Games & Books = BFF?

Videogame hooks kid on readingHere’s something you don’t hear often: Playing videogames can help kids get into reading. It happened to 8th-grader Christopher. He told the Press-Enterprise (in southern Calif.) that there are action games and storyline games, and he found he really liked the latter (he was reading below grade level at the time). One of those, Tales of Symphonia, was recommended to him by a relative, and “quickly discovered if he was going to have any success - if he was going to win this game – ‘I had to read to keep up’,” the Press-Enterprise reports. “He’s probably logged 200-plus hours playing - and winning. And he’s gone retro. Now, he’s reading books” – specifically Brian Jacques’ “Redwall” series of eight books and Kathryn Lasky’s “owl-populated fantasy series, Guardians of Ga’Hoole.” A call to a teacher at Christopher’s school told writer Dan Bernstein that Christopher was not alone in this “Video-to-Book Phenomenon.”

Net Family News - kid-tech news for parents

Various forms of storytelling supporting one another?  ROCK ON.  This is my sincere hope as stories continue to drive cross-media– opening new worlds yet supporting old.  Awesome.  

Thanks as always, Net Family News

technorati tags:gaming, youth

Testing & Improving Communities and Websites

Established off line industries already know everything about their customers and clients and have well developed psychological profiles, so they are pretty successful at selling their products and services. Websites and online sites also need psychological profiles of their visitors and customers to be effective and in business.

Why Make a Psychological Profile?

It allows you to make decisions easier. If you know the your
visitors come to your website to satisfy three different needs, than
you’ll know what to hit on when designing and developing your site.

Getting better results. You will not waste time and resources on
activities that get substandard results. You won’t preach mountain
biking to geeks or car racing to nerds.

Components of a Psychological Profile

You have to write down the thinking processes that occur in your
visitor’s heads when they use your site. What are they thinking when
they click on this button or that link? You need to know the difference
in psychological needs of a Google visitor and a repeat visitor and
treat each differently.

Don’t fly with your blinders on. Start with a basic psychological
profile of your site visitors and keep that in mind when building and
developing your site. As you get more feedback from what works and what
doesn’t and from usage and after action questionnaires, you’ll be able
to modify this profile and further tone your messages to hit spot on
with your target visitors and customers.

Psychologically Profiling of Your Site Visitors - Noah Kagan’s Okdork.com

Ain’t this the truth.  It rounds off the whole idea that you MUST listen to the needs of the community in order for it to survive and grow.  Thanks OKdork!

Finding Kids’ Heroes.

So, lately I’ve had this odd feeling, like a lit candle in the back of my mind, towards the base of my skull.  It’s out of reach, but I know it’s there– the flame flickering and tickling the darkened recesses of my busy-brain.

The candle has always been burning in the back of my thoughts, and I’ve only vaguely known what it was about… It is the eternal flame at the base of all my thoughts illuminating my desire to help inspire and empower kids. Big task, distant candle.

Every change I’ve made since High School has been encouraged in one way or another by this candle.  It is the spark that starts my path.  It is the reason for the very first sentence in my stories.  The champion behind the first decisions I make at work.  And even though I know this candle burns deep in the recesses of my mind…  To everyone else, its never really been the obvious focus.

In the past few months– either the candle has grown stronger, or my brain space has shrunk, because the flickering TICKLE has become a flickering TACKLE.

Of course I want to do something about it– but in typical Izzy-fashion, I’ve got to find my own way (I never seem to walk others’ paths very well).  A few months ago I signed up for volunteering at Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago– but due to staggering volunteer sign-up #’s, it will take a while before I get my foot in that door.  There are some other options I’m currently mulling & applying for… but time is time and it moves much faster when I don’t want it to, and much slower when I’m antsy.

So in the mean time, I want to dedicate some space on this ole blog O’mine to kids who are heroes and heroes for kids, as well as some sites that can help make heroes out of you and me.

I need your help:  If you could visit the “Kids Heroes” page on my blog (or just click here for a quick link) and leave information about any website, organization, or amazing kid/adult that is helping the inspire/empower cause… I would be much obliged.  I want to keep a running tally of amazing people.  And as that list grows– hopefully you (open invitation) and I can figure out something AMAZING to do to help inspire & empower & spread the flickering, tickling, tackling flame.

Thank you ahead of time. 

Henry & Harry: Musings on Harry Potter & the world

The following comments are reflections upon a really intense and delightful weekend spent at Phoenix Rising, a Harry Potter Conference held in New Orleans. Thanks to my hosts and to all of the other fans I met at the conference. I am sure that I will be having further reflections on what I learned this weekend in future posts.

Confessions of an Aca/Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins: Everybody Loves Harry?

Henry Jenkins is the coolest.  Check out the article above.  He goes deep into the world of HP conventions (which, indeed, is a culture on to itself).  He covers all areas of Media & HP– it’s exceptional.

technorati tags:HarryPotter, HenryJenkins