Daily Update: Jan 04

Hello, with special appreciation for students Beth Anne, Jessie, Susan, Kevin, and Jeremy, who have already made valuable contributions to the online discussions.

Don't miss Jessie's detailed response to the "What is Fun" prompts, Beth Ann's thoughtful assessment of Koster's defintion, and Susan's thoughts on the role of games in education.  I hope that Keith will help me learn something about what makes a sports game "fun."  

• Shortly you should get an e-mail with information on your SHU weblog password.  You'll need that to complete tomorrow's intro to the SHU weblog unit.
• There's a GriffinGate workbook that's designed to help focus your reading of the syllabus.  Please comlete that by 5pm tomorrow.
• I noticed that some of you haven't uploaded photos of yourself to GriffinGate. Even you prefer to upload a cartoon character or some other image besides a photo, I think it would be helpful if everyone upload something there. 
• I'm also posting two new discussion topics.  Please post an initial reaction here, and return several times over the next few days. You can hit "reply" next to a post in order to respond specifically to that person's comment -- that might help us manage a detailed discussion. (Let's see how it works.)

The new discussion topics are:

Opening Lecture

A 30-minute narrated slideshow... it took much longer than I expected to upload to YouTube, so I've posted the first two parts, and I will extend the discussion a bit so you have all of tomorrow to look at these parts.  I'll post the third part tomorrow, along with another brief lecture, if I have the chance.

The Social Dimension of Fun

And feel free to post here with your questions, comments, and reactions about the course so far.