Archive | December, 2010

Facebook – Jack of all trades

I have the privilege and pleasure of helping out at the local youth group. On Monday we had our Christmas party.  I took some photos.  And put them onto Facebook – inevitably the online social hub of the group.  I also posted them on Flickr.  I received a note asking why I’d duplicated the effort.  […]

TV – the social media

In the last few years, some commentators have predicted the death of television, some even championed it, declaring that it was obsolete – superseded by interactive media that offer true user participation. They cite massive user figures for the likes of Facebook, World of Warcraft as evidence that traditional media is on it’s way out. […]

A degree of value?

Today the UK parliament votes to triple fees to study for a higher education degree. Given the composition of the House of Commons, the outcome of the vote is largely predictable. The effect on future generations is less clear. When student tuition fees were introduced in 2006, Universities UK (UUK), the representative organisation for the […]

Where play meets learning

Play’ and ‘games’ are dirty words to many traditional educationalists because of their connotations of trivial, wasteful and indulgent activity.  It might hark back to our WASP-ish philosophy that only hardship and suffering are good for the soul.   Even the seminal play theorist, Johan Huizinga, argued that play is “an activity connected with no […]

Facebook cartoon meme

You may well have seen the campaign on Facebook to change your profile picture to a childhood cartoon character. The changes were accompanied by a status update like this: Change your facebook profile picture to a cartoon character from your childhood and invite your friends to do the same. Until Monday, December 6, there should […]

Games teach us lots

In my earlier post, I highlighted how little actual evidence there was that games can deliver transferable learning on the own.  This post presents some of the recent work that suggest playing computer games can teach us lots, albeit as a complement to other interventions. There are two kinds of learning one can associate with […]