My Day

I saw an ad for a college on the web ... but you wouldn't know it was a marketing campaign.  The webpage primarily was a gaming challenge.  The ad simply said (over a photo of a crime scene) "Solve the crime. Crack the case. Take the ultimate criminal justice quiz! Find your top five forensic clues. Play." Way down in the bottom was "Sponsored by Everest College."  So when I clicked on "Play"  I came to this site that provided a way for a student to puzzle out whether or not they wanted to pursue a major in criminal justice. 

http://mycriminaljustice.com/?source_code=DMAFFP&bid=203&aid=CD178  

This is really different from a brochure on "Majors in Criminal Justice." It plays into all kinds of skills that attract the Gamer Generation and uses well the visual signifiers familiar to today's student populations as well as the adult world where Law and Order, CSI and X-Files is/was all the rage. 

In a similar vein, David Baker, a leading protein scientist at the University of Washington, is reaching out to online gamers to help in the work of designing HIV vaccines and other useful protein structures.  He worked with Zoran Popović, a game designer at the University of Washington, to create an online game called Foldit where anyone skilled in online gaming can improve computer-designed proteins simply by playing this protein folding game.  Starting this afternoon, anyone can download the Foldit game for free.

Check out the news article at