I <3 the Internet

Warning stream of consciousness ahead!

Well I guess it all really started from a magazine. Today at work we recieved our regular subscription to Museums magazine. It sounds really exciting, I know but in it was an article by an interesting woman who I sheepishly admit I thought was a man because it was about gaming. She wants to use gaming in all sorts of great ways, including saving the world and having a game designer win a Nobel Prize. In the article she talked about happiness and how video games are really great at producing happiness based on some basic principles happiness researchers (yup they exist) have found. This all connected to museums because she thought museums should be at the forefront of creating happiness and that they could use the principles of gaming to do so.

Sooooo I've been thinking lately about my degree topic (educational technology) and how the part I'm really interested in is individualized instruction. I really think that's where technology has a chance to shine instead of just being annoying and hard to work/incorporate into the classroom.

When I first heard about gaming and ed-tech I thought, 'eh'. I've seen Scott play and play and play and didn't really want to have much more involvement than that. But when my professor described the way games can become really great individualized instructors my interest was piqued.

Anyway, back to Jane McGonigal, who happens to be the lady I was talking about earlier. She's awesome. I found her blog and she has some great stuff there and great ideas in general. I am always a fan of the "make the world a better place" ideas. But doing that while having fun is even better. She talks about how people spend 20 hours a week on World of Warcraft and compares that to the amount of time it's taken to build Wikipedia to it's current state. Basically WOW players could have make Wikipedia in a few months. She also links to this site where you play a game of exchanging and building on ideas the Signtific Lab. Their name bugs me because I always want to pronounce the G. So that was interesting, so is her Top Secret Dance Off. You can browse her blog for yourself to find all these crazy things.

I don't know if this gets anyone else excited, but I can't wait for the future and to meet people like her and to create games to educate people well and change the world and GRRRR just DO something with my life.

p.s. I was going to make a super secret dance and post it, but I made the super secret dance video and decided that it should remain secret.

Causes

Monday I went to the New York Women in Communications Matrix Awards. This is a big awards show that was held at the Waldorff this year honoring women in communication. I saw many well known news people, actors and the like such as Bob Woodruff, Christiane Amanpour, Diane von Furstenberg, Wolfgang Puck, Diane Sawyer, Bill Irwin, Robin Roberts, Anna Deavere Smith, and Padma Lakshmi the host of "Top Chef". For all that there were some famous people related to food, the chicken was some of the dryest stuff I'd ever had. I don't give the Waldorf=Astoria high marks for culinary craft. Wofgang Puck joked that he'd make lunch for all thousand some of us next year. Some of the speakers were pretty interesting. Bob Woodruff was the reporter who was severly injured in Iraq, Robin Roberts is a reporter on Good Morning America who is recovering from Breast Cancer. It was neat to see what these people had to say about where they came from and how they got to where they were.
I also had to think of Sarah and wish that her event could be just as packed as that one was. Sarah is coordinating a fundraiser for the non-profit she works for, Hope Communities. If anyone plans to be in the Denver area around April 19th they should go. While I'm putting in a plug for charitable events
I should probably also mention one of my favorite causes, Camp Sparky. If you're interested in having a nice dinnner along with an inspiring speaker and a silent auction where you're nearly gauranteed to get a good deal you should definitely go. This raises money to send an entire 5th grade class of underpriveliged kids to a 3 day camp run entirely by ASU student volunteers. It's pretty amazing to think that they spend just about $7,000 to take a hundred kids a hundred miles and feed, house, entertain and teach them all. It's really neat to hear the kids talk about leaving the city of Phoenix for the first time or see how excited they are to see snow or even a mountain. If you have time or a few bucks they're definitely a good organization to give to. Here are a few fun memories from the time when Scott and I ran around with packs of kids. That's him leading the charge and encouraging everyone to jump in to the "orchestra". Then there's me being the firm instructor that I am and finally one that's back from the day when Scott liked to be a little more wild with his looks and dance moves. Ahh memories.

From Camp Sparky

From Camp Sparky

From Camp Sparky

From Camp Sparky