I am the community lead for the Zotero project at the Center for History and New Media and a doctoral student in the Graduate School of Education at George Mason University. I am interested in open source platforms for learning and research, games and learning, and the history of science education. Before coming to the CHNM I worked for the Games, Learning, and Society Conference.
SEARCH
Bio
Photos
Status
- tjowens: @samplereality Apparently every address I have been associated with does not contain enough information. How should that make me feel?
- tjowens: I just can't understand how each Pokemon can talk to eachother only using the syllables of their own names @clioweb
- tjowens: 14 days left to submit proposals to the American Association for History and Computing's conference http://bit.ly/bE2zdv Tell everyone!
- tjowens: @retius @missmodular Indeed. As @jamespaulgee suggests most learning is more like games and less like classrooms http://bit.ly/9lzt1E
Tags
albert einstein
atomic
books
catalog
children's books
Children's Literature
chnm
Citizendium
Comics
copyleft
copyright
DC
design
Digital History
digital literacy
Education
educational games
Firstpast
game design
Games
Gender
History
History of Science
howto
lameness
learning
library
marie curie
omeka
organize
Playing History
playinghistory
programing
public history
RPG Maker
Science
serious games
Site Review
swivel
tech tree
Video Games
visualization
Wikipedia
worldcat
zotero
History
Read My Article On Civ Modders in the Journal Simulation & Gaming
Thursday, May 27th, 2010I am excited to announce that an article I wrote about how the game Civilization modders, players that edit and alter the game’s code, is now available as OnlineFirst through Sage. The project was a ton of fun and I hope it sparks some good conversations. You can find the abstract bellow. Sid Meier’s CIVILIZATION [...]
Keep Reading » 4
Mining Old News For Fresh Historcal Insight
Friday, September 4th, 2009This week I had the honor of participating in the Library of Congress’ national strategy for digital news summit. The Library gathered together a diverse mix of corporate and public archivists, representatives from public and private foundations, and librarians to discuss the digital future of news. The conversations focused on both how to preserve born [...]
Keep Reading » 2
A Walk Down Edutainment Lane: Or, What Target Taught Me About Serious Games
Saturday, July 11th, 2009Apparently war game sims sell, even oldish ones. Last weekend I took a quick walk through the games section of our local Target to see what new Wii and DS games looked fun. After picking up a copy of Cooking Mama, I took a gander at some of the games on the next row of [...]
Keep Reading » 1
Simulation As A Way of Knowing: First Reflections on Will Wright’s Keynote at the 5th Annual Innovations in e-Learning Conference.
Thursday, June 4th, 2009It’s not everyday that one gets to swoon as a big time fan boy. Will Wright spoke at the Innovations and e-Learning Symposium and I had the chance to stake out a spot right in the center of the room and soak up a bit of Wright’s visionary gamer visions. Beyond making some of the [...]
Keep Reading » 5
Design Rationale: Playing History
Monday, April 6th, 2009This week in Clio Wired: Creating History With New Media each of my classmatees has been diligently working on composing a design rationale for each of our projects. Below is my rationalization. You can also view it as this PDF. Design Rationale Playing History Related to this I thought folks might be interested in the [...]
Keep Reading » 4
Re-mixing The Tech Tree: Build Your Own History Of Science
Wednesday, April 1st, 2009A few weeks back Rob Macdougall posted a great essay about using the game Civilization’s approach to the history of science and technology as a point of entry into conversations about models for representing the history of science and technology more broadly. Rob’s students picked apart the way the game allows players to develop science [...]
Keep Reading » 1
Marie Curie on Ada Lovelace Day
Tuesday, March 24th, 2009Today is Ada Lovelace Day, an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology. From their website, ‘Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognized. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines.” I think the day is a great idea, and it [...]
Keep Reading » 2Strategy and Scope: Readings In Digital Humanities Project Management
Saturday, March 7th, 2009One of the first steps in constructing a digital humanities project is to define your strategy and project scope. This week in our creating history and new media class we had a great discussion about a topic most of the class had not really considered, what I would call project management in the digital humanities. [...]
Keep Reading » 1A Few More Site Ideas For Playing History: This Time From Mega Man
Monday, February 23rd, 2009One more round of site theme ideas. I think I might really like this round. Do folks like these more or less then the last batch? I did not fill in all the content for these, just a few boxes and headings to give a sense of the concept. Each of them would take a [...]
Keep Reading » 3Darwin, History, and Visualizations
Wednesday, February 18th, 2009Two weeks ago our Creating History in New Media class had a great chance to chat with historian David Staley about his book Computers Visualization and History and Scott McCloud‘s book Understanding Comics. New media provides some exciting places to take conversations about visualizations in history, but one of my other take-a-ways from the conversation [...]
Keep Reading » 1