners who feel they alone can arbitrate what constitutes acceptable labor."

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• reveals that online or electronic gaming is one of the technologies that students use most frequently—and that educational gaming is one of the emerging technologies that students would most like to see implemented in their schools. Yet, only one in 10 teachers has adopted gaming as an instructional tool.
• 64 percent of students in grades K-12 say they play online or electronic-based games regularly. On average across all grade levels, students are playing electronic games about 8 to 10 hours a week. More than 50 percent of students in grades 3-12 would like to see more educational gaming in their schools—yet only 19 percent of parents and 15 percent of administrators favor that idea.
• Julie Evans, Project Tomorrow’s chief executive. “Students are really articulating their interest in gaming, as well as the many benefits educational gaming can provide, such as helping them to learn difficult math concepts. Even the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics recognizes the huge potential for gaming technologies [in education].”
• Three Florida counties—Orange, Seminole, and Volusia—have adopted this software in their middle school classrooms
• “When I first saw the DimensionM product, I thought the graphics were incredible and the idea of making math practice a part of a video-game format was brilliant,” said Melissa Young, district mathematics specialist for Orange County Public Schools. “As I’ve been working with the math teachers and students in recent weeks, I’ve realized why it works—because it gives kids a reason to want to learn math.”
• “We are witnessing a metamorphosis of sorts. Within the first few weeks, we saw students seeking assistance from their teachers before the scheduled time for math, so they could beat their friends. … It’s driving up math scores. When our students are experiencing success on the game, it transfers to success in the classroom.”
• the No. 1 reason K-12 students like to play electronic games is the competition with other kids.
• only 11 percent said they are currently incorporating some gaming into their instruction.
• While 53 percent of middle and high school students are excited about using mobile devices to help them learn, only 15 percent of school leaders support this idea.
• Keeping school leaders well informed is the first step toward helping to bridge this disconnect, Project Tomorrow believes—which is why, for the first time, the organization provided online surveys for school leaders (who were defined as principals, technology coordinators, district administrators, and school board members).

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• Brantley's colleague, kindergarten teacher Mary Ford, has also used the Wii sports games in a joint activity with an older class: Ford and third-grade teacher Laura Smith paired up their students for a game of bowling with a little real-world math practice thrown in.
• nother Cumberland kindergarten teacher, Lois Haueisen, uses the Wii's Big Brain Academy, which challenges players on logical thinking and math. The game tests players' abilities and speed at solving various problems, involving skills like counting, recognizing patterns, and size comparisons.
• "One child honestly expressed his desire not to be in kindergarten if work was involved," Haueisen says. "Since the introduction of the Wii as a tool in his education, he willingly and diligently participates in class activities. Whenever he wavers, I explain how similar our class activities are to the activities he enjoys on the Wii, and he is back on task quickly."
• In fact, when she asked students why they thought the class used the Wii, they listed various reasons, including fun, learning, and "Everyone's a winner."

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• A study into what makes gaming pleasurable revealed a phenomenon called "flow" - a feedback loop between the level of challenge and the level of skill.

• The upcoming Spore game, from the creator of The Sims and Sim City Will Wright, is another example of a game that can offer children valuable lessons.

   

  "Spore is interesting because not only does it have those elements, it's a sandbox kind of God game where you have to create assets yourself. So you're experimenting - if I do this what happens, if I do that what happens," she said.

• The Quaker Valley High School
• all but two Allegheny County school districts receiving Classrooms For the Future grants -- Allegheny Valley did not apply and Duquesne was not eligible -- every district is equipped with technological teaching tools.
• Those schools use the power of technology to gather data and collaborate together."
• hrough video conferencing, which allows students to take virtual field trips or converse with students around the district or around the world.
• Jeff Taylor, director of curriculum, assessment and technology for North Hills.
• Teachers monitor the blogs, allowing students to learn how to behave on the Internet in a safe environment, said Chris Stengel, director of technology.
• Grades and homework assignments are now available on district portal Web sites, memos to parents are sent via e-mail or text message, and study guides are part of class Web sites in many districts. Students in the Fox Chapel Area School District start using online supplements designed by their teachers as early as first grade, said Norton Gusky, coordinator of educational technology for the district.
• "Now we have to look at how do we take technology to the next level where we're personalizing it and using it to meet the needs of many students."
• the introduction of iTunes University to local schools this year, students will be able to access original content from their teachers on their iPods, said Kevin Conner, instructional technology specialist for the Allegheny Intermediate Unit.
• "When rock 'n' roll came out, it was like, 'Oh my god, the world is going to fall apart,' " Czegan said. "And it can be the same now. The kids are so into their technology. It's just taking it and showing them how to use it in different lights."

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• he future of online learning, Mayadas says, lies in "blended" programs that combine faculty face time with the flexibility of online teaching.
• By combining face-to-face interaction with new online options in more powerful ways, these programs should offer the best of both worlds—rendering moot today's debate over whether virtual or in-person degrees are best.

• Logging in via their PCs or laptops, professor and students interact and work together as digital avatars—just like they would in programs like Second Life, using voice-over-Internet to talk or ask questions. The class is part of a fast-growing movement to apply state-of-the-art computer-game technology to U.S. college learning. Similar experiments have been conducted at Harvard, Amherst and MIT.
• This fall, more than 4 million students in the United States will take at least one course online, says Frank Mayadas, an expert on education technology at the Sloan Foundation in New York. America's biggest online school, the University of Phoenix, has grown from 80,000 students in 2000 to 345,000 students today and is on track to reach 500,000 by 2010.
• Four out of five U.S. college students now commute to campus every day,
• Stanford alone now boasts more than 50 different online master's programs, most of them in engineering and science, which have no physical classroom component but which Stanford claims are just as good as its on-campus offerings.
• while 83 percent of U.S. hiring managers said in a June survey that online degrees are more accepted today than five years ago, only 35 percent considered them equal to traditional degrees.

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• a new computer-based writing program that will be rolled out at six elementary schools and three middle schools in the Capistrano Unified School District early next year, funded by a $971,614 federal grant to improve technology and electronic learning resources.
• "Students will create and submit a piece of writing to an artificial intelligence software program, and immediately the system sends back a score and suggestions for improvement," said Susan Holliday, educational technology director for Capistrano Unified. "We're really focusing on students learning and not just on the technology."
• he writing program, called Write Away, is intended to complement and enhance regular classroom instruction, not replace it, Holliday said. The sophisticated program examines basic sentence structure, vocabulary use, spelling, grammar and organization, and then provides nearly instantaneous feedback.
• At least 25 percent of the funds must be used to train teachers in the use of education technology

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• Educators at Buffalo Creek Middle School are finding that when it comes to teaching advanced computer skills to computer-savvy students, there is no such thing as too young.
• n the school's Distance Communication class, children as young as 11 learn how to use professional computer animation and 3-D modeling software. They are required to use computer code to build their own Web sites.
• teachers here believe students who already use computers and iPods to communicate and play games are ready to learn skills needed in an increasingly technological job market.
• The class is getting rave reviews from students who see their future as video game designers or digital animators for companies like Pixar and Disney. Many of them give up free time twice a week to spend more time on their projects at an after-school program.
• Buffalo Creek spent $80,000 equipping the distance communication classroom with computers, software and digital cameras. School district officials said if the class works, it could be offered at other middle schools.
• In Sarasota, digital and Web design is typically taught at high schools, said district spokesman Scott Ferguson.

• This is the first semester for the class, and as it progresses Platt plans to place the students' Web sites onto the Internet. Many of the students' 3-D models will be submitted in statewide contests.

  "These kids are so receptive to this," Platt said.

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• nstantly, Matorella can see that all but one child answered correctly - and only she knows who got it wrong. "It's anonymous and they feel free," she said. "They love when I say, 'Get out the remotes.'"

• Principal William Moore was an early advocate of technology in the classroom, teaching astronomy courses online when he worked as a professor at the New School in Manhattan.

   

  When he came to MS 202 several years ago, he put WiFi Internet access in the school and bought laptops for every floor. But he never imagined the changes he's seeing now. "We're lightyears ahead of what I ever thought I'd have here," Moore said. "It totally transforms the school."
• Students at MS 202 said they preferred their high-tech classrooms to the ones in their former elementary schools - and particularly like the SMARTboards more than blackboards.

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• The Ozone Park middle school is one of 22 across the city participating in a pilot program designed to create and test-drive the 21st century classroom.

   

  About $13.4 million in capital funds, along with federal grants, have been invested into the so-called iTeach-iLearn schools over the past two years.
• Teachers receive training so they feel comfortable with the new technology,

• "If we are to produce the kinds students who will keep Chicago a leader in the global economy, we must have a major focus on science and technology," the Mayor said.

• The five proposed technology academies are all existing kindergarten-through-8th grade schools and would place an emphasis on improving students' math and reading skills through problem-based learning, incorporating technology as a tool.
• They were created as part of a district-wide technology initiative, which was made possible by a federal Voluntary Public School Choice grant for $11.7 million.
• Technology would be used to demonstrate and teach communication skills, creativity and innovation, research, development and information fluency, critical thinking and problem solving.

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• a new study has this week praised gaming for encouraging teenage players to become more socially interactive with friends and the community.
• Notably, the study also found that gamers use educational software to help them learn more about important global issues.
• a whopping 99 percent of the boys and 94 percent of the girls actively play some form of videogame ranging from simple Solitaire through to sci-fi epic Halo 3 and sporting stalwart Madden NFL.
• the study found that 52 percent of the teens were drawn towards games that made them consider moral and ethical decisions, while 43 percent said they enjoyed videogames involving the governing of an interactive and evolving community, city or entire nation. A further 40 percent said they played games that helped them learn more about social issues.
• The study also deemed that teenage players regularly confronting problems through virtual communities were more inclined to volunteer for charity work, join a protest march, and remain on the information bell curve regarding the state of politics.

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• With Free Realms (a game coming out of the San Diego team) SOE is aiming at not only the 9-14 age range, but those kids' parents and family as well. Combat is no longer the primary MMO experience with Free Realms. In fact Smedley was keen to point out that players will have to go and seek out combat much like people do with crafting in other MMOs. The four primary activities in Free Realms are -- in no particular order -- pet raising, combat, housing and mini-games.
• Another very important aspect of the experience is instant access, which is why the game is completely free to play. The game can be jumped into in about a minute of time,
• on that first day they'll experience two things right away: lots of high quality production and amazing customization.

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