Lauren Fenton

On the use of ARGs as an educational tool.

When Worlds Collide: An Augmented Reality Check

by Matt Villano

Researchers are ramping up traditional MUVEs, developing games that require students to uncover solutions in spaces where the real mingles with the virtual.

NOAH PATEL REMEMBERS the first time aliens descended on his math class at Thomas A. Edison Middle School in Brighton, MA.

The extraterrestrial buggers showed up unannounced, and Patel's students had to figure out why. Armed with handheld computers, teams of determined students set out to the school's football field to meet the intruders face-to-face. The computers, preprogrammed with specific GPS coordinates, revealed various clues via text, video, and audio as students wandered over particular spots on the field. Over the course of an hour, the students pieced together viable theories on why the Green Meanies were there.

"We were provided with a 'CIA' briefing talking about the suspicious landing that had taken place," Patel says. "We told the students they were going to be a part of very important research with Harvard and MIT, and that there were only a handful of kids worldwide who would have this opportunity."

read more >>
http://www.thejournal.com/articles/22020

the news is a bit old but interesting...

Google Lively vs. Second Life: pros and cons?

Google Shutting Down Virtual World "Lively"

read more >> http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-10103412-52.html

ARGs as an educational tool.

When Worlds Collide: An Augmented Reality Check

by Matt Villano

Researchers are ramping up traditional MUVEs, developing games that require students to uncover solutions in spaces where the real mingles with the virtual.

NOAH PATEL REMEMBERS the first time aliens descended on his math class at Thomas A. Edison Middle School in Brighton, MA.

The extraterrestrial buggers showed up unannounced, and Patel's students had to figure out why. Armed with handheld computers, teams of determined students set out to the school's football field to meet the intruders face-to-face. The computers, preprogrammed with specific GPS coordinates, revealed various clues via text, video, and audio as students wandered over particular spots on the field. Over the course of an hour, the students pieced together viable theories on why the Green Meanies were there.

"We were provided with a 'CIA' briefing talking about the suspicious landing that had taken place," Patel says. "We told the students they were going to be a part of very important research with Harvard and MIT, and that there were only a handful of kids worldwide who would have this opportunity."

read more >> http://www.thejournal.com/articles/22020

My blogging intention for this week is to close seminar with an open-ended fest of interactive topics that we may or may not have touched upon in class.

In the case of this article, Lev Manovich has also been Andreas Kratky's collaborator on a project called "Soft Cinema", which explores the concept of database narrative and the merging of software and cinema in general.

Lev Manovich - Database as a Genre of New Media

The Database Logic

After the novel, and subsequently cinema privileged narrative as the key form of cultural expression of the modern age, the computer age introduces its correlate - database. Many new media objects do not tell stories; they don't have beginning or end; in fact, they don't have any development, thematically, formally or otherwise which would organize their elements into a sequence. Instead, they are collections of individual items, where every item has the same significance as any other.

Why does new media favor database form over others? Can we explain its popularity by analyzing the specificity of the digital medium and of computer programming? What is the relationship between database and another form, which has traditionally dominated human culture - narrative?

read more >>http://vv.arts.ucla.edu/AI_Society/manovich.html