Mobile apps coexisting with the printed book?

I had the opportunity this summer to explore mobile apps on the iPad. In addition to experimenting with the tablet and mostly free mobile apps, I also completed my online course on "the future of storytelling". In this course, one of the final segments was on transmedia storytelling, which mentioned how the narrative of a traditionally published novel was extended through the use of mobile apps. Through this particular segment, I learned about MirrorWorld and Mirada. In this blog post or entry, I briefly introduce both MirrorWorld and Mirada, with some discussion of how these represent a new trend of convergence between traditional book publishing and mobile app development.

To begin, MirrorWorld is one of the works of Mirada in modern storytelling that mixes both traditional and technological techniques to expand on a story world first told by a novel. According to Mirada's About page,  Mirada is "a studio designed for storytellers" (Mirada 2014, "About"). They specialise in "synthesizing archetypal oral tradition with modern technique" (Mirada 2014, "About", para. 2). Mirada further dubs Mirror World as the "World’s First Living Storybook" (Mirada 2014, "Cornelia"). In my understanding of Mirror World, Mirada built a mobile app that functioned as a story engine or database that permits users to explore the story world and be immersed into an interactive experience while exploring the story. For more information on this (or if you want to check out the app for yourself), explore the following websites:

• http://mirrorworldnovels.com/
• http://www.corneliafunke.com/index.php?page=app&lang=en

However, I just wanted to opine here that after seeing Mirror World and learning about the development of the app to expand on the novel, I think the future of traditional book publishing will persist. Hence, future books being published will have accompanying apps. These accompanying apps will expand the story world of the traditionally published book visually and otherwise. What this means in my opinion is that the printed book is not yet dead, but will co-exist in the future with apps that expands upon the narrative that the book tells.


References:

Mirada (2014). About. Retrieved from http://mirada.com/about

---(2014). Cornelia Funke’s mirror world: Crafting the World’s First Living Storybook.
Retrieved from http://mirada.com/stories/mirrorworld

Considering gamification of work and study and applications to libraries

I have not been sharing much of my informed research or opinions recently. Much of that writing is taking place in my papers for the directed reading courses. In fact, until the end of August, I may not have much to say about my thesis ideas and its evolution, as I am currently saying it else where and revising it as I 'perform' it in narrative in those papers to submitted.

However, I do have some ideas to share. For example, I am thinking about improving human productivity through what is known as gamification. For those who have never heard of the term gamification, you can check out the definition on the website Gamifying Education.org or Lee and Hammer (2011). I recently learned the term after attending the CAIS conference poster sessions, where I interacted with a poster presenter that discussed applying gamification to create an app to help persons conserve energy and help the environment.

Earlier this week however, I thought about gamifying the research process, especially for persons who have to conduct literature review or readings,  by creating an app that awards points or some scoring system for each research article read. To make it more interesting, make the app run on Facebook so as to gamify the research process and make it social: where persons can compete with their Facebook friends or other colleagues to see who read the most research articles.

However, now I am thinking about it as a tool that managers could use to increase productivity in the work place. Each worker participates by inputting the number of tasks, and check off each that is completed. In the end, the computer scoring system would indicate their score awarded for each task completed, as well as comparisons with other workers. The computer game system could then distribute awards like the most productive worker - with the most tasks completed in relation to the number of tasks they have to get done.


For university libraries too this system could be rolled out for both students to engage their use of the library's resources and for staff. For students, the resources read could come from the online library catalogue or OPAC. Students could check off resources read and the system automatically calculates how many pages were read and compares their scores with other students in their discipline or faculty or course. Libraries would also get feedback about what students are reading that could inform collection development, as well as to indicate alternative metrics of the value that libraries provide, not just storing the number of hits on a resource, but rather the number of unique hits and number pages and resources read by all students within any given time span.

Library managers could also apply the system to library workers, as a project management tool to help make workers more productive by motivating them to perform through achieving high scores, which can result in both virtual and real rewards.

What do you think?

References:

Gamifying Education.org (2012). "What is gamification?". [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.gamifyingeducation.org/ [Last Accessed July 6, 2012].


Lee, J. J. & Hammer, J. (2011). Gamification in Education: What, How, Why Bother? Academic Exchange Quarterly 15(2). Available at: http://www.gamifyingeducation.org/files/Lee-Hammer-AEQ-2011.pdf

Applying Linguistics to Library and Information Studies

By doing the course: Language technologies for Libraries and Beyond at my university got me interested in Linguistics and what it has to offer in libraries and information studies. I will basically summarise my thoughts based on what I have been exposed to in my course.

The area of applied linguistics and natural language computing is a relatively new area for library and information science (more so for information science than libraries). However there are a number of natural language processing applications that are useful to libraries including information extraction, automatic summarisation, computer assisted language learning, speech recognition, question answering systems and dialogue systems. So applied linguistics, and in particular, the computing of language is definitely an area that could be considered as an attractive course.

Applied linguistics could also be used in examining library service (reference query) transactions, plus studying problems of how language impedes or facilitates access to information. Development of ontologies is another area of relevance to libraries and to information science in particular.

Regarding my thesis idea, I Wanted to explore as my thesis the idea of using a Folkloric artificial intelligent conversational agent to provide business/government information to micro-enterprise owners. Still immature but I am trying to talk with potential advisers to help me refine it. The folkloric character - Anansi - and perhaps other Jamaican characters like Sly Mongoose, Doctorbird, Patoo Owl are some of the characters that I am considering using.

Regarding the artificial intelligent conversational agent, I am just using existing systems that attempt to simulate conversation with people, by pattern matching algorithms and extracting output responses from pre-populated databases of rules and responses.There are two systems that allow one to  freely develop a computer-based agent that simulates dialogue with human beings: http://site.mycybertwin.com/ and http://www.pandorabots.com/botmaster/en/~182d3afe91fba45b3cc71bda~/home.

I want to use such agents to provide information, perhaps providing a new way to access government documents through natural language query, that will reduce the hassle of interacting with unpleasant civil servants, using phone lines or waiting for response to emails. Not to mention the other issues with locating relevant documents or information within the documents.

Writing a statement of intent/proposed research to get into graduate studies

A former student of mine, preparing for application to graduate studies, requested information about how to do a proposal for getting into a Thesis/Research based Masters. I know that when I was seeking to get into a PhD and MPhil programme, there was little documentation about how to produce such a document. However, I conducted my research through asking faculty and administrators for the particular programme that I was interested in and getting a basic outline of what I must put in such a document. Here I will generally share what I have done, which has been successful thus far in landing me into my current PhD programme.

You will definitely need to include the following in your document (statement of intent/research proposal/proposed research), whatever name or label it is called or referred to.

1.An interesting title: one that will appeal to the faculty that you are interested in. Usually something that is in line with what they already research but also something novel and kind of innovative/creative.


2. The problem - This is essentially your introduction/background to the topic that you are interested in studying; what it is and why is it significant and ought to be studied


3. A brief literature review to relate the issue you want to study in other literature/scholarship in the field.

4. A proposed method for discovering the data - who you are going to talk to/observe and/or what are some of the documents/sources that you will consult. Also make explicit some possible research objectives and questions.

5. References - sources you used throughout. the proposal/document.

Hope you will find this useful.

Edited: November 4, 2013