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Who is Kym?

I'm a professor in the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin Stevens Point . I teach educational psychology, supervise student teachers, and assist students in developing their web portfolios. More broadly, I'm an educator, researcher, designer, and gamer.

I grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah, but I think of Portland, Oregon as my home town. I lived in Portland from 1989-2003. I earned my Bachelors in Chemistry from the incomparable Reed College in 1998, and my Masters in Teaching from Concordia University in 1999. I taught high school for three years, including English, Speech, Algebra, and Business Technology. I was also the assistant coach of a competitive speech team. Then I worked as a researcher at a federally-funded regional educational laboratory for one year, where I focused on open source software .

In 2003, I moved to Lansing, Michigan, to earn a PhD in Learning, Technology, and Culture at Michigan State University . My program combined educational psychology and educational technology. My interests include motivation, constructivism, and popular media and technologies. Utopian Entrepeneur, by Brenda Laurel, echoes a lot of my thinking and goals, so I fervently recommend it. In 2006, I finished my PhD and became a professor.

For most of my life, I've been an avid, critical fan of games. I've played computer and video games since the early 1980's. I've played tabletop role-playing games since 1989. I've been designing original games since the early 1990's, including tabletop role-playing games and text-based multiplayer online role-playing games (a.k.a. MUDs).

I combine my passions through my research on teaching using video games. I frame my research in a larger model called Playful Interest Bridging (PIB). PIB urges a playful, opportunistic attitude toward "pop" media and techs (e.g., games, music, movies). Some pop media and techs can be re-purposed for academic learning goals. This isn't an original idea (Sesame Street has done it for decades), but I'm trying to create a more complete, possibly-prescriptive model. Teaching using video games will require new designs, so I'm interested in emergence, co-construction, and community management in online games. I'm also interested in metacognition and contextual awareness, especially in role-play.

Some of my other recreations include movies, novels, and comic books, especially survival horror and speculative science fiction. I enjoy bicycling and canoing. Happily, my wife Jodi shares many of my interests; we meet in 1994, and we were married in 1999. We have two daughters: Bayli Cadence (born 6/22/2004) and Dani Ember (born 7/9/2007). We have a cat named Xena and a turtle named Roosevelt.

See also: Kym & the Crimson Gargoyle