Cybrary

During the International Conference in Multicultural Learning and Media Literacy in the Modern World, Keiso Katsura presented his work on Cybrary entitled “Creating the opening days and hours display systems for multiple cultural facilities.” In his project, he is exploring a mobile application using Perl/CGI script programming to give real-time information about library in the worlds (the opening and closing hours, the websites, the calendars and events).

This application uses color image files and text that can be changed by date, hour and minute. He said that he was preparing to build applications for both PC and mobile version soon. His Cybrary service is currently only available in Japan.

He explained that he was currently updating all data manually and by himself. Considering large amount of data about the libraries in the world that available and necessity to update it on daily basis, he needs an automatic instead of manual system. With only a manual system, he would not be able to accomplish his design goal, which is to provide up-to-date information about libraries and cultural facilities in different regions and countries.

MoDe Workshop

I participated in the MoDe (Mobiling and Designing) workshop, which was conducted by the team from Initiative Information Studies, University of Tokyo lead by Professor Shin Mizukoshi at Media Lab on the 20th March 2006.

MoDe project is an experimental project to investigate a new type of media research linking analytical humanities and social scientific research to creative experimental research in fields such as media literacy, information design and media art. This project includes efforts to nurture public media literacy on mobile media, as well as the development and implementation of practical programs (educational materials, curricula, workshop) in order to reinvigorate public communication.

This research group has been developing their own framework of methodology that is called “media probe”, which combines activities, such as information design, workshop program, media literacy program and ethnographic research. Starting from designing media, they have been experimenting new ways of media communication based on critical views to the current mode of media. They design a new media and gave it to the users to be tested. The new media aims to provoke user reaction so that they may express themselves through that media. After a period of time, they gather the traces of the users' activities left in these medias. Redesign media based on the information from the probes and iterate the next cycle are the next steps of the design process.

In this workshop, they particularly introduce the Cambrian game. Cambrian was a combination of old and new methods. Renga, which is considered as an old method, is an old Japanese series of poetries, which link as inspiration of emergence and whose space focused in sessions. The new method that they use is blogging.

In Cambrian game, renga was used as inspiration to share interesting digital images to the the community. The game allows players to submit their own "leaf" in form of pictures, images, music/sounds, movies, commentaries to a virtual tree using their mobile devices or PC. The players can link a new leaf to any inspiring leaf. A leaf can trigger some leaves which will grow the tree explosively.

Playing Cambrian game has a lot of similarities with blogging. The game encourages individual to share their personal thoughts, memories and favorites in public spaces, in particular using their mobile devices.

From learning point of view, I think the game has a lot of potentials in supporting the process of idea generation, mind mapping, data gathering, etc.

Moreover, the game can be used as means to start communication in the community. People start to get to know each other by playing the Cambrian game. In one of their workshop, the research groups extended the format of file sharing from digital pictures to movies and music. Combined with other technology, such as QR-code and RFID, further interaction and sharing information techniques can be developed further.

From game to learning

I recently attended an interesting workshop on Cambrian Game. The game allows players to submit their own leaf in form of pictures, images, music/sounds, movies, commentaries to a virtual tree using their mobile devices or PC. The players can link a new leaf to any inspiring leaf. A leaf can trigger some leaves which will grow the tree explosively.

Playing Cambrian game has a lot of similarities with blogging. The game encourages individual to share their personal thoughts, memories and favorites in public spaces, in particular using their mobile devices.

The game has a lot of potentials in supporting educational process. Some learning activities that can potentially be developed further using this game include “mind mapping”, “idea generation” and “data gathering/collection” activities.