Lessons down a rabbit hole: Alternate reality gaming in the classroom

an article by Shira Chess (University of Georgia, USA) and Paul Booth (DePaul University, USA) published in New Media & Society Volume 16 Number 6 (September 2014)

Abstract

Alternate Reality Games can be used to reinforce classroom knowledge by encouraging collective learning practices and focusing on new media literacy skills. An Alternate Reality Game creates a game space from real-world locations by relying on information, both online and offline, to physically involve players in a game “space.”

While the majority of large Alternate Reality Games, to date, have been used as part of marketing campaigns, an increasing number of faculty teaching topics in digital media, technologies, and game studies have begun to employ the alternate reality game in the classroom.

We argue that the affordances of Alternate Reality Games are best integrated within a “play-revise-design” format. By appropriating this emerging format in classroom spaces, we hope to teach students concepts such as new media literacies, the values of “safe failure,” and social learning, while giving students the tools for interactive storytelling.

---

New Media and Literacies: amateurs vs. professionals

an article by Tibor Koltay published in First Monday Volume 16 Number 1 (January 2011)

Abstract
New media are not supportive of critical thinking and conscious selection of information. Literacies of our age stress critical thinking and take many forms. Despite differences and similarities among information literacy, media literacy and digital literacy, all of them have to differentiate between amateur and professional contents produced in new media. Similarly to the traditional division of labor among libraries, the needs behind amateurism and professionalism have to be satisfied differently.

Full text (HTML) available here

---