Virtual Ancient Egypt curriculum introduced into the classroom

Click on the banner below for an interesting article about a new simulation being used in the classroom.

Rutgers develops virtual reality treatment for hand impairment in chronic stroke patients

A good news story about gaming!!!!

Rutgers develops virtual reality treatment for hand impairment in chronic stroke patients
http://tinyurl.com/n58y6

NEW BRUNSWICK/PISCATAWAY, N.J. – Rutgers researchers have filed a patent application for a PC-based virtual reality system that works alone to provide stroke patients effective, intensive nontedious hand-impairment therapy even years after a stroke has occurred.

"Virtual Reality-based Post-Stroke Rehabilitation" is discussed in a paper presented Jan. 24 at the 10th annual Medicine Meets Virtual Reality conference, by Grigore C. Burdea, director of the Human-Machine Interface Laboratory at Rutgers' Center for Advanced Information Processing.

The new system uses two types of sensor-equipped gloves along with programs running on a PC to provide both therapy and a way for the therapist to chart progress. In use, the patient's gloved hands are linked to virtual hands on the PC monitor – the patient's actual hand movements are mimicked on-screen. By interacting and playing with various onscreen graphics – including fluttering butterflies, piano keyboards and mechanical hands – the patient performs intensive rehab exercises without drudgery. The PC-based design also opens the door for "tele-rehabilitation" – the opportunity for therapists to work with patients from remote locations.
The Rutgers researchers tested four patients with hand impairment suffered in strokes from one to four years prior to the study. After three weeks of the new therapy, the researchers found up to a 140 percent improvement in range of motion for the thumb and up to a 118 percent improvement in the ability to move one finger at a time. There were also significant improvements in such areas as finger speed and finger strength.

"We found that virtual reality alone could be used to improve the condition of chronic stroke patients, without the use of traditional rehab exercises," said Burdea. "It provides a way for patients to completely immerse themselves in rehab, and actually look forward to treatment. As a consequence, the results are fast and dramatic."

###
Burdea is well-known for leading the team that developed the Rutgers Master, a virtual reality rehabilitation device for hand injuries. His team on the new hand therapy system includes Rares Boian, Anand Sharma, C. Han, Sergei Adamovich and Howard Poizner of Rutgers, along with Alma Merians from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, and Michael Recce and Marilyn Tremaine of the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Research was funded in part by the New Jersey Commission on Science and Technology and by Rutgers Special Research Opportunity Allocation grants.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Professor Grigore Burdea can be contacted by phone at (732) 445-5309 or by e-mail burdea@vr.rutgers.edu.

Girl Has Seizure After 5 Hours Of Video Gaming

Whilst the discussions are not new about the possible links of game playing to seizures, I thought this article may be of interest to some. Many (if not all games) now carry warnings about the dangers- food for thought for parents.....


Girl Has Seizure After 5 Hours Of Video Gaming
POSTED: 11:21 am CST December 8, 2005
UPDATED: 2:04 pm CST December 12, 2005
http://tinyurl.com/remok

Doctor Says Long-Term Video Game Playing Is Likely Cause

DES MOINES, Iowa -- A central Iowa mother woke up over the weekend to find her 14-year-old daughter having a seizure.

After a trip to the emergency room, a family learned that the cause was most likely from playing video games too long.

Doctors said such incidences are not common, but it does happen. Certain people are prone to it because of the way their brains work. Once was enough for this Des Moines family.

Amy Kopaska loves to play video games. She spent five hours straight playing a video game over the weekend. Her marathon session led to a frightening situation.

"This has never happened before. Boy, it scared the life out of me," said Janell Hansen, Kopaska's mother.

Hansen woke up early Sunday and heard an awful noise from her daughter's room. She found her daughter thrashing on her bed.

"I rolled her over. Her eyes were dilated. She was foaming at the mouth, gasping for air. Just breathing very hard," Hansen said.

Hansen said that at one point, it appeared her daughter had quit breathing all together.
"Then it was quiet. She didn't move. I thought I was watching her die. It scared me terribly," Hansen said.

Hansen gave Kopaska a couple of big breaths as she waited for the paramedics. At the hospital, after several tests and questions, the conclusion was the long-term use of the video game induced the seizure.

"The pattern of the lights sets up an abnormal reaction in the brain and that causes the seizure to happen," said Dr. Joel Waymire, a pediatrician.

Kopaska doesn't remember anything about the seizure.

"My mind is a blank like dreaming without the dream," she said.

Kopaska was playing the game called "True Crime: New York City." There's a car driving through snow and the snowflakes act as a strobe light.

Kopaska's brother played too, but he took a break when it was her turn. She stayed and watched him play.

Kopaska now only plays one to two hours at a time and then takes a break.

When Play Turns Into Pain

Photo: E3 Expo 2006


A really intersting article (and certainly food for thought that many will debate for some time) appeared in The Age (August 12, 2006) about the problems with addictions to game playing.


When Play Turns Into Pain
http://tinyurl.com/edwrl

Addicted gamers are flocking to a detox clinic that helps them regain control of their lives, writes Charles Purcell.


If you had told Keith Bakker two years ago that one day he would be starting Europe's first clinic for video-game addicts, he might have laughed at you.

Yet when the director of the Smith & Jones Addiction Consultants noticed that more and more clients with drug addictions were also obsessed with gaming, the evidence was impossible to ignore.

"We run an organisation where we have facilities for - I hate to call it that - 'regular addictions' such as chemical dependency and eating disorders," Bakker says.
"Because we are based in Amsterdam where soft drugs are pretty much legal, we get a lot of kids in with soft drug addictions.

"In the last 18 months, when we did psychosocial and addiction histories for the kids, we kept seeing gaming come up. This was obviously an enormous obsessive-compulsive behaviour that they were having a lot of trouble with."

Bakker says the idea for a video-game treatment centre started with one client about a year ago.

"His parents brought him in for a cocaine problem - he had stolen money to buy some. Then it turned out he was just a gamer, who took cocaine just to stay awake.

"We didn't have a program for just gaming addicts. I looked around for somewhere to send this kid and there was nothing, nowhere in the world. The kids kept showing up and we had to develop something around the kids that came in."

Bakker says that since opening the game detox clinic, his consultancy has been bombarded with requests for information from academics, psychiatrists and other professionals from around the world. There also has been a flood of applications from prospective clients, mostly from the United States. "It'll be full forever," he says.

Bakker reckons the number of video-game addicts is potentially huge. He says 20 per cent of the world's population has a genetic disposition to addiction. The Netherlands alone potentially has 800,000 under-18s at risk.

"If you repeat those numbers across the world it's crazy," Bakker says.

In a large majority of cases people become obsessed with one type of game - the multiplayer game. Their obsession revolves around advancing to the next level of the game.

"The one we see the most is World of Warcraft. It's really heavy. In these games it's all about levelling up, you can only level up. So there's never a moment when they have any satisfaction or esteem. So these kids turn up [to the clinic] as little wrecks."

In the centre of Amsterdam, the clinic consists of two 16th-century townhouses on a canal. The vast majority of clients are young males.

"There are very few women, maybe four out of 100," Bakker says. "Basically they're all white males from ages 10 to 25. They're all quite intelligent - many of these kids have scholarships to university."

The treatment costs about 500 euros ($840) a day, which includes meals, activities, accommodation and therapists. Drugs are not part of the treatment.

"Compared to most treatments it's quite reasonable," Bakker says. "That's because there's no medical detox. But there's a hardcore psychological detox. We don't have to keep them under 24-hour medical supervision. We do have to keep a guard on the door to make sure they don't run away and go find an internet cafe."

Clients are allowed to bring clothes, toiletries and books for studying. Mobile phones are forbidden, along with Game Boys and anything connected with video games.

"The first thing you have to do is detox them, no contact at all with any electronic video game, nothing with moving images except for television," Bakker says. "Obviously it sounds crazy, but there's no remote control anywhere.

"Look at the second word of that [remote control] - control. If you want to have some fun, you know what you do? You get 10-15 video gamers in a room and you throw the remote control in and see who gets it."

The clinic takes 10 clients at a time. Each day starts at 7am and lights are out at 11pm. Bakker says they have a great cook on site. "As soon as they come in they see a nutritionist. Sometimes the kids are overweight or underweight."

Video-game addicts can forget about that staple of gamers everywhere, Red Bulls. "They're a trigger for gaming behaviour," Bakker says.

Therapy begins in the same way as any other obsessive-compulsive disorder, Bakker says. "They have to realise it's not the second or third game that's going to kill them, it's the first one. They also have to realise it's all about control, that there's no way they can control their gaming behaviour [without help]. The horror is that it's an obsession of the mind. It's a mental thing, it's not about gaming itself.

"Then there's the other side. Let's imagine a 14-year-old kid. He's chubby and he's got pimples and the girls don't like him and he gets picked on at school. And he comes home and turns on his computer and he becomes Arnold Schwarzenegger fighting the world but he has total control over his little environment. There's this need to go off into a fantasy world to control everything, but then they're losing control.

"Then there's the social side. If we're going to have any type of long-term success these kids have to fill a hole which has been filled sometimes for years with gaming. We give these kids new living skills, other activities where they can get some kind of fulfilment."

The withdrawal symptoms for gaming include panic attacks, sleeping problems and sweating when seeing a computer. Unfortunately, in the modern world, video-game addicts can't just give up their computers to get the cyber monkey off their backs. And no one is asking them to.
"If you work on a job in 2006 you have to work on a computer," Bakker says. "It's like with an eating-disorder client - we have to get them to the point where they eat three meals a day. What they have to learn with the game is that the dealer is one click away. They need to learn to be very vigilant. They learn how dangerous gaming is by looking at the evidence of their life."
Bakker says part of the therapy is to have clients take part in "activities that build their self-esteem. There's skydiving, paintballing, strategic games in the woods. We do rope exercises, team-building exercises and wall climbing. There's a lot of team stuff and competitive games. They love competition."

The duration of the stay depends on the individual. "Some kids in the first conversation look at the situation and say, 'Holy Christ' and that's it," Bakker says. "But usually the kids that have come here have already lost a whole lot."

And what they lose is time. An addict might spend five hours a day, which equals 35 hours a week, on their addiction, stealing time away from their families and their future.
"There's no time for anyone else, to form social relationships, to learn how to talk to the opposite sex, play football, do your homework," Bakker says. "We've seen hundreds of emails since this has hit the press - what we see are these horror stories of kids who have lost scholarships, they stay up all night and don't go to class the next day."

China has also recognised the extent of the problem. It has started its own clinic for internet and associated gaming addiction (see story below).

Others are sceptical that video games can be addictive. Tim Weaver, editor of Xbox World 360, thinks that "addiction" is the wrong word.

"Playing games frequently and for long periods of time is unequivocally not the same as being addicted to gambling, drugs or alcohol," Weaver says. " Those three, to me, are far more serious and far more dangerous."

Does he think some games more addictive than others?

"The better the game is, the more likely players are to spend time with it. We get a lot of correspondence about Halo 2. We don't get a lot about Barbie's Horse Adventure."

Consultant psychiatrist Dr Clive Allcock, who is president of the National Association for Gambling Studies, can see similarities between playing games and poker machines.
"It's the consistency of the activity, the time the mind is focused on something that is fast," he says. "The parallel does seem to be it's exciting for them so that there may be a chance when they grow older that might switch over to poker machines.

"I've had a case where it's gone the other way, where one individual stopped playing gambling machines but spent considerable time on video games. The avoidance issues just switched over to games."

A spokeswoman for the NSW Department of Health says there are no plans to start a video-game addiction clinic in NSW, "but we will watch with interest the Amsterdam trial".
Bakker chuckles when I tell him I'm a gamer but I'm not addicted. "If someone comes in to see me as an alcoholic I look for possible loss of control. 'Can you always drink safely? Can you guarantee me every time you go out you'll not end up in jail?' It's the same with gamers," he says. "There are many kids who can play games for 30 minutes and then do their homework. But there is a big percentage of kids that can't do that. Once they start they can't stop."

Chinese shock treatment
If you think rampant gaming is just a problem in Western countries, think again. China has started its own clinic to address internet addiction at the Beijing Military Region Central Hospital. Many of the patients are addicted gamers.

"Every day in China, more than 20 million youngsters go online to play games and hit the chat rooms, and that means that internet addiction among young people is becoming a major issue," says the head of the clinic, Dr Tao Ran.

During their two-week courses, patients receive drug and psychological therapy, electroshock treatment and exercise.

No one has any figures on success rates for the various clinics. However, we had some interesting responses when we discussed this issue on Icon game reviewer Jason Hill's blog. Perhaps the real answer to video-game addiction is maturity.

Joaby writes: "I was 18 when I was addicted to video games, and continued to be for three years. But now, at the age of 24, I can understand what is important, and I can prioritise."
Yet even adults with children aren't immune to the siren call of the computer. Pumpkinhead says: "I once asked my mother to look after my daughter one Saturday as I wanted to finish a particular quest in an online game.

"Gaming addiction is not a victimless crime. I guess I am 'lucky' in that my husband and I both play the same games. But my daughter is not so lucky. We agree not to play until after she is in bed now. After playing all weekend I will feel a terrible sense of guilt that she did nothing but watch TV the whole time.

"I have known others whose addiction to chat rooms has resulted in their children being taken from them. [A] little boy at two worked out if he pulled the power cord out he would get mummy's attention."

Website Focus: The Escapist

Tony Forster sent me this fantastic web link today, The Escapist at http://www.escapistmagazine.com/

A bit about The Escapist-
The Escapist covers gaming and gamer culture with a progressive editorial style, with articles and columns by the top writers in and outside of the industry. A weekly publication, its magazine-style updates offer content for a mature audience of gamers, entertainment enthusiasts, industry insiders, and other "NetSet" readers.

Published every Tuesday, each issue of The Escapist explores a central theme, addressing head-on the topics relevant to gamers.

Combining print-quality writing and magazine-style aesthetics with the accessibility of the web, The Escapist is available online, via PDF, and through RSS for broad syndication.


A couple of links that jumped out as really interesting reading are-


Even Better Than The Real Thing
In the world of motorsports, autocross is to Formula One as your local soccer league is to the World Cup; there might be a few sponsored players out there who earn a little money, but most everyone buys their own shorts and cleats. Likewise, most autocrossers bring their own cars and tires. Hardcore competitors regularly drop $1,200 a month on tires that might survive a month's worth of abuse, racing after a prize that's often little more than a $5 plastic trophy.

But, for every speed racer blowing the price of a small car each year on tires, wheels, sway-bars, dampers, trailers, lodging, race schools and who knows what else to squeeze a few hundredths of a second off their time, there are dozens more who autocross just for kicks. I fall somewhere in-between, not hardcore enough to spend thousands of dollars on go-fast bits, but competitive enough to want to win. What I needed was an edge. Something to offset the advantage gained by those with the resources to dump wads of cash into their hobby. One winter I found it; the perfect training regimen for cheapskate racers like me: videogames.

Not just any videogame, of course. Real training requires some sort of simulation. In the world of flight training, it's typical for a new pilot's first non-simulated flight in a new jet to occur with passengers in the rear. That seems a little disconcerting, but the benefits of sim training over real-world training are straightforward: A sim can throw a pilot into just about any problematic situation imaginable and do it safely, enabling him to repeat the exercise until he gets it right. All this without having to worry about investing in any farmland.

Read on at http://www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/59/13


Playing To The Test
Nothing can judge you better than a videogame. You spend hours or tens of hours feeding information into a system that gauges your abilities, tests what you're capable of and rewards your improvement. With the right design, a game not only knows if you're winning or losing, but where you're strong and where you need help.

In education, and especially in the school system, tracking students' improvement is everything. In the U.S., the No Child Left Behind Act requires that students show demonstrable progress in basic learning areas; from grade to grad school, we endure regular standardized tests. And from the dawn of education, teachers have been forced by the people who pay their salaries to prove their students can read and write more words at the end of the year than they could at the beginning. While a great education system matches the particular needs and strengths of each student, you can't get away from keeping score.

Games were made to keep score. So, why are games in the classroom treated as a sideline and a bonus activity instead of an integral aid to the curriculum? Many developers coming out of academia, the "serious games" movement or the educational software business want to see more games in schools. But as they make their case, one of the biggest hurdles they have to cross is assessment: If you can't prove a game's efficacy, and if the work - sorry, play - students enjoy in a game doesn't lead to a number in a grade book, it's hard to add it to the curriculum.

Will games ever find a place next to textbooks and multiplication tables? Can games even measure the kind of performance that counts in school?

Read on at http://www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/59/8



Learning The Gaming Way
When someone mentions "educational gaming," it used to be the only games we could discuss were games like Mario Teaches Typing or Number Munchers. They were games meant to teach you measurable skills in hard-wired subjects like math, English or - if you were lucky enough to sport a high-end Apple II in your classroom - you could fire up Oregon Trail and learn how to make your entire family die of cholera.

In our enlightened, modern era, it's become more obvious that sometimes the "education" you can receive from games extends beyond adding and subtracting. While many games can teach valuable skills like complex problem solving and how to manage a budget, there are some games that have educational benefits that go beyond what you learn in a classroom.

Oftentimes, the trick lies in identifying exactly what it is you want to learn.

Read on at http://www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/59/3

The Army Takes Delivery of Tank Simulators

Two interesting articles from The Age


Army takes delivery of tank simulators
http://tinyurl.com/r3jmc

Ben DohertyAugust 23, 2006
IT'S the ultimate toy. Think of a supercharged PlayStation worth $4 million and you're close to imagining a tank simulator.

Yesterday, the School of Armour at the Puckapunyal army base unveiled its latest high-tech training tools: simulators to train drivers and gunners of Australia's new M1A1 AIM Abrams tank fleet.

The first 18 of 59 tanks are due to arrive from America in about a month, but training on the simulators will begin next week.

Hop inside and you're suddenly behind the wheel of an armoured tank worth many millions more than is worth contemplating, with the terrain mapped out for you across 120 degrees on massive television screens.

As you manoeuvre your machine across open countryside, or desert, or an urban streetscape, each movement of your controls affects your "tank".

Drive it too quickly down a hill and the machine jolts forward — with alarming force — to let you know you'll need to use a little more finesse next time.

In the gunnery trainer, you're in charge of the 120 millimetre cannon.
Your job is to seek out targets — be they helicopters, buildings or enemy tanks — and, quite simply, start firing shells.

It's a high-pressure gig, even in a simulator, and all the time the voice of your instructor is ringing in your ears, barking military commands such as "contact in three seconds".
About 50 armoured corps drivers come through Puckapunyal each year, and each will do about two-thirds of their training in a simulator.

They will do about 200 kilometres — or 10 hours — behind the controls of the computer screen tank before they get inside the real thing.

The idea is that drivers can hone their tank-driving skills without inflicting wear and tear on the expensive vehicles — and without the risk of crashing them. And gunners can train without wasting live rounds.

Army chief Peter Leahy said the opening of the simulators was a red-letter day for the Australian Army.
"This will take about two-thirds of the actual load off the tanks driving out on the range. We can do a lot of our training right here," Lieutenant-General Leahy said.
The 59 M1A1 AIM Abrams tanks — hand-me-downs from the US Army — and supplementary vehicles will be delivered to Australia over the next year at a cost of $528 million.
Some of the 60-tonne vehicles are 20 years old.

The Abrams fleet will replace the Australian Army's Leopard tanks, some of which have been in commission since 1977.
The Minister Assisting the Minister for Defence, Bruce Billson, opened the simulators yesterday and took charge of a "tank".

But he fears a post-parliamentary career as a tank driver may be beyond him.
He said the new simulators were "incredibly lifelike".

"These are a fantastic innovation. Simulation technology has been proven in aviation and here is an example, for the first time in our country, where we use it for land combat training," Mr Billson said.



Army takes delivery of tank simulators
http://tinyurl.com/r3jmc
Crew members for Australia's new Abrams tanks will now be able to practise driving and shooting even though they don't have any actual vehicles.

With the first of 59 tanks set to arrive later this year, the army has taken delivery of an advanced simulation system which allows crew to train on what are basically very advanced video games.

Junior Defence Minister Bruce Billson said the driver and gunnery trainers would permit realistic training while reducing tank operating costs and environmental damage.
"The systems potentially offer a two-thirds reduction in the ammunition and kilometres needed to qualify crew on the M1 AIM Abrams," he said in a statement.
"These new systems will allow armoured crews and their instructors to be well prepared for the new vehicle."

Mr Billson opened the new Abrams M1A1 AIM tank driver training (TDT) and advanced gunnery training system (AGTS) at the School of Armour in Puckapunyal, Victoria.
The driver training system simulates a variety of terrain and weather conditions with realistic motion but without leaving a classroom environment.

Instructors can test driver response to system failures at no risk to vehicles or personnel, while the gunnery system enables rigorous training without the high cost of using live ammunition.

Both systems, made by defence company Lockheed Martin, are in widespread use in the US Army.

In 2004, Australia announced it would buy 59 Abrams tanks to replace its ageing Leopard tanks in a deal worth $600 million.

The driver and gunnery simulators are being acquired as part of a logistic support package.
Under the contract, Lockheed Martin will provide the Australian army with two relocatable AGTS, four fixed-site AGTS and one tank driver trainer.
Training will be carried out at Puckapunyal and Darwin.

Video game mimics Venezuela attack

From the Aljazeera news service-
http://tinyurl.co.uk/g7f3

Venezuelan politicians are complaining that a video game to be marketed by a US company next year provides a blueprint for violently overthrowing Hugo Chavez.

The game, Mercenaries 2: World in Flames, simulates a military invasion of the oil-rich South American nation and will be released by Pandemic Studios of Los Angeles.

"A power-hungry tyrant messes with Venezuela's oil supply, sparking an invasion that turns the country into a war zone," Pandemic says of the game on its website.

Venezuelan politicians who back Chavez called it the latest example of a US government-inspired propaganda campaign against Chavez that could even help lay the psychological groundwork for an actual invasion.

Luis Tascon said: "This could be a point of departure. The United States has an impressive media machine. In that machinery the gringos are always the heroes and their adversaries are always the villains."

War of words
An executive at Pandemic said the video game would be released next year but declined to comment on its content. A public-relations firm representing the company did not return calls for comment.

Chavez has been locked in a war of words with Washington as he pushes his leftist agenda in Latin America, with the United US charging that the self-proclaimed revolutionary is trying to destabilise the region.

George Bush, the US president, said this week he was concerned about the erosion of democracy in Venezuela. Chavez accused the White House of planning to topple him to gain access to his nation's vast oil reserves.

Last week Venezuela, the world's No 5 oil exporter, staged a mock invasion complete with naval landing craft and camouflaged tanks to train military troops and communities to defend against an attack.


Pandemics Mercenaries website- http://www.pandemicstudios.com/proj_mercs2.php

ACMI: Games Lab

The Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) is running an exhibiiton called, "Games Lab".

From the website-
"We all know that they are fun, but what else can computer games be? Games Lab celebrates the past, present and future of games, and looks deeper to discover that they are a fascinating reflection of our culture."

More info at-
http://www.acmi.net.au/games_lab.jsp

There's also a feature on, "The Best of Independant Games Festival 2006"
http://www.acmi.net.au/independent_games_festival_2006.jsp

The Education Arcade

From the website -

http://www.educationarcade.org

The Education Arcade is committed to research and development projects that drive innovation in educational computer and video games. Our research-based creative design, pedagogical development, and student evaluation activities inform the production and distribution of effective new teaching and learning tools for today's classrooms and beyond.

Website/Software Focus: Text Adventure Development Systems

From the website-
Welcome to the official web site for TADS, the Text Adventure Development System. TADS is a freeware programming system that can help you create high-quality interactive fiction. This site is devoted to news and information about TADS.

More info at-
http://www.tads.org/

Teaching Educational Games Resources

There's a whole host of resources and articles here at-
http://opencontent.org/wiki/index.php?title=Teaching_Educational_Games_Resources

Patterns of Group Interaction-seeking in a Simulated Emergency Response Environment

Interesting paper written Qing Gu and David Mendonca (both from New Jersey Institute of Technology)

Read on at-
http://tinyurl.co.uk/et4q

Website/Article Focus: Problem-Based Learning and Simulation in Online Graduate Courses

Interesting paper written by Henry S. Merrill (Visiting Associate Professor of Adult Education) Indiana university.

Go to-
http://tinyurl.co.uk/i9vt

What Can Education Learn from the Video Game Industry?

Here's an interesting panel discussion on "What Can Education Learn from the Video Game Industry?" from The Institute for the Advancement of Emerging Technologies in Education at AEL.

Go to-
http://www.iaete.org/soapbox/summary.cfm?&tid=What3080

Extreme Learning: Decision Games

From the Chief learning Officer website-
http://www.clomedia.com/content/templates/clo_article.asp?articleid=899&zoneid=107

April 2005 - Jay Cross

Sometimes failure is not an option. When a malevolent megalomaniac threatens to vaporize your empire, you send in your James Bond—not a raw recruit.

In business, when it’s vital to break into a complex new market, you send in a veteran who knows the territory to close the deal. You rely on an expert who has been there because he knows how to spot the signs and figure out what’s going on as if by second nature. Until recently, extensive experience was the only way to become an expert. It took decades to develop and hone one’s craft—you couldn’t teach it in a classroom. That’s about to change.

Several months ago, I talked with two knowledge management and research companies in Singapore: Straights Knowledge and Pebble Road. These two companies had been commissioned to help small and medium businesses become experts in doing business in China.

Foreign businesspeople new to China have an extraordinarily difficult time learning to sense and respond to the culture’s complexities. They don’t need more information—they need to be able to read what’s going on so they will know how to use the information they’ve got. Until now, no one could figure out how to transfer the insight of experienced foreign entrepreneurs.

What separates novices from experts is the way they size things up. Experts assess a situation with less information than novices. In his new book, “Blink,” Malcolm Gladwell calls this capability “thin-slicing” or “rapid cognition.” Designers started by teasing out the “thin slices” that experts pay attention to when making rapid decisions. They elicited narratives from China hands, focusing them on context rather than conclusions. The narratives fell into six themes: strategy, environment, people, culture, law and fraud.

Next, the designers conducted extensive, confidential interviews with seasoned professionals. They asked them to imagine challenging but typical scenarios and to display them on a table using small figures and props to represent roles and relationships (situational context). The experts explained the relationships displayed (social context). They also played the scenarios forward and backward, answering questions such as “Let’s imagine it turns out well/badly—what would the situation look like then?” (teleological context).

The designers poured this content into six shell scenarios. They included representative businesses going into China (trading companies, manufacturing companies, service companies), the situational themes and a variety of geographic regions. Narrative techniques created by Dave Snowden’s Cynefin Centre helped transform the raw material into realistic stories. Methods borrowed from screenwriting brought the stories to life. The result was a “game pack” of scenarios, each containing dozens of unfolding vignettes.

A half-dozen or more novices can work though the scenarios collaboratively, making individual judgments along the way and learning from what their colleagues deem important. One game takes a moderately experienced group three hours or more to complete, but the game is best played with diverse levels of experience. Forcing the group to agree on their reading of the situation before moving on requires them to explain their divergences, which in itself provides a high level of complex, highly contextualized knowledge.

These decision games repeatedly test a person’s judgment and knowledge while allowing them to engage with business colleagues in a complex and ambiguous environment. While they are learning about a particular domain, participants also gain insight into the perspectives, styles and capabilities of their colleagues.

Think about it: Exposing novices to multiple ways of seeing and sizing up situations is how expertise is built. Switching the focus from teaching content to challenging contexts intensifies learning. Participants become so involved, they don’t even break for coffee.

Organizations need more savvy, can-do experts to deal with an increasingly complex world. In fact, decision games are a preferred method of developing experts in the U.S. Marines. These high-impact methods also accelerate the decision-making capabilities of high-tech sales stars.

CLOs recognize that training the corporate SWAT team takes more than plain old vanilla training. Expect to see more programs for high-potential performers that use thin-slicing to build expertise—fast.

Jay Cross is CEO of eLearningForum, founder of Internet Time Group and a fellow of meta-learninglab.com. For more information, e-mail Jay at jcross@clomedia.com.

Extreme Learning Lab Created by MASIE Center to focus on Gaming, Simulation, Mobile and Device Based Learning

From TrainingPress Release-
http://www.trainingpressreleases.com/newsstory.asp?NewsID=1390

Extreme Learning Lab Created by MASIE Center to focus on Gaming, Simulation, Mobile and Device Based LearningThe MASIE Center Saratoga Springs, N.Y., USA
20-Apr-2005 » Training Press Releases » Gaming, Simulation, Mobile Devices and other forms of Extreme Learning are the focus of a new Lab and Seminar opening at The MASIE Center in New York State. "Tomorrow's workforce will demand and utilize a whole new set of learning technologies, including on-line games, instant collaboration, simulation environments and other forms of 'extreme learning,'" said Elliott Masie, global learning expert and educational researcher.

The MASIE Center has developed a new xLearn Lab at its 10,000 square foot educational research facility in Saratoga Springs, New York, designed to explore the many facets of "extreme learning." Participants in The MASIE Center's first Extreme Learning Lab and Seminar will spend three days using, designing and exploring dramatically different learning models, including employee orientation delivered through a wireless, hand-held Sony Portable Playstation.

MASIE's xLearn Lab is equipped with Gaming Studios, a Simulation Arena, Virtual Teaching Studios, a Learning Usability Lab, a Tools Gallery, Video Capture, a Wireless and Device Learning Environment, and a Knowledge Flash Studio. The Extreme Learning Lab and Seminar provides an opportunity for participants to experiment, explore, dialogue with experts from around the world, separate reality from hype, and investigate current and future extreme learning opportunities. It will be a hands-on, mind-stretching, future-facing and assumption-challenging three days of unprecedented professional development.

Joining Elliott Masie, The MASIE Center's Director of Learning Innovations Mark Oehlert will co-teach and guide Extreme Learning participants. Mark will share his in-depth knowledge of current and emerging PC-based and mobile computing technologies and associated market trends, especially as they relate to e-Learning, job performance support, device-based and game-based learning. Elliott and Mark will also bring in a host of experts via video-conference and on-line collaboration as assets to the group.

The premier of the first Extreme Learning Lab & Seminar session will be held Tuesday, June 28 through Thursday, June 30 at The MASIE Center in Saratoga Springs, New York, USA. Information is available at http://www.masie.com. The MASIE Center is an international think-tank focused on Learning. It hosts the e-Learning CONSORTIUM and is the creator of Learning 2005, a new learning event to be held in Orlando this coming fall.

For information or interviews about Extreme Learning, contact Elliott Masie at emasie@masie.com or Brooke Thomas at 518-350-2227 or brooke@masie.com.

The Masie Center sponsors key events including Learning Futures in July, Dublin Ireland and Learning 2006 in November, Orlando, Florida USA. The center is also home to the Learning Consortium, a collaborative, benchmarking network of over 230 global companies focused on best practices for learning and performance.

My Virtual Life

From Business Week Online-
http://tinyurl.co.uk/7y6b

A journey into a place in cyberspace where thousands of people have imaginary lives. Some even make a good living. Big advertisers are taking notice

As I step onto the polished wood floor of the peaceful Chinese country house, a fountain gurgles softly and a light breeze stirs the scarlet curtain in a doorway. Clad in a stylish blue-and-purple dress, Anshe Chung waves me to a low seat at a table set with bowls of white rice and cups of green tea. I'm here to ask her about her booming land development business, which she has built from nothing two years ago to an operation of 17 people around the world today. As we chat, her story sounds like a classic tale of entrepreneurship.

Except I've left out one small detail: Chung's land, her beautifully appointed home, the steam rising from the teacups -- they don't exist. Or rather, they exist only as pixels dancing on the computer screens of people who inhabit the online virtual world called Second Life. Anshe Chung is an avatar, or onscreen graphic character, created by a Chinese-born language teacher living near Frankfurt, Germany. And the sitting room in which Chung and my avatar exchange text messages is just one scene in a vast online diorama operated by Second Life's creator, Linden Lab of San Francisco. Participants launch Second Life's software on their personal computers, log in, and then use their mice and keyboards to roam endless landscapes and cityscapes, chat with friends, create virtual homes on plots of imaginary land, and conduct real business.

REAL BUCKS
The avatar named Anshe Chung may be a computerized chimera, but the company she represents is far from imaginary. Second Life participants pay "Linden dollars," the game's currency, to rent or buy virtual homesteads from Chung so they have a place to build and show off their creations. But players can convert that play money into U.S. dollars, at about 300 to the real dollar, by using their credit card at online currency exchanges. Chung's firm now has virtual land and currency holdings worth about $250,000 in real U.S. greenbacks. To handle rampant growth, she just opened a 10-person studio and office in Wuhan, China. Says Chung's owner, who prefers to keep her real name private to deter real-life intrusions: "This virtual role-playing economy is so strong that it now has to import skill and services from the real-world economy."

Oh yes, this is seriously weird. Even Chung sometimes thinks she tumbled down the rabbit hole. But by the time I visited her simulated abode in late February, I already knew that something a lot stranger than fiction was unfolding, some unholy offspring of the movie The Matrix, the social networking site MySpace.com (NWS ), and the online marketplace eBay (EBAY ). And it was growing like crazy, from 20,000 people a year ago to 170,000 today. I knew I had to dive in myself to understand what was going on here.

As it turns out, Second Life is one of the many so-called massively multiplayer online games that are booming in popularity these days. Because thousands of people can play at once, they're fundamentally different from traditional computer games in which one or two people play on one PC. In these games, typified by the current No. 1 seller, World of Warcraft, from Vivendi Universal's (V ) Blizzard Entertainment unit, players are actors such as warriors, miners, or hunters in an endless medieval-style quest for virtual gold and power.

All told, at least 10 million people pay $15 and up a month to play these games, and maybe 20 million more log in once in a while. Some players call World of Warcraft "the new golf," as young colleagues and business partners gather online to slay orcs instead of gathering on the green to hack away at little white balls. Says eBay Inc. founder and Chairman Pierre M. Omidyar, whose investing group, Omidyar Network, is a Linden Lab backer: "This generation that grew up on video games is blurring the lines between games and real life."

Second Life hurls all this to the extreme end of the playing field. In fact, it's a stretch to call it a game because the residents, as players prefer to be called, create everything. Unlike in other virtual worlds, Second Life's technology lets people create objects like clothes or storefronts from scratch, LEGO-style, rather than simply pluck avatar outfits or ready-made buildings from a menu. That means residents can build anything they can imagine, from notary services to candles that burn down to pools of wax.

PROPERTY RIGHTS
You might wonder, as I did at first, what's the point? Well, for one, it's no less real a form of entertainment or personal fulfillment than, say, playing a video game, collecting matchbook covers, or building a life list of birds you've seen. The growing appeal also reflects a new model for media entertainment that the Web first kicked off: Don't just watch -- do something. "They all feel like they're creating a new world, which they are," says Linden Lab Chief Executive Philip Rosedale.

Besides, in one important way, this virtual stuff isn't imaginary at all. In November, 2003, Linden Lab made a policy change unprecedented in online games: It allowed Second Life residents to retain full ownership of their virtual creations. The inception of property rights in the virtual world made for a thriving market economy. Programmer Nathan Keir in Australia, for example, created a game played by avatars inside Second Life that's so popular he licensed it to a publisher, who'll soon release it on video game players and cell phones. All that has caught real-world investors' attention, too. On Mar. 28, Linden Lab raised a second, $11 million round of private financing, including new investor Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com Inc (AMZN ).

Virtual worlds may end up playing an even more sweeping role -- as far more intuitive portals into the vast resources of the entire Internet than today's World Wide Web. Some tech thinkers suggest Second Life could even challenge Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT ) Windows operating system as a way to more easily create entertainment and business software and services. "This is why I think Microsoft needs to pay deep attention to it," Robert Scoble, Microsoft's best-known blogger, recently wrote.

WEAK SPOT
A lot of other real-world businesses are paying attention. That's because virtual worlds could transform the way they operate by providing a new template for getting work done, from training and collaboration to product design and marketing. The British branding firm Rivers Run Red is working with real-world fashion firms and media companies inside Second Life, where they're creating designs that can be viewed in all their 3D glory by colleagues anywhere in the world. A consortium of corporate training folks from Wal-Mart Stores (WMT ), American Express (AXP ), Intel (INTC ), and more than 200 other companies, organized by learning and technology think tank The MASIE Center in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., is experimenting inside Second Life with ways for companies to foster more collaborative learning methods. Says Intel Corp. learning consultant Brent T. Schlenker: "We're trying to get in on the front end of this new workforce that will be coming."

The more I kept hearing about all this, the more I knew this was wa-a-a-ay more than fun and games. So early this year I signed up at www.secondlife.com, downloaded the software, logged on, and created my persona. As reporter "Rob Cranes," I embarked on my journey.

And promptly got lost in the vast, uncharted terrain.

Click: I land at the Angry Ant, a nightclub holding a "Naked Hour" where avatars are in various stages of undress, dancing lasciviously. Is it getting warm in here?

Click: I stumble upon someone teaching a class on how to buy and sell virtual land to a motley crew of avatars sitting attentively on chairs watching PowerPoint slides. Do we get a toaster when we're done?

Click: Suddenly, I'm underwater at Cave Rua, watching a school of fish swim by. Cool, but what do I do here?

Click: Here's a virtual doctor's office, where a researcher runs a simulation of what it's like to be a hallucinatory schizophrenic. A menacing British voice from a TV urges: "Shoot yourself. Shoot them all. Get the gun out of the holster and shoot yourself, you !@#&!" Yikes, where's that teleport button?

My disorientation points up one of the big challenges of these virtual worlds, especially one so open-ended as Second Life: With nothing to shoot and no quest to fulfill, it's hard for newbies to know what to do. Virtual worlds require personal computers with fairly advanced graphics and broadband connections and users with some skill at software. "The tools are the weak spot," says Will Wright, legendary creator of The Sims video game, who nonetheless admires Second Life. For now, he says, "That limits its appeal to a fairly hard-core group."

Still, there's no denying the explosion of media, products, and services produced by users of these virtual worlds. IGE Ltd., an independent online gaming services firm, estimates that players spent about $1 billion in real money last year on virtual goods and services at all these games combined, and predicts that could rise to $1.5 billion this year. One brave (or crazy) player in the online game Project Entropia last fall paid $100,000 in real money for a virtual space station, from which he hopes to earn money charging other players rent and taxes. In January inside Second Life alone, people spent nearly $5 million in some 4.2 million transactions buying or selling clothes, buildings, and the like.

That can add up to serious change. Some 3,100 residents each earn a net profit on an average of $20,000 in annual revenues, and that's in real U.S. dollars. Consider the story of Chris Mead, aka "Craig Altman," on Second Life. We exchange text messages via our keyboards at his shop inside Second Life, where he hawks ready-made animation programs for avatars. It's a bit awkward, all the more so because as we chat, his avatar exchanges tender caresses with another avatar named "The Redoubtable Yoshimi Muromachi." Turns out she's merely an alter ego he uses to test his creations. Still, I can't help but make Rob Cranes look away.

SHOPPING SPREE
Mead is a 35-year-old former factory worker in Norwich, England, who chose to stay home when he and his working wife had their third child. He got on Second Life for fun and soon began creating animations for couples: When two avatars click on a little ball in which he embeds the automated animation program, they dance or cuddle together. They take up to a month to create. But they're so popular, especially with women, that every day he sells more than 300 copies of them at $1 or less apiece. He hopes the $1,900 a week that he clears will help pay off his mortgage. "It's a dream come true, really," he says. "I still find it so hard to believe."

His story makes me want to venture further into this economy. Besides, my photo editor is nagging me to get a shot of my avatar, which needs an extreme makeover. Time to go shopping! First I pick out a Hawaiian shirt from a shop, clicking on the image to buy it for about 300 Lindens, or about a dollar. Nice design but too tight for my taste, so I prowl another men's shop for a jacket. I find something I like, along with a dark gray blazer and pants. As a fitting finishing touch for a reporter, I add a snazzy black fedora, though I'm bummed that it can't be modified to add a press card.

I'm also feeling neglectful leaving my avatar homeless every time I log out. It's time to buy some land, which will give me a place to put my purchases, like a cool spinning globe that one merchant offered cheap. And maybe I'll build a house there to show off to friends. I briefly consider buying a whole island, but I have a feeling our T&E folks would frown on a $1,250 bill for imaginary land. Instead, I purchase a 512-square-meter plot with ocean view, a steal for less than two bucks. Plopping my globe onto my plot, I take a seat on it and slowly circle, surveying my domain. My Second Life is good.

I soon discover that Second Life's economy has also begun to attract second-order businesses like financial types. One enterprising character, whose avatar is "Shaun Altman," has set up the Metaverse Stock Exchange inside Second Life. He (at least I think it's a he) hopes it will serve as a place where residents can invest in developers of big projects like virtual golf courses. In a text chat session in his slick Second Life office, Altman concedes that the market is "a bit ahead of its time. I'm sure it will take quite some time to build up a solid reputation as an institution." No doubt, I'm thinking, especially when the CEO is a furry avatar whose creator refuses to reveal his real name.

Premature or not, such efforts are raising tough questions. Virtual worlds may be games at their core, but what happens when they get linked with real money? (For one, people such as Chung's owner start to take changes to their world very seriously. She recently threatened to create her own currency inside Second Life after the Linden dollar's value fell.) Ultimately, who regulates their financial activities? And doesn't this all look like a great way for crooks or terrorists to launder money?

Beyond business, virtual worlds raise sticky social issues. Linden Lab has rules against offensive behavior in public, such as racial slurs or overtly sexual antics. But for better or worse, consenting adults in private areas can engage in sexual role-playing that, if performed in real life, would land them in jail. Will that draw fire from law enforcement or, at least, publicity-seeking politicians? Ultimately, what are the societal implications of spending so many hours playing, or even working, inside imaginary worlds? Nobody really has good answers yet.

My head hurts. I just want to have some fun now. It's time to try Second Life's most popular game. Tringo is a combination of bingo and the puzzle-like PC game Tetris, where you quickly try to fit various shapes that appear on a screen into squares, leaving as few empty squares as you can. I settle in on a floating seat, joining a dozen other competing avatars at an event called Tringo Money Madness @Icedragon's Playpen -- and proceed to lose every game. Badly. I start to get the hang of it and briefly consider waiting for the next Tringo event until I see the bonus feature: a movie screen showing the band Black Sabbath's 1998 reunion tour.

Instead, I seek out Tringo's creator, Nathan Keir, a 31-year-old programmer in Australia whose avatar is a green-and-purple gecko, "Kermitt Quirk." It turns out Keir's game is so popular, with 226 selling so far at 15,000 Lindens a pop, or about $50, that a real-world company called Donnerwood Media ponied up a licensing fee in the low five figures, plus royalties. Tringo soon will grace Nintendo Co.'s (NTDOY ) Game Boy Advance and cell phones. "I never expected it at all," Keir tells me, his awe evident even in a text chat clear across the world. He's working on new games now, wondering if he can carve out a living. That would be even cooler than the main benefit so far: making his mum proud.

TALENT BANK
After all my travels around Second Life, it's becoming apparent that virtual worlds, most of all this one, tap into something very powerful: the talent and hard work of everyone inside. Residents spend a quarter of the time they're logged in, a total of nearly 23,000 hours a day, creating things that become part of the world, available to everyone else. It would take a paid 4,100-person software team to do all that, says Linden Lab. Assuming those programmers make about $100,000 a year, that would be $410 million worth of free work over a year. Think of it: The company charges customers anywhere from $6 to thousands of dollars a month for the privilege of doing most of the work. And make no mistake, this would be real work were it not so fun. In Star Wars Galaxies, some players take on the role of running a pharmaceutical business in which they manage factory schedules, devise ad campaigns, and hire other players to find raw materials -- all imaginary, of course.

All this has some companies mulling a wild idea: Why not use gaming's psychology, incentive systems, and social appeal to get real jobs done better and faster? "People are willing to do tedious, complex tasks within games," notes Nick Yee, a Stanford University graduate student in communications who has extensively studied online games. "What if we could tap into that brainpower?"

In other words, your next cubicle could well be inside a virtual world. That's the mission of a secretive Palo Alto (Calif.) startup, Seriosity, backed by venture firm Alloy Ventures Inc. Seriosity is exploring whether routine real-world responsibilities might be assigned to a custom online game. Workers having fun, after all, likely will be more productive. "We want to use the power of these games to transform information work," says Seriosity CEO Byron B. Reeves, a Stanford professor of communications.

BUILDING BOOM
Whether or not their more fantastic possibilities pan out, it seems abundantly clear that virtual worlds offer a way of testing new ideas like this more freely than ever. "We can and should view synthetic worlds as essentially unregulated playgrounds for economic organization," notes Edward Castronova, an associate professor in telecommunications at Indiana University at Bloomington and author of the 2005 book Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games.

I get a taste of the lack of regulation just as we're about to go to press. Logging in to Second Life after a few days off, I see that someone has erected a bunch of buildings on my avatar Rob Cranes's land, which is located in a region called Saeneul. The area was nearly empty when I arrived, but now I'm surrounded by Greek temples under construction. So much for my ocean view. Online notes left by one "Amy Stork" explain that the "Saeneul Residents Association" is building an amphitheater complex, and "your plot is smack bang in the middle." She's "confident that we can find a *much* better plot for you than this one....Love, Amy xx."

Oh, really? For some reason, this causes Rob Cranes to blow a gasket. He resists my editor's advice to "head to the virtual gun store," but he fires off angry e-mail complaints to Ms. Stork and Linden Lab and deletes the trespassing buildings, planting some trees in their place. Then he reconsiders: Maybe a ramshackle cabin with a stained sofa and a sun-bleached Chevy up on blocks would be a great addition to his plot.

At first, I wonder why I (or my avatar) has such a visceral reaction to this perceived intrusion. Then a flush of parental pride washes over me: My avatar, which so far has acted much like me, hanging back from crowds and minding his punctuation in text chats, suddenly is taking on a life of his own. Who will my alter ego turn out to be? I don't know yet. And maybe that's the best thing about virtual worlds. Unlike in the corporeal world, we can make of our second lives whatever we choose.

The Online Universe: An Old Fogey's Guide

From Business Week Online-
http://tinyurl.co.uk/q4hc

Ask most people under the age of 30 about online games, and chances are they'll wax enthusiastic about their favorite, whether it's Neopets for the kiddies or World of Warcraft for twentysomethings. For everyone else, the most likely response is: Huh? Here's a primer on these strange new worlds.

What the heck are they?
They're like video games, except you're online with thousands of other people playing at the same time. Some are medieval adventures, others are set in space, and still others are little more than online chat rooms.

So what do you do, exactly?
Oh, kill things. Join up with other people in "guilds" so you can kill bigger things. Play roles like warrior or wizard. Earn imaginary gold and gain the power to do more activities in the game. Or, in less scripted worlds such as Second Life, you make everything up along the way, creating your own virtual world.

Wait, first tell me how I get started.
Fire up your personal computer (a newer one that can handle the whizzy graphics), download the software from the game's Web site, and sign up for an account. Then you create an avatar to travel around that particular digital world. Uh -- avatar?

It's a graphic representation of you inside the world. In Second Life, avatars typically look more or less like humans, though they can be modified in such detail -- different hair, eyes, body type, even clothes -- that each one is unique, sometimes bizarre. You see the game from the perspective of your avatar, viewing whatever is in your avatar's line of sight and seeing or hearing only the conversations of others nearby.

O.K., so tell me about this Second Life.
It's a three-dimensional online world, set up by Linden Lab of San Francisco and its CEO, Philip Rosedale. Unlike in other virtual worlds, you and the other 170,000 users create just about everything inside it. Software menus make simple construction from basic shapes easy. But with a little more work using Linden's own programming language, you can build nightclubs, casinos, beaches, skydiving services, retail stores -- you name it.

How do I check all this out?
Using your mouse and keyboard, you walk or fly your avatar around the digital landscape. The arrow keys move the avatar forward, backward, and sideways. Use the page-up button to jump up or fly and look around.

What does it cost?
You can get a free basic membership, which allows you to customize your avatar and explore Second Life. If you want to own land on which to put a house or garden or other objects, you need to sign up for a premium membership, which is $9.95 a month. Buy more land, and monthly fees rise.

Why would anyone go to all this trouble?
You own whatever digital objects you create within Second Life, whether they're elegant avatar dresses or a cool motorcycle. So if you want, you can open your own business selling your virtual creations, like thousands of Second Life "residents" already do.

It's Not All Fun And Games

From Business Week Online-
http://tinyurl.co.uk/va88

Virtual worlds abound in useful business applications

It's hard to imagine a less corporate setting than the often bizarre online virtual worlds such as Second Life. But to a surprising extent, mainstream businesses are already dipping their toes into the virtual water. They find it's not only a cheaper but also often a better way to perform a wide variety of corporate tasks.

For one, as any flight simulator fan knows, an imaginary world can make a boffo training ground. Tim Allen, head of technology at Crompco Corp., an underground gas tank testing firm, discovered that as the pseudonymous "FlipperPA Peregrine" inside Second Life. There, he built a virtual gas station, graphically showing all the tanks and gas lines under the asphalt. He says it's much easier to grasp the station's workings this way than it is on paper. "It's great for training new hires and showing changing regulations to existing employees," says Allen, who also runs the Web mall SLBoutique.

Companies are also starting to use virtual worlds as alternate offices in which colleagues and partners can meet and view materials that the Web isn't rich enough to display well. Justin Bovington, chief executive of the London marketing firm Rivers Run Red, for instance, uses Second Life as a virtual meeting place where ads, posters, and other designs can be viewed in 3D settings by clients and partners around the world in real time. That saves the weeks it would take to shuttle physical materials back and forth.

For Walt Disney Co.'s (DIS ) movie Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Bovington's firm worked with the media agency Carat Group to develop a marketing campaign. Using Second Life to create 3D models of the android character Marvin for posters, CD-ROMs, and a Web site, they placed the character in various poses to see what designs worked best -- all in 20 minutes instead of the two weeks typically required to build physical models. Overall, Rivers Run Red saved up to $175,000 last year using Second Life to eliminate expensive modeling services and travel.

Other businesses have begun to use virtual worlds as marketing tools to reach young people who prefer logging on to games to switching on the TV. Bovington is working with media companies, a distillery that wants to set up a dance club inside Second Life, and the British fashion designer Mrs Jones, which offers virtual versions of its real-world apparel designs. "They're all interested in creating their own branded Second Lifes," says Bovington, whose avatar goes by the name "Fizik Baskerville." "Allowing people to immerse themselves in your brand is the Holy Grail."

Some big brands are already well along in the quest, creating their own independent virtual worlds for customers. Coca-Cola's (KO ) MyCoke.com envelops fans in everything Coke with games, music, and chat in a virtual setting. Wells Fargo's (WFC ) Stagecoach Island is a virtual world where people can play games to learn about finance while hanging out with friends. Some have even held virtual birthday parties there. "It wasn't just about slapping our logo up in a competitive game," says Tim Collins, Wells's senior vice-president for experiential marketing. "We have to make it fun to reach young adults."

All this could prove risky. As companies provide real services inside virtual worlds, such as employment and investment opportunities, they could draw attention -- and regulation -- from real-world authorities like the courts and legislatures. And more than in any other medium, companies don't make the rules inside virtual worlds -- the participants do. Too much reality, especially the commercial kind, could scare away the very people that companies are trying to reach.

A Virtual World's Real Dollars

From Business Week Online-
http://tinyurl.co.uk/eh0v

Online game Second Life is drawing legions of eager players -- and big bucks from VCs who see hard profits in a booming fantasy world

Some 165,000 people roam the online virtual world Second Life through their "avatars," or onscreen graphic characters. But it's a good bet most of them don't realize that in their midst is an avatar controlled by the chief executive of Amazon.com. (AMZN ). Now, as part of a new $11 million funding of Second Life's creator, San Francisco-based Linden Lab, Amazon founder and CEO Jeffrey P. Bezos is also an investor in this growing online phenomenon.

On Mar. 28, the 7-year-old company scored capital from its current investors -- Benchmark Capital, Catamount Ventures, the Omidyar Network, and software legend Mitch Kapor -- and new backers Globespan Capital Partners, as well as Bezos. That's on top of an $8 million round of financing in October, 2004. Bezos isn't talking about why he invested, but Linden Lab CEO Philip Rosedale notes, "He just thinks it's a cool thing."

POPULATION EXPLOSION. It's easy to see why Second Life has captured the attention of Bezos and other investors. Second Life is a three-dimensional digital world in which players can do just about anything: Create an avatar that acts as an online alter-ego, fly around landscapes dotted with dance clubs and gardens, and socialize via text messaging with friends' avatars. The population inside Second Life has grown eightfold from a year ago, when just 20,000 "residents," as they're known, called it a second home.

Second Life is one of many Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs), such as No. 1-selling World of Warcraft from Vivendi's (V ) Blizzard Entertainment unit, which has more than 6 million players, each paying $15 a month. But unlike World of Warcraft, where players go on quests and slay monsters, participants in Second Life create their own reality. They use software, available through detailed menus, to create everything from avatar clothes to buildings to games that are played inside the virtual world.

So what's the financial appeal to investors? For one, they want to find some way to ride the boom in online games, but without the Hollywood-size cost -- upwards of $30 million -- of developing a game using all in-house talent. "It's the complete decentralization of the creative process," Jonathan Seelig, managing director at Globespan, says of Second Life. "That was one of the most compelling things."

RECURRING REVENUE. Seelig and others are also fascinated by the emergence of a fledgling economy inside Second Life, in which residents sell virtual clothing, mansions, and land to each other. Once residents "own" virtual land, they have reason to stick around -- in some cases paying hundreds or even thousands of real dollars a month in "land maintenance" fees. Such users are golden for game and Web companies, which like the recurring revenue they generate.

Still other investors, such as Omidyar Network, the investing group run by eBay (EBAY ) founder and Chairman Pierre Omidyar, see a socially redeeming angle. At the recent PC Forum conference in San Diego, Omidyar said Second Life fits with his group's mission to give people the tools to foster individual self-empowerment. "What really fascinated me was that it was fully created by people inside" Second Life, he says, especially communities such as people with Asperger's Syndrome, a mild form of autism. "Where people spend time, there's value created," he adds. "Inevitably, it will lead to interesting things."

Linden Lab CEO Rosedale plans to use the money to come up with even more interesting things. In coming weeks, for instance, Linden Lab will incorporate the Mozilla Web browser more fully into Second Life, so there will be a seamless connection between the virtual world and the World Wide Web. Rosedale also hopes to invest in new features such as better virtual vehicles for avatars to ride and more fluid interaction between avatars.

Linden Lab also expects to use the money to expand internationally. Already, some 25% of Second Life residents hail from overseas, from Australia and Japan to England and Germany. Expanding further will require local-language versions of the software, as well as local offices or partners.

ALMOST PROFITABLE. Even with plans to hire at least 30 more people to its existing staff of 70, Rosedale says the company is close to profitability. "Hopefully we'll never need to raise private money again," he says. Although he won't reveal the current valuation of the company, he says this round values the company four times greater than in late 2004.

Linden isn't alone in the universe of virtual worlds. A startup called Multiverse Network Inc. in Mountain View, Calif., has created software that will allow other companies to build their own virtual worlds. "Our idea is to let people create all these independent worlds," says Multiverse Executive Producer Corey Bridges. Online worlds, he adds, "can't be defined by one company." Maybe not, but Linden Lab now has more resources to push its own vision of the virtual future.

Nintendo in Alzheimer's battle

From The Australian (IT Section)-
http://tinyurl.co.uk/e4xa

Simon Hayes
JUNE 01, 2006

COMPUTER games in the hands of the elderly are shaping up as the latest weapons in the war against Alzheimer's.

Nintendo's Dr Kawashima's Brain Training game will hit the shelves in Australia on June 15 and has already created a stir among experts, who say cognitive stimulation could reduce the risk of Alzheimer's.

In Japan, retirees have flocked to shops to buy the game. It is the sort of publicity Nintendo - better known as the creator of Pokemon and Super Mario Bros - craves, given its attempts to reach an adult audience.

Brain Training includes word games, arithmetic tests and sudoku puzzles. A similar Sony game is also proving popular in Japan, but the company has not decided whether to sell it here.

Neurosurgeons - who have long recommended patients knit, do crosswords, play chess or even learn a foreign language - are enthusiastic about the game.

"I had a patient on Saturday and I said 'Look out for this game'," said Michael Woodward, director of aged and residential care for Melbourne private hospital group Austin Health. "I'd be happy to lend my copy out."

Professor Woodward, a leading authority on Alzheimer's, said three major studies over the past five years had shown an association between social, intellectual and physical health and a reduced risk of the disease.

"The program does indeed seem to link in with the areas of brain that can be affected by cognitive decline," he said.

"There is a sound scientific basis for this ... There is increasing evidence that keeping your mind active does seem to be a prevention for progressing towards Alzheimer's."

Professor Woodward said even those not showing signs of dementia should perform some "mental aerobics" every day.

Nintendo will give $1 from each copy of Brain Training sold to Alzheimer's Australia.

Website Focus: Get Ready For The Big One

From the website-

Welcome to the world of natural hazards!

Here you can explore some of the hazards that happen in New Zealand - especially earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and tsunami!

There are three sections:

Are You Prepared? Do you know what you need to have in your family’s B-Ready Kit? How to look after your pets in an emergency? Check out your preparations here.

Pūrākau (Stories) Have you ever wondered how Taranaki got to be on the North Island’s west coast? Or how Māui brought fire to Aotearoa? Read our stories and find out.

Get Ready for the Big One So you think you know how to quake-safe your home for an earthquake? Where to go if a tsunami warning sounds? Whether to build your clubhouse on a snoozing volcano? Play the game and test your knowledge.

For more info-
http://tinyurl.co.uk/fvb1

Computer games in schools: new survey reveals what students want

An Ipsos MORI survey investigating students' attitudes to mainstream computer games has revealed that three in five 11-16 year-olds would like to use computer games to learn in school. The research, which surveyed over 2,300 11-16 year-old students in England and Wales, explores students' opinion and use of games and the findings could help to determine how computer games may be integrated into the school curriculum.

Read on at-
http://www.egovmonitor.com/node/6768

Further information on Teaching With Games" can be found at-
http://www.futurelab.org.uk/research/teachingwithgames.htm