who ordered a newish world?

Winner to be announced on October 13, 2008 in London.
Awarded for excellence in the use of emerging technologies for improved learning and teaching…
Project MiLK: The Mobile Learning Kit (scroll down the page for more info)… formerly known as the Mobile Informal Learning Kit… but that just seemed too formal!

Milk is an authoring tool that helps students create simple mobile game adventures (that are actually a disguise for sophisticated learning events). Teachers and researchers have used MiLk in multiple contexts (schools, parks, museums, homes etc) with various subjects informing the use (science, poetry, art, social sciences, history, physics etc).

Please vote before October 9… Txt MILK to : +447786203140

http://www.handheldlearning2008.com/awards

We have been invited to speak at the conference by Steve Moss, Strategic Director (ICT) for Partnerships for Schools (P4S) in the UK. This organisation does some fantastic projects, in particular the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme. We will present on Extending Learning Relationships & Environments … highlighing the impacts of the projects SCOOT, MiLK, SCAPE and Farm It Right… see info on projects

http://www.handheldlearning2008.com/programme

“Worlds in Play. International Perspectives on Digital Games Research.”
Edited by Suzanne De Castell and Jennifer Jenson. Peter Lang. New York 2007

This book chapter was originally a presentation at the 2005 DIGRA conference in Vancouver. “Lesser-Know-Worlds: Bridging the Telematic Flows with Located Human Experience Through Game Design”
by Deb Polson

Review of the book:
“They increase our critical vocabulary for analyzing and designing digital games, and perhaps most importantly for the future of research in this field, they display an increased understanding of the experience of the gamer and of the depth and diversity of pleasures that attract us to this compelling new medium.” Janet H. Murray, Professor & Director of Graduate Studies, Digital Media & Information Design and Technology Programs, School of Literature, Communication, and Culture, Georgia Tech From Amazon.com

After a nother successful invasion of the fabulous Federation Square in Melbourne and the Brisbane River Festival… SCOOT’s latest victim is the Victoria University. On Febuary 20 and 21 the Footscray Park and St Albans Campuses were invaded by Omega Carnegas Carnival of Chaos.

All commencing students of the Faculty of Arts, Education and Human Development registered as SCOOT AGENTS to seek out evidence and compete in challenges… as usual, the Agents received and sent mission information via an Agency SMS frequency!!!

This year the SCOOT game underwent a transformation to cater to a new demographic, venue and expected social interactions.

Our Faculty collaborators asked SCOOT Game to give new students the opportunity to orient themselves to their new ‘digs’ in a new and fun way… but most importantly they wish for all students to meet and interact in an effort to welcome them here as long term members of a dynamic community of students, staff and services.

SCOOT AGENCY Players web site
Victoria University - Faculty of Arts, Education and Human Development

BIG thanks to the SCOOT crew and our Vic Uni extended family of helpers

While on the topic of Bionic Woman and Cyborgs…
Im both excited and confused by the constant repetition of stories and characters from the SCI FI channel.

Katee Sackhoff who is actually Starbuck on Battlestar Galactica is now Sarah Corvus, an earlier model Bionic Woman, gone bad. This sends my imagination into a bit of a spin… could this mean that Starbuck is the original ‘toaster’… will there will be a ‘cross-over’ episode? (like the recent Dr Who and Torchwood… this created the same confusion once I also considered Life on Mars in the interpretation during the final episode!).

Basically, we live in a constantly morphing narrative of characters, actors, gossip, current affairs and literature… with very little thought, I now call this the ‘Mid World Narrative’ (the MWN… that is the result of a continuous memetic cycle that creates, shares and morphs MWNs thru the simple mechanism of living). The MWN is a narrative that exists between fictions and histories… a living ‘mash-up’.

Soooooo…. My latest mad theory (MWN) is that Starbuck is the original cyborg made by hopeful (foolish) humans in, let’s say 2100 AD. Starbuck freaks people out… so these well meaning humans decide to redesign her to look more distinguishably ‘machine-like’… hence the Battlestar Gallactica red eyed cylon monster. This makes sense … as it would ease the 2100 humans who must now feel confronted by their mortal limitations… ‘resistance is futile’… ‘if you could see what Ive seen with your eyes’.
These MWNs may, at first glance, seem insignificant… however, they make my morning showers and bus rides full of wonder and leg shaking excitement… nail biting private adventures emerge from multiple real and fantasy encounters… mashing up tv shows, game characters, world news, songs, gossip… into flickering moments of private interpretations… personal narratives… waking dreams.

img src: left (LA Con) right (BayCon) Science Fiction Conventions (indisputable evidence of MWNs)

The ‘Cowborg’

This image accounts for the evolution of the cyborg, and records the moment the Cowborg emerged… the Cowboy/Cyborg… the loner, the reluctant hero, the over-acheiver etc.

Wired Magazine (sept 2007, pg 71 “JamieSommers 2.0″) states that the six million dollar man was the ‘ur-text for all subsequent cyborgian scenarios”… surely not.

The cyborg has been part of the human pshyche for ages… “an organism that is a self-regulating integration of artificial and natural systems”… that suggests that Frankenstien is in fact a cyborg.

I have long believed that the term cyborg comes from the merging of “man and cycle”. And the wheel has been a human tool since we started carting our sorry limited selves from place to place.

According to Wikipedia the “the first literary cyborg” was a ’super hero’ named Nyctalope