ScotteVest Good Fit for Bitheads. Scott Jordan's eVest keeps getting better. Version 3 of the gadget-friendly jacket has 2,313 square inches of pocket space and 23 zippers. A product review by Leander Kahney. [Wired News]
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Adult Women Like to Play Games. A new industry poll reveals that more women than teen boys are behind video game consoles. The poll also finds that lacking a better alternative, adult women prefer war themes over the light 'n' fluffy doll games now offered. [Wired News]
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Video Games in the Classroom?. A good, intelligent discussion of the (potential) use of games in education. The participants avoid stepping on cliches and approach the topic with sound fundamentals. Many useful nuggets. Like this: "Games can teach facts well and certainly could be used for this without much change in schools. But the real potential of games is to get people to think, value, and act in new ways. A game like Civilization can get the player to see that history could have happened in different ways..." Some of the questions show that people still don't get it, though. For example, one person comments, "The question about their possible place in the classroom -- in a university classroom, I presume -- is another matter." James Gee is a lot more diplomatic than I would have been: "I do believe that education at all levels needs to get out of the four walls of a classroom and a rigid schedule of the same hours for each class not matter what it is." By contrast, this is a great question: "Can video games be an interface for distance learning? Is anyone considering or doing this?" Now you're thinking! And "I guess that my interest in computer games is embedded in a larger interest in the emergence of new texts and new literacies." Whee-hoo! Do read this transcript. By James Gee, Chronicle of Higher Education, August 27, 2003 [Refer][Research][Reflect] [OLDaily]
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Denne er klippet fra INFOBITS: VIDEOGAMES -- THE NEXT EDUCATIONAL "KILLER APP"?

In "Next-Generation: Educational Technology versus the Lecture" (EDUCAUSE REVIEW, vol. 38, no. 4, July/August 2003, pp. 12-16, 18, 20-2), Joel Foreman, professor in George Mason University English Department, proposes a "fringe idea" with the potential to revolutionize the educational system. He believes that "large lecture courses may someday be replaced by the kind of immersive digital environments that have been popularized by the videogame industry. Viewed in this light the advanced videogame appears to be a next-generation educational technology waiting to take its place in academe."

Foreman illustrates his idea with a hypothetical Psychology 101 course that uses an immersive environment to engage students in "learning through performance." Using the videogame model, students would progress through several "levels" of the course as they build upon their knowledge of the material and meet the course's learning goals.

EDUCAUSE Review [ISSN 1527-6619], a bimonthly print magazine that explores developments in information technology and education, is published by EDUCAUSE, 1150 18th Street, NW, Suite 1010, Washington, DC 20036 USA; tel: 202-872-4200; fax: 202-872-4318; email: info@educause.edu; Web: http://www.educause.edu/. Articles from current and back issues of EDUCAUSE Review are available on the Web at http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/.
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