I’m on the List!
Filed Under Boise State Class, Programming, Technology | Leave a Comment
My classmates Sean and Kristy, the recommendations from Dr. Gibson on “The Last Lecture,” and our game development curriculum grant inspired me to dig further into the Alice Programming Language. As a result, I submitted to be a beta tester for Alice 3.0 Spring 2009. To do this we need to offer a course in Alice, and visit Carnegie Mellon to have an orientation (myself and a teaching assistant), and agree to submitting any bug reports we encounter. As many of my students know, I pretend to have a “hot line” to Bill Gates when we encounter problems within the Visual Studio.NET product. It would be really nice to “actually” have a hotline with the Alice folks. We’ll see what develops!
I just received notification that I have been added to the beta email list for Alice v 3.0!
An Open House in Second Life
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We held our Open House for the EICCD Virtual Campus in Second Life on May 1st. We had some CCC students, and several others present representing faculty, administration, and staff. I saw that my Boise State friends, Dalai and Geneva were online so invited them, too. They came to the Student S.N.A.P. (stands for Student Networking and Programming) Club clubhouse. The students “furnished” the clubhouse themselves, and were very proud of it.
My goals for the island are to start holding meetings, presentations, and classes there to spark more interest and to justify our presence. One good thing, we have another year funded as it will be a part of our departmental budget.
Making an Instructional Game as Inviting and Addicting to Play as W.O.W.
Filed Under Boise State Class, Computer Graphics/Game Development, Second Life | Leave a Comment
I ask my studnets, “How can I make an instructional game that will teach you networking concepts as inviting and addicting to play as W.O.W.?” The response I received was, “Well, I don’t know, maybe you could come up with something like a Super Mario game,” replied one student. When I probed, he indicated that you could create a 2D game with differing levels. I asked him if it would be as engaging as W.O.W. He smiled and said, “No.”
With that encounter, and other similar ones; I have decided to explore W.O.W. this summer to see first hand what makes it so engaging that people lose all sense of time.
I already know some of the things that I will need to incorporate into my “serious games;” here are some of my findings (which go right along with all of the literature I have been reading through my Games and Simulations class):
1. Leveled play — needs to be missions/assignments that are challenging enough to obtain a sense of accomplishment once they are completed, yet not too difficult as to disinterest.
2. Collaboration – methods for sharing resources and talents to meet the intermediate or final goal.
3. Society Structure – have different roles that allow players to interact with each other based upon that role
4. Appealing graphics and modes of interaction — I am hoping Second Life will provide this.
Second Life appeals to me as a medium to use because of #2-#4 above. It does not have a “Leveled-play,” but I am hoping that it can somehow be scripted. What I really like about Second Life is the ability to create — if a learner finds an activity “lame,” they could simply create a better activity. That would make for some very powerful learning!
Realizing your Childhood Dreams
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a.k.a. “The Last Lecture” This is a powerful, inspirational message for all. Randy Pausch is a guru in virtual reality, and responsible for Alice Programming.
A Kindle is in my Future
Filed Under Boise State Class, Teaching and Learning, Technology | Leave a Comment
My very near future… like Monday! I had ordered three $100 gift certificates from my daughter’s school fundraising program. With just $99 more, that Kindle was in my Shopping Cart — and then the order was confirmed! I have written a grant to try to use in my classes for my students. I am particularly interested in working with publishers to deliver my textbooks via Kindle to avoid all of the “book overload” in my office. Think of the savings in time, money, and our precious resources to have our books delivered electronically! I am also intrigued by fact you can email documents to it for reading on-the-go. I plan on giving you a full report when it arrives in two days! (with free shipping, I might add!)
My First Presentation in Second Life
Filed Under Boise State Class, Second Life | Leave a Comment
Well, Kiriki got all dressed up in a nice blue suit to do her presentation in Second Life. We started at EdTech Island. I dropped down an object to teleport them to the EICCD Virutal Campus board room. Then, I show them the video background for my presentation if they had not yet viewed it from the Blackboard site. This video is streamed on the land. Participants need to have Video Streaming enabled in their preferences and then press play movie at the bottom of their client screen. Then we used a teleport to the demo skybox holodeck.
First to the “disco” where they could dance to the streaming version of “The Seven Layer Rap.” I had this streamed into the land so when they pressed their music play button on the bottom of their screen. I also had a link out to a VoiceThread where students could create their own version of the rap or share another rap they had created on any given networking topic. Maybe when I use this next semester, we can have a contest!
Off to the library where everyone participated in playing the wiring game where colored “donuts” were attached somewhere to their bodies and they were to line up in order for the wiring of the 568B cabling configuration (with the help of a poster on the wall). It was fun to watch them interact with the donuts. One unexpected thing happened when multiple donuts were applied to one avatar — that brings up another option 
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Some had found the OSI Quizzer earlier. I found out that once they found it they tried to interact with it. Good to know! I used Eloise Pasteur’s Big Quiz Rezzer to make up the quiz. It is merciless in that if you get something wrong, you need to go back to the start. Guess it was based on mastery learning. A suggestion was made to have some help of feedback loop. Another future project!
Lessons learned:
- Don’t play with your “Speakeasy!” — I had the Speakeasy notecard ready to go with a preloaded plan of what I was going to say. I also had the card visible to me so I could remember what was coming next. Speakeasy allows you to preload a notecard into a HUD and it then displays each line in the chat as you click on the Speakeasy HUD. Apparently, I had played with it so it was not at the first line.
- Have a buddy system. Know who you have attending the presentation and have them find a buddy to keep track of them. It was hard to both present and make sure everyone was with me as we teleported around.
- It takes more time than you think. Connection problems, teleport problems, navigation problems — all lead to additional time for the presentation — build these in.
- Mac users do not have a right-click. They do have a more option when they touch an object that helps them find other options. That was a new one to me!
- Expect the unexpected. Things might come up that you did not expect. Enjoy!
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As I was preparing my project, I tested various things to see what was available, and trying to get things to work. My goal is to create some type of repository of the tools I find useful and how to quickly use them. This little picture shows what happened while I was trying to figure out the Cattle Puppy Feed tool. Needless to say, I did not use that one! |