Blogscapes

I came across a post on Copyblogger announcing a Twitter Writing Contest!

The contest requirement is to write the best 140-character story, and the best story will win the writer an iPod Nano (of course it’s got to be the nano!)

The post also writes:

It should be a great exercise and a lot of fun. Being constrained to exactly 140 characters will spark your creative juices and force you to focus stringently on word choice, sentence structure, and even punctuation.

Here’s an example that I tweeted over the weekend:

Three flies are bugging me on the deck. I kill two, and spare the third. “Go tell the others this is what happens,” I warn as he buzzes off.

Isn’t that such a great, cute tweet! Forget the essay, the novella, the short story, here comes the micro-tale!

If you think that ‘brevity is the soul of wit’ and want to give it a try, find out more at Copyblogger.

Hm..maybe I shouldn’t be saying that so openly, what with the growing anti-Valentine’s Day movement that has been gathering momentum by the day leading up to Valentine’s Day.

Just look at the number of sites devoted to those who loathe Valentine’s Day: http://www.antivday.com/forum/ ; http://www.etsy.com/storque/section/spotlight/article/a-very-jaded-valentines-day/1011/ and many anti-V Day merchandise and articles. Looks like today’s communications technology allows for mass cyber-lamenting and self-pity.

This kind of reminded me about a group of people I read about recently  - Taiwan’s ‘home boys’ who proclaim themselves to be woman haters, and who are seen as being socially inept as they spend all their time playing online computer games and complaining on Internet chatrooms about women. Looks like misogyny has also gone high-tech via new media. It seems that they ‘prefer video games to trying their luck with women”.

According to an article, “Mr Hsu Wen-Hsiung, a bespectacled 26-year-old office worker who took part in the anti-couple demonstration last December, complained that women never had the patience to get to know him or allow him to show his good nature and sense of humour in a relaxed atmosphere”.

He said, ”You spend so much time on the Internet that you don’t get to know women, and then failing to find a girlfriend, you go back to the Internet…it is a vicious cycle.”

Another 24-year-old college student, Lu Yung-ping, added, “You don’t have to be sad if you don’t have a date…we can huddle together and have some fun.”

I don’t know about you, but I felt a chill go down my spine.

These past two days have been spent at the new Republic Poly campus attending the ICET 2007. This year’s themes is “Rethinking Pedagogies: Creating Possibilities Through Digital, Interactive and Media” and the focus was on how ”innovations in ICT like gaming and interactive digital media have created a new environment for teaching and learning in the new century.”

Indeed, the keynote addresses as well as the many speakers there spoke on new methods of teaching and learning such as those using game-based learning as well as Web 2.0 technologies. 

Going by the vendors there, SMART classrooms seem the way to go! Don’t think I have seen that many different types of interactive whiteboards in the same place!

Just some quick thoughts on some of the areas discussed at the Conference:

-there was quite an interesting video shown which was a video by Microsoft, a kind of “devil wears Prada” parody

-virtual worlds like Second Life and gaming such as World of Warcraft can have interesting and myriad educational benefits (hm.. while I do agree that there are some benefits in gaming, I wonder how much of the learning can be transferred to real life contexts. I mean, sure, a gamer can exhibit good leadership skills being the Guild leader and directing a raid, but can he or she also exhibit the same leadership skills in real life? I mean, how many gamers, techies, etc out there are good communicators? and gaming is supposed to cultivate communication skills…

- learning needs to be fun and engaging….hm.. but won;t it be a bore if everything is all fun and games? Also, real life is not all fun and games. If students fed on a diet of highly stimulating environments go out into the world, will they be disappointed? Worse, will they be able to cope with the mundane everyday world, where work can be gasp, actually tiresome and tedious?! 

- there’s an increasing closing gap between virtual and real worlds. Much has been done to recreate the real world in a virtual setting..with that, where is the room for one’s imagination?

- gaming addiction - incidentally, I was just watching Tab TV and the topic tonight was on cyber addiction.

Clearly, while educators explore the use of IDM in teaching and learning, let’s hope people don;t just all get carried away by the technology. As shown at the Conference too, technology can sometime let you down too. I can’t quite keep count of the number of times the Internet connection went off, or Ppt slides were not loaded properly, or files not saved properly.

But it’s good to know that questions have been raised and educators will continue to see what ways can best be used to help people learn and enjoy learning.

New Media is constantly evolving. Each day, new forms of using New Media emerge as well as new forms of New Media!

In order to keep up with all the developments as well better my understanding of New Media and its related issues, I’m looking out for seminars, conferences and workshops on New Media organised for this or next year. It would be great if they had a slightly more educational than technological slant, as I’m more interested in the various issues related to the use of New Media than the technology behind it, though I’m aware, often the two are related.

If you do know of any good seminars, conferences or workshops coming up, I would appreciate it if you could drop me a line or leave a message in the Comments box.

Cheers! 

Greetings during the holiday season!

It wasn’t easy getting online the past two days as Singapore’s Internet connections have been pretty badly affected by the earthquake off Taiwan. What happened was that on 27 Dec, (yes, I know 27 Dec is one day after 26 Dec, the day of the Tsunami two years ago),  the earthquake off Taiwan destroyed underwater cables that linked much of Asia’s access to the cyberhighways of the world. It just goes to show how vulnerable the digital world is. For all that technology we have created, we are still very much dependent on the physical world (like the hardware and cables!) and we are no match for Mother Nature. Many online operations have also had to go manual (with the human touch!) Also, this is another example of the consequence of globalisation?

On to better news - if you didn’t already know, I have been named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year! And you have, too! 

If you look closely at the cover, on the screen of the computer, is a mirror, so you are actually looking at yourself as Person of the Year! Cool, right? Time decided to honour the common man, yes, that’s you and me, as we control the Information Age! According to the cover story, “in 2006, the World Wide Web became a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter…it’s a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It’s about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people’s network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. It’s about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.”

And for “seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game, TIME’s Person of the Year for 2006 is you” and me! 

We are now co-creators of the digital world! Power to the Everyman!

“This is an opportunity to build a new kind of international understanding, not politician to politician, great man to great man, but citizen to citizen, person to person. It’s a chance for people to look at a computer screen and really, genuinely wonder who’s out there looking back at them.”

So, as we continue to improve in our technologies, and as the world gets increasingly ‘technologised’, let us remember that we are still very much human, and continue to make connections in the digital world and seek new kinds of understanding, and forge new ways of harnessing the powers of new technologies.

Have a blogging good year ahead!

Best wishes for a happy and blessed 2007!