ED-Media Notes 1

http://www.aace.org/CONF/EDMEDIA/

http://twemes.com/edmedia08

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GAM- Game Model

Playing Games: Hegemony as Enemy by Alan Amory, University of Johannesburg, South Africa
Many argue that the three most influential writers today are Umberto Eco, Richard Dawkins and Noam Chomsky. In Dreaming in the Middle Ages, Eco defines the phenomena of neomedievalism to confront pop-culture in a globalised corporate world – the language and structures of the past are perpetuated into a future where fiefdoms exploit and undermine civil society. Dawkins, on the other hand uses signs and symbols of science to explore and decry the rise of fundamentalist belief systems. Chomsky, who was involved in the development of cognitive science when he challenged Skinner's behaviourist approach to the study of language, continues to explore power relations especially those related to American politics. Therefore modern fiefdoms perpetuate fundamentalism through capitalistic and religious power structures. Are the relationships between educational technology, society and teaching and learning, which are part of Eco-Dawkins-Chomsky world view, perpetuating the past into the future? This presentation explores the design, development, use and evaluation of educational technology in relationship to belief systems to identify the rhetorical acts that are part of the dialectic struggle to liberalise and democratise educational practices.