Sounds like a great paper, eh?
One of my billion interests in studying gaming is studying the knowledge creation and sharing that goes on so seemlessly and successfully in game communities...and that is highly prized and rarely possessed in the business world, and off the radar in the education world (K-12 and higher ed.).
THis came to me in discussion with Holly this morning (OMG collaborative knowledge creation, LMAO). I was telling her how deeply I'd gotten into the Warlock forum thread on talents The discussion there, now a persistent thread, began when a lvl 60 warlock posted about six different configurations of talent points and the sort of warlock identity they each best support. This was clearly intended as an education piece, as indicated by the title Warlock Talents 101 (a call out to college culture, eg psych 101, art history 101), the postings have links to the talent calculator (yes, a tool for arraying different configurations of your talent points, and which generates a link for use in your postings).
I was reminded of my Pokemon community identity. In various Pokemon community sites, a common thread is something like Deck Talk or Deck Garage where you can post your favorite card deck for discussion, problem solving, or simply to display a real kick ass set of cards. In both communities' practices there is no one right answer or right way to play, and so the discussions get quite lively as folks not only take issue with other folks' propositions, but also argue their rationales fairly eloquently, thus providing insight to expert thinking of various sorts, in a kind of L&W access to practice way.
Then I realized that the same thing happens elsewhere. When I got my new Macbook Pro and had trouble with the wifi connection dropping out, I joined the forum hosted by Apple to discuss the issue. After I posted my entry, I watched as within the space of an hour 35 new messages went up around it. THat got me thinking again about the Pokemon and WoW forums and the vitality that is there and that makes the forums worth repeat visits rather than turning them into static, dare I say reified, FAQs. What I am saying is that there are 'Net savvy folks who simply understand and rely upon (assume) the existence of vital ongoing practice communities to create, exchange, and grab knowledge...practical knowledge. They understand how to join in, what to expect, how to behave, etc etc. Where is the analogous tool in school?
[And BTW we shall return to active Pokemon play. Sarah has been needling me. We lost our local gym (club group that does f2f meetings) and need to find another.]
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