Reuters reported a few days ago about a game created by college students which blends fantasy sports with democracy. “Fantasy Congress” has players drafting a line-up of real life lawmakers, and gaining or losing points based on their performance. As stated by the article, one intention of the game is to make people care more about politics, to get obsessed with it in much the same way as sports superfans. As one of the creators of the game said, “If people cared about politics as much as they care about sports, we'd have a better democracy.”

cross-posted from "Confessions of an Aca/Fan: the Blog of Henry Jenkins"

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I spent Thursday in New York speaking on a panel with the University of Chicago's Nicole Pinkard and the University of Southern California's Mimi Ito as part of the public launch of the MacArthur Foundation's exciting slate of new initiatives in the area of youth, learning, and digital media. People interested in understanding the full context of this initiative should keep an eye on the Foundation's new blog. The event was simulcast on Second Life and on Teen Second Life.

Just a roundup of some recent articles relevant to media literacy:

1)The Federation of American Scientists have jumped on the bandwagon of educational institutions looking to leverage the pedagogical power of video games for education.

2)On the other end of the spectrum, one study indicates that happiness in education is overrated. More specifically, countries where students who enjoy math and are confident don't actually do as well in it. These conclusions are based on student self-evaluations vs. tests results in the various nations. But high-confidence students do better than their immediate peers, so I'm not sure that the official interpretation is so cut and dry.