It dawned on me this evening that, while I’d posted some shameless self-promotion to Joystick101.org and Constance had posted some shameless self-promotion to TerraNova, I’d never actually bothered to post any shameless self-promotion to my own weblog about a new research blog I’m involved in. So, here ya go: For the past few weeks, I’ve been posting to popcosmo.org, the new blog for Constance Steinkuehler‘s research group. I’m a member of her research group, and she’s my primary professor.

The name “pop cosmo” might be a little opaque at first glance, but it’s short for “Pop Cosmopolitanism,” a term that Constance has been using lately to summarize the goals of our work. By focusing on the ways that popular media (in the form of persistent online virtual worlds) encourage various learning and literacy practices, we’re arguing that they’re preparing kids for the demands of 21st century workplaces, and the responsibilities of being global citizens (hence “cosmopolitanism”). Here’s Constance’s introductory post, which better explains what we’re doing.

I made a post last week about our research into science literacy and the World of Warcraft official forums. It’s been an interesting project so far, and now we’re in the process of writing up some of our results, as well as determining what to do next. Here’s the introductory paragraph of my post:

Following up on Constance’s post from the other day, I’d like to talk a little more about our ongoing research into science literacy practices in the World of Warcraft forums. Based on the results Constance posted, we found a staggering amount of “social knowledge construction” occurring in our sample of posts to the official WoW forums. Constance gave us a taste of what the typical post to these forums looks like, but what about exemplary posts, and what might those tell us about science literacy in these online contexts?

This coming Saturday, we’re going to start our first afterschool groups, introducing adolescent boys to World of Warcraft. It’s been pretty nutty trying to get everything prepared and ready for them, but I think we’re almost there, and we’re excited to get the kids playing. More on that as it develops.

If you’re interested in any of this, by all means, go check out popcosmo.org, and let me know what you think.