Most of the posts about deafness, voice and Second Life are over at our project blog – If interested, follow these links:

http://learningfromsocialworlds.wordpress.com/category/accessibility-deafness-virtual-worlds/

http://learningfromsocialworlds.wordpress.com/9a-deaf-in-second-life-paper/

Does the video stuff at iTunes have captions? I’m not really interested in making stuff that I could not watch myself. Well, I could watch it but it’d be pretty dull without subtitles. Anyway. Some stuff on podcasting and accessibility http://www.techdis.ac.uk/index.php?p=3_10_13_3 There is probably more there at the JISC website  – they also have an accessibility SIG. Presumably captions/lack of captions (ie subtitles) also has implications for people studying in a second language …? The thing might be to play around with voice to text software and combine (cut and paste? is that possible) with something like  http://subtitle-horse.org/. That’d be better than a separate transcript I think, if the process could be made really simple…

Meanwhile – some randomly assembled links to accessibility and podcast things (there’s lots and lots out there…)

http://www.gcast.com/u/kingettblue/main?nr=1&&s=66908556

http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/news/archives/2007/12/podcast_accessi.html

http://www.stonedeafpilots.com/?p=6

http://www.irishdeafkids.ie/2009/transcribepod-podcasts-accessible/

http://seanzdenek.com/?page_id=23

Getting started on ‘Computer Games, Gaming Culture and Education’

Here is information about the first few weeks of the course. Get to Blackboard ASAP to contribute to the forum, chat with classmates, and access more course information.

Explore ’game studies’ by visiting the Digital Games Research Association’s digital library at http://www.digra.org/dl. Try entering terms in the search box (‘education’ or ‘learning’ or ‘gender’ or ‘narrative’ or ‘cheating’ for example).

See also Games Studies, Eludamos, Games and Culture, Loading…

You might find this interesting too – a recent programme from BBC 4. Gameswipe and this…

Set reading from the start of term:

By the 19th, Chapters 1, 3, 4 Computer Games: Text, Narrative and Play. Carr, D., Buckingham, D., Burn, A. and Schott, G. Cambridge: Polity

19th – 26th (see details below) Juul 2003; Salen and Zimmerman 2003 – your first ‘task’ is on these readings.

26th – 2nd November. Frasca on simulations, plus chapter 6 of the set text. Details at Blackboard.

Getting started

Play! You will need to buy or borrow at least one of the following games to get started. The list is negotiable…(post alt suggestions to the forum at Blackboard)

Tomb Raider: Legend (PlayStation or PC version – it plays better and easier on a console)

Harry Potter (any of the games in the series)

Grand Theft Auto III (or Grand Theft Auto San Andreas or Grand Theft Auto IV.)

The Sims

Sid Meier’s Civilization III

Resident Evil IV (easier to play on a console, but a PC version is available).

World of Warcraft (http://www.wow-europe.com/en/index.xml – note that you will have to buy the game, and then pay a monthly subscription to play this incredibly popular game).

RuneScape – another online Role Playing Game – this one is basic, but it’s free. http://www.runescape.com/

Any of the Baldur’s Gate series, Final Fantasy series, the Silent Hill series, the Oddworld games.

POST ‘Ice Breaker’ Game Diary and introduction by the 19th  : Start playing the game that you have purchased. Jot down a few notes after each play session. Is it hard? Fun? Boring? Frustrating? Are you getting better at it? How does it feel? Post excerpts from the diary to the relevant thread in the Discussion Board area – along with a short biographic note to introduce yourself to the class.

Tips – where do people buy games? Go to www.allgame.com for background information on these titles. Outlets like Game and CEX have new and second hand games (both have branches close to the IOE). To shop online, try www.play.com and Amazon. Some libraries or DVD rentals have games. Or borrow them from friends or family. Email us if you have questions.

Set task: 19th – 26th October

Required Reading:

1. Juul, J. (2003) ‘The game, the player, the world: looking for a heart of gameness’ DiGRA Level Up Conference Proceedings, Utrecht, November 2003 online at http://www.digra.org/dl/db/05163.50560

2. Salen, K. Zimmerman, E (2003) ‘This is not a game: play in cultural environments’. DiGRA Level Up Proceedings Utrecht, Netherlands: Utrecht University, 2003. http://www.digra.org/dl/db/05163.47569.pdf.

Continue to play your game(s) and complete the following task:

TASK: Look to the articles by Juul, and Salen and Zimmerman. What makes the game you are playing, a game? Is it a game? Be specific, and use the criteria proposed in these readings (300 words, max).

Post your answers to ‘Is it a game?’ forum at Blackboard by the 26th of October

If you get stuck, email us!

Bad Games colloquium
Saturday 18th July, 10am – 6pmPervasive Media Studio
Leadworks, Bristol

The Play Research Group at the University of the West of England, Bristol seeks contributions in the form of research outlines, position papers, media projects and provocations on the theme of

Bad Games will:

· Thematise games and play as a central yet ambivalent characteristic of digital culture. Question influential assumptions of the liberatory potential of interactivity
· Reflect on, revise, reject, renovate or otherwise refresh critical modelings of ludic digital culture that assume it be an intrinsically positive, creative or subversive alternative to ‘old media’
· Complicate simplistic moral panics about bad games and their effects
· Consider bad games in the context and rubrics of other ‘bad’ media theory topics like paracinema, trash culture, and comics

Bad Games might include

Sex games//Mind games//War games//Boring games//Work games//Power games//Horror games//Cruel Games//E-gambling//SimCulture//Ludic figures in cinema, from Funny Games USA to The Nines, to Intacto//The atrocity exhibition of Reality TV//The military-entertainment complex//The infantilization of adults by Nintendo ds//Parental guidance: children playing violence//Computer games’ temporal and financial demands
Repetitive games

The colloquium will be structured so that participants share proposals and dialogue, discussion and responses rather than as a presenter/question time format.

COST: £20 – payable on the day.
Tea/Coffee and Lunch will be provided.

The 5th Annual Games for Health Conference 2009 (Boston, USA), June 11-12 has a pre-conference track on Accessibility and Virtual Worlds (it includes games and accessibility presentations). Programme at:  http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=p9ekyWGoKP7oJbqar0v4zAg

Media Representations of Disababled People, an online resourse here at http://www.disabilityplanet.co.uk/index.html (from L.Wood, 2006). Featuring reports, overviews, links, biblography…

Um. So, I hope to keep going with my BSL classes and at some point in the future, I will know what this means.
Meanwhile – it looks interesting! ‘Deaf people, BSL and virtual worlds’ – from you tube.

Millions of people regularly play computer and video games, and during the past decade there has been an explosion of innovative research in the area of Game Studies. Students of this course will analyse games, research player culture, and explore current games and education debates. The course will cover:

• Game definitions and genre
• Narrative and games
• The relationship between games and other popular media
• Play, player culture and online communities
• Representations, identity, gender and fandom
• Learning in games, and within game communities
• The use of games and virtual worlds by teachers
• The place of games within the Media Studies curriculum
• The meaning and acquisition of ‘game literacy’
• Drama, Role-Play and Learning
• Game research methodology

This MA level course is aimed at anyone interested in studying games, play and education. The course combines distance learning with 2 days of face-to-face teaching. The course tutors, Diane Carr and Andrew Burn, have researched, taught and published extensively on the topics of games, players and media education.

The course can be taken on its own, as part of the Institute of Education’s MA in Media, Culture and Communications, or as a 30 credit optional module on many of the IOE’s MA’s.
For more information contact Diane Carr (d.carr@ioe.ac.uk)

http://subtitle-horse.org/
Use this to add subtitles to your movies.

Abstract for ‘A seminar on 3D Virtual World and Social Learning’ organised by: CS Ang, David White, Steven Warburton, P Edirisingha,  Panayiotis Zaphiris. Funder: EMERGE JISC. City University. March 17th 2009.

Second Life: Voice, Deafness and Difference
Diane Carr
The proposed presentation involves a work in progress – a journal article on the topic of identity, perceptions of disability, experiences of deafness, and Second Life. Virtual worlds raise questions about access and usability. Additionally, virtual worlds offer researchers an opportunity to examine the ways in which social aspects of ‘disability’ (deafness, in this instance) manifest in online communities.
Drawing on Deaf Studies, Disability Studies, Feminist philosophy and Cultural Studies literature, the author will explore the discursive construction of deafness and difference in Second Life, based on participation, observation and interviews with Second Life residents who identify as deaf/Deaf or hearing impaired in their first or everyday lives. By these means issues of identity and subjectivity in virtual worlds will be explored, in relation to questions of agency, discourse and power.