Submitted by Bill Densmore on Fri, 06/04/2010 – 2:32pm
Session Convenor: Emilia Askari
Session Reporter: same
Discussion Participants:
Maria Rojas, Narjis Rahman, Ross Neal, Carmen Lee, John Kotarski, Eric Galatas
coding isn’t geeky — it’s creative, like writing. everyone will have to learn the grammar of coding. we should start in kindergarten with computer etiquette. by middle school, students can be creating apps. we need a curriculum to teach students how to create apps and onlne games.
how do we get kids excited about news? connect it to things that excite them, such as music an sports.
news U site has great tutorials. wish there was one on how to create a game. classes at Wayne State require students to complete the News U tutorials and reflect on what they learned.
Boys and Girls Clubs — really good at teaching people how to create in-person games. This same skills may be useful to people planning online games. Would be interesting to relate in-person games to virtual games and vice versa.
someone should create a game-building template, a wordpress of games
what appeals to people about games like foursquare varies from person to person. element of conquest is important.
webkinz — very popular with very young kids. we should create a news-related or civic-related counterpart.
educational computer games can help motivate older kids to stay in school
graphic novels — base them on news rather than history and make them interactive
makebeliefscomix.com is a good way to create manga
Flash — important for building games — can learn Flash on Knight Digital Media Center website
need to campaign for policy change — people who create state graduation requirements and benchmarks should let journalism or story-telling count as an English class
John had success creating a news program with high schoolers in Mount Clemens. he had them interview five different people on the same topic for cable tv. different perspectives on the same topic made the story stronger.
Elliot Soloway – UM professor who’s a great resource on mobile phones in schools
Henry Jenkins at USC — another resource person
sandboxgamemaker.com — web site with game template
qik — app that lets you use a mobile phone as a camera livestreaming to the web — will use this at the US Social Forum coming to Detorit June 22- 27
signature practices vs best practice — signature practices can be adapted for each location