Dr. Adrienne Burk convened an amazing conference last month on behalf of the Institute for the Humanities at Simon Fraser University, and I was lucky enough to get a chance to speak on one of the panels. The conference was called Witnessing the World: New Possibilities for Citizenship and Social Change, and while it was an intimate group, there was a wide range of speakers. The day ranged from discussions about the ancient Greeks’ definitions of witnessing all the way to multimedia presentations about citizen journalism as a tool and technique for progressive social change – some day, I’m going to write more about these presentations but the honest truth is that the ideas presented were so complex that I’m still wrapping my head around them.

I presented about the possibilities for social media and how it was changing the way we play – as well as the way we act as citizens and witnesses. Since my presentation consisted only of screen shots, I airily told everyone not to worry or take notes, that the links for everything I was talking about would go up on my blog. I made it sound like this would happen within about five minutes, might even be up by the time they got home.

And a geologic age later, here it is! So let’s talk about serious games, and how it could make us better citizens. Thanks to everyone at the conference who was kind enough to chat about this in person.(More...)