But one thing stuck out for me in particular, and that was the example of turning student assessments and classes into environments similar to role-playing games. It comes out of Lee Sheldon’s teaching at Indiana University, and you can see an actual curriculum over here at Terra Nova: Build Your Own Sheldon Syllabus. (The comments there are also worth reading).

Stephan’s web-page : Pop songs about Jesus

The people who compile this sort of things have way too much time on their hands.

You can read more about it here - Newsarama.com : Dylan Horrocks Welcomes Readers Back to HICKSVILLE.

And there’s a book launch and exhibition for it on Friday, 19th March, here in Auckland. See Hicksville at the High Seas! « Hicksville Comics

I loved ‘Hicksville’ (Greenflame · Mapping the land and ourselves and Greenflame · Dylan Horrocks on comics, games and world-building) but I have never gotten around to purchasing a copy. Looks like this might be the time, though given how much I’m out of home in the evenings and weekends for work things at the moment, I’m not sure I’ll be able to get to it.

Finding back issues of these kinds of comics is pretty hard here in NZ - I’ve picked up some at events like Armageddon - some I was interested to read that there was a new series of The Magdalena coming out soon.

As part of that there was a recent interview with the co-authors of the series, Ron Marz and Nelson Blake, about what they plan to do with the series. (See Newsarama.com : The Descendant of Jesus Christ Fights in TOP COW Ongoing Series).

In the interview, Marz says,

Well, hopefully nobody thinks this is going to be a theology text. The book is still about a kick-ass chick in a cool costume fighting monsters. But we’ll definitely touch on matters of faith, and the role of organized religion in the world.

So I guess it’s business of usual there.

You can also see some of a past Magdalena story over at: Tied in with that is

Newsarama | Ron Marz/Ryan Sook’s Full MAGDALENA Story FREE! Page 1

(I wonder if any of the nuns I know have an assortment of ninja weapons and equipment?)

The cartoons in this post sum that experience up quite well. See TidBITS Tech News: A Pair of Cartoons Reveals DRM Frustrations.

I’m wondering why they’ve embedded this approach in a humanoid form, rather than through an animated avatar on the cellphone for example. Perhaps the physical presence of the robot creates a kind of relationality (e.g. authority figure) that a computer application couldn’t do?

• Ten rules for writing fiction | Books | guardian.co.uk
• Ten rules for writing fiction(part two) | Books | guardian.co.uk

I’ve cribbed some of it below - but drop by her site for the full details.

Call for Papers for Edited Book on CHURCH AND NEW MEDIA: PERSPECTIVES, PRACTICES AND FUTURES
Editors: Pauline Hope Cheong, Peter Fischer-Nielsen, Stefan Gelfgren and Charles Ess

Background and Rationale
This book brings together, for the first time in five years, a collection of key articles in the area of religion and the Internet, particularly as new media relates to church, mission and interfaith dialogue. In light of the increasing mediation of everyday life in many parts of the world, this book approaches online religion with a fresh perspective, to account for contemporary developments in media and spirituality, with implications for faith and other civic organizations.

Arguably, as institutionalized religions and movements rush to leverage the Web to improve their reach, religious communication on the Internet takes an increasingly significant role alongside more traditional venues for such discourse. It may be, however, that religious use associated with new media problematizes established faith rituals, and religious community building in both its conception and operationalization. Changes in the Church can also
be conceived as intertwined with a range of other forms of social and political developments, such that new media acts as an agent and practice to challenge and transform the influence and authority of the Church. Furthermore, as ³new² media is a moving target, there may be past concepts that are more able to explain the nature of church life (such as evangelical
mission and systematic theology) or new concepts that are being developed that are better able to address the diversity and complexity of contemporary social and religious life (such as the ideas of social networking, viral marketing and church branding).

This edited collection aims to address and inform such issues and debates by offering new empirical, theoretical, and theological insights into how religious life continues to transform and be transformed by these new communication technologies. Current contributors, together with the editors, include Knut Lundby, Heidi Campbell, Mark Johns and Jørgen Straarup.
We hereby invite proposals for additional chapters (particularly in the historical and theological sections as explained below) that will complement and expand upon these contributions.

Theology After Google | Transforming Theology