Henry Jenkins has an interview on his blog this week with David Hutchison, a professor at Brock University in Ontario and the author of the book Playing to Learn: Video Games In The Classroom. Hutchison wants teachers to bring video games into the classroom, but not in the 'Oregon-Trail-on-Thursdays' way: to actually study them as cultural artifacts.

[M]ost of the teacher-gamers I have spoken with over the last two years see a disconnect between their in-school teaching jobs and their out-of-school gaming activities. It strikes me as nonsensical that so many students and their teachers may be going home at night to play the same games, but then returning to the school the next day with no intention of ever sharing their mutual passion for video games.

Even better, apparently Jack Thompson commented on the interview. Check it out -- it's a lot to think about.

Why Grand Theft Auto Should Be Taught In Schools (Part 1, Part 2) [Henry Jenkins]

In the outer hall of Tokyo Game Show, Japan's many game-design specialty schools recruited potential students by showing off games that current students had produced. Some of them were pretty fantastic -- especially the students at Japan Electronics College, who'd made some pretty fantastic posters for their games.

Right: Tomoya Ooki, a senior at JEC, shows off his game Escape. Inspired by his favorite game series Resident Evil, this mystery game features a series of puzzles that the main character has to solve in order to escape a creepy old house.

Below, the rest of the posters.

Continue reading "TGS 2007: Crazy Student-Made Games" »