Presentations

On mobile learning at ELI

I'm presenting on the future of mobile learning today, at the ELI Spring Focus session.

Presentation materials are on a series of wiki pages, starting here.
 

Alternate reality games, "Experience IT" track, at the ELI 2006 conference

These are materials for a session on alternate reality games, in the "Experience IT" track, at the Educause ELI 2006 national conference, San Diego.  We will draw in part on a small demo ARG in progress, starting with Caleb Navidson's Livejournal.
Please post questions, comments, suggestions in the comment box.

0. Introduction

John Borland, "A novelist turned gaming innovator."  CNET, December 15, 2005.
Sean Stewart, The A.I. Web Game.
Dave Szulborski, This is Not a Game: A Guide to Alternate Reality Gaming.  Pennsylvania: New Fiction, 2005.
Brooke Thompson, ARG Quick Start Guide.
Jesse Walker, "Games People Play: Life invades games, and vice versa."  Reason, August 29, 2005. 

I. ARG Storytelling Aspects

Mystery
Characters
Timeline (staggered)
Sites for/as/about characters

• MetaCortechs, Paranormal Studies Journal
• ILoveBees, Last Call Poker
• Find Araya

II. Structure

Workflow

• Project Mu Web design chart

Preloaded content

• Media pieces (Mu: photo, Flash)
• Platform structure
  • Controlled hosting
  • Web services (a Flickr example)

Dynamic content

Nongame content

• Google and links
• The world's intrinsic weirdness: numbers radio

ARG arc

1. Trailhead and rabbit hole (Tulse Luper)
2. Collaborative play (Fora [Unfiction], p2p, web publishing, f2f, lurk)
3. Closure (MUcredits)

III. Puzzle pieces

Site identity
Hidden text like this - easy, isn't it?

• Bad Wolf disclaimer
• Schedoni.info

Anagrams (I, Rearrangement Servant)

Binary (Nick Ciske's delicious binaries)

Morse code (Stephen Philips' resource)

• Stop Polarneft

ROT-n, or Caesar cipher (Unfiction ROT machine)

• Try this one: h zptwsl pklh aoha dpss johunl aol dvysk

(Perplex City)   

Vigenere cipher
    Sharky's Vigenere, Christopher Nevison's

Steganography
    JPHide, Camoflague, CameraShy    

Word frequency (Web Frequency Indexer)

ACM SIGUCCS: Social Software: Blogs, Wikis, and More

Social Software: Blogs, Wikis, and More
ACM SIGUCCS, November 2005

Larger principles for the day:

• social multiplier
• microcontent
• tagging and folksonomies

 

social writing platforms

• blogging

Blogger
LiveJournal, TypePad
Moveable Type, WordPress
regional, urban
.edu: syllabus and content, student co-authoring,
more .edu: student blogs, library-based blogs
research: researchers, public intellectuals (right, left), Pharyngula
new .edu forms: blogging content, mixed blogs, world blogging

• wiki (try this one)

WikiSpaces, SocialText
WikiProjects: WikiPedia, WikiNews
New wiki-ish projects: JotSpot, WriteBoard, TiddlyWiki
.edu: Bowdoin's Romantic Audience (article)

• finding stuff

Aggregate: Blogdex,
Search: Daypop, Feedster, Waypath.  Google Blogsearch.
Social search: Gnosh

social network services
I. YASNs: Friendster, Orkut

They know you already: ZoomInfo
Reputation systems: /.

II. Social objects

-images (Flickr)
-social bookmarks (del.icio.us)
-RSS

Read: Bloglines, NetNewsWire
Search: IceRocket, Technorati
Publish: Feedburner
Visualize: TagCloud (sample), Blogpulse

News: Digg, Memeorandum, OhMyNews!, Yahoo News Search

Next and other

-podcasting (one note)
-social search
-mobile devices plus social software
-CMS interaction
-player shakeout
-faculty adoption
-curves and politics

Elections and politics

Some readings

• Yochai Benkler, "Common Wisdom: Peer Production of Educational Materials".  Presented at the September 2005 Advancing the Effectiveness and Sustainability of Open Education Conference.
• Tony Hammond, Timo Hannay, Ben Lund, and Joanna Scott, "Social Bookmarking Tools: A General Review". D-Lib, April 2005.
• Mary Hodder, “For the Vox Populi: A Comparison of How Some Blog Aggregation and RSS Search Tools Work”. Napsterization, July 24, 2005.
  
• Tim O’Reilly, “What is Web 2.0?”, September 30, 2005.
• Clay Shirky, “Ontology is Overrated”. presentations given during spring 2005.

NERCOMP Emerging, morning overview session

NERCOMP Emerging Technologies SIG, October 2005.

Selected exemplary themes for the morning:

Machinima
RvB
Waking Poe

1. Darknet and OurMedia

Social software in Web 2.0:

Social bookmarks

Writing platforms

Social search

Bad Wolf and the ARGish message

All your Google Base
are belong to us (more)   

Multimedia afternoon at UMW

Still more presentation at the Mary and Washington event - I'm doing a multimedia session this afternoon.

Some Web resources:

 

Series of multimedia narrative links.

Digital Fiction

 

Gaming and narrative

Crimson Room (already parodied)

The Phone

Treasure Box

Mixing: the ultimate, lost Lord of the Rings

The Spiders, Scott McCloud

Sound and video Video production by game: machinima Sound and podcasting: IT Conversatons

Mary Washington, day two

I presented on pervasive computing and education this morning.  I was struck by how unstable our definitions and descriptions of this world are.  "Wireless" and "mobile" are too limited; "ubiquitous" has been sapped to mean "lots of machines".  "Nomadic" is provocative, but might become too garish to explain quotidian usage.  "Pervasive" might be better, with its sense of extension and hint of anxiety.
The blog format managed to garner some emails and comments, which is good - thanks, folks.

Gardner catches me showing off a nifty Vermont grave.
Ernie Ackermann presented on his use of blogs in his computer science classes.  Teresa Coffman described her education course blogs, and mentioned her own.  Good discussion covered the pedagogical aspects of blogging, including formal versus informal writing, aggregation of student feeds, the role of outside readers, research assignments, and nontraditional learners.

Gardner Campbell spoke to his experience with blogging, including a Milton seminar.  He focused on blogs and language, narrative, and defamiliarizing implicit writing concepts.

Presentation at Mary Washington

I'm attending and presenting at a fine teaching and technology event at the University of Mary Washington.  Brian Lamb has presented, as has Diana Oblinger.

I am experimenting with blogging my presentation materials here. Feel free to post comments, or email me.  The blog entries are a bit cryptic and telegraphic, as I'm warding off the PowerPoint disease of reading entire slides.

We will be discussing the emergent device ecology, interpenetation of devices and everyday life, wireless socialization, adding the digital layer to physical space, mobile device anxieties and panics.

Shameless promotion of my work:

• "Social Software and the Future of Conferences - Right Now", co-author with Pascal Kaplan, Vicki Suter (.pdf format).  Educause Review January/February 2005. 
• "M-Learning 4 Generation Txt?".  Interviewed by Howard Rheingold.  The Feature, November 2004.
• "Going Nomadic: Mobile Learning in Higher Education" (.pdf format).  EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 39, no. 5 (September/October 2004): 28–35.
• "m-Learning: Emergent Pedagogical and Campus Issues in the Mobile Learning Environment." (abstract)  ECAR Research Bulletin 16, August 2004.
• "Teaching in the Wireless Cloud".  The Feature, April 2003.

The haunted Web goes mobile

The Web: Threat or Menace?

1995: Marty Rimm and Time, or the dreams of pedophiles
evil cell phones: killer numbers, stalkers
 
precursors
The telephone (TZ)
EVP
1984: William Gibson, Neuromancer; John Varley, "Press Enter []"

1990s : some primary texts:

television: Wild Palms (1993), The X-Files (1993-2002)
games: Myst (interactive fiction; 1993), Quake, Dark Seed, Alone in the Dark I-III, Resident Evil I-n
film: Serial Experiment: Lain (Japanese anime; 1998-1999), The Matrix (Wachowskis, 1999), Suicide Club (2002)
novels: Cryptonomicon (Stephenson, 1999)

Social computing

Social computing

Back to back, txt to txt

Social coordination: research and information-mongering

Swarming: Arquilla and Ronfeldt, RAND study, First Monday article; social constructivism

Smartmobs

Science fiction: Vernor Vinge, "Fast Times at Fairmont High" (2002); Greg Egan

Privacy and exposure

Privacy and exposure

Interpenetration of world and class: accelerant

Intimate computing

Sousveillance and popular surveillance

David Brin, Transparent Society