digitaldust

Prezi is now much more based on skill than chance. I’ve just started using it again, and I have to say that it is much better and easier to use than it used to be. They’ve just fixed a few of the little niggles that I had last time I was using it. Last time I gave it a go was October, last year, and it was still a bit ropey, but I think it has probably just reached the point where I would happily cut over and use it instead of keynote for many things. Keynote is still quicker, and integrates better with the desktop, but Prezi suits where I’m coming from for teaching.

The Prezi I built for a lecture on chance and skill in game design.

The other great thing is that they offer a free, educational tier in their pricing model. Though four, purely text based, prezis take up nearly 10% of by 500Mb. So if I start bunging images in (something I want to do) I wont get very far.

Went along to the Computation Turn and presented my paper on Patterns in the Digital Humanities. The keynotes from Katherine Hayles and Lev Manovich are online there as videos.

The one major thing I came out of it with was realizing that recognizing shapes is not the same as recognizing patterns. Most of the time when someone says they see patterns in data sets and visualizations, they see shapes in the data, not patterns.

Also the HEAT workshops keep progressing. Still looking into behavior change through both mobile devices and serious gaming as part of that.

A busy week, though looking back I don’t know why or what filled it. However I know it took me all week to get an ethics approval application in, which mostly involved filling in a few boxes.

Lots of presentations at the beginning of the week from the students I’m teaching on Play and Games. They came back with initial concepts for their serious board game designs. Quite a lot of good work, and we were quite impressed with a smattering of proper citations and name checking in the talks. Some nice ideas coming out, though many still have their heads stuck in the Monopoly space.

The previous week I was impressed with the quality of the Play and Games essays, and finally after collating, double marking, remarking and all the other tedious admin stuff that makes up teaching we got them finished and back to the students. It probably isn’t methodologically accurate but we did see a massive increase in the students marks between last year and this year. The average mark last year was 51, and this year’s average is 61. There are probably lots of factors in the mix, but I do think that between Ian and myself we got the students to actually read, dissect and analyse academic articles. As well as getting them to think through constructing an argument, writing coherently and lastly doing proper citations and referencing (big thanks to Ian who I think did most of the work on it). Phew… it paid off.

The choices of essay topic were interesting as well, considering that, apart from one, they are all boys. I gave them a choice of four topics, with some starter texts on each. 23 wrote about girls and gaming, 22 wrote about immersion, 11 on simulation vs narrative and only 2 on definition.

Segueing onto something completely different, On Friday I went to the DCRC’s Pervasive/Invasive seminar/workshop on the ethics of pervasive media. A bunch of interesting talks, much interesting chat, and one big realization for me. That we’re already there in discussion the ethics of these things, pervasive media is not something way off, we are in that posthuman space already. Which marries up with a few other things I’ve been reading and pondering recently by way of Katherine Hayles and Andy Miah. The Future Has Arrived. Though I’m sure Sam will pull me up on my loose attitude towards thinking about this and what we can or cannot do or say about how we create, imagine and relate our present and future.