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I spent my whole Saturday morning working with 5 of the best educators I know. We're bringing gaming into the classroom. Once Suzie Boss pointed me to Jane McGonigal, I became a follower. So yeah, can I put follow McGonigal for Act1 in Evoke? Why not? After all she says things like this: "In "EVOKE," you're leveling up in world-changing superpowers like creativity and resourcefulness. You're unlocking achievements by completing real social innovation missions. Even though much of the game material is real and important and serious, you get the motivational push of game dynamics and the rewards and satisfactions of making real progress. Plus, it's a social network, and once you start making friends with other players, there's all the social stickiness that involves." In this quote, you can see that McGonigal is attempting to bring together the power connective powers of social network with the addictive and motivational mechanisms of games. Plus it's all about doing REAL missions, missions in real life. I'm still not sure that my students will see the connections between their addictions and the learning/doing/re-wiring that McGonigal is aiming for in Evoke. I'm not sure, but I've been VERY impressed so far with how Evoke feels, and I've been seeing that the gamers in my classroom are the first to "get" this game. I want to learn more about McGonigal now, because it gives me more confidence that she is up to something with Evoke, that it has the power of a massively multiplayer online game and the seriousness of a political action social network.

"The cocaine trade has impacted Brazil and in turn its favelas, which tend to be ruled by drug lords. Regular shoot-outs between traffickers and police and other criminals, as well as assorted illegal activities, lead to murder rates in excess of 40 per 100,000 inhabitants in the city of Rio and much higher rates in some Rio favelas.[12] Traffickers ensure that individual residents can guarantee their own safety through their actions and political connections to them. They do this by maintaining order in the favela and giving and receiving reciprocity and respect, thus creating an environment in which critical segments of the local population feel safe despite continuing high levels of violence. Drug use is highly concentrated in these areas run by local gangs in each highly populated favela. Drug sales and use run rampant at night when many Favelas host their own baile, or dance party, where many different social classes can be found. These drug sales make up "a business that in some of the occupied areas rakes in as much as US$ 150 million per month, according to official estimates released by the Rio media.""

I'm looking into Jane McGonigal's work around ARG's - Alternate Reality Games. In particular I'm wondering how playing one of these games changes the way people interact because they are thinking differently. This is what McGonigal has to say about such changes: "Games, when you play them with other people, … actually strengthen the reward circuitry so it actually makes people more social and more likely to collaborate because their brains are actually more responsive to people online and offline. Games are transforming the brains of people who play them in largely positive ways." She is saying that by playing a game, we adopt a role and use our brains differently. This expands what is possible in our brains, and has impacts on what we do in life after we are finished playing the games. And this is what games should do: change how we live our lives when the games aren't there. Like art helps us see differently, games should help us live by different rules, recognize different systems than we saw before playing the game.