A simulated learning environment of history games for enhancing players’ cultural awareness

This research attempted to create the historical context of Southern Taiwan in the late nineteenth century based on the martial art novel “Xiao-Mao” (Pussy) by designing a role-play digital game “Taiwan Epic Game” about the war time; in which, Taiwanese history, geography, and culture are presented in an innovative way with virtual scenarios. Questionnaire surveys were conducted to investigate the effects of the digital game. The simulationist immersion premises were chosen to be the primary concern, with which the designers should pursue the supreme creation of situation, character, setting, and system. The results showed that the game can effectively enhance players' cognitive growth, as well as cultural awareness in terms of the sense of existence of the environment, local culture, folk arts, faith and festivals, and architectural characteristics. It can be concluded that the three-dimensional simulated learning environment created in the digital game can successfully merge “reality” and “virtuality.”     

当艺术遇上MONEY

正"文化产业管理"专业毕业后,我机缘巧合地走进艺术品投资这扇门,这几年内看到的、听到的、学到的,表面上是艺术,实则蕴含了许多为人处事的哲理:驾马十驾,功在不舍。上善若水,厚德载物。当艺术品进入市场,遇上money,很多人或许觉得亵渎了艺术,视它为一种可怕的遭遇。其实不尽然。就好像我们每个人或多或少地拥有自己的想法和才能,都需要有那么一个人或一群人来看见、来欣赏、来买单——这是用外在的度量衡来肯定内在思想的一种方式。面对艺术品里的金钱诱惑,一些人准确把握住了市场,一些人则掉进了钱的陷阱。因此,当艺术遇上money,可能是场预谋,也可能是个意外;可能是种遭遇,也可能是段邂逅。     

凯特·麦克道威尔 不只是岁月静好

当人们看到艺术家凯特·麦克道威尔(Kate Macdowell)的作品时,脑海中会情不自禁地浮现出这样一段话——段来自英国学者、《纳尼亚王国传奇》作者C.S.Lewis的名言:"对于美,我们从不满足于远观。尽管上帝为证,美已是无上的恩典。我们希求无法诉诸语言的情感——我们想与所见的美产生关联,想将美据为己有,想周身沐浴其中,甚至——想成为美的一部分。"     

Exploring consumers to buy innovative products: Mobile phone upgrading intention

The fourth generation mobile phone soon will be launched. Marketers are concerned about customer acceptance, and, in particular, about the main factors that determine whether customers will upgrade their mobile phones, which will affect the diffusion of 3G, 4G, and Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access phones. We integrated post- and pre-adoption theories, upgrading and value-based theory and chose 2G and 3G users to examine customers' plans to upgrade their current phones, and found that value assessments can affect mobile users' plans to upgrade to next-generation versions. When 2G mobile users were satisfied with their current model, they were not willing to upgrade to 3G mobile phones. They tend to upgrade by leapfrogging the next generation product as an indirect result of their positive satisfaction with their current model. These results suggest that 2G mobile users consider the 3G mobile phone to be a transitional product, and will wait for future options that are expected to perform better than those presently available.     

Changing from a special school to an inclusion service

Members of the Somerset Inclusion Project and Gary Thomas (professor and reader in education at the University of the West of England, Bristol) discuss the need for schools to become more inclusive in response to the Government's recent Green Paper (DfEE, 1997), which emphasises that special schools need to work in different ways and to provide services to local mainstream schools. The notion that inclusion is right and segregation is wrong led the staff to convert the Princess Margaret School (PMS) in Taunton, Somerset to an inclusion service.