There is more about games than competition…

I’m working on my final written assignment for the Gamification Course at Coursera (our professor is Kevin Werbach, The Wharton School, Univ. of Pennsylvania). One of the most inspiring comments were made during the interview by Werbach of Amy Jo Kim, an expert in game design, gamification and and ‘the… Continue reading

How relevant is an avatar?

What does it mean to be an avatar? Or should we say to ‘have’ an avatar? And what is an avatar: the thumbnail on a Twitter of Facebook account? The 3D characters in World of Warcraft or in Second Life? The textual description of a character in a text-only roleplaying… Continue reading

The metaverse is dead. Long live shared creative spaces!

Linden Lab, the company behind the virtual world Second Life, is about to launch two non-Second Life products: Creatorverse and Patterns. Creatorverse is an iPad-app: Patterns will be a ‘new 3D creative environment’. Virtual World-watcher Wagner James Au says on New World Notes that Linden Lab no longer has as… Continue reading

Sometimes, the reputable university press wins out

Interesting. George Siemens, together with Bonnie Stewart and Dave Cormier have agreed (and been contracted) to write for Johns Hopkins University Press. George Siemens launched the first Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) in 2008 (with Stephen Downes). His book, about the scope and nature of higher education (HE) change, will… Continue reading

The Rapture of the Nerds

I’ve just finished reading The Rapture of the Nerds, written by Charlie Stross and Cory Doctorow. It’s an often almost dream-like book about life in the era of the technological singularity. Wikipedia explains: The technological singularity is the hypothetical future emergence of greater-than-human superintelligence through technological means.Since the capabilities of… Continue reading

Mind-blowing books, interviews about Avatars, Otaku

Professor Henry Jenkins published the second part of his interview with his colleague Beth Coleman about avatars and the x-reality (the thing we live in when we constantly switch back and forth from digital space to what we used to call the ‘real world’). I also read Coleman’s book Hello… Continue reading

Where is your avatar, anyway?

These last few days were very rich in eye-opening news events and posts – enabling us to get a better view on fundamental changes in media and technology. An overview: [<a href=”http://storify.com/mixed_realities/where-is-your-avatar-anyway” target=”_blank”>View the story “Where is your avatar, anyway? ” on Storify</a>]

Virtual Worlds, Games and Education (another MOOC!)

There is a true explosion going on in open online learning. I don’t know whether it’s always “massive” as in Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), but anyway, there is a lot happening out there. I don’t have statistics about how many projects there are, nor about the total number of… Continue reading