'Girlfriends and Strawberry Jam’: Tagging Memories, Experiences, and Events for Future Retrieval

In this short paper we have some preliminary thoughts about tagging everyday life events in order to allow future retrieval of events or experiences related to events. Elaboration of these thoughts will be done in the context of the recently started Network of Excellence PetaMedia (Peer-to-Peer Tagged Media) and the Network of Excellence SSPNet (Social Signal Processing), to start in 2009, both funded by the European Commission's Seventh Framework Programme. Descriptions of these networks will be given later in this paper

Medical student attitudes toward video games and related new media technologies in medical education

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Studies in K-12 and college students show that their learning preferences have been strongly shaped by new media technologies like video games, virtual reality environments, the Internet, and social networks. However, there is no known research on medical students' game experiences or attitudes towards new media technologies in medical education. This investigation seeks to elucidate medical student experiences and attitudes, to see whether they warrant the development of new media teaching methods in medicine.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Medical students from two American universities participated. An anonymous, 30-item, cross-sectional survey addressed demographics, game play experience and attitudes on using new media technologies in medical education. Statistical analysis identified: 1) demographic characteristics; 2) differences between the two universities; 3) how video game play differs across gender, age, degree program and familiarity with computers; and 4) characteristics of students who play most frequently.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>217 medical students participated. About half were female (53%). Respondents liked the idea of using technology to enhance healthcare education (98%), felt that education should make better use of new media technologies (96%), and believed that video games can have educational value (80%). A majority (77%) would use a multiplayer online healthcare simulation on their own time, provided that it helped them to accomplish an important goal. Men and women agreed that they were most inclined to use multiplayer simulations if they were fun (97%), and if they helped to develop skill in patient interactions (90%). However, there was significant gender dissonance over types of favorite games, the educational value of video games, and the desire to participate in games that realistically replicated the experience of clinical practice.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Overall, medical student respondents, including many who do not play video games, held highly favorable views about the use of video games and related new media technology in medical education. Significant gender differences in game play experience and attitudes may represent male video game design bias that stresses male cognitive aptitudes; medical educators hoping to create serious games that will appeal to both men and women must avoid this.</p

Anthropology of virtual worlds : history, current debates and future possibilities

La importancia de la investigación de los mundos virtuales ha ido incrementando y poco a poco se ha convertido en una parte importante de la antropología digital en los últimos años. Ofrece así posibilidades prometedoras para la ciencia social, como la realización de experimentos en los mundos virtuales. Sin embargo, el campo está lejos de estar unificado en muchos aspectos, y el debate sobre las definiciones, los usos y los términos importantes no está aún concluído. Este artículo ofrece una introducción a los mundos virtuales, la participación antropológica en este tema y los actuales discursos antropológicos, terminando con el debate de las perspectivas de la investigación de percepciones y las prácticas de violencia dentro de los mundos virtuales.The research of virtual worlds has become an increasingly important part of digital anthropology in recent years and offers promising possibilities for social science, such as conducting experiments in virtual worlds. However, the field is far from being unified on a lot of topics and the discussion about definitions, uses and important terms is not yet finished. This article provides an introduction to virtual worlds, anthropological involvement with that topic and current anthropological discourses, finishing with a discussion of the prospects of researching perceptions and practices of violence within virtual worlds

MECHANIZED CULTURAL REASONING AS A TOOL TO ASSESS TRUST IN VIRTUAL ENTERPRISES

International audienceThe globalized knowledge society generates virtual enterprises that are usually set up and managed on the web, and the new trend is to make the relevant technologies avail- able on intelligent portable devices. The existence of trust is a mandatory condition to make such enterprises successful. Trust has many facets ranging from very theoretical ones to fully heuristic features. One point is that trust can arise when one understands better the behavior of partners. In this paper we outline a new technology leading to the possibility to include inter-cultural issues among the factors having a strong impact on trust. This technology is called Abstraction-Based Information Technology. Its goal is to enable to design tools in articial intelligence to perform so-called cultural reasoning that ensures better trust among inter-cultural communities.We outline how Abstraction- Based Information Technology becomes feasible when working with virtual knowledge communities. An argument in favor of our approach is that it relies on a bottom-up ap- proach, particularly suitable for the web technology and for intelligent wearable devices. The solution of intercultural troubles then amounts to solve knowledge con icts among virtual knowledge communities