Showing posts with label wow. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wow. Show all posts
Friday, October 21, 2011
Wednesday, July 06, 2011
You can take the girl out of the library...
For the past several weeks, I've been wondering what to do with this blog. Should I change the name? Start a new one? What?
Why? After working in libraries for the past 13 years, I am now working in the private sector, managing a recruitment and staffing firm's social media program. It's a very good fit: the firm specializes in information technology hiring--something I know a thing or two about, from both sides. Developing the social media strategy is challenging (yea!), and keeping abreast of the changes keeps the challenge fresh. And many of the skills I learned as a systems librarian and innovator are transferable.
In other words, I do not anticipate becoming bored any time soon. (This is a good thing; ask my mother.)
As one might suspect, I've been really delving into the world of branding, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. See my post, Swimming in the sea of social media. I remain impressed by the number of people who are interested in sharing what they know. It's almost overwhelming.
A side note: The title of my last post might have been more accurate if I had called it "Trekking across the social media terrain" - as illustrated by the 2010 Social Networking Map. Note the "Google Information Gathering Outposts". I guess the map will need to be redrawn to include Google+!
So, this week I'm preparing a social media guidelines draft, and reviewing staff profiles on LinkedIn. Here are some useful lists of policies and guidelines:
A personal favorite of mine is by SocialVoice. Its simplicity makes it concise, and its tone appeals to our better instincts. Check it out.
So, you can take the girl out of the library, but can you take the librarian out of the girl? That remains to be seen. In the meantime, I'll keep the name of this blog for now. After all, I've spent quite a few years building this brand.
Oh, yeah... Atzilut is level 85! Think I'll work on my worgen now. Play on!
Why? After working in libraries for the past 13 years, I am now working in the private sector, managing a recruitment and staffing firm's social media program. It's a very good fit: the firm specializes in information technology hiring--something I know a thing or two about, from both sides. Developing the social media strategy is challenging (yea!), and keeping abreast of the changes keeps the challenge fresh. And many of the skills I learned as a systems librarian and innovator are transferable.
In other words, I do not anticipate becoming bored any time soon. (This is a good thing; ask my mother.)
As one might suspect, I've been really delving into the world of branding, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. See my post, Swimming in the sea of social media. I remain impressed by the number of people who are interested in sharing what they know. It's almost overwhelming.
A side note: The title of my last post might have been more accurate if I had called it "Trekking across the social media terrain" - as illustrated by the 2010 Social Networking Map. Note the "Google Information Gathering Outposts". I guess the map will need to be redrawn to include Google+!
So, this week I'm preparing a social media guidelines draft, and reviewing staff profiles on LinkedIn. Here are some useful lists of policies and guidelines:
- Social Media Governance - a database of about 176 policies
- Only 29% Of Companies Have A Social Media Policy: Is Your Company At Risk?, by Jeff Bullas
- Enterprise: List of 40 Social Media Staff Guidelines, by Laurel Papworth
A personal favorite of mine is by SocialVoice. Its simplicity makes it concise, and its tone appeals to our better instincts. Check it out.
So, you can take the girl out of the library, but can you take the librarian out of the girl? That remains to be seen. In the meantime, I'll keep the name of this blog for now. After all, I've spent quite a few years building this brand.
Oh, yeah... Atzilut is level 85! Think I'll work on my worgen now. Play on!
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Atzilut Dings 84
W00T!
I've been playing rather sporadically; the last few weeks have seen much more gameplay. My significant other gifted me with Cataclysm in December, and I immediately rolled a worgen, Lunebane. She's level 28 right now. I also picked up a copy of "official strategy guide". If I had realized how different this guide was from the WoW guide, I wouldn't have bothered. At any rate....
I've been doing some interesting reading lately. I'm listening to Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World by Jane McGonigal (@avantgame), and I'm reading My Life as a Night Elf Priest: An Anthropological Account of World of Warcraft, by Bonnie Nardi. Both are fascinating. I could insert a rant here about the differences between listening to a book and reading a book... but I'll desist (for now). I might mention that I listened to Dan Tapscott's book, Wikinomics, last year, and The World is Flat, by Thomas Friedman.
I've been playing rather sporadically; the last few weeks have seen much more gameplay. My significant other gifted me with Cataclysm in December, and I immediately rolled a worgen, Lunebane. She's level 28 right now. I also picked up a copy of "official strategy guide". If I had realized how different this guide was from the WoW guide, I wouldn't have bothered. At any rate....
I've been doing some interesting reading lately. I'm listening to Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World by Jane McGonigal (@avantgame), and I'm reading My Life as a Night Elf Priest: An Anthropological Account of World of Warcraft, by Bonnie Nardi. Both are fascinating. I could insert a rant here about the differences between listening to a book and reading a book... but I'll desist (for now). I might mention that I listened to Dan Tapscott's book, Wikinomics, last year, and The World is Flat, by Thomas Friedman.
I have been playing more in large part to McGonigal's book. Things IRL haven't been golden lately, and oddly enough, I stopped playing WoW. After listening to Reality is Broken, I realized that perhaps not playing was not the best strategy for me. Interesting. So I made an effort to begin playing more frequently, and I've found it really does make a difference to me.
It's at this point that I find I really wish I had a hard copy of McGonigal's book at hand. I'll get back to this in another post.
Nardi's My Life as a Night Elf Priest is also fascinating. One of the more attractive features is that this book is not a collection of essays, but an ethnographic exploration of World of Warcraft. I'm only in chapter 3, so I won't talk about this book any further.
Last year I read Digital Culture, Play, and Identity: A World of Warcraft® Reader, edited by Corneliussen and Rettberg (@jilltxt). This is a book of essays by people who actually play WoW. I would like to be in their guild!
I promise all of this is building up to something; it's still incubating, but I guarantee some sort of paper will result.
In the meantime, Atzilut is level 84, and that's something to enjoy.
Saturday, August 08, 2009
Level 71 At Last!
Haven't had a chance to play much in eons, but finally got back to it a bit these past few weeks. Tonight (this morning?) Atzilut finally leveled. Atzi was in Valiance, picking up Grand Master training for skinning, herbalism and first aid. Also picked up the Writhing Longstaff. Well, off to bed. May the stars guide you...
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Portals to Learning
Nicholas Schiller and ?? discussed what we can learn about teaching from studying the structure of video games. Nicholas presented "theory", and ?? discussed her adventures in WOW and how the principles she picked up there can be applied to BI.
From their powerpoint:
Games are complex information systems. They must teach players to evaluate information and make informmed choices. Games that don't do this successfully fail to sell.
Lessons from WOW:
Collaboration and Apprenticeship:
Principle: You're never alone
Application: team exercises, self-selection, identifying critical skills as a group.
Deemphasizing Authority Distinction/Emphasizing Peer Knowledge:
Reputation in wow is based on a player's skills and knowledge.
Principle: No single authority; peer to peer; 32 seconds later...
32 seconds is the average length of time it takes to get a response from someone in WoW
Application: Not LMS-like; wiki; knowledgebases
Parsing Out Learning/Using the Level Concept
Principle: Scaffolding; not tempted to skip; you only see the part of the world you've mastered. [I disagree with what she says here. You see where you have EXPLORED, not what you've mastered. I think this is an important distinction.]
Cool.
Application: Focus on process; no right answer. She developed a teaching strategy where she focuses on 3 key things, not moving forward until students have mastered those.
Socializing/Community
Principle: "The real takeaway from a good swordfight session in World of Warcraft is its masterful community building" (econtent). Players build the resources, they are the resources; they belong to the community.
Application: Collaboration as a communtiy building tool. Core kids hang together.
Intrinsic Motivation and Rewards:
Players choose to play the game. Activities are rewarded.
Students have choices too. Students are used to choosing. Choice can be workked into a classroom curriculum. Choice of partners; choice of "quests".
Persistence in Failure
When you fail in WOW, you know what to do. When you fail in the classroom, do they know what to do? Building expertise and community allows them to understand that keeping at it will result in success.
Nic: Other gaming examples: Portal
Gating: the problem: button mashing ==> problem solving by random input.
Game designer solution: Gating. Mandatory pause in the acgtion that requires demonstration of select application.
Classroom application: Design research assignments to require identifycation and reflection on research process. Annotated bibliographies (show your work!)
Valve's corporate culture is Playtest, playtest, playtest. (Eric Wolpaw on playtest/assessment.)
Gee's book: Why doesn't Lara Croft obey Prof. Van Crey?
Telling and doing. Which approach is the surer path to student learning? Learning from how game design teach players. Application: discovery based learning. Player who eventually ignores the professor's tutorial and begins exploring for themselves finds easter eggs...
New ideas as she has leveled up:
Need for a community of scholars; ie those with greater experiences. Experienced librarians vs. reference assistants. The jargon gets confusing again at each level.
Gaming literacy = information literacy
(?) Bloom's Taxonomy-- finishing on a fairly high level when they're playing game... need to translate/apply the game playing strategies to learning...
-30-
Great session! I don't think xxx followed through on her development. She focused on the guild experience to the exclusion of the solo experience. The important distinction here is that whether the student is working with classmates or is studying alone, they have access to the same set of resources, and needs to be just as familiar with the available resources at any time.
Gating was a new term for me... but i believe I recognize the process. Playing Zelda Twilight Princess is no fun for me... I get so frustrated when I can't get past certain areas. There's no way to stop following that thread, and change pace for a while; you have to complete that step the way the game designers determine... and I don't really learn that way. In WoW, if I can't do soemthing, I can focus on a different quest for a while, complete it, and then return to the problem.
From their powerpoint:
Games are complex information systems. They must teach players to evaluate information and make informmed choices. Games that don't do this successfully fail to sell.
Lessons from WOW:
Collaboration and Apprenticeship:
Principle: You're never alone
Application: team exercises, self-selection, identifying critical skills as a group.
Deemphasizing Authority Distinction/Emphasizing Peer Knowledge:
Reputation in wow is based on a player's skills and knowledge.
Principle: No single authority; peer to peer; 32 seconds later...
32 seconds is the average length of time it takes to get a response from someone in WoW
Application: Not LMS-like; wiki; knowledgebases
Parsing Out Learning/Using the Level Concept
Principle: Scaffolding; not tempted to skip; you only see the part of the world you've mastered. [I disagree with what she says here. You see where you have EXPLORED, not what you've mastered. I think this is an important distinction.]
Cool.
Application: Focus on process; no right answer. She developed a teaching strategy where she focuses on 3 key things, not moving forward until students have mastered those.
Socializing/Community
Principle: "The real takeaway from a good swordfight session in World of Warcraft is its masterful community building" (econtent). Players build the resources, they are the resources; they belong to the community.
Application: Collaboration as a communtiy building tool. Core kids hang together.
Intrinsic Motivation and Rewards:
Players choose to play the game. Activities are rewarded.
Students have choices too. Students are used to choosing. Choice can be workked into a classroom curriculum. Choice of partners; choice of "quests".
Persistence in Failure
When you fail in WOW, you know what to do. When you fail in the classroom, do they know what to do? Building expertise and community allows them to understand that keeping at it will result in success.
Nic: Other gaming examples: Portal
Gating: the problem: button mashing ==> problem solving by random input.
Game designer solution: Gating. Mandatory pause in the acgtion that requires demonstration of select application.
Classroom application: Design research assignments to require identifycation and reflection on research process. Annotated bibliographies (show your work!)
Valve's corporate culture is Playtest, playtest, playtest. (Eric Wolpaw on playtest/assessment.)
Gee's book: Why doesn't Lara Croft obey Prof. Van Crey?
Telling and doing. Which approach is the surer path to student learning? Learning from how game design teach players. Application: discovery based learning. Player who eventually ignores the professor's tutorial and begins exploring for themselves finds easter eggs...
New ideas as she has leveled up:
Need for a community of scholars; ie those with greater experiences. Experienced librarians vs. reference assistants. The jargon gets confusing again at each level.
Gaming literacy = information literacy
(?) Bloom's Taxonomy-- finishing on a fairly high level when they're playing game... need to translate/apply the game playing strategies to learning...
-30-
Great session! I don't think xxx followed through on her development. She focused on the guild experience to the exclusion of the solo experience. The important distinction here is that whether the student is working with classmates or is studying alone, they have access to the same set of resources, and needs to be just as familiar with the available resources at any time.
Gating was a new term for me... but i believe I recognize the process. Playing Zelda Twilight Princess is no fun for me... I get so frustrated when I can't get past certain areas. There's no way to stop following that thread, and change pace for a while; you have to complete that step the way the game designers determine... and I don't really learn that way. In WoW, if I can't do soemthing, I can focus on a different quest for a while, complete it, and then return to the problem.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
At LITA
I've made it to LITA, finally! I attended the lita forum when it was in Raleigh, NC, quite a few years ago, and haven't been able to make it back until now.
I've brought my new toy with me, an EEE PC, but the keyboard is giving me problems. However, practice makes perfect... Actually, I bought this one, and THEN, the 1000 came out. My son has fallen in love with this one, so he's getting an early birthday present, and I'm going with a slightly larger 1000. Also going with the linux version.
I'll be blogging the sessions, of course, and posting them here.
Had tea today at Churchill's Tea Room and Shop-- very nice. Brings back wonderful childhood memories.
Then I attended the reception at The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County. The library was great-- they've just finished renovating their space, increasing greatly the amount of space. The highlight for me was a tour of their digitization project. They are creating a Virtual Library of their out of copyright items, city directories, and other manuscripts. Most recently, they've been digitizing handwritten ships logs. Fantastic operation. It's given me much food for thought-- I never made it to the food and wine, though.
In WoW news, Cresenc has been transferred to the Aerie Peak server, but no one has been on who can bring her into the guild. The latest patch is something else.... I have to redo Atzilut's talent tree... clicked one too many times and now need one more talent point to get Starfall. Sheesh. I think my new toon will take up the Inscription profession. Looks like fun!
I've brought my new toy with me, an EEE PC, but the keyboard is giving me problems. However, practice makes perfect... Actually, I bought this one, and THEN, the 1000 came out. My son has fallen in love with this one, so he's getting an early birthday present, and I'm going with a slightly larger 1000. Also going with the linux version.
I'll be blogging the sessions, of course, and posting them here.
Had tea today at Churchill's Tea Room and Shop-- very nice. Brings back wonderful childhood memories.
Then I attended the reception at The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County. The library was great-- they've just finished renovating their space, increasing greatly the amount of space. The highlight for me was a tour of their digitization project. They are creating a Virtual Library of their out of copyright items, city directories, and other manuscripts. Most recently, they've been digitizing handwritten ships logs. Fantastic operation. It's given me much food for thought-- I never made it to the food and wine, though.
In WoW news, Cresenc has been transferred to the Aerie Peak server, but no one has been on who can bring her into the guild. The latest patch is something else.... I have to redo Atzilut's talent tree... clicked one too many times and now need one more talent point to get Starfall. Sheesh. I think my new toon will take up the Inscription profession. Looks like fun!
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