Stephen T. Slota
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steveslota.bsky.social
Stephen T. Slota
@steveslota.bsky.social
330 followers 610 following 160 posts
Co-author of The Worldbuilding Workshop: Teaching Critical Thinking and Empathy Through World Modeling, Simulation, and Play

Learning Scientist, EdTech Expert, Instructional Designer, GameDev, Former K12 Teacher

They|Them 🏳️‍🌈🎮 https://www.steveslota.com/
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steveslota.bsky.social
JUST TWO MORE MONTHS (!!) until The Worldbuilding Workshop hits bookshelves/earbuds near you!

I'm so psyched to finally reveal the book cover, which @mitpress.bsky.social graciously allowed me to design.

The *final* final version may vary very slightly, but this is the general layout.
Cover art for "The Worldbuilding Workshop: Teaching Critical Thinking and Empathy Through World Modeling, Simulation, and Play" by Trent Hergerader and Stephen Slota. The Image depicts a purple horizon set against a yellow background with a timeline of events, historical structures, and a cityscape beneath a giant hand. The back cover reads: The Worldbuilding Workshop is the first comprehensive treatise on worldbuilding as an educational tool for deconstructing, analyzing, and contextualizing the planet’s most urgent, mind-boggling questions. The process unfolds across six stages that collectively encourage hypothesis formation, research, group discussion, and systems modeling. By interrogating governmental, economic, social, and cultural forces at various points in space and time, learners are prompted to reflect on: 1) how these forces came to be in the first place; 2) how different people experience(d) these forces based on their respective socioeconomic and sociocultural contexts; and 3) how each of us can shape these forces within our shared reality. Beyond advocacy for avant-garde technologies or flash-in-the-pan activities, co-authors Trent Hergenrader and Stephen Slota point to worldbuilding as a strategy for reconfiguring education to meet 21st century challenges and teach critical thinking as well as its less-talked-about sibling, empathy. Featured topics include: how and why worldbuilding is supported by contemporary theories of human thinking and learning (e.g., constructionism, situated cognition); interrelationships between constructivist teaching and assessment practices; how instructors and learners can co-develop accurate representations of worlds set in specific places and times; geographies and demographies of worlds; creation of ethical character sketches that capture broad characteristics of diverse populations; and how instructors and learners can interact with co-constructed worlds through simulation and role-play.
October 2, 2025 at 5:50 PM
steveslota.bsky.social
Ahead of our book's upcoming launch, @mitpress.bsky.social has shared a pair of fantastic endorsements from other researchers in the field! 🤯🤩
Two endorsements for the upcoming book The Worldbuilding Workshop: Teaching Critical Thinking & Empathy Through World Modeling, Simulation, and Play. "The Worldbuilding Workshop shows how to center imagination—our mind’s world-building, time-traveling power—at the heart of education in a world that urgently needs it." - James Paul Gee, Regents Professor Emeritus, Arizona State University; author of What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy "A genuinely new, practical, and much-needed pedagogy for playful and connected learning. Where everything zigs to numbers and algorithms, The Worldbuilding Workshop zags to role-play and narrative to nurture humanistic inquiry of our complex worlds." - Sebastian Deterding, Chair of Design Engineering, Imperial College London; coeditor of The Routledge Handbook of Role-Playing Game Studies
August 21, 2025 at 8:58 PM
steveslota.bsky.social
Installing new flooring after a lengthy bathroom renovation and decided to leave a secret time capsule message for whomever pulls it up in the future.

@criminalsimpsons.com #thesimpsons
A white bathroom subfloor featuring a sharpie drawing of Moe Syzlak from "The Simpsons" saying "Hey everybody! I'm a stupid moron with an ugly face and a big butt and my butt smells and I like to kiss my own butt!"
July 13, 2025 at 8:30 PM
steveslota.bsky.social
Reupping this classic gif for no particular reason.
An animated gif of George W. Bush giving a goofy smile in front of a "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" banner aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln (circa 2003).
June 22, 2025 at 1:56 AM
steveslota.bsky.social
Black and white protest poster emblazoned with the words "Twinkle Twinkle Little Tsar" depicting Donald Trump as a diaper-wearing infant in dictatorial regalia holding a baby bottle and sitting beside a photo of Vladimir Putin.
June 15, 2025 at 1:09 AM
steveslota.bsky.social
No fucking kings ❌️👑

#nokings @indivisible.org
Black and white protest poster emblazoned with the words "Twinkle Twinkle Little Tsar" depicting Donald Trump as a diaper-wearing infant in dictatorial regalia holding a baby bottle and sitting beside a photo of Vladimir Putin.
June 14, 2025 at 3:09 PM
steveslota.bsky.social
It's becoming more real. 👀

Coming to bookshelves everywhere December 2025.
Image of the title page for The Worldbuilding Workshop: Teaching Critical Thinking and Empathy Through World Modeling, Simulation, and Play by Trent Hergenrader and Stephen Slota, foreword by Bryan Alexander, published by The MIT Press
June 5, 2025 at 10:33 PM
steveslota.bsky.social
A still image from The Simpsons S07E02 'Radioactive Man' of a prop manager on the set of the Radioactive Man movie painting black spots on a beige horse while telling Martin, Ralph, and Nelson, "Cows don't look like cows on film. You got to use horses."
March 1, 2025 at 11:26 PM
steveslota.bsky.social
Screencap of The Simpsons S05E15 "Deep Space Homer" featuring musician James Taylor singing "Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground" before he suddenly realizes the uncomfortably dark implication of that lyric in this context (Homer and the other astronauts are engaged in a dangerous re-entry that may, in fact, result in an explosion that kills them all).
February 7, 2025 at 2:15 PM
steveslota.bsky.social
A still image from the cartoon series "Over the Garden Wall" in which Greg is trapped in the roots/branches of an edelwood tree and telling his older brother Wirt, "No. I was just eating leaves."
December 9, 2024 at 2:50 PM
steveslota.bsky.social
A quick jaunt in Holyoke, the river at sunset. 🌅
Selfie photo of Stephen (a fair-skinned non-binary person with blue eyes, black eyeliner, dark blonde eyebrows, a silver septum piercing, freckles, and light stubble wearing a green crocheted beanie hat, gray Columbia fleece jacket, and black hoodie) standing on a bridge in front of a river with another bridge in the background and brick buildings with glass windows on either side. The sun is setting and orange light is reflecting off of the river's surface.
December 7, 2024 at 11:35 PM
steveslota.bsky.social
Post an Onion headline that lives in your head rent-free.
A March 26, 2003 headline from satirical newspaper The Onion titled: "This War Will Destabilize The Entire Mideast Region And Set Off A Global Shockwave Of Anti-Americanism vs. No It Won't"
December 2, 2024 at 2:24 AM
steveslota.bsky.social
THE THANKSGIVING QUEEN! 🦃🍗🥧
Selfie photo of a non-binary person with blue eyes, dark purple hair, freckles, brown eyebrows, black cat eye eyeliner, a silver septum piercing, and light facial stubble looking up into the distance while wearing a maroon zip-up sweater, black collared shirt, maroon-striped necktie, and a children's construction paper crown made to look like a turkey. They have their right hand framing their jawline while standing in front of a beige wall, multicolor wall art, and a small scarecrow decoration.
November 28, 2024 at 9:42 PM
steveslota.bsky.social
Hello Bluesky!

This is your annual reminder that the Sam Raimi/Tobey Maguire (2002) 'Spider-Man' is a Thanksgiving movie.
Peter Parker, Mary Jane, Harry Osborn, and Norman Osborn sit around a dining room table wearing semi-formal attire to enjoy a Thanksgiving dinner in Sam Raimi's (2002) 'Spider-Man.'
November 28, 2024 at 5:59 PM
steveslota.bsky.social
Dyed my hair dark purple tonight. It's giving emo Peter Parker vibes (complimentary). 🖤✨️
November 28, 2024 at 1:41 AM
steveslota.bsky.social
An animated gif from Season 8 Episode 17 of The Simpsons ("My Sister, My Sitter"). Two men wave at the camera before entering the top and bottom floors of a two-story outhouse. Shortly afterward, the man in the bottom outhouse shouts, "OH, GOD! STOP!"
November 27, 2024 at 7:18 PM
steveslota.bsky.social
Monday night bisexual lighting 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

😌✨️
Selfie photo of a fair-skinned non-binary person with blue eyes, dark eyebrows, light stubble, freckles, cat eye eyeliner, and a silver septum piercing smiling at the camera. They are wearing a green crocheted beanie hat and black hoodie featuring a Star Wars stormtrooper and the word "TROOPER" while posed with their left hand against their face in front of a black bookshelf beside blue, purple, and pink LED lights that resemble the bisexual pride flag.
November 25, 2024 at 10:00 PM
steveslota.bsky.social
I'll continue to post excerpts as we near our release date. Meanwhile, I'm happy to answer questions about worldbuilding, its application in different environments, and how you can integrate it into your own curricula! ✨

For funsies, these are some illustrations I created to accompany the text! 🎨😊
A black-and-white illustration of a tall, cylindrical cardboard coffee cup with a plastic lid. It features a satirical "Worldbuilder's Choice Coffee" logo of a long-haired woman with a globe for a head and a propeller beanie hat. Printed below the logo are the words "Reusable. Recyclable. Re-enjoyable." Two side-by-side black-and-white illustrations. On the left, Phineas Gage is depicted in a suit with a patterned vest and bowtie, missing his left eye, and holding a railroad tamping rod in his left hand; on the right, Gage's skull is depicted with the railroad tamping rod impaling his head below the left eye and through the cranium. A black-and-white illustration of two brains on either side of the letter "D." The left-hand brain is only able to perceive the left side of the "D" and therefore interprets the full symbol as a square; the right-hand brain is only able to perceive the right side of the "D" and therefore interprets the full symbol as a circle. The image is meant to convey that two individuals can perceive the same "objective" reality but draw two (or more) distinct conclusions about its actual nature. A black-and-white illustration depicting a five-step cycle of termite mound construction. Winged termites fly away from their home mound to survey the environment. In so doing, they deposit pheromone-laden excrement across the landscape. Though this behavior is initially random and chaotic, it becomes increasingly linear as termites congregate around piles of excrement with the highest concentrations of pheromones. The presence of more termites causes the most visited piles of excrement to expand. Once the piles become sufficiently large (to the point of falling into one another), they form arches and a full mound under which a queen will lay eggs. The process begins again once the eggs hatch and new winged termites depart their burgeoning colony.
November 24, 2024 at 9:21 PM
steveslota.bsky.social
Caturday Night 🐱✨️
Photo of a bengal cat laying on her side with a smug and sleepy expression. Her eyes are closed, and she is laying on her right side with her head turned up toward the camera.
November 24, 2024 at 1:42 AM
steveslota.bsky.social
Thought this photo from the other day was kind of cute and decided to share with the Bluesky people in my phone. 🏳️‍🌈😌✨️ Happy Saturday!
Selfie photo of a fair-skinned non-binary person with blue eyes, dark blonde eyebrows, freckles, and a silver septum ring wearing an open black-collared shirt, black fishnet croptop, jeans, black fishnet gloves, and a green crocheted beanie hat smiling and making a peace sign at the camera with their left hand. Their bare chest and stomach are visible beneath the croptop, and they are standing in front of a wall-hanging map that depicts the world of Avatar: The Last Airbender.
November 23, 2024 at 10:53 PM
steveslota.bsky.social
The book (The Worldbuilding Workshop) won't be out til next fall, but the premise is that we (collectively) need to study/understand how personal beliefs/actions interact with governmental, economic, social, & cultural systems/forces (and what that means for the broader human/environment ecosystem).
Chapter 6 Worlds in Space and Time “The truth about the world is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness, it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analog nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tent show whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning. - Cormac McCarthy As outlined in Chapter 1: Around the World in 300 Pages, the world is a veritable Gordian Knot of co-defined systems where even the act of acquiring a morning cup of coffee is ensnared in a massive web of global supply chains and human labor—and that is just one small, relatively insignificant example among truly awe- and horror-inspiring alternatives (e.g., addiction to fossil fuels and cheap disposable goods, poverty, malnutrition, the rise of authoritarianism, climate change, threat of nuclear war). Further complicating matters, every facet of the world operates, shifts, and changes in parallel every minute of every day. How can we possibly hope to get our heads around any of it, much less all of it? Let us disabuse you of the notion: we cannot, on an individual level, get our heads around all of it. The planet is too large, diverse, and transitional for that goal to be anything other than a fool’s errand. Yet, with perseverance and care... ...we can get our heads around quite a lot, including the experiences of people we have never met and the nature of places we have never visited. Doing so requires that we partition off specific portions of the planet—freezing them in space and time—to examine the lived conditions of individuals, societies, cultures, economies, and governments. These spatially- and temporally-frozen slices of life can help us construct more accurate, useful, and responsible models of complex systems that capture how they have interacted in the past, how they interact in the present, and how they might interact in the future. The aim here is not to uncover some objective, capital-t “Truth” but to establish a well-reasoned representation from which we can draw tentative conclusions and refine our collective understanding of reality. This process brings a measure of order to chaos, particularly within the context of teaching and learning environments like classrooms, workshops, and other spaces where we seek to explore why things work the way they do. We call it worldbuilding, or the practice of capturing the social forces and lived experiences contained within a world (i.e., a place bound by spatial and temporal boundaries).
November 21, 2024 at 12:13 AM
steveslota.bsky.social
Thinking about this passage from our upcoming book for no particular reason:
When people are collapsed from diverse populations into flat monocultures through essentialism (i.e., the belief that individuals or cultures have particular characteristics essential to their being), it becomes much more difficult to think through their individual perspectives and much easier to invent snap judgments about who they are, what they believe, and why they believe it. It also fuels circular logic: “Of course [group of people] took [course of action]! It’s in their nature!” If worldbuilding is meant to inform critical thinking and empathy, then essentialisms and stereotypes (particularly those fueled by capitalistically motivated platforms) move us further from our goal, not closer to it. To wit: essentialisms and stereotypes lead us to draw all manner of incorrect conclusions. In extreme cases, they can be leveraged by demagogic authoritarian figures to solidify a base of support—aiming anger and grievance at scapegoats to destabilize civic, journalistic, and academic institutions that might otherwise slow or stop a hostile takeover of government. In more banal situations, they drive acceptance of essentialist truths that undermine the day-to-day choices of individuals or groups of people. Consider the nursing profession. An essentialist would argue the reason more women become nurses than men is that women are inherently more nurturing and caring than men, and because men are more analytical, they more often choose to be physicians. A more nuanced examination would question the original premise: Are women “essentially” more nurturing than men? Or does our culture socialize young girls into particular behaviors and jobs? Are young women more likely to be tracked into the profession by teachers and guidance counselors? Are career opportunities for women in healthcare more limited outside of nursing? The essentialist only needs to assert their position as if it were proven fact (whether or not it is), while the conscientious thinker has to interrogate the question and substantiate their conclusion with evidence (i.e., the former behaves like a lawyer, making a determination and working backward to justify it; the latter behaves like a scientist, conducting research prior to making a determination).
November 20, 2024 at 9:47 PM
steveslota.bsky.social
Okay, be fair... your mom AND me, thank you very much. 😌
November 19, 2024 at 10:19 PM
steveslota.bsky.social
When I'm not writing about playful learning and worldbuilding, you can catch me posting games, illustrations, and selfies. 😊

There's more to share, but this thread is already long... So, if you're interested in the aforementioned projects (or others), please reach out! I'd love to hear from you!
Two side-by-side black-and-white illustrations. On the left, Phineas Gage is depicted in a suit with a patterned vest and bowtie, missing his left eye, and holding a railroad tamping rod in his left hand; on the right, Gage's skull is depicted with the railroad tamping rod impaling his head below the left eye and through the top of his skull. A black-and-white pencil drawing of various characters from the Cartoon Network television show Smiling Friends. A selfie photo of Stephen, a fair-skinned non-binary person with brushed-back dark blonde hair, blue eyes, black cat-eye eyeliner, a silver septum piercing, stubble, and makeup freckles. Rays of sun are shining through green leaves and brightening the blueness of Stephen's eyes. They are wearing a black button-down collared shirt over a gray t-shirt, and they have a black earbud in their right ear. A selfie photo of Stephen, a fair-skinned non-binary person with dark blonde hair, blue eyes, black cat-eye eyeliner, a silver septum piercing, stubble, and makeup freckles. They are laying on a bed with light gray sheets and a blue/white quilt while wearing a black-and-white bandanna on their head, black fishnet gloves on their arms, a black leather choker around their neck, a mesh crop-top shirt, and a long, black cloak.
November 18, 2024 at 6:47 PM
steveslota.bsky.social
A very card game-y weekend! Opened with my first foray into #starwarsunlimited, then swapped to @adventuretime.bsky.social #cardwars.

The SWU booster box I was gifted for my birthday had some crazy good pulls, including 9 foils, 2 hyperspace, 3 Falcons, 2 Han Solos, a Darth Vader, and more! ✨️🥳
Two players sit opposite one another playing the Star Wars Unlimited trading card game. The game mat is dark blue with a hyperspace graphic. The foreground features four cards held by someone with fair skin and a fishnet glove on their hand. Two teams of two players each sit opposite one another playing the Star Wars Unlimited trading card game. One game mat is dark blue with a hyperspace graphic; it is adjacent to two additional black, silver, and red mats, one for each player on either side of the table. The foreground features three cards held by someone with fair skin and a fishnet glove on their hand next to another person with fair skin holding one card. Twenty rare and legendary Star Wars Unlimited trading card game cards (set in plastic sleeves) are laid on a gray carpet. This includes two Emperor Palatines; three Millennium Falcons; two Han Solos; two hyperspace art cards; foil copies of Vigilence, Jabba the Hutt, K2-SO, and others; and a Darth Vader. All 20 cards were pulled from a single booster box. Two players sit opposite one another playing the Adventure Time Card Wars card game. The foreground includes a fair-skinned person's left hand donning a black fishnet glove. They are holding six cards from the pre-made Ice King deck; their opponent (fair-skinned and wearing a blue hoodie) is playing with a pre-made Princess Bubblegum deck. They are using a Card Wars-themed game mat with several Landscape and Creature cards arranged for mid-game play.
November 18, 2024 at 2:43 AM