This academic games conference prepares to start.

Today is the night before Meaningful Play 2010 gets underway.  This is an academic conference about, as the tag line says, “designing and studying games that matter.”   It takes place here in East Lansing, Michigan, on the campus of Michigan State University, over the next three days.  The sessions at this conference are less about implementation details (so no SRO technical sessions with Michael Abrash or John Carmack) and more about broader issues, such as how to make games more effective as learning tools, and what makes gameplay meaningful.

The last (and first) edition of this conference was held two years ago, and you can read my detailed information on that conference in my post Meaningful Play 2008, and in the next three entries for Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3.  Of course, I will be attending, and reporting from, the conference again this year.  In fact, I have already attended the first associated event (and picked up my badge).

This “pre-conference talk” was Hanging Out, Messing Around and Geeking Out: Connected Learning and Play in a Digital Age, presented by Mimi Ito of the Humanities Research Institute, University of California, Irvine.  In her presentation, she noted and illustrated these three main conflicts between traditional methods of education and learning via new media: originality versus sharing, stock versus flow of information, and top-down versus peer-to-peer.  She discussed and defined “connected learning”, involving three main elements: being interest-driven, involving peer interaction, and tying formal and informal methods together.  As much as I sometimes feel disconnected from the current social technologies, this definition clearly put my own educational experience at the forefront of the connected learning movement.

One piece of the presentation that clearly brought home the issues being discussed was a video, A Vision of Students Today, by Michael Wesch from Kansas State University.  It is particularly noteworthy that this video was created more than 3 years ago; think about how much things have changed even since it was produced.

After the talk (which was actually open to the general public), I skipped the reception for a personal errand, but I did return to (a different location in) East Lansing in time to pick up my badge at registration.  Of course, there was also a bit of swag, too, including a very nice zippered bag with pockets, the obligatory conference t-shirt, and other goodies.  Now I ask you:  How many professional/academic conferences provide a chocolate bar in the swag bag?  Great idea.

I will admit to being pleased to know the conference organizers and have them note that they were glad to have me attend again.  Now I just need to review the schedule book, highlight the interesting sessions and workshops (possibly all of them), and decide which portable electronic device to carry with me, or whether to go “old school” and take notes with a pen and paper.

… and I need to get some sleep.