Kim White

Kim White develops online games, interactive tutorials, e-books, blogs, and websites for Bedford/St. Martin’s. She came to Bedford/St. Martin’s from the Institute for the Future of the Book, a small think tank affiliated with the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School, where she studied the future direction of learning tools and academic discourse in the digital age. She earned her MFA in fiction writing from Columbia University and had a prior career as an art director. Her combined knowledge of emerging media, narrative structure, visual design, and project management—and the year she spent in the trenches teaching first-year composition—helped her guide the development of Peer Factor.

Abstract

We see the computers and composition community rapidly accepting the idea that using computer games in the classroom can be a very effective way to teach writing.

Introduction

The Peer Factor game is designed to be an easy-to-use, interactive Flash game. In two separate episodes, Peer Factor introduces students to the full process of peer review:

Game Pedagogy: What is the Game Factor?

The Game Factor is the term we use to describe the educational potential of games to teach student players complicated concepts and processes.

Convergence: Theory into Practice

In this section, we would like to discuss our processes for designing the game. In software and game design terminology, what we do here could be referred to as a postmortem: we describe what went well, what went wrong, and why.

Rethinking the Textbook: Toward a Participatory Paradigm

Just as the word book is an inadequate term to describe the electronic media and platforms that are creating book alternatives, textbook is a less than adequate term for emerging digital learning tools.

References

This webtext draws upon these resources and experiences to discuss how we took the next critical step and designed an interactive educational text that employed game elements.