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January 26, 2006
What's Cool (Bluegoose on the Brazos)
One crucial act of nerdism is to obsess over cool stuff. On the technological side, cool stuff is usually gadgets. A new program, a new game, a new tool. If it's cool, it demands your attention and nothing can get in the way.
For educators who think they can appeal to nerdism by making college courses into computer games, several problems arise. First, school is always decidedly uncool. Second, the educators themselves fall into a kind of nerdism and tend to get excited about their tools and then neglect what they wanted to teach in the first place.
[From Bluegoose on the Brazos. My response (also on this blog): [...] although I am able to see how this problem with courses surrounding video games may arise, I would like to offer a counterexample. Dr. Dennis G. Jerz was an undergraduate mentor of mine who enlightened me about technical writing, hypertext, usability, and new media as our interactions continue to this day through blogging. Anyway, he is teaching EL 250: Video Gaming at Seton Hill University, a course that contextualizes video games as Interactive Fiction with new media and he is getting a positive response from students who say they want to be there. BK]
Posted by kuechebj at January 26, 2006 11:11 PM
Comments
Dr. Killingsworth (jimmiebluegoose), SSpring, and I are having a good discussion at Bluegoose on the Brazos on this post.
Posted by: Bobby Kuechenmeister at February 17, 2006 01:17 PM