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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.

"On the other hand, Smith said that any game developer trying to build a game that attracts audiences around the world would do well to concentrate on proper localization. Mistakes that have annoyed regional audiences, Smith said, have included one social game offering virtual goods timed for Christmas that didn't make sense to South Americans because they featured snow-oriented scenes. "

"Still, it may not matter whether developers consider social games to be bona fide games, Reynolds said. Rather, succeeding in the Facebook era may mean learning a lot more about social interactions than about game mechanics. "The magic is in the social interactions," Reynolds said. "And so we have to devise game mechanics that are very, very light...get the social right, and then work on the game mechanics."

This looks like a very interesting map of a course, and isn't this what many of are teaching, whether we call our course English, technology, social studies, or computer arts?

Discusses how social games like Farmville make money.

I was searching up, "phobia reasons and symptoms," and this item came up. It focuses on two types of phobias, Agoraphobia and sociophobia.\n\n"Agoraphobia like social phobia, affects more women than it does men. Sufferers of agoraphobia are terrified of panic attacks occurring in public places. Common fears are crowded environments and places where one can't escape easily. Meetings, standing in a queue or elevator are common situations that spark fear."

""People with Asperger's have a special ability to remember a particular event in a detailed manner. But they don't understand the social context of the situation," says Dr Rajendra Barve, psychologist. " This stood out for me because we can't remember things in details the next day. But they can remember things clearly.

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.

A special session to commemorate International Women's Day on 25 March at ESCAP headquarters in Bangkok, with the theme, "Women Speak Up: Voices from the Informal Sector," heard messages about valuing women's informal work and their contributions to the global economy. The event included a discussion on women informal workers, addressing accountability and the need to affirm the value of women's work in the informal sector while making linkages with migration, HIV, violence against women and women's leadership. "We must have the involvement of women and girls in finding effective solutions. It is women who raise sons and daughters and are influencing children's attitudes and values about gender equality and human rights," said keynote speaker Dr. Saisuree Chutikul, a former Minister attached to the Office of the Prime Minister of Thailand and current member of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. "They should have freedom to express their views, to participate in decision-making and have leadership roles in areas of their concern." "Women are more marginalized than men. And as workers, women are the bottom of the job hierarchy. They have limited access to productive resources, often working for low wages, in contractual and flexible employment, without legal or social protections or collective bargaining mechanisms, and subject to market vagaries,"

I've been thinking about how some of the Diigo tools can help students to become a more thoughtful, slower, more considered process. "Carr goes on to argue that reading online---the most prominent form of reading for many---has devolved into nothing more than "power browsing," a horizontal trip through text characterized by skimming in search of content that is immediately engaging and accessible. Concentration is irrelevant to the online reader, as new pathways are only a quick click away. "Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words," writes Carr, "Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski." " I agree that students tend to skim and perhaps look for nuggets they can use in their own writing when they read online. Changing this is what I want to use Diigo for.

It seem to be everywhere!