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April 29, 2007
April 25, 2007
An Invitation to Adventure
If you read this blog, and especially if you're interested in pervasive games, then I'd like to offer you a little intrigue and innovation........If you accept...please click HERE!
April 24, 2007
Loki
Is Loki the world's first decent location-based search engine? I'm not sure but I can't wait to try it out in a truly mobile environment.....
Loki is also the mythical being of mischief in Norse mythology....
April 21, 2007
Move Me!
I spend a lot of time exploring the way players can use their bodies to interact with games so it's nice to come across an entirely new aproach.
SMARTlabs' Actionchair is an especially interesting take on this idea. Can you think of any other human computer game interface in which the device moves YOU? The closest I have come to an equivalent is the rumble box on a game controller.
I think the idea of the chair is to allow children with physical disabliities to take control of their own movement, perhaps also to offer a sensual experience.
It would be interesting to turn this on its head - create a chair for able-bodied players in which they control some movements, but the chair limits or controls (perhaps in unexpected ways), the others. A challenge of adaptation.
Location-based games don't exactly control players' movements...certainly not physically, but they do manipulate (usually only once the player has agreed to engage). I like the idea that location-based games are an invitation to dance and create meaning.
April 18, 2007
Seriously Mobile Summit
I'm crossing my fingers that I can get the time to make it to the Serious Mobile Summit this Friday...I'm especially excited about the virtual discussion panel!
April 17, 2007
Bodystorming
© 1994-2007 Proboscis.
A term used to describe a variety of different approaches, but I like the one offered by Proboscis.
"Bodystorming is similar to brainstorming except it involves physical interaction and engagement with the system through a playful acting out of the issues, techniques, interface and interaction possibilities".
Giles explains that "our particular use of it as a technique is as an 'experience' for working with people in communities - giving abstract ideas a physical presence and sense of interaction that are often remote and difficult to grasp"
It is exactly the idea I was searching for in my last post but I would never have come up with such a clear and beautiful explanation. Funnily enough I already knew of Bodystorming, but I'd never have made the connection between this experience and my clumsy ideas about location-based learning and idea generation without google.
April 08, 2007
Thinking on the web.....
I've been thinking a lot recently about the ways in which the web has changed the way I learn. One of the most striking changes is the way it helps me to precipitate ideas. You know - the ones on the tip of my brain....
In the olden days, ideas like these might take days, weeks, months to reveal themselves, and sometimes they'd just slip away. Thinking about how I work on the web, I've come to realise I have developed methods that speed up the process, and give me a much better success rate! I start with a whiff of a thought...maybe I've got a few sketchey terms in my head, a faint outline. I pop them into google. "ideas, meme, precipitation, "new ways of learning"' If I'm lucky, someone out there has already put in the effort to develop a more concrete meme..in this case no...OK, then I'll read the articles, papers and blogs that include similar words or strings. Maybe one of them touches on a theme that rings bells, usually there'll be a sentence or two that seems to move closer to what I was thinking. I borrow the sentence and do another search. I repeat this circling process over and over again until I either find content that expresses my idea or is coming close enough that I can fill in the blanks.
If I get stuck, I'll do some word searches in wikipedia, and thesaurus.com. I've also started searching google images, professional image libraries like Corbis and even video:YouTube - as a visual learner, being able to tap into such a huge source of visual stimuli is a dream come true.
Once I have the idea, I'll usually email it to myself so it's in wriitng and I can look at it with fresh eyes. If I think it's worth it, I blog it. Writing here seems to be the best way to fully bake an idea because at that point, I find myself viewing the idea from the perspective of a reader - and that's when I'm most critical!
These approaches work so well for me that nowadays I'll boldly follow some entirely tenous thought that pops into my head, Blink-style, just to see where it leads!
Does anyone else work this way? Or some other way specific to the web?
OK, I admit: I have no idea yet how this relates to location-based learning, but deep deep down I have a feeling it does...and I'm confident I'm only a few searches away from the answer.....
April 03, 2007
Gaming 3.0
I didn't especially like Rag Doll Kung Foo the game, but I loved its tactility and the expressiveness of characters which always makes me giggle. It is refreshingly lacking in slickness - think Aardman versus Pixar, and by this I don't mean rough charm, I mean immediacy of vision.
Now there's Little Big Planet I'm jumping up and down with glee. The game is just as tactile and humorous but the game-play is revolutionary, offering a simple and convincing conclusion to the play versus game debate. For label lovers: it's Gaming 3.0.
So Media Molecure - can you make it available on the Wii?