How is this similar to geocaching? I just learned to geocache a couple of days ago and this feels very similar. While I bring background knowledge about geocaching, mobile phones and the Pokemon card game, Hailey brings deep knowledge of the card game, the tv show and other video games. She has also had thousands of conversations at school- mostly with boys- about Pokemon. She brings deep background about the mythology and backstory.

This type of commentary by someone who saw #PokemonGO's potential while playing Ingress leads me to think about the concept of Reading Ladders.

PokemonGO might be higher on the metaphorical ladder because the story is built on a popular mythical cartoon and video game.

This inequity already exists in the game with the in-app purchases for coins. I appreciate the article because it highlights inequity but I'm wondering how many authors are writing about the game without a familiarity of the game content.

The competition dynamics right now are tuned for wealthy. Some questions I want to ask are: Who can play? Who can engage in the fitness aspects and goals? Who can collect cards and access the text complexity in the game?

If systems replicate in games then they are also mirrored in games and can be studied through games.

Also a dream come true for community health experts interested in prevention, and marketing experts, I would guess, interested in in-app purchases.

This speaks to the importance of surfacing those economic theories for learners playing a game.

Why is this easier to imagine? Perhaps because we've been busy as a culture scolding youth for interest in media while we devour it. We should be translating the tipping point that Nintendo seems to have hit upon culturally and asking what they think. Teens in my neighborhood are interested in the cultural phenomenon and they're also excited to talk about Nintendo's motives. We've adopted such a deficit view of mobile game players, and smartphones that confronted with evidence that a game based on a Japanese cartoon is encouraging family activity, we imagine the worst.

The bigger question is how will organizations that seek to educate a community respond to such a powerful example of AR? Will they experiment and iterate like the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas? Or, will they adopt a deficit view of players and seek evidence of players rushing past monuments in search of Pokemon? What answers will educators look for?

I'm a little dubious about the expert's response here. My daughters and I are talking about the game and learning together. The question I'd ask is, does this shared experience lead to engaged, interest-driven dialogue?

This is consistent with what I'm seeing with my own daughters and the other youth in my neighborhoods. They've definitely come out to play even in some oppressive heat. I appreciate this article's approach, which is a little more measured.

I think this analogy of a kiddie cock-fighting fantasy lays the author's bias bare. Isn't it more helpful to notice the connection to Japanese culture?

Godzilla's popularity explains global interest in monster vs monster fiction in a much more understanding way that doesn't deficitize fans. Lastly, why spin Google and Ingress' iterations with the game as failures? Isn't it more important to understand the tipping point that resulted in global game craze?

This article didn't really enlighten me at all about how Pokemon Go is the future of education...

While it's nice to see equity noted at the end of this post, equitable teaching and learning is seldom - if ever - about access to devices. At the very least, the author should mention access to data - to broadband access, to networks that facilitate the production and sharing of information. Beyond that, access is far more powerful when framed in terms of networks and institutions, not devices. Giving every kid a device won't do much for systemic educational inequity in America, or elsewhere for that matter.

At this point I'm pretty dumbstruck...

See my previous annotation. The author's inability to consider the privilege of mobility and space is troubling. This is further emphasized by the fact that the four kids in the next picture are all white and male. Privilege speaks loudly.

And when others walk around playing Pokemon Go, they might end up in very different circumstances.

And before Goosechase there were educators and media designers who were creating various mobile learning activities, technologies, and pedagogies to meet the needs of their students and communities. The author should carefully consider the cases presented in the books Mobile Media Learning: Amazing Uses of Mobile Devices of Learning and also Mobile Media Learning: Innovation and Inspiration.

Many learning technologies have been designed and deployed in diverse settings, many outside the formal confines of a school classroom. The history of mobile computing did not start yesterday. There's a long line of scholarship that usefully indicates design principles for learning across settings, and the role of learning technology to afford authentic practices (such as scientific inquiry).

Technically, this is augmented reality, not virtual reality.

Where is the recognition of contested policy - that some schools and districts prohibit students from using personal phones in school? Or that educators are not permitted from experimenting with mobile learning pedagogy? And - certainly more importantly - the author's decision to ignore issues of access and equity is very troubling.

Some very smart people have thought about why learners use various tools, and why that may or may not be beneficial to their learning. I highly recommend that you read Audrey Watters, Larry Cuban, and Sherry Turkle to name but a few people who would likely bristle at this superficial analysis of an emerging technology as somehow relevant to education.

Why? Because they are distracted in class due to learning that is not relevant to their interests? Or because they are participating in some type of activity that is complemented by mobile device use? The initial presumption that learners are "on" a device and not engaged with authentic practices (i.e. questioning, inquiry) is troubling, if not shortsighted.

What might youth author in podcasts? Can this be authentic journalling, planning and strategy? Can youth experts who are experienced with Pokemon make podcasts for their classmates to give the background of the game?

This is a strange rationale. Instead of focusing on the inevitability of youth using phones, I would look at the possibility of connecting story, myth, strategy, mapping, exercise and social interaction.