Jonathan Savage

I’m always interested to read about how sound design is approached within computer games. Andrew Diey alerted me to this post recently via his Twitter feed. Thanks Andrew. It has some fantastic commentary about how various sound designers have approached designing sonic elements of different games. Some will be appropriate for use with students in school; others are interesting as part one’s own professional development.

On the topic of computer games in education, I found this very interesting paper which applies some of the discussions about informal learning in various contexts (including computer games) to the construction of a ‘public pedagogy’. This quote is an introduction to what the paper explores:

However, informal learning, at least of the sort we see in today’s popular culture, does involve teaching in a major way. It is just that the teaching it involves is not like what we see in school. Teaching in informal learning, in much of today’s popular culture, involves three things: design, resources, and what we will call “affinity spaces.” We will give specific examples in a moment. But first, we want to point out that, since informal learning in popular culture today involves teaching in this sense, it is a form of public pedagogy.

This seems like a fine idea and one that is often missing from debates about informal learning, which often seem to imply that the teacher has to abdicate their role in order to allow more freedom for their pupils’ exploration of a chosen topic. That might well be the case for some, but there is a lot more going on than first meets the eye. I think that James Paul Gee and Elizabeth Hayes have done an excellent job here. Very incisive and compelling reading.

Thanks to Chris for pointing out this article about the introduction of Wii Music into schools across 51 cities in America. According to the article, Wii Music is going to be used to teach pupils about rhythm, tempo and song structure.

A video game that uses a magical guitar to fight evil has won a prize in one of the UK’s most respected game contests. Called Ragnarawk the game was created by a five-strong student team for the Dare to be Digital design competition. Run by the University of Abertay Dundee, it gives 12 teams of student designers 10 weeks to produce working prototypes of a game. Malcolm Brown, team leader for Voodoo Boogy, said the idea for Ragnarawk was born two years ago. “We’re big fans of role-playing games and rhythm games,” he said, “though originally it used a dance mat and you danced at your enemies.” But, he said, the growing popularity of games using a guitar-shaped controller prompted them to change tack. “There have been a number of games that use a guitar controller in Japan particularly but they are only just hitting Europe,” he said. Read more here.