About Melanie McBride is a researcher at Ryerson University’s Experiential Design and Gaming Environments (EDGE) lab. See her About page for more information.
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By Melanie, on March 5th, 2011 Remix artist Pogo’s Disney remix “Alice”
In 2009, I came across the inspiring work of self-taught Australian remix musician Nick Bertke (aka “Pogo”). As a media teacher doing remix in my own media production classes, I was interested in learning more about Pogo and his creative process. So I interviewed him about it.
What I [...]
By Melanie, on February 12th, 2011
“Gee and other educators worry that students who are comfortable participating in and exchanging knowledge through affinity spaces are being de-skilled as they enter the classroom”- Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture
Every day, I’m struck by the differences between the experiences I have in situated affinity spaces and those of my educational communities [...]
By Melanie, on December 5th, 2010 Gamers enjoying the “retro recroom” at gamercamp
Institutional and informal game play: What’s at stake for learning?
The image above is from Gamercamp, a Toronto gaming unconference where I moderated a panel on “Play”. What I saw there and pictured above was an awesome example of truly holistic, situated, informal learning. And the [...]
By Melanie, on September 22nd, 2010
My second Machinima: Epic Journey: Travel forms in WoW
Have you ever wanted to fly (like a bird)? This is just one more thing you can experience in a synthetic world that you can’t do in reality. And I stress the word “experience” versus activity – because the brain doesn’t distinguish between “real” or [...]
By Melanie, on September 8th, 2010 “The reward, in other words, doesn’t have to be a useful or fun thing in itself, it need only be an obvious outward sign that the wearer of it has done some difficult work to get it.”
- Edward Castronova, Synthetic Worlds : The business and culture of online games (2005)
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By Melanie, on August 22nd, 2010 My first-year teaching at an inner city school was one of the most challenging, yet rewarding, of my life. Despite five years instructing post-graduate industry tech courses at the college level, I was very much the noob high school teacher. But it wasn’t just any high school but a program for at-risk learners, aged 18-20, [...]
By Melanie, on May 18th, 2010 Every day I read the tweets of fellow educators it’s clear that the battle for technology adoption is still going strong. It’s also clear that endless panics – moral and otherwise – are a part of the problem. Just today, wired educator and author Will Richardson described the challenge of teaching critical (technological) literacies without [...]
By Melanie, on July 23rd, 2009 “Every gram – sorry, byte – of personal information these feckless data-packrats collect on us should be as carefully accounted for as our weapons-grade radioisotopes, because once the seals have cracked, there is no going back.” – Cory Doctorow
Every day, all around the world, people are sharing enormous amounts of personal information and data [...]
By Melanie, on April 15th, 2009 In this current moment of economic, cultural and social adversity it’s all to easy to give in to cynicism, hopelessness and fear. What’s more difficult is locating the inspiration and optimism necessary to move forward.
Distinguished author and educational leader Parker Palmer reflects on how we got here and where we’re headed in this [...]
By Melanie, on April 4th, 2009
I recently crowdsourced my Twitter network for their perspectives on internet blocking in schools. The above flash slideshow is a collection of their responses. A gallery of the individual tweets is here.
Taking part: There are several ways you can contribute and collaborate to this evolving discussion:
Twitter: If you wish to contribute your [...]
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