An interesting presentation on how to "restore" awe and fascination in learning using new media (there are some great ideas with augmented reality and geotagging). This definitely fits into the them of transliterate learning & pedagogy:

Digital Literacy: Rethinking Education

[multimodal narratives :: nonfiction]

Enjoying some downtime over the holidays and catching up on fun reading. While doing so I came across a variety of new media narratives. This one, Storm Stories, uses photos and videos with a focus on user-generated content.

Also have a look at the Wisconsin State Journal's Down to a Whisper on the loss of Native languages. There are images, video and the most interesting bit is the option to listen to Native languages; choose paragraphs, sayings or even just vowel sounds.


Time's person of the year, Barack Obama. Are you connected?

[breathing earth]

During my presentation yesterday for the Creative Writing & New Media Online Master's students (who met in Leicester f2f for one week) I referred to some interesting narratives that are merging story with geographic information and/or maps. Two projects I referred to were The 21 Steps and a school trip project by Emerson College. In line with my developing interest on the role of geographic information (and the like) in narratives, the following project fits right in - linking cultural narratives (of co2 emissions, births and deaths) with countries. Thanks to a tweet today by @fromthehip aka Ingrid Kopp, I found The Breathing Earth Simulation:


The countries in red (at the time of this screen capture) - US, China and Saudi Arabia - are "currently emmitting 1000 tonnes of CO2." It's also interesting to see how the birth/death rates compare:
Someone dies/is born every:
China: 3.5 seconds/1.8 seconds
Saudi Arabi: 8 minutes/42.7 seconds
US: 12.8 seconds/7.3 seconds

In Canada: 2.1 minutes/1.5 minutes
In the UK: 51.8 seconds/ 48.9 seconds - so in the UK deaths and births seem to be pretty balanced. While Greenland seems to be the country with the slowest death and birth rates: 20 hours/9.8 hours


The project is created by David Bleja.