Effective Use of Games in Academia

Posted by Celia Walter | 5 Aug, 2008

Rafael C. Alvarado, Director of Academic Technology Services at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania writes for Educause Quarterly with Overcoming the Fear of Gaming: A Strategy for Incorporating Games into Teaching and Learning. Alvarado discusses opportunities for the effective use of immersive games in academia.

“Ultimately, to take full advantage of games as engines of learning, we should move from a critical approach to a creative one and encourage the innovative use and development of games (and gaming engines) within our colleges and universities as collaborative new media projects. Such projects would take advantage of our unique social arrangement of students, developers, and faculty and allow us to rely less on consumer culture to provide game content. The design of these games would be guided by the experience of managing the pedagogical outcomes of games in real-use contexts, forming a feedback loop that would identify and select for better games.”

iLibrarian blog

 

Post in Gaming and learning | comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Global ethic foundation

Posted by Celia Walter | 5 Aug, 2008
Global ethic foundation
This is the homepage of the Global Ethic Foundation. The organization, which is based in Germany, was founded and funded by Count K. K. von der Groeben. It seeks to promote inter-cultural, interreligious and inter-denominational initiatives around the world. This website, which is accessible in English, French, German and Spanish, informs visitors of their history, mission and activities. It contains the full-text of the 'Declaration Toward a Global Ethic' which can be downloaded in 15 languages and that of 'A Universal Declaration of Human Responsibilities'. It also provides a bibliography of publications on global ethic and reviews of books on this area. Other resources include a chronicle of events and annotated links to relevant websites. This would be an interesting resource for those researching on the role of religion in peace-building. Intute.ac.uk
http://www.weltethos.org/dat-english/

Post in Ethics | comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

The African review of books

Posted by Celia Walter | 5 Aug, 2008
The African review of books
The African Review of Books (ARoB) is an online scholarly publication, which publishes reviews of recent (and some not quite so recent) fictional works which the author considers might be of interest to a South African readership. One might expect that this would focus more on South African publishing than is the case - the country does, after all, have a very strong publishing industry. However, the site is much more wide-ranging than that - there are reviews of books about Africa which are published in Europe, South American novels and short stories from India on the site at the moment (July 2008). None of them are particularly recent, either, although the reviews are. As the reviews are nearly all the work of one person, this would appear to be the result of the site being a more personal collection than the title might suggest. Having said that, the reviews are extremely well thought-out, considered and interesting and the site provides an authoritative investigation into the books which are presented. Intute.ac.uk
http://www.africanreviewofbooks.com/

Post in Books: reviews, launches, etc, Abstracts | comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Barefoot press

Posted by Celia Walter | 5 Aug, 2008
Barefoot press
The barefoot press website was a companion to a regular pamphlet going by the same name which was distributed for free with the intention of increasing the circulation of and interest in South African poetry. The website features works by some significant South African poets, as well as submissions by up-and-coming writers and members of the public. All poems on the site are reviewed, however, so a certain standard is maintained - there is a light-hearted section for the absolute amateur to contribute to called 'put your foot in it', where visitors are encouraged to write about feet, where this standard is most definitely dropped. The website has led to a few print publications, most notably a posthumous one featuring the works of Lionel Abrahams, its most famous contributor. It now seems to be out of date, unfortunately, but it still retains a very useful and interesting collection of original poetry by some of South Africa's most promising young writers and is well worth a visit. Intute.ac.uk
http://www.pix.co.za/barefoot.press/

Post in Poetry, South Africa | comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)