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August 30, 2006
Will Wright Talk on the Future of Gaming (and Learning!)
I attended a talk last night by Will Wright, creator of The Sims and Spore. I was encouraged by and in agreement with his comments about the challenges of motivating kids to learn and the value of tapping their natural creativity to let them build their own games, characters and stories with enabling tools, and tapping into this energy to eventually address world problems from the environment to poverty in Africa. I asked him after his talk "What will it take to have a game addressing a social cause become commercially successful". He was very quick to say "Great design"!.
I thought of 100 questions I could of or should have asked, but there you go folks, that was the one I squeeked in.
I'd love to have had more time! Will is cool. Inspiring.
Posted by Ron Edwards at 09:57 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
August 12, 2006
Mobile Learning Discussion Heats Up in Australia
I've been contributing to a new discussion group on Mobile Learning in EdNA, Australia's online community for educators and within a week we're over 70 posts. There is something for everybody there from corporate and educational examples of mobile learning, to tools and resources/ideas for newbies and experts.
Check it out here: It will run at least for a few more weeks.
There has been a lively conversation there around the video I posted featuring Nigel Paine, discussing BBC use of podcasting, blogging and wikis and informal learning with some advice on how to make it (the video) more effective. No feedback yet on using the video on mobiles which it was designed for. YOUR feedback is welcome! Here's the link again:
http://www.datmedia.co.uk/showcase.htm (click on "play" under Nigel's photo).
Posted by Ron Edwards at 01:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The Read /Write (mobile) Web & Learning
I noticed this poster "Making Our Content Their Own" at the BBC yesterday, placed in their lobby to educate their staff on the explosive growth of blogs, user generated content and millions of viewers having conversations about their content online (one million messages a month!). We met with researchers and a cool educational team (21 CC) focussed on helping kids and teachers create powerful learning experiences through podcasting, making creative videos with blue screen/chroma key, using augmented reality to bring stories and science to life. and much more. We had a great conversation in which we brought our knowledge of mobile augmented reality, first person handheld virtual reality, location detecting capabilities to provide context to educational experiences, and annnotating public space with contextual information to explore collaborative ways to work together.
Never underestimate the power of a demonstration...
Posted by Ron Edwards at 12:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 10, 2006
Dockers Dilemma Location Based Game Update
There has been a lot of interest in Celine Llewellyn-Jones location based learning game Dockers Dilemma. The The game is nearing completion with the voice over recordings going well. It should be ready to play at the Museum in Docklands soon. You can listen a brief interview she did on it here from her blog which is focussed on location based learning and games.
Posted by Ron Edwards at 10:36 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The Power of Blogging and YOU TUBE?
You Tube is a free video hosting service, is viewed by millions daily, and is a phenomenon. You know that. But did you know it is being used as an agent of change? I noticed this article from the New York Daily News commenting on the grass roots momentum to unseat US Senator Lieberman in the primary election for Connecticut:
Novice Connecticut candidate Ned Lamont's victory was hailed as the first electoral coup by the ranks of liberal bloggers who breathed life into the upstart's campaign.They drummed up crowds to see Lamont, dogged Lieberman on the campaign trail with questions and coordinated the travels of the "Kiss Float," a giant papier-maché representation of President Bush's infamous kiss for Lieberman that showed up at all of Lieberman's events.
Much ink has been spent analyzing the bloggers' angry screeds, but little attention has been paid to the most remarkable technical innovation of the Lamont race: the introduction of YouTube.com into politics.
The new Web site, which lets anyone upload and broadcast video for free, was a major player in the Lieberman upset.
Lamont backers posted about 500 homemade videos, from snippets of Lieberman being roasted on the "Colbert Report" to compilations of conservatives like Ann Coulter and Pat Robertson gushing praise for him.
Also, Lamont's TV commercial, "Messy Desk," which lampoons negative ads by darkly warning voters that Lamont's desk is a mess and he's rotten at karaoke, was viewed more than 140,000 times on YouTube: a stunning number of people to actively seek out campaign advertising.
500 homemade videos?! The era of anybody/everybody generating content is here!
Posted by Ron Edwards at 10:21 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 03, 2006
PSP RSS Feeds...(test)
Hmmm... There is an RSS reader on the PSP but it needs the little orange button to subscribe via clicking on it and not jus t the feed url. Let's see if I can embed one here without a button.
Posted by Ron Edwards at 10:28 PM | Comments (0)
Ambient Peformance Event Calendar - Subscribe via RSS
This is the feed for our events calendar - copy and paste into your RSS feed reader to keep up to date with upcoming events. We'll be adding the conferences and partner workshops we'll be at soon.
http://www.google.com/calendar/feeds/36n9s0elr4ter4d9nlho7s5p54@group.calendar.google.com/public/basic
Workshop topics and maps are in viewable from each entry. Note you can add events directly to your Google Calendar via the Google Calendar buttons on the previous list published on July 21.
Here is the html link to the calendar. We'll embed this on our website soon.
Posted by Ron Edwards at 01:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 02, 2006
The Mobile Web: RSS Readers
Did you know that there are more than 30 RSS readers for mobile devices now? Check out this list and you'll see several different types of readers from WAP and JAVA based tools to mobile browser based. I've been using Google personalized home page for my laptop RSS reader so I see all feeds in one place (I never remember to go check my other feed readers!). I tried it on my Sony PSP and it works ok. There is also a built in RSS reader on the PSP I've been experimenting with.
Posted by Ron Edwards at 08:28 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 01, 2006
Free Stream on BBC Internal Podcasting, Wiki & Blog Use
I interviewed Nigel Paine, Head of BBC Training and Development recently to share the great work he's been doing to encourage the use of various web 2.0 technologies including podcasting, wikis, blogs. I think it turned out great (your feedback is welcome!) and I liked how Nigel related them to efforts to better enable informal learning, provided advice for implementation and was able to articulate the benefits he is seeing along the way.
You can access the video from here: http://www.datmedia.co.uk/showcase.htm . You can even send it to your mobile phone!
The press release on it with direct links is here.
We'll be using the video with our upcoming Seriously Mobile Series of workshops to help bring more business applications to life.
Posted by Ron Edwards at 05:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack