Convergence is a cultural phenomonen not a technological one

October 16th, 2006

The book’s core premises could be identified as the following:

1. Convergence is a cultural rather than a technological process. We now live in a world where every story, image, sound, idea, brand, and relationship will play itself out across all possible media platforms.

2. In a networked society, people are increasingly forming knowledge communities to pool information and work together to solve problems they could not confront individually. We call that collective intelligence.

3. We are seeing the emergence of a new form of participatory culture (a contemporary version of folk culture) as consumers take media in their own hands, reworking its content to serve their personal and collective interests.

4. We are acquiring skills now through our play, including our game play, which we will later apply towards more serious ends.

The benefits of participatory culture
On the one hand, just as fans attach themselves to television shows and rework them to reflect their fantasies, serious games advocates can attach themselves to existing commercial games that have pedagogical potentials and rework them to serve their own agendas. In my own work, we have been modding Neverwinter Nights to create a new game, Revolution, which re-enacts the culture and politics of the American Revolution.
Other examples might include the “universities” that have grown up around [Sid Meier's] Civilization or simply the development of teacher’s guides to get students to think critically about the models of society in Sim City. A student has modified The Sims and Grim Fandango to turn them into tools for mastering foreign languages in a particularly engaging and immersive way.
On the other hand, much of the learning that currently surrounds popular culture takes place at the intersections between media or between media and the real world. I want to look at ways that serious games designers can tap the power of collective intelligence and participatory culture.
Might also be worth checking out Professor Stephen Heppell who gave a fascinating speech the other night in Cambridge about education, technology and a more imaginative and engaging way to educate our children. He has some podcasts which I would recommend Heppell used the word delightful in the context of education. I thought that was fabulous. Here is Heppell talking about Learning 2016 – what it might look like

Back to Henry Jenkins and his thoughts on gaming and education
One defines education around skills and learning processes; the other around content. So, I would say that right now, gamers are acquiring a broad array of core skills which will inform the ways they work and learn in the future just by playing games that are already on the market.
We might, for example, think of games as a space for thought experiments, as a world where we apply a process of hypothesis formation, testing, and refinement as we work through problems, as an environment where we deal with multiple inputs and sort through the relations between them, as a location where we are encouraged to pool knowledge with other learners, and as a resource which allows us to occupy multiple roles and learn to think through a range of different identities. This list suggests some of the core cultural competencies and social skills which young people need to acquire to perform well in the future.

Via Business Week
I wonder if he and Henry Jenkins are talking to each other – they should be.