On their Web-site Game Based Learning (http://www.gamebasedlearning.org.uk/) James P. Gee and Elizabeth Hayes present a short paper on 'Public Pedagogy through Video Games: Design, Resources and Affinity Spaces' (http://www.gamebasedlearning.org.uk/content/view/59/) in which they exemplify and critique the notion that informal learning outside school compares rather favourably with formal learning within.
At the heart of this article is the concept of 'Affinity Space' where people with common interests meet and interact to further their passion. Interestingly these Affinity Spaces may be real or virtual and often are not within a school or University environment. In these informal spaces learning happens in the absence of clear rules, hierarchies or social preconceptions, just the opposite of the learner's experience derived from formal learning spaces.

For these spaces Gee and Hayes advocate the existence of a 'popular culture' which delivers as they call it 'public pedagogy', often in direct competition with the traditional school pedagogy.
As a case in point for this assertion they present the case of a young unassuming girl, Jade, who attends after-school activities aimed at encouraging girls to become more technology-interested.

As Jade was competent in playing the game 'The Sims' it occured to her that it would be nice if she could wear her real fashion clothes in this simulation game. As this was a task her tutors could not help her with they pointed her towards Photoshop with the intent to create and adapt digital images of her favourite clothing and then projecting them onto the avatars in Sims using appropriate game 'mods'.
And apparently in many hours of hard work she did mange to work out not only how to do this but also to showcase it to her fellow female students; she was also asked to train those who were keen to learn how to do it themselves.

Thereafter Jade learnt how to upload her clothes onto the Internet for more people to use them thus obtaining glowing feedback and boosting her normally low self-esteem in the process.
The next natural step for Jade was to replicate this approach for the Second Life platform with the difference that this time she could actually sell her products for Linden Dollars and ultimately make real money.

Whilst she was undertaking these tasks Jade spent a considerable time within certain Affinity Spaces talking to others and reading relevant sources material. In the process Jade did not only learn the specific technical skills within the context of this project but managed to acquire several important transferable skills such as problem-solving and (online) communication, information literacy and teaching skill, and  finally how to run a (virtual) business. And all this outside the formal learning space.

This obviously begs the question - are we over-teaching during formal contact hours and if yes how can we engage students to learn more informally outside reduced class time. Because there is always the temptation by some learners not to engage in the absence of controlled and supervised learning it will be the role and responsibility of the tutor to identify appropriate activities and affinity spaces tailored to the individual learner and their project.
This way the student may transform from a consumer to a 'prosumer' on the Web i.e. a person who generates and produces content of interest to the wider learning community.

Is this what is meant by Education 2.0?

Know Your Island

This is the name of the game we have chosen to put forwad as our Google Earth team project.
Its aim is to test the user's geographical knowledge of islands.
However instead of just looking them up on a world map in this exercise you will be given the opportunity to 'fly' along parts of or its entire coastline.
The learning objective is to concentrate on the coastal features as the user will be traveling a predetermined path for about a minute. Certain geographical features such as the extent of agricultural land, rocky coastline, sandy beaches and marshland will provide important clues, as will the degree of habitation (towns/cities) and the presence of ports, bridges or jetties.
The game can be played individually but also as a group, competitively, based on a point score:

Rules
The rules are as follows:
1. Click on the file link at the bottom and play back the flight tour; if you can't work out the island repeat the flight, a maximum of four times
2. If you have not identified the island after the fourth time select the 'Places of Interest', and 'Borders and Lables' option from the Layers feature in GoogleEarth and try to identify the island using the landmark names
3. If you have not been able to identity the island at this stage start 'zooming out', one incremental step at a time until you know its name.
Points awarded as follows:

1. If you recognize the island on the first tour you get 10 points, if you recognize it after the second run you get 8 points, at the third attempt 6 points and at the fourth time you get 4 points.
2. If you need to switch on the landmark layers in order to identify the island you get 2 points
3. If you have to make use of the 'zooming out' option you will get for each incremental 'zooming out' a penalty point, for example if you zoom out one increment and then recognize the island you get get -1 points, if you need to scroll out three increments you score -3
4. Note down the score for each island you identify and move to the next one
5. Total the number of all points during your island hopping to obtain a final score
6. The person with the highest score wins

P.S. Is is recognized that there is a strong local bias within this game hence the choice of islands should be adapted to the nationality/residency of the player. For example local versions of the game may be created for particular countries such as Greece, Spain or Denmark.

Target group: GCSE to A-level Geography students
Below is the example of the first island tour, called Island1. Click on the file to launch GoogleEarth:

island1.kmz