Tunxis Summer Mash-up

The Tunxis Summer Mash-Up is a two-week intensive program designed for high school students interested in combining their creative talents with contemporary technology to explore the world of digital storytelling.

Students will produce three short films: a self-portrait, a documentary, and a work of fiction. Each of these projects will be mentored by faculty members who have real-world experiences in the various genres.

Students will have access to cameras, scanners, computers, video-editing software, and script-writing software to produce their short films.

Tuition also includes lunch each day and a 2Gb flash drive for everyone.

For more information, contact John Timmons at this email address or visit our web site at http://www.tunxis.commnet.edu/mashup

Games and Literature

Roger Travis has an interesting set of activities up. I wonder if he wouldn’t me borrowing some of it.

Unit 1. The bardic occasion, then and now (A, B) (3 weeks)

* Activities: (reading) Iliad 2, Odyssey 8-9, Lord, Singer of Tales; (gaming) Play a level or quest three times, preferably in co-op; (discussion) in-game discussion; develop interview questions for developers.
* Sub-objectives: 1) describe the bardic occasion; 2) summarize oral formulaic theory; 3) produce a report of a gaming session as a bardic occasion.

Wiki Mystery 2

Mark Bernstein’s 2nd Wiki Challenge is up.

I’ve been slowly nudging our history faculty to use wiki technology to replace their text books. We’ll be adding Wiki software to a mint condition server soon so that they have the opportunity. Faculty complain about the expense and redundancy of text books (this is only going to get worse). They complain about text-book restrictiveness and the hassle of editions. The possibilities are exciting. New ideas can be added without having to print out an article from a journal. Additions can be automated and directly linked-to. Links can be unambiguous and navigation interesting. Faculty will control the content and provide weaving opportunities for their students. Course materials and assessments would be a huge part of the mix.

But hold on. There are major problems to overcome:

1. Work load
2. The whole as a describable figure of speech
3. Writing
4. Learning curve
5. Copyright
6. Pushy book reps
7. Dev and staging server
8. Redesign
9. Access and authorship
10. Deadlines

I myself have a difficult time writing links in wikis which is why I’m noncommittal at the moment. If I write metaphor into a page, it’s pretty simple to come up with a few examples, such as “It rides upon the wrinkled hide / of water” from David Solway’s poem Windsurfing. But is this necessarily a call for a link or an intext blockquote?

Mortality

Mark Bernstein poses an interesting mortality question. It’s also about the mathematics of reading. In a lifetime, how many books can we read, and what now constitutes “book” or “book knowledge” besides the obvious package? At the moment, I’m reading Jesper Juul’s half-real because John game me a copy. I’m also reading several hypertexts, including Coulon’s The Reprover, and Don Quixote.

I skipped much of the chapters in Juul’s book after reading partway through them because they didn’t grab me so I probably wont read it in its entirety.

I understand the quandary. Many of us walk by the stack knowing full well that something else is going to come along. We feel like we’re missing something. We better move quick. It’s also about commitment, responsibility, and finishing what we decide to start. Then I remember what a wise person said: Everything’s in Alice Munro and everything’s in Beowulf and everything’s in Bashō. That’s pretty complicated, I remember saying. He said, Bashō already said that. I’m paraphrasing, of course.

Obama, Hillary, and Risk

So, it’s time to move on. I must say that Obama and Hillary are two excellent people. They both know how to play the current game. Although it is hard for spectators to understand or infer the rules. Media news and online information about the political process is almost impossible to put together. My one wish is for big ideas to show through. Risky stuff.

Prioritizing infrastructure. American adventures around the world boggle me when there is so much work to do at home. Last night Hillary Clinton referred to our dependency on “foreign oil.” This is not right, even if it is coded, and it’s simplistic. It’s oil that’s at issue. Not sources. “Foreign oil” implies the politics of energy and geography. “Bad” modifies both the adjective and the noun.

So many ideas are enriching the human ecology and built space communities (in which I include hypertext). But the current narratives restrict their going mainstream. Ideas that could do so much for human well-being. Everywhere the infrastucture’s crumbling: bridges, schools, homes, savings, and roads. With it, minds. It may be that all change takes is for one community to say “We’re going to install solar panels on all our municipal buildings and then we’re going to wait and see what happens to the space around the joint.” Certain resources will simply not be affordable in the future. We don’t need them anyway.

Into the Game

Bryan Carroll getting into the poetry game:

Watersides

a tattoo is stained glass
the view over the hood.
Might have been summertime
just as the weather would
before the orange, blue and yellow.
I hope you don’t mind the ink.
I can only imagine.
what my eyes will see
on this stained waterside.

Reporting Cupcakes

Susan Gibb sends along this report on principals and cupcakes. But I wonder about the reportage. There’s a huge hole in the middle:

The controversy began when Frank Carbino delivered the goodies to the school May 6, intending to bring them to his daughter’s class for her birthday. He said he got as far as the school office when a secretary told him to leave the sweets on the counter for his daughter to pick up and bring back to her class.

Carbino said he protested, saying his wife had cleared the birthday plans with the teacher the day before. He then spoke with D’Amico, who told him school policy prohibited parents from personally delivering birthday cakes or treats.

“All I’ve wanted to do was just clear my name of the whole thing,” Carbino said. “It’s more of an integrity thing.”

None of this is being explained. The day has been full of weird reports. But I’m only able to guess who is representing stories with clear, coherent, and honest method.

First get us interested, explain thoroughly, and then make it matter to something.

Sen McCain do you have a cold? asks the reporter.

Yes, we are masters of the universe.

Here’s one conclusion: we need better case law on speech in digital contexts.

Hamlet and Games

John Timmons sends a link to Gamasutra’s Hamlet game challenge.

This week’s challenge is: Design a game that teaches Shakespeare’s Hamlet using only original text as dialogue.

Anyone is welcome to participate, and professional developers are encouraged to provide feedback and guidance to the GameCareerGuide.com community via its forum.

To suggest your own solutions, read the complete assignment on GameCareerGuide.com. Then send your answers to gamecareerguide@gmail.com with the subject line “Design Challenge: Hamlet.” Entries must be submitted by Wednesday, June 4, 2008. Be sure to include your full name and school affiliation or job title. Please try to keep your answers to 500 words or fewer — unless they’re really good!