February 08, 2013

Running from the zombies

Train

It’s been a busy week. I’ve had classes, meetings, and deadlines to meet. And on top of that, I’ve been fighting zombies. I’ve dodged their attacks, watched as some of my students turned into zombies, and used icicles to defend myself.

I’ve been playing Twitter vs Zombies 2.0, a game first developed last November by Jesse Stommel and Pete Rorabaugh. My students and Pete’s students hijacked the game and have been running it for two days, a New York-Georgia collaboration that ended up pulling in about 130 players.

For many of my students, it’s their first time using twitter, and the game has taught them how. We’ve also learned something about collaboration: we’ve had to hash out rules with students in another state, mostly by typing at each other inside a google document, and we’ve held meetings through Google Hangout, a video chat that allows multiple people to chat at the same time.

The best part of the game for me, though, is the story-telling, the bits of narrative that players are constructing with their 140-character tweets. On twitter, you only get to write a sentence really, and your sentences get automatically mixed in with everyone else’s in the rolling stream of tweets. It’s very much like the campfire game where you go around the circle telling a story, each person adding a line. You never know what crazy twist the story might take.

The newest rule in the Twitter vs Zombies 2.0 game is that humans can create safezones by linking to a blog post. That’s why I began this post with a photo of a train. In my narrative, I’m on a train with some other humans, attempting to escape the zombies. Wish me luck.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

"In my narrative, I’m on a train with some other humans, attempting to escape the zombies."

And singing songs. There are a lot of train songs. Maybe the music scares away the zombies?

ChrisinNY

Anonymous said...

Ah maybe I don't need to turn undead after all, what a crazy random happenstance.

Yay, trainrides.

@Nick_Kwiatk

jo(e) said...

Nick: Glad I could pull you onto the train. It's actually kind of funny because out of all the people playing, you're the one who probably knows exactly where the train in this photo is.

jo(e) said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
jo(e) said...

ChrisNY: OH, train songs! I'm going to start singing. That will drive everyone on twitter nuts.

Anonymous said...

"Fifteen cars and fifteen restless riders,
Three conductors and twenty-five sacks of mail."


"You can hear the whistle blow, 500 miles."

These are the two I was thinking about, but others (many others) here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_train_songs

ChrisinNY

susan said...

ANd I'm flashing back to an older post of yours and feeling disappointed that the train is going UNDER a bridge rather than being a train ON a bridge.

susan said...

Plus there's always "I've been working on the railroad...." which is perhaps more a song about tracks than trains. But still.