voyeurism

the Six Learnings - the brochure

i've done a simple brochure of the Six Learnings curricular design framework for fictive worlds and virtual environments :-)

Destination Guide -> Nature & Parks

Cassiar Park

At Cassiar Park, Residents can enjoy a picturesque waterfall, go hang-gliding, scuba dive, or explore a sunken volcano and shipwreck.

Visit in Second Life

comparative essay on the Porsche Panamera V6 and the BMW 535i Gran Turismo

i test drove the Porsche Panamera V6 and BMW 535i GT yesterday.

depending on your point-of-view, these two cars may or may not be natural rivals. in Singapore, the two are priced sufficiently close to be, with the difference being about eight percent of the less expensive car's (in this case, it is the Panamera's) upfront price (i'm expressing the price differential in this way (as a percentage rather than as an absolute figure), given the skewed nature of car prices in Singapore because of the way cars are taxed here).

price similarities aside, another (albeit tongue-in-cheek) way to think about it is that they are both German hatchbacks :-P

both cars represent something of a design experiment for their respective marques, the Panamera being Porsche's first 'proper' (ie, non-SUV) rear-doored-saloon, and the 5 Gran Turismo being, well, ...

much journalistic ink has been spilled about the 5 Gran Turismo's push-me-pull-you, schizoid design.

like all great designs with the potential to truly outlast their originally-conceptualised shelf-life, the design of the 5 Gran Turismo polarises opinion. it's impossible not to form a strong initial opinion of the car, but like all great designs, this initial strong opinion will find itself sculpted and nudged and taken in unanticipated directions.

the 5 Gran Turismo makes an incredibly strong (there's that word again) visual statement, about itself, and - by critical extension - its driver. this is not a BMW for BMW-fans. no, Toto, we're not in Kansas any more.

in some ways, the Panamera has also been charged with growing the brand, with taking and extending the marque into new, conquest markets.

on the surface of course, the potential market for the Panamera is (relatively) huge, very obvious, and undeniably lucrative. this is a car that was launched at the Shanghai motor show in 2009, after all. yes, the Panamera is Porsche's calling-card into the rarified world which has traditionally been the domain of the S-class, the XJ, and (less traditionally, but to take a leaf out of Top Gear's hat) the Quattroporte and (for high-end Panamera models) the Rapide.

yes, it's obvious how the Panamera will help grow the Porsche brand.

being obvious, on the other hand, is a concept which is entirely alien to the 5 Gran Turismo.

and - i am confident the passage of time will prove me right - this alienably unobvious nature is the 5 Gran Turismo's greatest strength, and its trumping ace.

because the 5 Gran Turismo is impossible to pigeon-hole, it casts deep, probing hits into its potential clientele's subconscious, as opposed to the Panamera's much more generalised strategy of diffusive spread.

these deep, probing hits hit one's brain and mind in places where - and in aspects in which - one didn't even know existed.

the 5 Gran Turismo - in each of its potential target markets (SUV, luxury limousine, sports sedan, and whatever else) - will appeal to only a (relatively) tiny segment of the population, but by golly once they've been smited, nothing else will be good enough for them and shortlists will magically be wiped clean.

the question is, of course, whether time will tell whether these several, extremely-targeted deep-impacts will sum up to sufficiently commercially viable figures for BMW.

i really hope they do, because the 5 Gran Turismo is a wonderful, unforgettable, car.

it challenges all preceding notions of beauty and stands them on their head, in its own inimicable post-modern Web 2.0 mashed-up way.

take it for granted that both cars handle fluidly and deliver strong, usable performance adequate for both everyday conditions and the weekend Grand Tour.

instead, consider the intangible feeling of bien-etre one offers in spades, while the other struggles to deliver.

consider how this same intangible bien-etre manifests itself through their respective interior architectures - one, with its grand sweeps and arcs, being designed from a philosophy which truly lives 'less is more' rather than just mouthing it as a meaningless platitude; the other, with its busy, slabbish man-machine interface which never seems to recede into the background and let the driver get on with the driving.

both cars are built for the cross-continental Grand Tour.

only one will accomplish this supremely.

for while the Porsche Panamera is simply complex, the BMW 5 Gran Turismo is complexly simple.

********

my grateful thanks to Jason Lim and Algean Tan of Stuttgart Auto Pte Ltd, and to Patsy Chua of Performance Motors Ltd, for so kindly making the respective cars available, and for their time today :-)

aide-memoire for the affordances for learning of Second Life - the Six Learnings Cube!

further to my earlier post from the Second Life Community Convention conference, over the weekend i had the brainwave to represent the curricular design framework known as the Six Learnings of Second Life, as the faces of a cube :-)

each of the Six Learnings corresponds to one face of a cube, and you have the choice of folding the cube outside-in, or inside-out (so to speak). that is, you can choose your cuboid aide-memoire to be in the form of pictures or text, depending on your personal learning preference :-)

the result looks like this.

the cube can be used as a complement to the Six Learnings notation system.

here's what the template looks like, you can grab the dimensionally-larger version of the template straight from flickr :-)

follow these three easy steps to get your own Six Learnings cube...

1. divide the (printed) image into two equal (mirrored) halves;

2. put the halves into a photocopier such that a single sheet of paper printed on both sides will result; and finally

3. cut out the cube outline and fold either outside-in or inside-out :-)

[1 Dec 2013 update: the Cube will be included in the Australian geography textbook GeoWorld8, edited by Susan Bliss and published by Macmillan Education Australia!]

Destination Guide -> Role-playing Communities -> Pirate / Nautical

SS Galaxy

This enormous, full-featured cruise ship spans three sims and offers an array of activities, including shopping, dancing, and music. Just like a real life cruise, you can also rent the staterooms and suites.

Visit in Second Life

Destination Guide -> Real Life

Temasek

Learn about the culture, history and ecology of Singapore at Temasek.

Visit in Second Life

Destination Guide -> Science & Technology

Raymaker Field Studies Centre at Bowness

Learn more about geography, geomorphology, and the earth sciences by exploring this island and interacting with its exhibits. Highlights include the ability to walk directly inside a volcano, an earthquake simulator, and a climate change/reef health simulation.

Visit in Second Life

Destination Guide -> Underwater

The Jules Verne Museum

Visitors can take an extraordinary underwater voyage here. With a full-size submarine to explore, this museum offers insight into the life and work of French science fiction writer Jules Verne.

Visit in Second Life

the Six Learnings in action at the EduTech seminar 2010

14- and 15-year-old students from Ang Mo Kio Secondary School in Singapore, learning by expressing their in-world performance to an atomic audience, during the recent EduTech seminar 2010 organised by the Educational Technology Division of the Ministry of Education.

video ergo sum

when i think about how best to represent a personal situated experience vicariously to an audience potentially divorced in either or both space and / or time, that is much more than just taking a keepsake.

that is 'learning by expressing'.

so, the insights for me are first that 'learning by expressing' is just as critical in identity-formation as the other five learnings of the Six Learnings framework, even though (or precisely because) it involves the representation of any or all of the five other learnings to an external audience; and

second that there is potential applicability of the Six Learnings framework to our performative identities as atomic / biological selves as well.