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.
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- 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
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Playing History
A 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 » 313 Free Online History Games
Thursday, January 29th, 2009This is a quick smattering from the hundreds of different free online history games and interactives I have come across. This slice of the history games web underscores a few key points behind building the Playing History collaborative directory. First, the list gives a quick sense of the different diversity of groups making history games. [...]
Keep Reading » 0Creating History In New Media
Monday, January 26th, 2009I am excited to taking Jeremy Boggs course “Creating History In New Media” to round out my MA in American History. The syllabus is pretty exciting, if a bit overwhelming, mix of tech skills (HTML, CSS and using WordPress and Omeka) with readings in project management and process for web design. If your into this [...]
Keep Reading » 7Darwin Quest RPG: Making Historical RPGs for Almost Nothing
Tuesday, August 5th, 2008Last Friday I was excited to rediscover RPG Maker, a windows only, no-programing skills necessary, platform for building role playing games. The tool allows you to create games with the look and feel of mid-nineties Super Nintendo Games like Final Fantasy VI, Breath of Fire, or EarthBound. As an avid gamer and proto-historian I was [...]
Keep Reading » 4Conversation Piece For THATCamp
Saturday, May 31st, 2008This is just a quick post to get out a first pass at a rubric for assessing games for use in history classrooms for THATCamp. Click the image to see a bigger, more readable version. Most approaches to evaluating games, or at least most of the approaches I have come across are not discipline specific, [...]
Keep Reading » 0Why we need to Play History
Sunday, November 18th, 2007In the last few years there has been a wealth of interest in games for learning. A growing body of research on the educational value of games underlines the ways the can engage students like no previous media. There are now conferences and journals dedicated to games and learning, the MacArthur foundation last year granted [...]
Keep Reading » 5If They Use It, They Will Fund: Life Cycle for Expert Search Portals
Sunday, November 11th, 2007There is no way around it, it will take substantial effort to keep Playing History viable for the future. This is a common feature for expert search style tools. The good news is that all sorts of groups already do it, including CHNM‘s History Matters. There are substantial costs, while there are strategies for off [...]
Keep Reading » 2Playing History:Hacked Screen Shot
Sunday, October 7th, 2007Here is a quick mock up of a individual games page for Playing History. (Click on the image to see it at its native resolution) Everything isn’t perfectly lined up but you get the picture.
Keep Reading » 2Playing History For An Audiance
Sunday, October 7th, 2007So far I am calling my video games resource for teachers “Playing History.” As I am imagining the resource there are four potential audiences, and each of the audiences would enter the picture at different stages, and each would have unique needs. K-12 History Teachers The primary audience is Teachers. As outlined in my use [...]
Keep Reading » 1A Use Case for Playing History: Games for the Classroom
Monday, September 24th, 2007Kevin Ryan a 9th grade world history in Fairfax Virginia is planing out a unit on Vikings. Looking over his lectures and activities he realizes it would be great to have his students spend half a lesson using a game or interactive to introduce the subject . Kevin logs on to playing history and searches [...]
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