Author Archives: egordon

About egordon

This blog documents my research on the growing importance of location, place and space in networked social media. I'm an assistant professor of new media at Emerson College in Boston. Colin Rhinesmith, a graduate student at Emerson, is a major contributor to this blog.

Community PlanIt in Boston Public Schools

How do you convince people to take time out of their busy schedules, leave their home around dinner time, perhaps get a babysitter, all in order to participate in a slow-moving conversation about something very abstract? It’s not easy. While … Continue reading

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Experience is Trying

In thinking about the game design work we are doing, I have previously made the distinction between participation and engagement.  Loosely, I have defined engagement as sustained attention to a driver of participation.  And I have made the argument that … Continue reading

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Preparing for Launch

The summer is nearing an end and we are actively trying to get Community PlanIt ready for launch.  While the goal is to get the game ready for a national launch, on September 9th, we will start a three-week game … Continue reading

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Six Principles of Designing for Engagement

p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 4pt; text-align: justify; font-size: 10pt; font-family: “Times New Roman”; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } Designing for local engagement within the context of net locality is a multi-faceted process.  Building systems of interaction that … Continue reading

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Design-based Approach to Communities and Technologies

The way people use ICTs in their daily lives is infinitely varied.  These variations are associated with socio-economic background, geographical location, cultural capital and a number of other factors.  While the scholarly debate has been rich in regards to understanding … Continue reading

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Attention to Location

I find myself paying to attention to how people pay attention.  I’m starting to frame my design considerations around this problematic.  For instance, in our Community PlanIt game, one way of stating our goal is to make urban planning fun.  … Continue reading

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Community PlanIt

While it has been announced in a number of forums, I have not yet written about the Engagement Game Lab on this blog.  In August 2010, the Engagement Game Lab was born as a virtual research organization at Emerson College. … Continue reading

Posted in cities, civic_engagement, Community_Informatics, mobility, net-locality, placeofmedia | 1 Comment

Local Engagement Games

There is extensive literature documenting the benefits of games for learning.  Educators are beginning to embrace the use of games for teaching history, science, or math it is becoming clear that they provide a mechanism through which content can be … Continue reading

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Participatory Chinatown Launches

Participatory Chinatown launched on May 3 in Boston’s Chinatown.  It’s a 3-D interactive game designed to augment the traditional community meeting.  Instead of the traditional model of people responding to a powerpoint presentation about the neighborhood, participants in this meeting … Continue reading

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Civic Multitasking

Local civic engagement is an outcome of local attention.  When people engage in their neighborhoods they are paying attention to their neighborhoods amidst the myriad other things to which they could be paying attention.  They are stopping to engage in … Continue reading

Posted in augmented_place, boston, hub2, mediated urbanism, net-locality, placeofmedia | 1 Comment