Au sommaire du dernier n° de Library Technology Reports (vol. 44, n° 7, oct. 08 / sur abonnement): bibliothèques et mondes virtuels.

Le dernier numéro de l'EDUCAUSE Review (vol. 43, n° 5 (sept.-oct. 2008) est consacré aux mondes virtuels et aux possibles synergies avec l'enseignement supérieur: "Whether it is Second Life or another virtual world, this foundational movement is not going away. The question to be addressed in the coming months and years is how higher education and, subsequently, individual institutions will determine the best way to continue to move forward with virtual worlds".

Articles:
- Virtual Worlds? “Outlook Good”
- Higher Education as Virtual Conversation
- Educational Frontiers: Learning in a Virtual World
- Looking to the Future: Higher Education in the Metaverse
- Drawing a Roadmap: Barriers and Challenges to Designing the Ideal Virtual World for Higher Education

7 Things You Should Know About Geolocation
(source: Educause, 27/08/08)

"Geolocation, also called geotagging, is the practice of associating a digital resource with a physical location. A photographer, for example, might include the longitude and latitude coordinates for where a picture was taken, allowing others to pinpoint that location on a map. Increasingly, geolocation is being applied to infrastructure components and end-user devices for the purpose of knowing where people are. This additional layer of location data can make resources much more useful to a broad range of users."

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Interview parue sur LeMonde.fr:

Pour nous adapter à la puissance des technologies numériques, il va nous falloir, affirme Ollivier Dyens, professeur à Montréal, modifier en profondeur la vision que nous avons de nous-mêmes.

L.M.: Professeur au département d'études françaises de l'université Concordia (Montréal), vous étudiez depuis quinze ans l'impact des nouvelles technologies sur la société. La foudroyante montée en puissance du numérique va-t-elle nous transformer en profondeur?

O.D.: Il y a quelques années, je pensais que la technologie changerait l'être humain. Aujourd'hui, je pense qu'elle va changer la perception qu'on a de l'être humain. Je crois de moins en moins au fantasme du cyborg, de l'homme-machine. Mais la vision que l'on a de nous-mêmes va devoir changer pour s'adapter à la réalité technologique de demain.

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"La Condition inhumaine" d'Ollivier Dyens. Editions Flammarion, 208 p., 21 euros.

Your Guide to Virtual Worlds (Mark Glaser)

"Virtual worlds are online three-dimensional spaces where you can interact with other people, collect items and build structures, and communicate via a virtual representative of yourself called an avatar. These worlds have been influenced by various science fiction writers such as William Gibson and Neal Stephenson, along with the movie, “The Matrix.”
Virtual worlds differ from massive multiplayer online games (MMOGs) because they don’t offer battles against monsters or have an overriding mission for players. For example, a resident of the virtual world Second Life might spend time in that space accumulating virtual land, rather than striving to complete quests or conquer levels as one would in many popular MMOGs such as World of Warcraft."

Via iLibrarian