The Escapist has made me happy today

I have tagged the following two posts from The Escapist in my Google Reader as well, but since I never publish out from there to my blog directly I am going to go ahead and share teh awsumness here as well. First I came across Tom Goldman's post that there may yet be hope for Goldeneye on the Wii! I recognize that this is probably yet another in a line of false hopes, but the prospect still delights. If for some reason you are reading my blog but you don't know why this would be significant, here for your convenience is a link to the article about the original game. Almost immediately thereafter, I read this extremely convincing argument by John Funk that we need an MMO with giant robots. Personally, I'm a firm believer in the power of giant robots to make things more awesome.

Giant robots in the process of making Warhammer 40K more awesome

Okay it's true, Funk wasn't writing about Imperator class battle titans at all. In fact, given his stated predilection for Japanese robots he might even find this a little disappointing (I can't really say)

At any rate, his post has inspired me and sometime in the not too distant future I will share some of my own thoughts on things we need in, around, and out of MMOs.

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R.I.P. Ted Sizer

An image of Professor Sizer from the Coallition of Essential Schools website This late post from the New York Times bears the sad news that we've lost one of America's great educational reformers. Personally, Horace's Compromise was a hugely influential read for me in my progression through the study of education and learning. More importantly I believe that America lost a great opportunity when we chose to focus on accountability through standardized testing rather than the sort of deeper learning objectives and means for measuring learning advanced by Sizer's Coallition of Essential Schools. Hopefully as we push forward in American education policy and practice, we will be able to draw more deeply upon the legacy Professor Sizer has left us with.

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Current research: Guild leadership practices

Despite claims I've made to the contrary one of the functions of this blog is in fact academic research. With that in mind, I'm a bit overdue to get a post up here about the project which is occupying most of my attention this academic year, namely my dissertation research. As the post title indicates, this branch of my work is focused on guild leadership practices.

If you want to know more, you need only read past the break.

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Live Blogging G4C Day 2

So I missed day one, but here for your reading pleasure are some blips and bleeps from day 2 of Games for Change.

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In the name of science

The truth of the matter is, I'm way behind on my blogging. I still haven't posted about the fantastic racist toy that I won at the Star Trek pub quiz (the darn thing is really hard to photograph), and there's a whole slew of other timely topics that seem to keep slipping away. However, when Tolga sent me the link for An Engineer's Guide to Cat Yodeling, I knew I had to reblog it here. Behold:

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