Welcome to SimU 2007!


If you are here for the first time, we encourage you to read about the conference and review "The Basics" to learn a little about the issues this conference addressed.

Thank You!

We'd like to thank everyone who attended SimU 2007 and applaud those whose hard work was instrumental in making SimU a success! The speakers did a great job of initiating a conversation about the unique challenges and opportunities facing educators and students regarding the student gaming generation. We also thank our student panelists, who did much to facilitate this conversation.

If you're interested in reviewing some of the content of the conference, you can access select portions of the webcast here. Again, thanks for your interest and participation and stay tuned for more SimU developments.

Video Archive


Opening Remarks and Dr. Judd Ruggill
Duration: 00:53:48
Description: Dr. Ruggill teaches for the department of media arts at the University of Arizona. His work has appeared in a variety of scholarly books, journals, and periodicals, including Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, The International Digital Media and Arts Association Journal, FLOW, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. He also co-directs the Learning Games Initiative, a trans-disciplinary, inter-institutional research group that studies, teaches with and builds computer games.

Ken S. McAllister
Duration: 00:39:23
Description: Dr. McAllister is associate professor of rhetoric at the University of Arizona and co-director of the Learning Games Initiative. He has been executive director of Alternative Educational Environments, co-chair of the International Digital Media and Arts Association’s Game Studies Special Interest Group, and is currently a member of the National Science Foundation’s iPlant Collaborative. His book Game Work: Language, Power, and Computer Game Culture (U. of Alabama Press, 2004) is now in its second printing and received a Choice Outstanding Academic Title award in 2005. He is presently working on a new book with Judd Ruggill titled Defining Games: Coming to Terms with a New Medium.

Jason and Sunny Cerchie (Rez Menoptra and Endira Udal)
Duration: 00:45:19
Description: Mr. Cerchie is a visual architect and 3-D artists with the Electric Sheep Company. He took a roundabout path to getting a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of Arkansas School of Architecture. Along the path were stints as a baker, a professionally touring musician and an artisan stonemason. Now he spends his time taking projects from two-dimensional conceptual art to fully immersive three-dimensional environments. Sunny Cerchie also makes an appearance at the conference through Second Life.

Ian Bogost
Duration: 00:46:28
Description: Dr. Bogost is the co-founder of Persuasive Games, an independent video game studio that makes games about social and political issues, including airport security, Christmas shopping, the global petroleum market and disaffected workers. Bogost speaks at conferences around the world about videogame theory and design. Bogost’s company has a relationship with the New York Times, in which they are publishing news games on the online op-ed page as part of the editorial content. He is an assistant professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Student Panel
Duration: 00:51:52
Description: Student panel with Ken Knoespel of Georgia Tech as moderator
– Drew Avery, Chemistry
– Troy Long, Industrial Engineering
– Suzanne Ownbey, Computer Science
– Quentin Rezin, BS in Computer Science, 2006

Kenneth J. Knoespel
Duration: 00:11:35
Description: Dr. Knoespel’s work spans issues of institutions facing and embracing technological change, science and visualization and the methodology of early scientific commentary. His current research includes work on diagrams within architecture, science and technology. He is revising a book on allegory and Renaissance science and completing research on a project dealing with science and culture in Sweden and Russia in the early modern period. He is the chair of and a professor in the School of Literature, Communication and Culture at Georgia Institute of Technology.