John KirriemuirSilversprite
John Kirriemuir
BSc Jt Hon Combined Studies (Statistics, Computer Science and Operational Research)
About
66
Publications
74,458
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Introduction
I collect and analyze evidence about effective uses of digital games in education.
Additional affiliations
May 2001 - present
Silversprite
Position
- Researcher
Description
- Researching the use of games in education, gamification in society, and the game franchise Animal Crossing. Research is, and can be, for education funding bodies, EdTech organisations, private and public organisations, charities and individuals.
May 2001 - May 2017
Silversprite
Position
- Consultant
December 1999 - May 2001
Position
- Research Funding Coordinator
Description
- Writing and assisting with the writing of funding proposals.
Publications
Publications (66)
A review of Lorcan Dempsey's book "The Network Reshapes the Library" which collects together some of the thoughts he has had on libraries, networked information retrieval, publishing and Irish literature.
John Kirriemuir reports on a British Library Labs and University of Nottingham event in the National Videogame Arcade on 3rd February.
Marieke Guy, Philip Hunter, John Kirriemuir, Jon Knight and Richard Waller look back at how Ariadne began 20 years ago as part of the UK Electronic Libraries Programme (eLib), how some of the other eLib projects influenced the web we have today and what changes have come, and may yet come, to affect how digital libraries work.
John Kirriemuir, editor of the first ten issues of Ariadne, reminisces about library and information science e-journals back in the day, looks across the current landscape of online “free to read, free to write for” publications, considers a few questions for budding authors to ask, and highlights some publications to house their words.
John Kirriemuir reviews the ALA Tech Report "Understanding Gamification" by Bohyun Kim, and find a high quality introduction to the subject.
Howard Jones mused ‘What is Love?’ in 1983. He didn’t know; neither do most of us. The same goes for the future of libraries, and digital games. Despite this, we can make a handful of safe guesses about gaming trends for the next few years.
Digital, video and other games, their development and use, are taught and studied in many universities. Game study itself is a multi-disciplinary activity across subject areas including sociology, psychology, the media and culture, economics, education, computer science and IT. This isn’t surprising, when you consider that digital and video gaming...
Most technological developments are driven by the seven Gs: Gambling, Games, Geodata (where you, or someone or something else is), Genealogy, Girls (pornography), Good health (medicine) or Guns (military and defence). When a new technology is marketed or upgraded, many purveyors of content and services in these seven areas quickly evaluate any inco...
What is geocaching? It’s an outdoor game that’s free to play, and involves literacy, thinking and exercise.People make ‘caches’ – containers usually holding a small log book and other items. These caches vary from a finger nail size metal nub, through to a 35mm camera film container (the most popular), to tupperware and beyond. And many caches are...
Many public libraries in the USA, and some in the UK, hold video game, board and card game events. But why? And how?
As with previous snapshots, the responses show a mixed picture of virtual world use and institutional attitude in UK Higher Education. Second Life remains the predominant virtual world of use amongst survey respondents, as it has been in UK academia for over half a decade. However, other worlds such as OpenSim (in particular) and Open Wonderland ar...
We all play games. Whether it’s the mainstream digital formats offered by video and handheld consoles; board games such as chess or monopoly; the challenges of the crossword puzzle; or the more abstract games that form our lives, such as beating the traffic light before it turns red, finding the best bargain in a store, trying to ‘win’ the argument...
This snapshot is the ninth in a series which stretches back to what seems the almost impossibly distant past of 2007. Many previous contributers to snapshots have contributed to this one, though a series of problems has resulted in there being less content than hoped for. Despite that, at north of 26,000 words, there’s still a lot of content to rea...
Background: Numerous surveys, articles, ephemera and online information sources indicate that Second Life has been the predominant virtual world, for educational purposes, in UK universities for the latter half of the 2000s. However, the infrastructure required to operate Second Life presents a number of technical concerns within some universities,...
The opening act of this report is a meditation on virtual worlds, and the perceptions and fears that some have of them. From this, the report outlines the main trends which have emerged during the three years which Virtual World Watch has been monitoring the use of this technology in UK academia. Following on, Virtual World Watch takes a look at ho...
BackgrouNumerous surveys, articles, ephemera and online information sources indicate that Second Life has been the predominant virtual world, for educational purposes, in UK universities for the latter half of the 2000s. However, the infrastructure required to operate Second Life presents a number of technical concerns within some universities, suc...
This snapshot report was put together against a backdrop of political and economic uncertainty. It comes, therefore, as a pleasant contrast to notice many cases of continuity, where academics are building on their uses of virtual worlds in previous academic years. It’s also good to welcome details of new sustainable virtual world projects and initi...
From input to this and previous snapshots, plus background research, institutional website searches and anecdotes, it is evident that every UK university except one (the University of the Highlands and Islands) has members of staff who have developed, or are developing, something in a virtual world – though that ‘something’, and the use and educati...
Virtual World Watch asked previous respondents to snapshot reports – UK university and college academics who develop and use virtual worlds – what worlds they used and why they chose them. Second Life and OpenSim were mentioned or used by most respondents. Second Life is attractive due to its constant development over six years, there is no need to...
Second Life (SL) was launched on June 23rd, 2003, making it nearly six years old. Virtual worlds such as SL are therefore not ‘new’. This is apparent when noticing the growing number of UK universities who are into their second or third year of teaching and learning using this technology. Second Life remains, by far, the ‘virtual world of choice’ f...
This report is the fifth in a series of snapshots of virtual world activity in UK higher and further education. It is the first to be conducted under the umbrella of Virtual World Watch (VWW). VWW and the previous snapshots are funded by Eduserv and supported by the Eduserv Foundation. Questionnaire data for this snapshot began to be collected at t...
This is the first snapshot survey where a significant number of respondents were supported by external, often research-based funding. The spread of funding sources is diverse, including national sources (JISC are mentioned by several respondents), European funding and non-academic sources. Of the other respondents, the majority had institutional su...
The Second Life ‘worlds’ consist of islands and larger areas of ‘virtual land’. Linden Labs make much of their income by renting out land to people and organisations. Once you are renting some land, you can develop buildings and other structures. Some laws of physics can be ignored; for example, you can build rooms or floors high in the sky. Struct...
The number of UK academics who are developing or operating teaching and learning resources in Second Life (SL) has grown rapidly in the last year. While an accurate figure is difficult to determine (partially due to the non-public nature of some developments), as a rough estimate some three-quarters of UK universities are actively developing or usi...
In late 2007, the following question was put to UK academics known for developing, or teaching, in Second Life:
“I have a question. How can (if it can) the ‘impact’ of using SL for educational purposes such as an in-world seminar or tutorial, over not using SL, be “measured” or quantified? I’m currently a little stumped on this. For the next snaps...
A presentation covering the use, and relevance, of digital games and virtual worlds to the library and information science sectors. Given to the Games Research Centre at Tampere University, Finland.
John Kirriemuir introduces a series of studies, funded by the Eduserv Foundation, investigating how the Second Life environment is being used in academia. These studies, survey-based "snapshots", are compiled from responses received from academics, researchers and developers across the Higher and Further Education sectors. Nine particular categorie...
This is an updated version of the first Virtual World Watch snapshot report. It shows that a growing number of UK academic institutions, departments and groups are at different stages of Second Life development. The summer of 2007 has seen several HE/FE institutions appear, in some form, on the grid. Some institutional and departmental islands, suc...
This report shows that a growing number of UK academic institutions, departments and groups are at different stages of Second Life (SL) development. It is, perhaps, presumptuous to conclude that UK Higher Education has reached a “tipping point” in terms of using and developing facilities in SL. However, there has been a considerable increase in act...
This report is an important step in beginning the challenging and exciting process of developing the potentially powerful new partnerships between gaming and education. It consists of several sections. Games in a social context defines digital computer and video games, examining them in a social context. What games teach investigates the research a...
An invited speaker presentation on digital and video games, and their relevance to education, learning and teaching. Given at the 2006 University of Ticer (Netherlands) summer school.
Despite media coverage that is usually negative or non-existent, digital (video) game playing is a major form of entertainment for significant numbers of people in developed countries. This paper begins with a brief outline of what these games are, who plays them and why there is interest within the library community. We then move through several e...
John MacColl, Lorcan Dempsey and John Kirriemuir reflect in turn on the rationale and history of the founding of Ariadne.
With the arrival of the next generation of video consoles – which will increase the number of people playing online games – this article provides a brief overview of contemporary aspects of online games, and the people who play them. Also examined are those aspects of online games and gaming that have direct parallels with digital library and other...
Computer games are today an important part of most children’s leisure lives and increasingly an important part of our culture as a whole. We often, as adults, watch in amazement as children dedicate hours to acting as football coaches, designers of empires, controllers of robots, wizards and emperors. In the past, computer games have been dismissed...
This article describes the development of a content management system(CMS)-based web site for the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), a UK strategic advisory body. After introducing the JISC, some of the motivations for developing a new web site are outlined, as well as an overview of the site mechanisms and some of the development issues....
This paper examines the use of "pure" computer and video games in classrooms. It reports the findings of an ongoing informal survey of how and why such games are used as an integrated part of formal classroom learning. The paper presents a number of examples of the use of such games, and tries to determine likely trends in their use in such an envi...
This report presents an overview of gaming consoles and a comparison of consoles and the PC. Benefits of games to learning and the learning environment are touched on, as is the use of games consoles in research and teaching. Issues pertaining to potential future applications of games and consoles to learning and teaching, especially through the en...
This article presents an overview of video gaming and discusses how gaming is related and relevant to digital libraries and digital learning technologies. It suggests that these relationships are worthy of more detailed investigation. This article begins with information about video games and consoles, a comparison of consoles and PC, and some obse...
John Kirriemuir outlines some of the issues for the establishment of digital library centres in UK Higher Education institutions.
This paper provides an overview of the games console market, a rapidly growing sector of the entertainment industry. An overview of the emergence of games consoles, and advances in games console technology, is given, as well as examples of the increasing incorporation of aspects of computer gaming into Higher Education student courses. Current and...
Les services d'affiliation du web permettent de generer des revenus commerciaux en creant un lien a partir d'un site web (l'affilie) vers les produits et services d'un autre site (la cible). Les principaux modes de remuneration du site emetteur de lien se font en fonction des clicks, des objets telecharges ou des ventes. Le service d'affilie mis en...
The games console, within the wider sector of electronic games and entertainment, is defined. A historical outline of the games console is given, indicating how the development of the console, and that of the PC, have intertwined over several decades. The emerging generation of games consoles possesses facilities that offer the possibility of acces...
The home-based video games market is one of the largest within the entertainment industry, and has recently begun to rival the music and film sectors in terms of audience, sales and revenue. This is partially due to the high profile mass marketing of games consoles and titles over the last decade, especially by a trio of Japanese electronics compan...
This article explores the technology and impact of expanding internet access, with respect to digital gaming systems and consoles.
This article describes some of the findings of an informal study of access to the Internet for information professionals working within the UK public funded health sector e.g. hospital libraries, NHS trusts, and other public funded medical libraries.
John Kirriemuir, the Service Manager of Organising Medical Networked Information (OMNI), and Nicky Ferguson of the Social Science Information Gateway (SOSIG) spoke to Brian McKenna, the Journals Editor at Learned information, about their subject gateways to information on the Net. OMNI and SOSIG are two of the eLib projects that have impacted signi...
John Kirriemuir outlines current areas of concern in: Information or Hysteria? "Talking sensibly" in the biomedical field.
This paper takes a look at some of the issues surrounding biomedical resource discovery. It begins with a brief overview of the components of a typical biomedical resource discovery system; more considered attention is given to MeSH and UMLS.b The main body of this paper deals with the issues surrounding the contexts into which a health/medical res...
A subject gateway, in the context of network-based resource access, can be defined as some facility that allows easier access to network-based resources in a defined subject area. The simplest types of subject gateways are sets of Web pages containing lists of links to resources. Some gateways index their lists of links and provide a simple search...
Clifford Lynch, the Executive Director of CNI, was interviewed by John Kirriemuir at the Metadata: What Is It? workshop on 18 June 1997. Clifford shares some views on mirroring, caching, metadata, Z39.50 and how he sees his role in CNI.
John Kirriemuir takes in megabytes of trilobites at the Natural History Museum.
Ariadne is a project funded under the Electronic Libraries Programme (eLib), with the main purpose of providing a regular, parallel, Web and print magazine for the UK Higher Education Library and Information Science communities. The overall goal of Ariadne is to disseminate information about, and raise awareness of, electronic library developments,...
Z39.50 is an information retrieval protocol. It has generated much interest but is so far little deployed in UK systems and services. This article gives a functional overview of the protocol itself and the standards background, describes some European initiatives which make use of it, and outlines various issues to do with its future use and accept...
John Kirriemuir and Isobel Stark with some notes and pictures from the main annual UK library exhibition: Libtech 96.
Debra Hiom and John Kirriemuir provide an informal report from the "cutting edge" of Web development.
Ariadne explains how the Electronic Libraries Programme (eLib), a key IT programme for academic libraries, is shaping up.
The authors describe how an existing course in cataloguing for postgraduate students of librarianship at the University of Sheffield's Department of Information Studies was modified to include practical work on cataloguing electronic resources. The students were instructed to search the Internet for resources associated with some topic, and to desi...
Clustering the output of a multi-database online search enables a user to obtain an overview of the information that has been retrieved without the need to inspect any documents that contain only redundant information. In this paper we describe a classification scheme that characterises the degree of relationship between pairs of documents in datab...
Projects
Projects (2)
A series of six informal articles, introducing aspects of games to the library and information science community. Published in CILIP Update throughout 2012.
Virtual World Watch (VWW) was a project and service which operated from 2007 to 2012, by myself with support from the Eduserv Foundation. The main purpose of VWW was to find academics in the UK who were using virtual worlds, and to find out if, how and why their use of such technology worked or failed. Many UK academics provided data (informal and formal) over the five year arc of the project.
