Social Gaming and Learning

I'm typing up this post in a browser specially made for social networking called Flock, and I generally like it. Playing with the features got me thinking about some of the things I've heard about concerning games and education, the social aspects of course.

First, there is the education, because that is what I've been hearing more social stuff coming from by way of informal forms of learning. I could see tools like Flock being used for courses and classes using social aspects of the web; Twitter, blogging, e-mail, maybe Diigo in the future.

Second is the possibility for "social gaming" though I haven't looked too much into it. I think there is great strides to be made in making games social activities, but to really do something with social games there has to be a way to do it. Flock is merely one example of the tools that are coming out that could be used to great effect.

There are possibilities, but I think the coolest part is the idea of a social networking dashboard. I'll admit that a part of me cringes at the thought of have my log in information stored in my browser, but I'm like that. I like the idea of being able to got online and just participate. Posting in all my online social communities, and having them listed out so I don't forget them. I'm like that too sometimes. There are a few things I would change, but these tools are in there infancy so I'll give them some time and see what they grow into.

Personally, I'd really like to see something like an e-mail dashboard that incorporates all the different APIs for popular social tools like forums, wikis, blogs, e-mail and feeds, only in a more co-operative way. Speaking of feeds, I wonder if that is really the way to go to make this stuff work; feeds and pings. How about forums thread feeds being used like blogs feeds are used? Wiki pages and so on now all seem to have feeds for changes and such, so it makes sense to me to build a feed reader that informs the user like an e-mail dashboard does. Add some multicategory/tag-based organization for all that stuff and it could be something really useful.

How could we use such a thing in our daily lives, as students, teachers, designers, developers, consumers, journalists, socialites and more? Or, better yet, how do we keep it all organized? See that's where the tag and category idea comes to mind. Tag it to organize it, and grab it when it's relevant. Having a business meeting? Tell the dashboard the right tags to lookk for and have it bring the links and accounts to you. Have a MMO group thing going on? Put in the right tags and find all those resources, friends and communication tools you have prepared for just such an occation.

Wait. I see a slight issue here, or is it? Normally you have to go and log into a service, use there individual systems for each item you want to have "prepared". However, if you have something like a dashboard through which you normally deal with your social services, and it also submits actions and content to multiple services as you want, it might not be a problem. How about the tag search looking through image collections, blogs, feeds and bookmarks you have on your social services? How might games and education use such a dashboard? I think there are definite possibilities.

Have fun, spread the word and tell me what you think,
Igen Oukan

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Social Gaming and Learning

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