Educational Gaming Commons

I just read an interesting Edutopia article about comic books in education. I've been curious about this for years - a prof. at PSU into Manga gave a talk pre 2K that sparked my interest.

More recently I puchased Comic Life Deluxe for the Mac - a comic book layout program in essence. Using it, you can develop your own comics. You still have to create your own artwork, but all else (frames, text bubbles, etc.) is just a click away.

Second Life and other virtual environments are one way to obtain your artwork. Fantastic scenes abound, and characters, outfits, poses, etc. are cheap and easy. The Global Kids Project did just this to great effect.

Sound great, but what's missing here? Web 2 integrated into the process. Imagine a program that combined Comic Book Deluxe with a Google Doc-like interface. Students could come together in a participatory creative endeavour, using a medium that speaks to them to build great things. How cool would it be to work with others across the world to create an artistic story that teaches?

I'm keeping my fingers crossed here!

This from the Second Life Educator's List Blog, courtesy of Alan Levine:

http://www.sl-educationblog.org/?p=116

The conference is now over. I hope the big green guy got to present!

See http://fleeep.net/blog/2008/05/08/weblins-another-transitional-step-to-3... for this fascinating new technology. Basically, you have an avatar that travels with you as you browse. It appears on the bottom of the page. The exciting thing is if other people are using Weblin, and they are on the same page, you can converse with them!

Fleep describes how this can be used in Course Management Systems. I had another idea - what a great way to jazz up an asynchronous discussion forum by setting a date/time for all to come to the forum and, well, discuss the topic? You could capture the conversation as posts in the forum AS THEY OCCURRED, turning it into a synchronous, chat-like event. We all know that forced chats don't work well. Will Weblins make a difference?

The call for speakers for the Second Annual Virtual Worlds Expo will be announced later this week.  VW Expo takes place September 3-4, 2008 in Los Angeles.  We're excited to bring our west coast show to LA this year. Virtual Worlds News again serves as the official blog for the Expo.  All Expo-related posts can be found in the VWnews VW Expo directory.  Last year's show site can be found here.

This post blew my mind! It really points out the probable directions of virtual world architecture, how things will change in virtual worlds due to changes in servers, power, etc. And it has my favorite - pictures that explain things to my simple mind!

Alternativa3D has released a demo of their 3D Flash game engine on their site, Alternativa Game Developers blog. It works with Flash 9, and allows speedy rendering of 3D models and objects while keeping processor load small.

Check it out: http://blog.alternativagame.com/en/2007/10/25/3d-engine-demo/

This might be something to keep an eye on for casual games developed in Flash.

With so many large corporations investing in Second Life and building corporate offices, it's no surprise that virtual recruiting is now taking place.

I think in the next decade, possibly sooner, we'll see expertise in virtual worlds as a desired skill, one you can display proudly on your resume. Will expertise in virtual worlds be rolled into the evolving list of technology literacy skills? I believe it's just a matter of time.

I've been spending some time learning to build and script. After several months, I'm getting fairly proficient. The included pict shows a rocking chair (that really rocks), a Grandfather clock (that really works), and a Trombone (that doesn't play). The chair took the longest - I was just learning. The clock took a long time due to it's complexity - plus I wanted it perfect. The trombone only took about two hours. That surprised me, but I am getting a feel for how to approach a build. I left the spit-valve off - why bother?

Another talk at the ELI Spring 2007 Focus Session on Immersive Learning Environments.

Phillip D. Long
Associate Director
Office of Educational Innovation and Technology
MIT

Virtual Learning Environments in 3D

MIT Virtual World Project

Started as a way to reach out to incoming freshman to explain and allow exploration of housing options.

Students used to come, for 1st two weeks did not unpack – just explored to find their fit.

To streamline this, built a residence hall in Second Life so students could explore before coming to campus.

A 3D Facebook!

Planning

* IDEO – Space as a narrative. MIT took this idea as well as ethnographic studies – interviewed students to find out what was important to them.
* Initially was to be a game-like environment.
* Then looked a Second Life.
* Intellectual Property concerns with Terms of Service Agreement. Indemnification. NMC has a service – you rent from them and they take on legal responsibility.
* Can it be named MIT? As long a faculty approved it, yes.
* Used existing policies for web presences to add SL to MIT.
* Got some seed money from SLOAN for student contest to build their own living space.

Cautions

What if students do "bad" things re: residence halls. Could expose things nobody wants/needs to know about.

Web Site

http://confab.mit.edu/confluence/display/SL/

ELI Spring Focus Session on Immersive Learning Environments

North Carolina State University

March 27-28, 2007

Richard Van Eck
Associate Professor, Instructional Design and Technology
Univ of North Dakota
Keynote Speech

Here's a synopsis - the full presentation will be posted soon!

Gen G – The gamer generation.

• Gen G are 2.0 learners.
• Gen G doesn't place boundries on work space, play space – it's all together.
• Flighty, spoiled, unwilling to work – untrue Gen G stereotypes.
• Nothing is technology because all is technology.
• Cognitive complexity of games and ILEs may be responsible. Must be quick, integrate info., etc.
• Gen G expect the environment to adapt to them.
• Gamers quickly analyze new situations, work independently and in groups, with others they don't know well.

Gen G Believes

• Organization important.
• Should be paid for performance.
• Team players.
• Lives in N dimensional world – living in dataspaces – ILEs, not spreadsheets.

GAMES

• Interactive
• Engaging
• Problem-based
• Situated Cognition
• Scaffolding - ZPD (see Vgotsky)
• Cognitive disequilibrium
• Assessment built in

Life 2.0
• Immersive
• Social
• Negotiated
• Collaborative
• Virtual

Misc.

• Flynn Effect – Every 10 years standardized intelligence tests must be re-normalized – intelligence is growing. Why? Unknown.
• Machinima – Self-produced by gamers, ILEers just for the fun of doing it.