Serious Games Source reports on a recent “exergames” project conducted at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT).
Students were grouped into teams of five and tasked with designing games to encourage physical movement and exercise. Teams then had to come up with their own, original game concept and accompanying website for peer review. In all 16 game concepts were produced and included titles such as JumpShock! to a multiplayer toast-throwing simulator Toast.

More on the game concepts, and associated discussion, is available on the project website at Lecture 2130.

Links
Serious Games Source Article
http://www.seriousgamessource.com/item.php?story=24111
Lecture 2130 @ RMIT http://gameslecture.blogspot.com/

Last weekend in Sydney, X|Media|Lab hosted a Serious Games conference and workshop. The event was attended by international speakers including Noah Falstein and Ian Bogost. Due to other commitments, I was in Melbourne and unable to attend. However, journalist Jason Hill covered the event in his ScreenPlay Blog (which even includes an interview with yours truly).

As an aside, while in Melbourne, I did manage to catch the Dali Exhibition, entitled Liquid Desire, at the National Gallery of Victoria. The volume of work exhibited was astonishing, and included paintings, sculptures, animation, sketches, film, jewelery and holograms. What struck me the most was the vivid, luminescent properties of his paintings. It was as if the painting themselves were a light source; it was absolutely amazing. The other thing that struck me was the intense detail of this work which was immensely intricate. A definite must see.

Links
Serious Games article@ Screenplay:
http://blogs.theage.com.au/digital-life/screenplay/2009/06/15/seriousgames.html
X|Media|Lab: http://www.xmedialab.com
Dali: Liquid Desire: http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/dali/

Now that I’ve recovered from a delightful sojourn to the Gold Coast, I thought I’d share with you some interesting articles on games and simulations for learning. Fast Thinking magazine included some interesting views by luminaries in the area of simulations, including Elyssebeth Leigh. It’s definitely worth a read.

Links
http://www.fastthinking.com.au/webdata/resources/article/FT014_Make_it_real.pdf