Simulations & Education

Israeli startup aims to bring virtual reality into our homes

2007-11-18T08:55:00.000+11:00

Dor Givon ducks and weaves, and the animated figure on his computer mimics the movements, narrowly missing a right hook, and then landing a good solid punch on his opponent's face. There's a smack, as the blow makes impact and Givon turns, adjusts the small web camera attached to his laptop, and says: "It's as simple as that. The camera tracks my every move."

Read on at http://tinyurl.com/28brt4

The FAS Virtual Worlds Project

2007-11-18T08:48:00.000+11:00

The Federation of American Scientists has embarked upon a project that promises to be both challenging, and possibly perpetual.

It is our hope thatit will also be beneficial to all those with an interest in the Internet and its educational potential http://vworld.fas.org/bin/view/Main/WebHome

Comparative list http://vworld.fas.org/bin/view/Main/VirtualWorlds

Computer games for education

2007-11-18T08:45:00.000+11:00

A new video, which includes interviews with teachers and Futurelab researchers, gives an overview of why we are interested in computer games for learning, what commercial games offer to the classroom, and how games can be developed specifically with education in mind.

This video isavailable as a free resource to download and use. http://www.futurelab.org.uk/resources/other_resources/video/Video832

SPP - recruiting for the Schome Park Project

2007-11-18T08:44:00.001+11:00

The schome-NAGTY Teen Second Life Pilot provided encouraging signs that Teen Second Life can enhance students’ learning, particularly in relation to ‘knowledge age skills’ (such as leadership, collaboration, etc). You can download a copy of the final report for that Pilot from
http://kn.open.ac.uk/public/document.cfm?docid=9851

The Schome Park Project is building on that initial Pilot – increasing the diversity of the student population and extending our understanding of the potentials and pitfalls of Teen Second Life. We are using a closed island in the Teen Grid of Second life – the only people who can access this island are students we have recruited by us and adults who have had appropriate ‘police checks’ within the last two years (eg enhanced CRB disclosures). Members of the project also have access to the Schommunity website (wiki, forum and SLog) which includes private as well as public areas – see http://www.schome.ac.uk/ .

We are currently looking to recruit 100 more students, aged 13 to 17 inclusive, to join the Schome Park Project. For this next cohort of students we will be meeting all the costs associated with registering the students on Schome Park and supervising their activities within the project (once they have returned their consent forms).

Interested students need to be 13 to 17 years of age and have access to a suitable computer (eg a fairly powerful PC or Apple) and broadband internet connection – most of our current students are active in the early evenings and at weekends.

Students have to be signed up through a school or other similar organisation that can confirm that they really are in the correct age range.

If you work in (or have contact with) a school that would be interested in some of its students joining the project then please get in touch – the only commitments the school are asked to make are to:
· Tell students about the project and provide those who are interested with a copy of the Info letter and consent form (a copy of which is attached for your reference) – students/parents then sign the forms and can return them directly to the Schome Park Project team.
· Confirm the names and dates of birth of students to whom they have given a copy of the info letter and consent form (eg by emailing this information to me)

Of course the opportunity does exist for staff to become involved in the project alongside their students if they wish to do so – we are interested in talking with teachers who would like to use Schome Park as part of their activities in school time – if this appeals to you then please get in touch.

You can find out more about the Schome Park Project via the schome website – http://www.schome.ac.uk/ (once there click on the link to Projects then scroll down to find the Schome Park Project).

The number of places is limited to 100 at this stage – and we will be working on a first come first served basis.

PeterT

Dr Peter Twining
Head of Department
The Department of Education
The Open University
Walton Hall
MILTON KEYNES MK7 6AA

Phone: +44 (0)1908 655078

Email: P.Twining@open.ac.uk
Second Life: Schomer Simpson/TheSchome Ranger

URL: http://schome.open.ac.uk/wikiworks/index.php/User:PeterT

Create Files for iPod Quiz and iQuiz

2007-11-18T08:39:00.000+11:00

Are you familiar with iQuiz? How about the iPod Quiz game that comes with the latest versions of the iPod Classic and the iPod Nano? Well, they are actually one and the same. Apple recently changed the name "iQuiz" to "iPod Quiz" and is bundling the game with new versions of the iPod Nano and the iPod Classic. If you have an iPod Video, 5th generation, you can purchase the original "iQuiz" game from the Apple iTunes store for the same cost as a song (99 cents in the United States).

So why are we telling you about iPod Quiz? Because iPod Quiz lets you turn a simple self-test activity into a hand-held game show, complete with high-quality images, animation, countdown timers, audio buzzers and more. When a quiz is made available in the iPod Quiz format, it can be copied to the appropriate folder in iTunes and then synchronized with an iPod. To learn how to create quizzes for iPod Quiz using StudyMate or Respondus, continue reading.

Read the full article at http://www.respondus.com:80/update/2007-11-a.shtml

Book- The Kids Are All Right

2007-11-10T20:22:00.000+11:00

Do any of these traits sound familiar to you?

If you get there first, you win.
Trial and error is the best strategy, and the fastest way to learn.
Elders and their received wisdom can’t help—they don’t understand even the basics of this new world.
There’s a limited set of tools—but some combination will work.

Maybe you've seen some of these traits in your kids. Maybe you've seen them in yourself.

They're the traits of the Gamer Generation.

In The Kids Are Alright, we look at the ways that Gamers think and point out how their mindset can help everyone - parents and kids alike.

Gamers believe winning matters - that much isn't surprising. But Gamers are actually savvier in many ways than their non-gamer counterparts, and may surprise the world with their talent.

So relax, moms and dads, the kids really are alright.

Check it out at- http://www.gotgamebook.com/

CALL FOR PAPERS for Edited Book

2007-11-10T20:16:00.000+11:00

CALL FOR PAPERS for Edited Book

Hybrid Reality Games:Reconfiguring social and urban networks via locative media

Edited by:Adriana de Souza e Silva, Ph.D. (Communication, North Carolina StateUniversity)souzaesilva@ncsu.edu Daniel Sutko (Communication, North Carolina State University)dmsutko@ncsu.edu

Description:Games are pervasive activities in human culture. The strong success of videoand computer games during the last 20 years can make us forget that thephysical environment has always been the primary playful space. But ifcomputers helped take games to digital spaces, the popularity of mobiletechnologies takes them back to the physical. The pervasiveness of mobilephones, which allow us to walk around urban spaces connected to the Internetand each other, encourages the creation of a new type of game arena thattakes place simultaneously in physical and digital spaces. In these games,communication, collaboration, and interaction occur in a combination of thephysical and the digital-in hybrid spaces.

In such games the players'mobility and position in space indeed matter. Hybrid Reality andLocation-based games transform the players' perception of urban spaces, aswell as the intrinsic definition of game space.This edited book invites essays that critically investigate theinter-relations among mobile technologies, location-based activities, andplayful / social spaces, with the ultimate goal of finding interconnectionsbetween games and social networks.

Submitted essays should focus on threemain areas:
(1) The history of games as social environments, with particular emphasis onMUDs and RPGs, as predecessors of hybrid reality/location-based gaming.Essays in this part of the book are encouraged to explore how gamecommunities are formed, how players in these types of games contribute tothe creation of the game space, game content, and the social relationshipsinside and outside the game.
(2) Theoretical papers about location aware games, differentiating thesetypes of activities from previous game theories on video games. Besidestheoretical papers, we also welcome case studies on current location- based,hybrid reality games, urban games, and pervasive games. In summary, we lookfor defining an overarching concept for the different types of multiusergames that employ mobile technologies as interfaces.
(3) Essays that investigate games beyond the pure entertainment approach,including articles that explore uses of hybrid reality, location aware andpervasive activities in educational contexts, media arts, training,corporate environments, and other similar activities.

Essays might draw connections among gaming, education, art, and other location-basedactivities.

These are suggested research themes, but similar topics will also beconsidered.The book will be directed at academic readers, but should be attractive tothe gaming community and industry insiders, as well.

Abstracts of 500/700words describing the proposed papers are due by December 15th, 2007 withthose accepted due in final form by June 15th, 2008.

Submissions may be in the form of empirical research studies or theory-building papers and shouldbe 5000/7000 words (in English).

Abstracts must include a brief biography ofthe author(s). Proposals and inquiries should be sent electronically tosouzaesilva@ncsu.edu .

Deadlines:Paper abstracts: December 15th 2007(500/700 words) Notification of acceptedabstracts: January 15th 2008 Full papers: June 15th 2008 (5000/7000 words)

About the editors:Adriana de Souza e Silva is an Assistant Professor at the Department ofCommunication at North Carolina State University (NCSU), and the director ofthe Mobile Gaming Research Lab (http://mglab.chass.ncsu.edu/). She is also afaculty member of the Science, Technology and Society Program at NCSU. In2004/2005, Dr. de Souza e Silva was a Senior Researcher at the UCLA GraduateSchool of Education and Information Studies (GSE&IS) at CRESST (Center forthe Study of Evaluation). She holds a Ph.D. on Communication and Culture atthe Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. From 2001 to 2004 Dr. deSouza e Silva was a visiting scholar at the UCLA Department of Design Media Arts. Her research focuses on how new media (mobile) interfacesreconfigure our relationship to space and create new social environments viamedia art and hybrid reality games games. She holds a Masters degree inCommunication and Image Technology at the Federal University of Rio deJaneiro, Brazil.http://www.souzaesilva.com/http://mglab.chass.ncsu.edu/

Daniel Sutko is a second-year Master's student in the Department ofCommunication at North Carolina State University. He teaches public speakingand is the research assistant for the Mobile Gaming Research Lab at NCSU.His research centers on the relationship between media and social/ spatialpractices, with a particular focus on new media literacy.

The 11 Video Games Needed to Unlock Your Inner Genius

2007-11-10T19:20:00.000+11:00

The 11 Video Games Needed to Unlock Your Inner Genius

What if Video Games Could Make You Smarter?

We posted about Johnson’s book, “Everything Bad is Good for You,“ then began thinking, “What if Video Games Could Make You Smarter?” If you believe in the premise, that video games are in fact good for developing intellect, which games would you turn to?

This article makes for a really interesting read and puts up some interesting justifications for the games that make their list.

Read thew full article at- http://tinyurl.com/36jn33

After reading this article, I posted the following reply, "Interesting mix of “games” there.

Interesting take on Call of Duty. I love the whole FPS style of game and would be surprised if many actually agree that it could be even remotely educational because it’s a “shooter”. (I should add that I do- I agree that it could used as an educational tool.)
Not in the true FPS style, but also “Full Spectrum Warrior” could be used as a leadership tool- it’s a shooter (for want of a better word) in which you direct your squads to achieve various goals, but as a player you don’t actually shoot anyone/anything yourself. It’s totally about leadership, tactics, decision making, etc.

In terms of the “Tycoon” rnage of games, I agree that many can be used as an educational tool. Whilst I’m not a big fan of them or the style, they could certainly be used as a business management learning tool. (For the more serious, there’s some like Airport Tycoon which is a bit more of a serious concept versus”the Roller Coaster suite.

On an even more serious note, there’s the suite of Microsoft Flight Simulator packages where the tutorials/lessons are being used by many as training tools before sitting for their actual Pilot’s Licence! (I have a good friend that has set up a cockpit, with 3 monitors, the TrackIR headset, complete with professional scenery, flight tools, etc to assist him and he swears by it….)

Interesting read- well done and I’m curious to see other feedback."

I'll Be Back!

2007-11-10T19:10:00.000+11:00

After much neglect to this blog, I will be back! Maybe even this weekend.

I've been flat out with work and family and haven't had time to do much of anything else but that all changes this week as I finish my current job on Thursday and take a bit of time to relax and re-evaluate everything that's important.

I also have a few job opportunities manifesting, including one that could see the family and I relocate to UAE early in 2008- watch this space....

Learning by Design: Good Video Games as Learning Machines

2007-04-30T18:18:00.000+10:00

James Paul Gee (Oh man of infinite knowledge and wisdom in the games and education arena!) has written a paper titled, "Learning by Design: Good Video Games as Learning Machines"

Download and read it at: http://tinyurl.com/yofseq

Websute Focus: Games In Learning

2007-04-30T18:15:00.000+10:00

It has long been recognised that games hold an important place in learning. Interactive games engage audiences, enabling them to understand concepts and learn information in an entertaining way.

Go to: http://tinyurl.com/2ysxnm

Alternate Reality Games SIG/Whitepaper

2007-04-30T18:06:00.000+10:00

An interesting whitepaper titled, "Alternate Reality Games SIG/Whitepaper"

Read and download it at http://tinyurl.com/27azhm

X-Box for Business & Education

2007-04-30T17:59:00.000+10:00

FIVE KEYS TO AUTOMATING EDUCATION
Over the past twenty-three years of research and experimenting, I have found that there are five elements that can accelerate learning. If the experience is immersive, interactive, fun, game-like, and competitive, the learner stays at a high level of concentration and focus, and learning is dramatically enhanced. Microsoft already has an education division, and they have a division devoted to X-Box video game development. In addition, the hardware is low cost and many kids already own one at home. All they would need to do is create games for education that take advantage of X-Box capabilities.

Read on at....

X-Box for Business & Education Part 1
http://www.burrus.com/blog/XBox1.html

X-Box For Business & Education Part 2
http://www.burrus.com/blog/XBox2.html

What Online Games Can Teach Us About Learning

2007-04-30T17:54:00.000+10:00

A webcast discussing the use of Massively Multiplayer Games and what they can teach us about learning...

Go to http://www.mediasite.com/presentation.aspx?p=11811

What's next: a Ph.D. in video gaming?

2007-02-01T15:44:00.000+11:00

From CNN Money .com
http://tinyurl.com/24ndw6

What's next: a Ph.D. in video gaming?
Electronic Arts endows chair at USC's School of Cinema-Television for interactive gaming studies.
February 8, 2005: 10:13 AM EST

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Video gaming reached official academic status Tuesday when Electronic Arts endowed a chair at the University of Southern California for the study of interactive entertainment.

Bing Gordon, Chief Creative Officer and co-founder of Electronic Arts (Research), was named the first holder of the Electronic Arts endowed faculty chair at the USC School of Cinema-Television, according to a statement from the company, the biggest video game publisher.

The USC School of Cinema-Television already offers programs in directing, producing, writing, animation and digital arts, interactive media and other areas.

The Electronic Arts endowed faculty chair will be a rotating position that will be held for one to two years by industry leaders in the field of interactive entertainment who will join the school's faculty as visiting professors.

"A leader in the game industry for more than 20 years, Bing once again is making history as the inaugural holder of the first-ever endowed chair at a university for the study of electronic gaming and interactive entertainment," USC Dean Elizabeth Daley said in the statement.
Since co-founding Redwood City, Calif.-based EA in 1981, Gordon has played a role in the development of nearly every game the company has published.

Gordon also has co-taught a "Video game Prototype Design" class at Stanford University and is a trustee at the Urban School of San Francisco.

Real cars drive into Second Life

2007-02-01T15:40:00.000+11:00

From CNN Money .com

Real cars drive into Second Life
Car companies open dealerships in virtual world. Extended warranties not needed, optional dragon heads available.
By Peter Valdes-Dapena, CNNMoney.com staff writer
November 18 2006: 12:38 AM EST

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- General Motors' Pontiac division is spending thousands of dollars to create a make-believe dealership that will sell make-believe cars for as little as a few dollars a piece.

The dealership will exist, so to speak, in Second Life, an on-line virtual world.

Second Life allows users to animate a computer-generated representation of themselves - or someone they might like to be - and move about, talk, walk and "teleport" from place to place in a computer-generated world all while interacting with people who might be, in physical fact, thousands of miles away.

Since it started about three years ago, the population of Second Life has grown to 1.2 million users.

For now, at least, the Pontiac dealership will offer just one model: the Pontiac Solstice GXP. But you can have it in any color you want. And we do mean any color. Stripes, spots, plaid, purple daisies. No problem.

Surrounding the dealership will be Motorati Island, 96 virtual acres that GM (Charts) has bought and will give away, lot by lot, in "land grants" to Second Life members interested in building car-culture oriented business.

Gallery: Second Life Cars
Some ideas include drive-in theaters, car customizing shops and restaurants with in-car dining service.

There will be no repair shops.

"I would hope you wouldn't have a virtual breakdown of a virtual vehicle," said Pontiac Spokesman Jim Hopson.

On the heels of Toyota
Pontiac is entering a space already occupied by two of the brand's Japanese competitors.
Scion, which opened a dealership in Second Life on Nov. 6, sells its three models there. Toyota's (Charts) youth-oriented brand, has so far sold about 200 computer-generated cars in Second Life, said Scion spokeswoman Allison Takahashi.

Commerce in Second Life is transacted using Linden Dollars that can be purchased with real currency. The current exchange rate is about L$280 per US$1. A virtual Scion sells for about L$300, or a little over a buck, said Takahashi.

The key feature of Scion's Second Life cars is that they are fully customizable. Owners have added big off-road tires and wheels to the cars. To the Scion xB, a boxy van with a shape reminiscent of a toaster, one customizer added two giant slices of toast.

The Scion showroom exists in its own neighborhood, Scion City, inside Second Life.
"Scion City is this sort of futuristic, gritty, decaying city," said Reuben Steiger, chief executive of Millions Of Us, the company working with Scion and Pontiac to create their virtual corporate presences.

Prior to founding Millions of Us, Steiger was Evangelist for Linden Labs, the San Francisco-based company that created the Second Life universe
Nissan (Charts), which opened its Second Life dealership in October, is providing copies of its Sentra to residents free of charge. The cars are delivered from a vending machine the size of an office building. But first, you have to request a meeting with someone named Toast Alicious. He is, as you might have guessed, a piece of toast.

"You're teleported to the toast avatar and the toast avatar gives you a token," said Steve Kerho, Nissan's director of media and interactive marketing.

Put the token into the giant machine and out pops a Sentra. It's yours to keep and drive as long as you like. Nearby on Nissan Island is a test track with a vertical loop so you can test out your driving skills. So far, Nissan has handed out about 2,500 virtual Sentras.

Nissan's cars have only limited customization possibilities, Steiger complained.
"You can't turn the hood into a dragon head," said Steiger, "which would be really cool."
Nissan aimed, instead, for a lifelike representation of the product. The only available colors are those you could get on an actual Sentra. Even the interior is rendered in true-to-life detail, except for a few additional items like an anti-gravity button in the middle of the dashboard. It's needed to drive around the giant loop.

Making cars from pixels
Everything in Second Life is created by its users from "primitive objects," or "prims," a set of seven fundamental shapes. Like Lego blocks, they can be combined to make useful things such as nightclubs, fashion accessories, guns and cars.

Virtual vehicles are a particular challenge to build, said Steiger.

Much like extra weight in real cars, complexity slows down virtual cars and makes them drive badly. Complicated shapes tax the virtual car's engine - the computer's processor - so little power is left to make the car drive in a quick, fluid motion.

To minimize the number of "prims" involved, while making a car look like something other than a wagon load of cinderblocks, designers must be especially creative. Basic shapes can be carved in a process sometimes referred to as "torturing the primitives." Colors can also be used as shading to suggest contours.

Even the best result can end up seeming, inadvertently, like the products of an incredibly advanced technology. Or a Woody Woodpecker cartoon.

Cars will occasionally drive part way through solid objects like utility poles and walls. Someone posting on a blog for Electric Sheep, the company that created Nissan Island, mentioned his car was so fast it was able to drive over a bridge before the computer had time to finish making the bridge.

Automobiles are largely unnecessary as transportation in Second Life, a place where individuals can shift themselves almost instantly from place to place.

But they excel as a form of self-expression, even more-so than real cars, said Steiger. So user-created cars, as well as airplanes, snowmobiles and blimps, existed in Second Life even before real-world car companies started buying land and opening dealerships.

With Motorati Island, Pontiac hopes to develop the nascent "car culture" within the Second Life community, said Hopson.

Potential Second Life entrepreneurs can submit ideas at the Website Motoratilfe.com and there is no need for the ideas to have anything to do with Pontiac in particular, said Hopson. They just have to involve cars.

"The potential of this is rather staggering," he said.

Gallery: Second Life cars

How real money works in Second Life

2007-02-01T15:36:00.000+11:00

From CNN Money .com
http://tinyurl.com/y54jyq

How real money works in Second Life
CFO of Linden Lab talks about what it's like to operate the LindeX Currency Exchange, a real market in the virtual world.
By Grace Wong, CNNMoney.com staff writer
December 8 2006: 12:15 PM EST

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- If you're angling to become the next business tycoon in the virtual world of Second Life, you're first going to need some Linden dollars.

Linden dollars - the currency of the virtual world which can be converted into real U.S. dollars - are being pumped through the economy of the booming three-dimensional world as more people explore what it's like to live a second life.

Residents can buy and sell Linden dollars on the LindeX, Second Life's official currency exchange.

No, Second Life is not overhyped
CNNMoney.com asked John Zdanowski, CFO of Linden Lab - the company that created Second Life - what it's like to operate a real market in a virtual world.

CNNMoney.com: Why did Linden Lab launch the LindeX Currency Exchange?

John Zdanowski: The Lindex basically facilitates placing value on the Linden in-world currency. There were a lot of other players doing it out there and we thought consolidating the volume in one place would reduce volatility and improve the tradability of the Linden.

Q: Is the LindeX an income generator for Second Life?
A: It is, but it's a small portion - probably less than 10 percent of revenue. [Linden charges fees for currency transactions.]

Q: Has the Linden dollar always been a floating currency? Why not make it a fixed rate currency?
A: I think the strategy of making it floating - in letting the market set the price - makes sense to us since we have a worldwide customer base. More than half of our new users are from outside the U.S. It creates more flexibility, it's more interesting - and more fun.

Q: The dollar has been sliding against a broad array of currencies the past month, how has it been holding up against the Linden dollar?
A: The in-world economy has been growing so rapidly, faster than the money supply, so there's been constant pressure for the Linden to appreciate against the dollar.
But we have ways to offset that. There are Linden stipends we offer to premium users. Another method we have for managing that is we can actually sell Linden directly on to the exchange. The third method we have for managing money supply is "sinks." When someone wants to do something in-world, they have to pay a Linden fee for it. For example, uploading an image or a file - residents have to pay Linden to do that. So those are the sources and "sinks" that help us manage the money supply.

Q: So Linden Lab does monitor economic activity in Second Life and adjust the money supply accordingly?
A: As much as we can. At this stage, we have limited tools for managing [the money supply]. We'll pull the levers we have when we can.

Q: Are there any controls in place aimed at keeping the Linden dollar stable?
A: There are "circuit breakers" at the broad level. There are limits on how much currency an individual can trade on a monthly and daily basis, according to how long they've been in world.
There are also controls against fraud - that's something other currency exchanges don't really have to deal with.

Q: How liquid is the LindeX?
A: Liquidity has been quite good and it's been rapidly expanding when you net out the activity Linden does on the LindeX.
There's been rapid growth as users have become more confident in the exchange itself. We can see increased confidence in terms of the Linden balances people hold - they've increased dramatically since we implemented the LindeX.

Q: In the real world, demand for a currency is based on a number of factors - from interest rates to the level of economic growth. What is demand for the Linden dollar based on?
A: It's based on the fact that Linden dollars represent a limited license right to use certain features of Second Life. In as much as the features people want to use in Second Life are valuable, then the Linden is valuable as a virtual currency.
The other thing that makes it valuable is that people are willing to trade real currencies for it and have confidence they'll be able to do that in the future. A lot of the dynamics are like the real world.
At the end of the day, growth of the use of the world and growth of the services provided in the world determine the value.

Q: One of the reasons Second Life has made headlines is because residents have been prospering from virtual real estate. Do you think there may be a housing bubble in Second Life?
A: I'm not sure it works that way. The world has been growing, but real estate doesn't have the same dynamic as in the real world. In the U.S. there's a fixed amount of waterfront real estate whereas in Second Life there's as much waterfront real estate as people want.

There hasn't really been inflation in the value of Second Life real estate. Value is created more by what people build on it and what they do on it rather than the land itself. If someone creates something beautiful and desirable, then that can have more value for people than the base land.

No, Second Life is not overhyped

2007-02-01T15:32:00.000+11:00

From CNN Money .com
http://tinyurl.com/yzguc3

No, Second Life is not overhyped
Is it a game? No. Is it a marketing opportunity? Yes, but who cares? What matters most is that it may point to the future of the Net, says Fortune's David Kirkpatrick.
By David Kirkpatrick, Fortune senior editor
November 10 2006: 4:02 PM EST

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- Second Life, the three-dimensional virtual world, has been getting tons of press lately. In the software, which anyone can download for free, you travel around as an "avatar" representing yourself (with a different name), through a huge range of spaces - beautiful natural environments, shopping malls, museums, clubs, homes, apartments and cities. So far, it's signed up 1.3 million members.

It's not a game, it's just a place you go to do whatever you want to do. It has been on the cover of Business Week, on the front page of the New York Times Escapes section and in the coverage of Reuters, which has now assigned a reporter to operate full-time inside Second Life. The Reuters reporter, Adam Pasnick, told CNET that his assignment has caused so many waves he's been getting interview requests from Poland, Colombia, Brazil and New Zealand.

W Hotels has built a prototype of its new Aloft hotel brand inside Second Life. It was featured in the Times, among many other articles. W President Ross Klein told me that while the company originally just wanted to test out concepts, the PR value from all the stories written about Aloft in Second Life has given the company a "hundred-fold" return on its investment, just in positive PR. Even IBM (Charts) CEO Sam Palmisano can now be seen lurking around Second Life.

Investing in the online property boom
Yet Second Life may be more important, longterm, than even this much publicity would suggest. That's because what it really may represent is an alternative vision for how to interact with information and communicate over the Internet.

Yes it's cartoony, but one of the great things about Second LIfe is that whenever you are doing anything, you can see the other people who are nearby as well. This brings a dimension of social life - so elemental to how we live our lives offline - to the Internet in a way that up to now the Web has not. In Second Life everything you do is done in a social space, though you can get privacy if you want.

So far Second Life is way too hard to use. The people who do best there are still techie types. It requires a fairly powerful computer. You have to download a special software application to use it. It can't be used in many corporate offices (like mine at Time Inc., for instance).

But Second Life is important as much for what it represents as for what it concretely offers today. Looking at Second Life makes me realize just how much the Web, wonderful and useful as it is, still mimics a print model.

We are all lathered up about the success of News Corp.'s (Charts) MySpace. But the social networks of the future will probably be much more than merely a bunch of Web-site-like collections of data, as MySpace is today. MySpace beat Friendster, the previous champion social networking site, by allowing its members much more freedom in how they created their pages.
Second Life goes much further. It took a radical approach to design from the beginning. It offered itself as a mere platform for the creations of its occupants. Essentially everything seen inside the software today was created by its users.

All that the company that operates Second Life, Linden Lab, sells is server time and network capacity. The more real estate you own, the more you pay. It costs nothing to enter, so you can go in and explore all you want. It's often worth it to own real estate, because you can make real money by renting it out or developing it to resell.

MySpace cowboys
Users pay in Linden dollars, which can be converted to real dollars. Though Second Life has established codes of behavior, and does enforce them, restrictions are minimal. Second Life really is the creation of its residents.

One of the more intriguing aspects of Second Life is that it includes links to content outside. If you go, for instance, to Sony's (Charts) island, you can enter a Christina Aguilera room, and watch her latest video (while your avatar sits in an easy chair, of course). There's no reason why some version of a 3D world couldn't eventually offer as much functionality as we get today on the Web, and more. An interesting corollary - searching with Google (Charts) might be harder. It's completely text-based.

Every day more big companies turn their attention to this new medium, realizing that it really represents something new. I'm now convinced that one day Second Life or something related to it will become a Google/Yahoo/MySpace-scale company.

Maybe Second Life will grow organically to become that company. Or an existing giant striving to stay relevant might buy it. Or maybe somebody will build a different, even better virtual world.

But we're seeing something new and important. If you want to stay abreast of what's happening in tech, you need to get inside Second Life. If you run into David Liveoak, don't hesitate to say hello.

Second Life to go open source

2007-02-01T15:28:00.000+11:00

From CNN Money .com
http://tinyurl.com/u33tj

Second Life to go open source
By David Kirkpatrick, Fortune senior editor
January 8 2007: 7:00 AM EST

The creator of the burgeoning 3D virtual world expects it to grow even faster with outside programming help, David Kirkpatrick reports in a Fortune exclusive.

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- Aiming to take advantage of its already-impressive momentum, San Francisco's Linden Lab, developer of the Second Life virtual online world, will announce Monday that it is taking the first major step toward opening up its software for the contributions of any interested programmer.

The company will immediately release open source versions of its client software for Windows, Mac OS, and Linux. In order to enter and move around the Second Life service, users must download and run this software on their computer desktop. But now, says Linden CEO Philip Rosedale, independent programmers will be able to "modify it, fire it up and sign on with it." The company gave Fortune exclusive access to executives in advance of the change.

While this initial step will open up what is essentially the user's window into Second Life for modification, it will leave Linden Lab in control of the proprietary software code for all Second Life's backend services - the server software that makes the world exist. However, executives say that the company's eventual intention is to release an open source version of that software as well, once it has improved security and other core functions. They say they have been preparing for the open source move for about three years.

The client, or viewer, software now being open sourced is what enables users to control their avatars, or digital in-world personas, as well as communicate with other users, and buy and sell virtual goods and services.

"We think that if we open source Second Life its product quality will move forward at a pace nobody's ever seen," says Rosedale. Almost all of Second Life's in-world content is already created by the company's customers, the world's residents, using software created by Linden Lab. With it, residents build a vast variety of in-world experiences, ranging from sex clubs to skydiving stations and golf games, from a fantastic anime-themed city to virtual recreations of Dublin and Amsterdam. All are populated by the avatars, or virtual representations, of other users. Many users own land where they build homes and businesses.

Linden executives calculate that over 15 percent of Second Life's residents are currently writing code in the so-called "scripting language" which enables users to build sophisticated in-world creations. Today Rosedale says they are writing 7 million lines of new code every week, in order to do things like modifying a doorbell so that it sends an e-mail message when a visitor rings it.
"We feel we may already have a bigger group of people writing code than any shared project in history, including Linux," says Rosedale. While this is often elementary code, it means, he says, that "we have an army of people waiting to work on this." Adds CTO Cory Ondrejka: "Why wouldn't we leverage our community and give them the opportunity to make Second Life what they want it to be?"

Many soldiers in that army are professional programmers at companies like IBM (Charts), Sun (Charts) and Autodesk (Charts) which have employees working on projects in Second Life. In addition, Linden Lab calculates that 65 small new companies have arisen that help build products and services inside Second Life.

Improving the client code is urgent for the company. Says Sibley Verbeck, CEO of Electric Sheep, one of the largest in-world construction companies, with 30 employees: "Linden Lab has done extraordinarily well creating a platform for very motivated early adopters. But they have not made the front-end experience ready for the mass market. It's hard to learn, hard to use, and hard to find content even once you learn how to use it." He's confident, though, that "those barriers will be addressed very rapidly upon the adoption of this open source initiative." He says his own company, among many, has a big incentive to improve Second Life's client code.

Interest in Second Life - which is free for basic use - has grown dramatically with a quickening pace of press coverage in places like Reuters, Business Week, Time, Wired and The New York Times, as well as consumer publications and Web sites worldwide. New registrants were arriving at a rate of 20,000 per month last January but by October the number had soared to 254,000. But many were apparently thwarted by how difficult the service is to use. Only 40,000 of those October registrants were still using Second Life 30 days after they first joined, according to figures recently provided by Rosedale.

Linden Lab claims 2.5 million "residents," meaning people who have registered for Second Life. But the service has only around 250,000 active members who still sign in more than 30 days after registering. Nonetheless, that group of active users is currently growing at about 15 percent per month.

Linden Lab claims its move represents the first time a market-leading company has taken a proprietary product and released it instead as open source. Netscape, by contrast, only released code for its Web browser once Microsoft had overcome its one-time lead in the market. That code, of course, eventually became the base for today's popular Firefox.

CEO Rosedale says that opening up the software is good for Linden Lab: "We believe that if we open-sourced every single line of code we have ever written it would only increase our rate of growth." That's because, he says, Second Life is a business that shows what are called "network effects." In such a market, every incremental user makes the service of greater value to existing users. The more people there are in Second Life the more interesting it becomes.

Under the GNU General Public License that Linden is using, if competitors were to use its open source code to build their own virtual worlds, any improvement they make to the software would have to be shared publicly. That means it would give the most benefit to Second Life, so long as it remained the largest such world.

Rosedale and other executives say they fully expect there eventually to be multiple virtual worlds that use Linden's code, or that at least are interoperable with Second Life, so avatars can pass from one world to another. Says Rosedale: "Say IBM builds its own intranet version with our code that's somewhat different from Second Life. But it's probably not that different. A user may say 'Wow, this virtual thing IBM's built is pretty cool. Now I want to go the mainland.' And we have another customer."

IBM Vice President for Technical Strategy Irving Wladawsky-Berger, a close student of Second Life, heard about the impending move toward open source from a Linden employee. "They have the right thought," he says, "which is that open source things work with the marketplace. But this is a field in its infancy that will be very competitive. Linden Lab might end up with a huge leadership position in a certain class of tools for virtual worlds, but those might not be the right tools for, let's say, a surgeon learning a new procedure in an immersive online environment. Second Life can be wildly successful, but so can others."

Says Linden Lab Board Chairman Mitch Kapor: "The whole philosophy of the company is about empowerment, with the overwhelming majority of everything being built by the residents. So going open source is part of the logical progression of our business. The most open system is also what will foster the most innovation, because people will be free to experiment."

In total, the software for Second Life comprises five gigabytes of source code, according to Joe Miller, Linden's vice president for platform and technology development. He says that with the members of its community helping it improve the client software, Linden can devote more of its own efforts to essential work at the server level to enable Second Life to grow faster. Near-term, the company expects users will create code to address bugs and other problems, as well as do things like enable Second Life to run on cell phones, or add support for different kinds of multi-media content inside the world.

Linden Lab will review open source contributions to decide which outside features it will incorporate into its own official versions of the client software. Unofficial software will not be given customer support by the company. But it will shortly open a test version of its server "grid," so developers can try out their software before unleashing it in the real Second Life.

Gaming advances as a learning tool

2007-02-01T15:18:00.000+11:00

From eschool news-
http://tinyurl.com/2yuat8

Gaming advances as a learning tool
For some educators, computer games are serious business From eSchool News staff and wire service reports

Using computer games to teach is hardly new: The military has been doing it with pilots and soldiers for decades, and corporations have been gaming for years as well. But momentum also is growing for using computer games to help teach students basic curricular concepts in school--even such entertainment-focused games as "Restaurant Empire" and "Zoo Tycoon."

Using computer games to teach is hardly new: The military has been doing it with pilots and soldiers for decades, and corporations have been gaming for years as well. But momentum also is growing for using computer games to help teach students basic curricular concepts in school--even such entertainment-focused games as "Restaurant Empire" and "Zoo Tycoon." January 18, 2007—Educators increasingly are using sophisticated computer games to snag and hold the interest of the "digital natives" in their classrooms, but some teachers have trouble accepting the educational value of making learning fun. This obstacle cannot be found in the cutting-edge learning environments described in this report, starting with one game-augmented course that has kids learning before they even know it.

Profit and loss ... PowerPoint ... spreadsheets ... typing practice: This junior high school business class could have given a case of the yawns to a buttoned-down executive, not to mention the kids.

To University of Wyoming professor Liz Simpson, what the students needed was something many teachers wouldn't even whisper about: a computer game--and not one designed for education, but solely for self-indulgent, time-consuming entertainment at home.

Simpson and a growing number of educators say that such computer games--"Restaurant Empire," in this case--can make school more engaging for today's "digital natives" who have never known a world without the internet, cell phones, text messaging, and Sony PlayStations.
Far from rotting the brains of the Laramie, Wyo., Junior High School business students, she says, the game jolted them into enthusiasm about tracking profits on spreadsheets and typing up journals on running a business. They even peppered a pizzeria owner with questions more typical of restaurant industry insiders than early teenagers, like how he thought the furniture and art he chose for his restaurant could help the business.

"We're on the leading edge of change, bringing a new tool into the classroom and responding to learner differences that have evolved with technology," Simpson said.

Her argument goes like this: Youngsters nowadays can find online anything they need to know, any time. That renders the old teacher's saw, "Someday you'll need to know this," less convincing than ever. But with a computer game, relevance to life becomes incidental; students need to learn in order to play the game in front of them.

"Kids want the information when they need the information," she said. "So they would say, 'Why is this not matching up?' And we would say, 'Well, is it your net profit or your gross profit?' And they're going, 'Well, what is that?' OK, boom! Now I can tell you."

Working in groups of three, the students used "Restaurant Empire" to create virtual restaurants, tending to details like training the wait staff and calculating whether sushi would turn a profit. They had to write reports and use Microsoft Excel to track the numbers. They also divvied up business responsibilities within their groups.

"It makes the class more interesting," said Hannah Smith, a tenth-grader who was in the class last year. "You don't have to listen to the teacher talk all the time. You don't have to look at a book all day."

Janet Johnson, who taught the business class after returning from a 19-year absence from teaching, said she found out quickly that keeping students' attention is much harder than it used to be. "When you can go home on a computer and build a zoo from 'Zoo Tycoon,' sitting and learning Excel is pretty mundane," she said.

But she said that with Simpson's help, "Restaurant Empire" turned her class around. "Before they know it, they're telling you what a business plan is," she said.

Using computer games to teach is hardly new. The military has been doing it with pilots and soldiers for decades, and corporations have been gaming for years as well. PricewaterhouseCoopers, for example, taught its employees about derivatives--a category of investments--using a game about a mining company in outer space.

"It's a very clever game," Marc Prensky said of the adult investment game. "Very nicely done, full of fabulous information."

Prensky is a game designer, gaming consultant, and author of two books on using computer games to teach, Digital Game-Based Learning and Don't Bother Me, Mom--I'm Learning! Neither he nor Simpson, however, has been much impressed with many of the games designed for teaching children. "Completely boring," said Simpson.

"What they've done is taken your pencil-paper word search and made into an electronic word search. It's still a word search," she said. "When school tries to do commercial electronics, what they really do is school electronically."
Prensky, who is familiar with Simpson's work, said educators have been trying out several ways to use entertainment games to teach.

Students can work on games in groups, he said, or a teacher can control the game with input from the entire class. Or a teacher might assign a game as homework. After a lesson on the Spanish conquest of South America, for instance, "Age of Empires" could be assigned for students to pretend to be Francisco Pizarro at home.

Prensky said he has been designing educational games to rival the complexity--and match the appeal--of entertainment games. "Games are really a language for this generation," he said.
Others have tapped into the same market. Muzzy Lane Software, of Newburyport, Mass., has created a computer roll-playing game designed specifically for classroom use, called "Making History" (see story: Computer simulation is 'making history'). In collaboration with the Game Institute, Muzzy Lane also offers an online professional development course to help educators incorporate gaming into their classrooms (see story: New course teaches instructional gaming).
Even the Federation of American Scientists--which typically weighs in on matters of nuclear weaponry and government secrecy--declared last fall that video games can redefine education.
Capping a year of study, the group called for federal research into how the addictive pizzazz of video games can be converted into serious learning tools for schools (see story: Scientists: Can video games save education?).

The scientists' theory: Games teach skills employers want--analytical thinking, team building, multitasking, and problem solving under duress. Unlike humans, the games never lose patience. And, they're second nature to many kids.

When students talk about gaming, Prensky said, teachers should listen--and learn. "The situation we have now is a situation of mutual disrespect. The teacher will say, 'I don't care about those games--those games are a waste of time, and you're killing your brain cells.' And the kids are very hurt by this," he said.

Computer games have become very sophisticated, he said, but teachers "think [students are] playing the equivalent of solitaire over and over again."

That's not Mark Greenberg, whose students at Phoenix Union Cyber High School in Phoenix, Ariz., design their own educational games. Greenberg said he sees teaching potential in the most complex games of all: massive, multiplayer online role-playing games, which bring thousands of people together online. The players form complex alliances, which Greenberg said could help social studies students understand real alliances between nations.

He doesn't think computer games are always appropriate for teaching. "But I think they're good practice to solidify an idea, once kids have learned about it," he said.

Simpson said classroom gaming should always be carefully planned and closely monitored, and "shooter" games like "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" are out of the question.

Some games, however, can be used in a variety of ways, she said. For example, Simpson has used "Restaurant Empire" not just in business classes, but also to help teach economics in a social studies class at Whiting Alternative School in Laramie.

"We went out and purposely got culturally different restaurant owners to come in and talk about the communities they were serving. So we looked at it from a socio-economic perspective, rather than business and entrepreneurship," Simpson said.

Simpson and her research partner, Frances Clem, were tapped by the Albany County, Wyo., School District to design and deliver teacher workshops on classroom gaming last summer. Using a $114,000 Wyoming state grant, they worked with more than 40 teachers in the district to give them insight into the needs of today's digital learners, letting the teachers experiment with a range of school-appropriate games and write lesson plans that incorporated their use.
The workshop, which is available to other school districts through the Learning Research Institute, already has shown results: Teachers and administrators alike are increasingly comfortable with the use of video games in standards-based curricula, Simpson says, and a number of workshop graduates are experimenting with gaming in their classes.

To study the influence of computer games and other digital media on student learning, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation last fall announced plans to donate $50 million in new research grants (see story: MacArthur to invest $50M in digital learning). Beginning this year, MacArthur says, it will donate $2 million a year toward research projects intended to explore the impact of games and other media on today's youth.

Even Greenberg would like to find out precisely why a student's eyes glaze over during quadratic equations--and light up in front of an Xbox.

"If we could just harness whatever's making him focus so hard and transfer that somehow to school, then I think we've revolutionized education," he said. "And I think that's possible."

Links:
University of Wyoming
http://www.wyoming.edu

Learning Research Institute
http://www.learningresearchinstitute.com

Marc Prensky
http://www.marcprensky.com

Muzzy Lane Software
http://www.muzzylane.com

Game Institute
http://www.gameinstitute.com

Phoenix Union Cyber High School
http://www.phxhs.k12.az.us/education/school/school.php?sectionid=5539

MacArthur Foundation
http://www.macfound.org

Video Game Tests the Limits. The Limits Win.

2007-02-01T15:12:00.000+11:00

From the New York Times-

Video Game Tests the Limits. The Limits Win.
http://tinyurl.com/2y8enw
By HEATHER CHAPLIN
Published: January 28, 2007

AS director of the 13-year-old Slamdance film festival, the indier-than-thou alternative to the Sundance Film Festival that concludes here Sunday, Peter Baxter has dedicated a good portion of his career to showcasing the work of artists toiling outside the mainstream. Three years ago, in that same anti-establishment spirit, he broadened the festival’s boundaries to include the Guerrilla Gamemaking Competition, a forum for independent video-game makers to do what their counterparts in film get to do every winter up the street: show their work, make deals and rub elbows.

Considering how few places independent game makers have for this sort of interaction, perhaps it’s not surprising that the mood the previous two years approached euphoria. “We felt proud just to be associated with Slamdance,” said Andrew Stern, who, along with his partner, Michael Mateas, took home the grand jury prize last year for their game Façade, an interactive drama about a marital crisis inspired by Ingmar’s Bergman’s “Scenes From a Marriage” and Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ ”

Tracy Fullerton, a professor of game design at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts, was so impressed by what she encountered last year that she persuaded U.S.C.’s Interactive Media Division to sponsor the 2007 competition by offering two six-week student fellowships at the school’s Interactive Media Lab.

But this year that euphoria was nowhere in sight. An entrant called Super Columbine Massacre Role Playing Game! made it to the finals, and in the process attracted complaints about its provocative content. So Mr. Baxter reluctantly opted to withdraw it from the competition. But the anger over his decision has dwarfed the original objections, and many entrants have chosen to leave the festival altogether.

The game in question combines real video images of the 1999 Columbine High School killers and snippets of their conversation with intentionally low-resolution 2-D graphics meant to replicate the look of an early-1990s Nintendo-style role-playing game. To its champions the game is a landmark example of how video games can explore deeply disturbing material, and a powerful condemnation of the culture that produced the Columbine tragedy. To its detractors it’s a study in appallingly bad taste, a horrid trivialization of a tragic event.

The controversy highlights the questions that experimental game makers face as they seek to evolve from a loose conglomeration of people with similar interests into a full-fledged movement. What will it take for their medium to be considered a legitimate art form? And should games even try to address painful or distasteful subject matter?
The game room at the Treasure Mountain Inn here this month was filled with the same red beanbags chairs as last year, but the crowd of 20 or so game designers had withered to half that number, and what had been a ring of more than a dozen humming computer terminals was now a handful of monitors. The rows of folding chairs set up for presentations were half empty, and where last year there was excited chatter on all sides, this year an uncomfortable quiet permeated the room.

The story of how this once-electric gathering lost its luster began with a phone call earlier this month by Mr. Baxter to Danny Ledonne, a 25-year-old Colorado filmmaker and the creator of Super Columbine. Overriding the panel of the judges who had included the game among the 14 finalists, Mr. Baxter told Mr. Ledonne that he had decided to withdraw his game because of outraged phone calls and e-mail messages he’d been receiving from Utah residents and family members associated with the Columbine shooting. He was also acting on the advice of lawyers who warned him of the threat of civil suits if he showed the game.

“I personally don’t find the game immoral, because an artist has a right to create whatever he wants, whether a filmmaker or a game maker,” Mr. Baxter said. “But when you’re responsible for presenting that work to the public, it becomes more complicated.”

Mr. Ledonne, who lives with his parents and had never made a video game before Super Columbine, said he could sympathize with Mr. Baxter’s predicament. “I knew right away what he was going to say,” Mr. Ledonne explained, “so I was just thinking, are they going to reimburse me for my air fare?“ He said he had received multiple death threats since he posted Super Columbine on his Web site in April 2005. “I’ve learned that games are expected to be for children, and when you create a game that’s not, people get very upset,” he said.

“I’m not really a provocateur in person,” he continued. “I inherited this society, which I truly feel is moribund and completely unsustainable. To me the Columbine shootings was like the canary in a coal mine.”

When word of Mr. Baxter’s decision found its way to the Internet, it set off a hailstorm of pent-up anger and indignation among independent game designers. The decision also prompted a flurry of open letters to Slamdance asking for Super Columbine Massacre to be reinstated. One by one over a period of about a week, 7 out of the remaining 13 finalists withdrew their games in protest, an act of solidarity almost unheard of among a group of people known more for working long hours in isolation than participating in group action. (One game, Toblo, made by a group of students at the DigiPen Institute of Technology in Redmond, Wash., was reinstated by the college, which owns the rights.)

A few days later Mr. Baxter heard from Ms. Fullerton at U.S.C. “We became sponsors because we wanted to be part of a contest that stood for certain values having to do with freedom of expression and creativity,” she said. “And when it didn’t anymore, we had to pull our support.”
Kellee Santiago, part of the U.S.C. team that made flOw, a sort of New Age Pac-Man that was among those pulled from the competition, said: “It’s hard not to come to the conclusion that games still are not considered a valid creative medium. It’s like saying that games aren’t allowed to cover serious subjects, and if you do, you must be doing something tasteless.”

To Mr. Baxter, though, it’s not that simple. “Games really are potentially a far more powerful medium that film, aren’t they?” he said while sitting at the Morning Ray Cafe just a few feet from the underpopulated gaming room. “In films you play a more passive role. You’re sitting back looking at something. Because of the role-playing aspect, games literally take the level of our participation to a whole other level. You are actively engaged in the outcome of your actions. Games are going to affect us in different ways, in ways we don’t fully understand yet.”
As he sipped his coffee, Mr. Baxter then said exactly what he had studiously avoided saying for two weeks: “Absolutely, games should be judged by a different criteria than film. I just don’t accept a direct comparison.”

To many of today’s independent game designers, the commercial video-game industry has become stagnant and intolerably risk-averse as game budgets reach tens of millions of dollars and design teams swell into the hundreds. But the advent of digital distribution and affordable game-building tools from companies like GarageGames has allowed them to create a broad spectrum of unconventional games.

Ian Bogost, an assistant professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology and co-founder of the game-development company Persuasive Games (whose slogan is: “Think games are just for fun? Think again”), was a finalist at the past two Slamdance competitions. One of his recent games is Bacteria Salad, in which the player’s goal is to harvest cheap produce and sell it for as much profit as possible. Another is Oil God, where the goal is to double consumer prices in five years: “Wreak havoc on the world’s oil supplies by unleashing war and disaster!”
In another recent game, Darkgame, designed by Eddo Stern, a Los Angeles artist, players wear a device on their heads that translates the game’s visuals into physical pulses. At different points in the game the senses of sight, sound and touch are stimulated, which Mr. Stern hopes will create feelings of claustrophobia and anxiety as well as the usual feelings of wonder and excitement players expect from games.

Sam Roberts, the game director of Slamdance, was visibly pained by the withdrawal of so many intriguing entries this year. “The game competition is here to pay attention to new young artists who have great ideas,” he said. “My biggest disappointment is that six fantastic games weren’t here to take advantage of that.”

Acknowledging that the event was seriously compromised, Mr. Roberts let the attendees vote on whether to award any prizes at all at this year’s competition. On Monday evening they decided not to.

Nonetheless Mr. Roberts said he was optimistic about the future of the event. “These are issues that we can’t avoid as we push the boundaries of what games can be,” he said. “In the end all this debate ended up sparking a lot of discussion and opening a lot of people’s eyes to that fact that there are artistically inclined games out there. And that’s a good thing.”

Linux Conference 2007

2006-12-29T20:14:00.000+11:00

From the Linux Conference has just been announced at http://lca2007.linux.org.au/

By way of background, linux.conf.au is one of the world's best Open Source and Free Software developer community conferences! A purely volunteer effort, it is hosted in a different Australasian city each year, and attracts some of the best minds in the world of Open Source and Free Software. Make sure you don't miss the chance to hang out and learn with the best.

Computer-simulated training on the rise

2006-12-20T08:20:00.000+11:00

Computer simulations give safe but realistic training to teachers, military personnel, and others

From eSchool News staff and wire service reports
http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStoryts.cfm?ArticleID=6742

Computer simulations, which have been used for years as training tools by the military and airlines, are increasingly finding their way into professions such as teaching, policing, sales, and other fields that depend more on interpersonal skills than technical proficiency. These so-called "social simulators" chase an elusive goal of replicating human behavior--but their proponents say they provide a safe environment that can be used any time and are a cost-cutting alternative to face-to-face training.

December 19, 2006—A loud boy launches spit balls at a classmate. Another kid slumps in his seat, oozing apathy and his desire to be anywhere else. Other students laugh mockingly and make inappropriate sounds as the rookie teacher faces his worst classroom nightmare.
It's no easy job to regain control and coax the students into writing an essay about what they did last weekend. Fortunately for the teacher, it was only a computer simulation.

The children are a mix of virtual humans projected on a screen and an out-of-sight actress who provides their gestures and dialogue. As the teacher interacts with each kid, the actress assumes the student's identity and movements with the help of technology that senses her motions. Computer simulations, which have for years been used by the military and airlines, are increasingly finding their way into professions such as teaching, policing, sales, and other fields that depend more on interpersonal skills than technical proficiency.

The STAR Classroom Simulator, a partnership between Simiosys LLC, the Haberman Educational Foundation, and the University of Central Florida, mixes computer technology and a human role-player. It's currently in trial and is expected to be commercially available within a year.

"I thought it was a great device to see how you would respond in a spontaneous situation with a student that might be either aggressive or have some repressive tendencies," said Kevin Gouvia, a former teacher at an Orlando-area urban high school who recently tried the simulator.
Randall Shumaker, director of the University of Central Florida's Institute for Simulation and Training, said simulators could give realistic but safe training to teachers, whose mistakes can be traumatizing, or suicide prevention counselors, whose errors can be fatal.

"The dropout rate for urban teachers is 40 or 50 percent," Shumaker said. "Part of the reason appears to be they just get thrown into the fires. We can build systems that give people a graded approach, so you expose them to this in a virtual world and gradually turn up the heat." The STAR Classroom Simulator isn't the first such system to take a simulation-style approach to teacher education.

David Gibson, currently president of Curveshift, worked at Vermont Institutes to develop "SimSchool," which he describes as "a flight simulator for teachers." The online program is designed to allow persons who would like to become teachers "to try things out" online, by assigning tasks to students and talking with them, explains Gibson. The program provides moment-by-moment feedback on how the user has performed, he notes, to prepare them for future careers as educators.

While many lament that people are losing their face-to-face social skills because of cell phones, eMail, and text-messaging, others are receiving computer training on how to interact with other humans in the most delicate situations.

SIMmersion LLC, a Columbia, Md., company partially owned by Johns Hopkins University, has developed interrogation simulations for the FBI by filming actors giving different responses, including gestures, to a range of potential questions that an agent might ask.

The footage is then built into a program that responds to a list of questions typed or spoken by the trainee. Unlike the STAR Classroom Simulator, where responses are controlled by a live actor, the responses are controlled by the computer program itself.

In one, "Rasheed" is a potential informant whom agents must cultivate by demonstrating sensitivity to Arab culture.

Being too abrupt with Rasheed, or telling him that his wife is beautiful, will offend him, and his demeanor will change. Sometimes Rasheed is open, sometimes not, and his motives for talking differ, meaning the same conversation will never occur twice, said Dale Olsen, SIMmersion's president. The system teaches rapport-building with the subject, rewarding a sensitive approach and punishing blunders.

Still, Rasheed is limited- he can't talk about every subject, because that technology is several years, maybe decades, away.

All social simulators chase an elusive goal of replicating human behavior.
"We don't quite understand all the things we need to know, and we can't quite make the [virtual humans] advanced enough," Shumaker said. But the advantage comes from providing a safe environment that can be used any time and is a cost-cutting alternative to hiring multiple actors.

"You can't necessarily practice dealing with real people, because if you do, you will harm people," Olsen said. "People could die, or you could get sued."

SIMmersion also has developed a program to help Army chaplains identify and treat soldiers who have suicidal tendencies, and the company will release a simulation in January that trains people how to counsel a woman who was just raped. Olsen said he is talking with companies in the communications and pharmaceutical industries to develop tailored programs that train in performance evaluation and sales.

Randall Hill, executive director of the Institute for Creative Technologies at the University of Southern California, created a cultural awareness trainer for the military that combines computer imaging with real props. But he also hopes the technology has a much broader application. "I want to see these technologies used to transport you to another time and place and be able to interact with people from other cultures," Hill said. "I think we can enhance social skills and cultural knowledge."

Links:
Simiosys LLChttp://www.simiosys.com

Haberman Educational Foundationhttp://www.altcert.org

University of Central Florida's Institute for Simulation and Training
http://www.ist.ucf.edu

SIMmersion LLChttp://www.simmersion.com

Institute for Creative Technologieshttp://www.ict.usc.edu

Ten Secrets of Successful Simulations

2006-12-11T14:08:00.000+11:00

An experiential simulation can be a wonderful training method. But it’s easy to create a one that is not as effective as it could be. Here are some suggestions for improving your chances of being successful.

One of the most satisfying experiences in training or education, no matter what the subject, is the so-called "Aha!" moment, that instant when sudden, spontaneous insight cuts through the tangle of loose ends in a learner's mind to reveal a,memorable truth.

Having spent nearly 40 years designing experiential simulations, I believe simulations are the most likely teaching method to create those "Aha!" moments. In a simulation called "StarPower," the moment occurs when trainees, who might be police officers or corporate managers, unexpectedly realize that the only way to keep power over others is not to use it.

In "BaFa' BaFa’," the moment comes when trainees suddenly grasp the idea that good intentions can actually worsen cultural misunderstandings. In a team-building simulation called "Pumping the Colors," it happens when trainees abruptly comprehend that the rules a team operates under are actually the team's responsibility.

Read the full article at:
http://www.stsintl.com/business/articles/tensecrets.html

Website Focus: The National Centre For Simulation

2006-12-11T14:05:00.000+11:00

From the website-
Just imagine it – firefighters rescuing victims from a burning building without the slightest chance of injury – students whose lecturers are world leaders – first responders and emergency personnel in rural communities with instant access to hands-on medical training – and theme park guests whose day ends with a true “Top Gun” flight experience.

Because of a unique and innovative organization, these dreams are reality. The National Center for Simulation (NCS) was formed in 1993 as the link among the defense industry, government, and academia on behalf of the entire simulation, training, and modeling community. Its mission is to facilitate networking among its growing local, national, and international membership and potential partners and customers in government, industry, education, and commerce.

As a forum, showcase, advocate and archive for simulation, training, and modeling knowledge and resources, NCS works to strengthen the simulation community’s synergy, foster innovation, and tell the story of modeling, simulation, and training to decision makers and the general public. NCS members actively create an environment where collective efforts result in new awareness and applications for military readiness, space exploration, health care, transportation, education, entertainment, and technology development.

NCS is headquartered in Orlando, Florida – home of the Simulation Center of Excellence and more than 180+ modeling, simulation and training companies, the University of Central Florida, and two military simulation and training commands.

Go to: http://www.simulationinformation.com/cms/

Website Focus: Action Training Systems

2006-12-11T13:47:00.000+11:00

Intersting website for those invovled in the emergency services and looking for simulations...

Go to: http://www.action-training.com/default.asp

Website Focus: Digital Combusiton

2006-12-11T13:43:00.000+11:00

Intersting website for those invovled in the emergency services and looking for simulations...

Go to: http://www.digitalcombustion.com/

Website Focus: Wildfire Simulator

2006-12-11T13:42:00.000+11:00

Intersting website for those invovled in the emergency services and looking for simulations...

Go to: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/fire/simulation.html#

Website Focus: Emergency Services Interactive Systems

2006-12-11T13:41:00.000+11:00

Intersting website for those invovled in the emergency services and looking for simulations...

Go to: http://www.firesimulator.com/

Proof of Learning: Assessment in Serious Games

2006-12-03T13:23:00.000+11:00

In Houston, Texas, a new hire steps onto a simulated offshore drilling platform and rehearses safety protocols. In Washington, D.C., a firefighter surveys a digital raging forest fire and chooses locations for trenches and firebreaks. A soldier in Iraq prepares for an upcoming mission using a detailed simulation of the urban battlefield. And a high school student in Portland, Oregon, manages the political campaign of Abe Lincoln as he tries to beat out Rudy Giuliani in the presidential elections of 2008.

Read the full article at:
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20051019/chen_01.shtml

Website Focus: Serious Games Europe

2006-12-03T13:21:00.000+11:00

SERIOUS GAMES EUROPE
Serious Games Europe is your professional one-stop gateway for information, news, events and views for games with an agenda. Serious Games Europe brings professionals looking to use games for more than just entertainment together with games developers, technical experts and, as importantly, other professionals who are using games seriously.

Go to:
http://www.seriousgameseurope.com/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1

Websute Focus: Serious Games Initiative

2006-12-03T13:19:00.000+11:00

The Serious Games Initiative is focused on uses for games in exploring management and leadership challenges facing the public sector. Part of its overall charter is to help forge productive links between the electronic game industry and projects involving the use of games in education, training, health, and public policy.

Go to- http://www.seriousgames.org/index2.html

Serious Games: Improving Public Policy through Game-Based

2006-12-03T13:16:00.000+11:00

In today's public policy environment, computer simulations have become important modern-age tools used to affect the policy debate and implementation process in a variety of areas. Whether they run on supercomputers in the national labs or use off-the-shelf statistical packages and spreadsheets, complex models and simulations are critical in helping scientists, policymakers, and others forecast, examine, and educate people concerning the potential outcomes and effects of public policy.

Given the importance of these models and simulations, it is critical to examine if they are being built as accurately and effectively as possible and whether the models are reaching the widest possible audience. This paper, written by a leading web-technology firm, examines the promise of game-based simulation as applied to public policy.

Read the full paper at-
http://wwics.si.edu/subsites/game/index.htm

Lemonade Stand

2006-12-02T08:28:00.000+11:00

Want a fun way to teach your kids basic maths and business skills?
Check out the Java game, Lemonade Stand.

Go to http://www.lemonadegame.com/

FLVS debuts forum for virtual teachers

2006-12-01T09:07:00.000+11:00

Article at eSchool news

http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showstoryts.cfm?Articleid=6726

FLVS debuts forum for virtual teachers Monthly forum encourages educators to share best practices, knowledge

By Corey Murray, Senior Editor, eSchool News

As interest in online learning among U.S. students continues to mount, the Florida Virtual School, one of the nation's largest institutions in support of online learning, has announced the creation of a new web-based forum dedicated to meeting the needs of online instructors.

Organizers say monthly discussion sessions featuring some of the brightest minds in online learning will provide educators with an opportunity to collaborate, share ideas, and build stronger online learning environments for K-12 students. November 29, 2006—As virtual school enrollments continue to climb nationwide, school administrators are faced with an important question: How to prepare traditional teachers for success in an increasingly online world.

Looking to establish a running dialogue between online educators around the best ways to manage and improve online learning opportunities for students, the Florida Virtual School (FLVS), one of the nation's largest institutions of online learning, has come forward to sponsor a series of web-based discussions on the topic.

Called Virtual School Community of Practice (CoP) forums, organizers have billed the monthly online discussions as a way for educators to exchange best practice solutions and share professional insights about what it takes to build and sustain effective online learning communities.

This year, experts say, as many as 1 million students nationwide are enrolled, or will enroll, in online courses. And that figure is expected to climb by as much as 25 percent annually, said Julie Young, FLVS president and chief executive officer.

"Together as educators, we can best serve the needs of students by collaborating, sharing our intellectual knowledge through regular communications to ensure that online learning remains cutting edge and continues to meet the educational needs of students," Young said. "Our hope is that through these regular online forums we will build upon a movement among online educators to exchange lessons learned on how to bring inventive strategies into education and keep today's students engaged and challenged."

Sixty online educators from 13 states participated in the inaugural CoP forum Nov. 20. During the program--which focused on motivating students enrolled in online courses--educators talked about the need for open and frequent communications with students and parents. Other topics included the use of interactive whiteboards, tutorials, motivational tactics, and effective feedback to ensure student success in the online classroom.

In addition to monthly sessions CoP members have access to the community's web site, where they will find additional resources and networking opportunities in support of effective teaching.
Highlights include an archive of monthly forum sessions; threaded discussions on various topics related to online teaching; information resources and best practices and strategies; knowledge bases to which members can contribute; access to colleagues tackling similar challenges; a forum for research and implementation questions; and other opportunities for professional collaboration.

To participate in the program, educators must pay a fee of $200. The fee grants access to 10 webinars throughout the year, according to Young, as well as the companion web site and related online resources. While the lion's share of the money collected by FLVS will go toward supplying the bandwidth and resources for the online forums, Young said, part of the proceeds also will go to building out new online courses, which will be available to virtual institutions using FLVS content nationwide.

FLVS educators will be active participants in the forum, Young said, but the CoP invites the insights and knowledge of veteran online instructors and novices alike.
"Having input from a variety of online leaders gives folks a melting pot to draw their ideas from," she said. "Our goal is to be a community that is open to any educator. Regardless of where [educators] are in their journey to become better online teachers, we would encourage them to sign up." Though still in its early phases, the forum already is attracting the attention of some of the nation's leading voices for virtual instruction.

"One of the challenges with teaching is that teachers are often isolated within a classroom and want to share their instructional strategies that work, but are limited by the time, schedule, or structure in a traditional school day," said Susan Patrick, executive director of the North American Council for Online Learning. "This is a great idea to support improving online teaching and increasing access to a professional community of online teachers."

A second online forum on the topic of time-management strategies for online teachers is scheduled for Dec. 14. FLVS will host the forum, which will include experts from a range of virtual schools and online learning programs.

Additional topics for January and February include: academic integrity, reading, and ELL strategies, organizers said. Young said the topics for each program were chosen with the input of FLVS educators and clients.

For more information about the CoP, educators are encouraged to visit the web site at: http://tinyurl.com/vln3q

Links:
Florida Virtual Schoolhttp://www.flvs.net/

North American Council for Online Learninghttp://www.nacol.org/

Immerse Yourself - Increasing Learning through Simulation... Gaming Style

2006-11-28T07:52:00.000+11:00

Dan Keldsen interviewed Calrk Aldrich on the use of simulations in learning. Interesting interview where Clark gives some ideas about the type of simulations, how they can be used an so on...

Introduction
Immerse Yourself - Increasing Learning through Simulation... Gaming Style
A conversation with Clark Aldrich, Co-Founder of SimuLearn which is www.simulearn.net, and lead designer of their "Virtual Leader" product, and a step-back to Simulation 101 to bring people listeners/readers up to a common-level of discussion, and then some diving into how to sell and use simulation or other e-learning within an organization, pros and cons of techniques, and a lot of discussion on what e-learning or simulation both can and cannot do. This is you chance to disguise time spent in Second Life as "research" into e-learning!

Access the interview or download the MP3 to listen to, at http://tinyurl.com/y7xpu9

Unlimited Learning- Computer & Video Games In The Learning Landscape

2006-11-25T14:11:00.000+11:00

An interesting read...

Introduction
In the ‘glass half-full’ camp were observers who could see that children whose attentions
wandered elsewhere in their lives, for example at school, were unexpectedly very, very
focused. For this camp, a journey began in what has become something of a quest for
the Holy Grail. In this case, the Grail was learning software that was as seductive and
engaging as computer games.

Some of the earliest educational software was seductive, engaging, challenging and evocative
because it was written by the same teams that were in parallel developing the cool games.
On-screen snooker became an exploration of bearings, while virtual football an exercise in
maths and probability. Schools mattered in the market because a lot of the nation’s best
computers were in schools. There were more computers in school than on the high street.

Read the full pdf document at- http://tinyurl.com/yhdj8m

Stop Playing Games

2006-11-25T14:08:00.000+11:00

For all the press releases and talk about the availability of video games as a reliable training tool, there aren’t too many that bring any real benefit to training the troops.

By Mark Brian
Available at- http://www.military-training-technology.com/article.cfm?DocID=1202

Today, everyone loves to talk, write and pontificate about the importance of games, usually off-the-shelf-products, in training military forces. I’m tired of people just talking about the cool stuff that games bring to training the force. It’s about time for some real action.

What am I talking about? Well, for all the media attention on using computer and video games to train the force, there aren’t any real programs or an evaluation process to support this euphoria. I challenge anyone to look through the federal budget process documentation—the POM in Pentagonesse—or recent funding actions and find a production program that has an approved requirement for commercial type computer/video games to support training.
Don’t give me the “America’s Army” story; that is a recruiting tool, planned, funded and executed that way. My buddies in the training business in Orlando don’t appear to have anything real in the production pipe.

Now there are lots of ideas kicking around in the labs, the Army Research Institute’s VECTOR lab, but that doesn’t get it to the field. Why is this so frustrating? Let’s rewind back a few years. Remember the all the excitement when a Navy ensign used Microsoft “Flight Simulator” and his own initiative to go to the head of his class in Naval aviation training? That was in 1999, almost seven years ago. In 1997, the National Research Council published a book on DoD and industry working together using modeling and simulation to enhance training and an analysis of making use of games and other simulations. But what happened to these ideas?

There are many books, papers and presentations on this concept—it is hardly new. I think most of them were killed by culture, not that they didn’t or couldn’t add value to our warfighters. And it is common knowledge that the field of computer/video games has been exploding and the training community is watching it all pass by. The mind power is out there; we need to get off the dime and move into the information age.

The Marines tried “Doom” in an early effort and have been using “Operation Flashpoint” for a few years. The Army has used “Spearhead” and other games with the Armor School, “Steel Beasts” at the U.S. Military Academy; the Navy has used “Fleet Command” at the Naval Academy, and the submarine fleet has a commercial game they use.

This has happened long enough that by now the services should have an appreciation for what can be done and begun to develop the requirements and funding necessary to bring a successful capability to our warfighters—but no.

The Institute for Creative Technologies helped develop the game “Full Spectrum Warrior” as a training tool that could also be commercially viable, and where has that gone? The only results I’ve seen are articles saying how much a waste of money it was for the Army to fund part of the game’s development. Critics argue the game was more entertainment-based from the start.
Are there any visionaries out there who have the courage to step up and champion this cause? Is our process asleep at the wheel or do our senior leaders shy away from the idea of using games to train? Maybe they just don’t understand what the young soldiers of today, and especially tomorrow, expect. Just like in Iraq, this is a culture issue, not a technology issue.
What is really disheartening is that Hezbollah, a terrorist organization of some note, figured out that games were the way to go by reading U.S. press clippings. It took them only a couple of years to get a product developed, to market it, and then it went into the hands of their intended audience—prospective recruits and those who might need a little training. An adaptive enemy is effectively using our ideas against us and our allies.

Imitation may be the sincerest forms of flattery, but it indicates that right now our adversaries have the agility edge—they are transforming rapidly, inside our decision and innovation loop. This is an adaptive and skilled adversary. It is only a guess, but I’d wager that during raids in the past few years in OIF and OEF copies of “Special Force”— Hezbollah’s recruiting and training video game—have been found, as training material, on more than one terrorist’s computer.

Yet years later we don’t have a real plan forward. Or, if we do, it is very, very well hidden from view. Where is that agility, adaptability and flexibility we always hear about? It’s apparent that our enemy has it, and I’ll bet that our adversary has a plan to move forward with his success from “Special Force.”

So, how do we fix this? Well, I’d start by developing a strategic plan that looks at desired capabilities (if we have to put this into the requirements hopper you can dust this article off in about five to seven years). And how do we get there quickly? In the Army’s case, I would make TRADOC talk to itself. The recruiting command part of TRADOC put out “America’s Army” as a blockbuster recruiting tool, which is about to copied by the Navy. But they couldn’t seem to talk within the command with the trainers (or outside the command to the acquisition community) to make it a real training product for the entire Army. What we have here is a failure to communicate, and that should stop now. It’s about our warfighters, not about press clippings.
We really need to pry programs out of the tech base and PowerPoint presentations and into a real production effort. Then we’d fund the program so everyone would understand that we mean business. The hard part? You have to have people who can evaluate commercial games, see what they can do for you and be innovative. Very few commercial products will be perfect out of the box, but that’s okay—a good enough solution will give us the increased agility and the flexibility we keep talking about. Here for example, our institutional Army needs some help, manpower help. The training developers were stripped out years ago, and the Army is paying the price now. We also need to have a change of culture at all levels. A realization that the young people of today know how to make this work, and that the senior leadership doesn’t know which end of a GameBoy is up, is critical. Without a culture change, we will continue to fund programs that are usable today, but not looking toward the future expectation of our warfighters. What do our warfighters do in Iraq and Afghanistan do when they have down time? They play video games. The Doonsbury comic strip that ran on September 11, 2005, was another great example of this.

Why can’t we make a training product that our soldiers, Marines, sailors, airmen and others want to play? We have a superb pool of combat veterans who I believe would step up to this challenge—they have proved their agility, innovation and courage; let’s leverage it.
The use of computer and video games, commercial games, consoles, hand-held and otherwise, need to be part of our training culture, not “toys.”

It’s time to take action to better support the warfighter. Conferences don’t produce capability for our soldiers. This is not leading-edge stuff anymore. Innovation and culture is necessary to compete in the marketplace of training. We must partner government with industry, as we have done with some success in limited efforts in the past, and get on with it. Take a little risk, move out and draw fire.

The Army’s chief of staff often says that transformation is a journey, not a destination. I agree, but it is time that we stop walking and do a little “double-time” to support our warfighters with the training tools—in this case games—they need for victory.

Editor’s note: Mark Brian is a veteran of the U.S. Army. He was involved with implementing training technologies during his military career and now works in the defense industry.

Reality Bytes: Eight Myths About Video Games Debunked

2006-11-25T14:04:00.000+11:00

An article by Henry Jenkins, MIT Professor.

Go to- http://www.pbs.org/kcts/videogamerevolution/impact/myths.html

A large gap exists between the public's perception of video games and what the research actually shows. The following is an attempt to separate fact from fiction.

1. The availability of video games has led to an epidemic of youth violence.

According to federal crime statistics, the rate of juvenile violent crime in the United States is at a 30-year low. Researchers find that people serving time for violent crimes typically consume less media before committing their crimes than the average person in the general population. It's true that young offenders who have committed school shootings in America have also been game players. But young people in general are more likely to be gamers — 90 percent of boys and 40 percent of girls play. The overwhelming majority of kids who play do NOT commit antisocial acts. According to a 2001 U.S. Surgeon General's report, the strongest risk factors for school shootings centered on mental stability and the quality of home life, not media exposure. The moral panic over violent video games is doubly harmful. It has led adult authorities to be more suspicious and hostile to many kids who already feel cut off from the system. It also misdirects energy away from eliminating the actual causes of youth violence and allows problems to continue to fester.

2. Scientific evidence links violent game play with youth aggression.

Claims like this are based on the work of researchers who represent one relatively narrow school of research, "media effects." This research includes some 300 studies of media violence. But most of those studies are inconclusive and many have been criticized on methodological grounds. In these studies, media images are removed from any narrative context. Subjects are asked to engage with content that they would not normally consume and may not understand. Finally, the laboratory context is radically different from the environments where games would normally be played. Most studies found a correlation, not a causal relationship, which means the research could simply show that aggressive people like aggressive entertainment. That's why the vague term "links" is used here. If there is a consensus emerging around this research, it is that violent video games may be one risk factor - when coupled with other more immediate, real-world influences — which can contribute to anti-social behavior. But no research has found that video games are a primary factor or that violent video game play could turn an otherwise normal person into a killer.

3. Children are the primary market for video games.

While most American kids do play video games, the center of the video game market has shifted older as the first generation of gamers continues to play into adulthood. Already 62 percent of the console market and 66 percent of the PC market is age 18 or older. The game industry caters to adult tastes. Meanwhile, a sizable number of parents ignore game ratings because they assume that games are for kids. One quarter of children ages 11 to 16 identify an M-Rated (Mature Content) game as among their favorites. Clearly, more should be done to restrict advertising and marketing that targets young consumers with mature content, and to educate parents about the media choices they are facing. But parents need to share some of the responsibility for making decisions about what is appropriate for their children. The news on this front is not all bad. The Federal Trade Commission has found that 83 percent of game purchases for underage consumers are made by parents or by parents and children together.

4. Almost no girls play computer games.

Historically, the video game market has been predominantly male. However, the percentage of women playing games has steadily increased over the past decade. Women now slightly outnumber men playing Web-based games. Spurred by the belief that games were an important gateway into other kinds of digital literacy, efforts were made in the mid-90s to build games that appealed to girls. More recent games such as The Sims were huge crossover successes that attracted many women who had never played games before. Given the historic imbalance in the game market (and among people working inside the game industry), the presence of sexist stereotyping in games is hardly surprising. Yet it's also important to note that female game characters are often portrayed as powerful and independent. In his book Killing Monsters, Gerard Jones argues that young girls often build upon these representations of strong women warriors as a means of building up their self confidence in confronting challenges in their everyday lives.

5. Because games are used to train soldiers to kill, they have the same impact on the kids who play them.

Former military psychologist and moral reformer David Grossman argues that because the military uses games in training (including, he claims, training soldiers to shoot and kill), the generation of young people who play such games are similarly being brutalized and conditioned to be aggressive in their everyday social interactions.
Grossman's model only works if:
- we remove training and education from a meaningful cultural context.
- we assume learners have no conscious goals and that they show no resistance to what they are being taught.
- we assume that they unwittingly apply what they learn in a fantasy environment to real world spaces.

The military uses games as part of a specific curriculum, with clearly defined goals, in a context where students actively want to learn and have a need for the information being transmitted. There are consequences for not mastering those skills. That being said, a growing body of research does suggest that games can enhance learning. In his recent book, What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, James Gee describes game players as active problem solvers who do not see mistakes as errors, but as opportunities for improvement. Players search for newer, better solutions to problems and challenges, he says. And they are encouraged to constantly form and test hypotheses. This research points to a fundamentally different model of how and what players learn from games.

6. Video games are not a meaningful form of expression.

On April 19, 2002, U.S. District Judge Stephen N. Limbaugh Sr. ruled that video games do not convey ideas and thus enjoy no constitutional protection. As evidence, Saint Louis County presented the judge with videotaped excerpts from four games, all within a narrow range of genres, and all the subject of previous controversy. Overturning a similar decision in Indianapolis, Federal Court of Appeals Judge Richard Posner noted: "Violence has always been and remains a central interest of humankind and a recurrent, even obsessive theme of culture both high and low. It engages the interest of children from an early age, as anyone familiar with the classic fairy tales collected by Grimm, Andersen, and Perrault are aware." Posner adds, "To shield children right up to the age of 18 from exposure to violent descriptions and images would not only be quixotic, but deforming; it would leave them unequipped to cope with the world as we know it." Many early games were little more than shooting galleries where players were encouraged to blast everything that moved. Many current games are designed to be ethical testing grounds. They allow players to navigate an expansive and open-ended world, make their own choices and witness their consequences. The Sims designer Will Wright argues that games are perhaps the only medium that allows us to experience guilt over the actions of fictional characters. In a movie, one can always pull back and condemn the character or the artist when they cross certain social boundaries. But in playing a game, we choose what happens to the characters. In the right circumstances, we can be encouraged to examine our own values by seeing how we behave within virtual space.

7. Video game play is socially isolating.

Much video game play is social. Almost 60 percent of frequent gamers play with friends. Thirty-three percent play with siblings and 25 percent play with spouses or parents. Even games designed for single players are often played socially, with one person giving advice to another holding a joystick. A growing number of games are designed for multiple players — for either cooperative play in the same space or online play with distributed players. Sociologist Talmadge Wright has logged many hours observing online communities interact with and react to violent video games, concluding that meta-gaming (conversation about game content) provides a context for thinking about rules and rule-breaking. In this way there are really two games taking place simultaneously: one, the explicit conflict and combat on the screen; the other, the implicit cooperation and comradeship between the players. Two players may be fighting to death on screen and growing closer as friends off screen. Social expectations are reaffirmed through the social contract governing play, even as they are symbolically cast aside within the transgressive fantasies represented onscreen.

8. Video game play is desensitizing.

Classic studies of play behavior among primates suggest that apes make basic distinctions between play fighting and actual combat. In some circumstances, they seem to take pleasure wrestling and tousling with each other. In others, they might rip each other apart in mortal combat. Game designer and play theorist Eric Zimmerman describes the ways we understand play as distinctive from reality as entering the "magic circle." The same action — say, sweeping a floor — may take on different meanings in play (as in playing house) than in reality (housework). Play allows kids to express feelings and impulses that have to be carefully held in check in their real-world interactions. Media reformers argue that playing violent video games can cause a lack of empathy for real-world victims. Yet, a child who responds to a video game the same way he or she responds to a real-world tragedy could be showing symptoms of being severely emotionally disturbed. Here's where the media effects research, which often uses punching rubber dolls as a marker of real-world aggression, becomes problematic. The kid who is punching a toy designed for this purpose is still within the "magic circle" of play and understands her actions on those terms. Such research shows us only that violent play leads to more violent play.

Henry Jenkins is the director of comparative studies at MIT.

Sources
Entertainment Software Association. "Top Ten Industry Facts." 2003. http://www.theesa.com/pressroom.html
Gee, James. What Video Games Have to Tell Us About Learning and Literacy. New York: Palgrave, 2001.
Grossman, David. "Teaching Kids to Kill." Phi Kappa Phi National Forum 2000. http://www.killology.org/article_teachkid.htm
Heins, Marjorie. Brief Amica Curiae of Thirty Media Scholars, submitted to the United States Court of Appeals, Eight Circuit, Interactive Digital Software Association et al vs. St. Louis County et al. 2002. http://www.fepproject.org/courtbriefs/stlouissummary.html
Jenkins, Henry. "Coming Up Next: Ambushed on 'Donahue'." Salon 2002. http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/08/20/jenkins_on_donahue/
Jenkins, Henry. "Lessons From Littleton: What Congress Doesn't Want to Hear About Youth and Media." Independent Schools 2002.
http://www.nais.org/pubs/ismag.cfm?file_id=537&ismag_id=14
Jones, Gerard. Killing Monsters: Why Children Need Fantasy, Super Heroes, and Make-believe Violence. New York: Basic, 2002.
Salen, Katie and Eric Zimmerman. Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003.
Sternheimer, Karen. It's Not the Media: The Truth About Popular Culture's Influence on Children. New York: Westview, 2003.
Wright, Talmadge."Creative Player Actions in FPS Online Video Games: Playing Counter-Strike." Game Studies Dec. 2002. http://www.gamestudies.org/0202/wright/

A Survey of COTS Games Used In Education- PPT

2006-11-25T13:52:00.000+11:00

An interesting Powerpoint file (5+ mb) about the use of COTS games in education....

Go to- http://tinyurl.com/y2zko7

Email Games

2006-11-24T12:45:00.000+11:00

In 2000, The Australian National Training Authority (ANTA) introduced a new national professional development initiative called “Flexible Learning Leaders”. This initiative aimed to accelerate the work of leading practitioners in flexible learning across Australia by investing up to $40,000 in a six month personal professional development program. As one of the 23 inaugural leaders, I organized the first visit to Australia by Dr Sivasailam “Thiagi” Thiagarajan a world renowned leader in games and simulations methodologies.

Read on at- http://tinyurl.com/ue2wq

The Value of Performance Simulations

2006-11-24T12:44:00.000+11:00

Your business might be at risk due to training that may not deliver all of the skills that your employees need and assessments that may not always test whether they have acquired these skills. Simulations can play an important role in reducing this risk.

Read on at- http://tinyurl.com/swmac

Australian Flexible Learning Network- A Look At Simulations

2006-11-24T12:06:00.000+11:00

Simulations are a great way of incorporating realistic activities into a learning experience. They can range from fully developed graphical interfaces to games to simple computational models. The examples given here are not high end games or educational experiences like flight simulators rather they demonstrate simulations that can be created on modest budgets. Many toolboxes are examples of simulated environments, too.

More info at- http://tinyurl.com/tppl4

There's also more info specific to the design of simulations at- http://designing.flexiblelearning.net.au/gallery/content/simulation.htm

Center for Computer Games Research- IT University of Copenhagen

2006-11-24T11:58:00.000+11:00

Computer games are an important part of contemporary culture. We need new research to understand the nature of games, their structure, their function and their impact.

At the Center for Computer Games Research we research game aesthetics, game design, game spaces, game worlds, gaming cultures, and learning in games.

More info at- http://game.itu.dk/index.html

ECGBL 2007: The European Conference on Games Based Learning

2006-11-24T11:55:00.000+11:00

Over the last ten years, the way in which education and training is delivered has changed considerably with the advent of new technologies. One such new technology that holds considerable promise for helping to engage learners is Games-Based Learning (GBL).

The University of Paisley was founded in 1897 and matured to University status in 1992. Operating on 3 campuses in Scotland (Ayr, Dumfries and Paisley), it currently has 1,300 staff guiding some 11,500 students. The Paisley campus is located in the town of Paisley and is the original campus of the University. Around 800 students follow programmes on this campus. The School of Computing and Information Systems has been providing a degree course in Computer Games Technology since 2001 and recently received accreditation from the Sector Skills Council for the Audio Visual Industries, one of only two computer games degree courses in the UK to receive this accolade.

We are delighted to be hosting the first European Conference on Games Based Learning and look forward to welcoming you to our beautiful part of Scotland.

More info at- http://www.academic-conferences.org/ecgbl/ecgbl2007/ecgbl07-home.htm

Website Focus- Game Manufacturers Association

2006-11-24T11:52:00.000+11:00

GAMA, the Game Manufacturers Association, connects, supports, educates, and promotes the people and companies involved in the world of games. Every year, the game industry does business at the GAMA Trade Show -- the industry's biggest and longest-running trade event. At the Origins International Game Expo, over 15,000 people and companies learn, play, and buy. All year long, GAMA promotes the game industry with partnerships and trade show appearances throughout the country.

New people. Solid traditions. Bold vision. GAMA -- Minding the Business of Games™

More info at- http://www.gama.org/
Including a portal dedicated to the use of Games in Education.

'Second Life' develops education following

2006-11-24T10:19:00.000+11:00

From the eSchool News Online site-
http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStoryts.cfm?ArticleID=6713

Virtual world being used by some educators and youth groups for teaching, socialization
By Justin Appel, Assistant Editor, eSchool News

November 10, 2006—An online virtual world that has become one of the web's most popular activities is also becoming an increasingly popular venue for teaching and socialization among educators and youth organizations.

The program, called Second Life, which first opened to the public in 2003, immerses participants in a virtual world of their own making. By setting up an account (either paid or free), users are able to create a virtual persona known as an avatar, which they can personalize to look however they want.

The program, from San Francisco-based company Linden Lab, allows users to create everything within their virtual world. Users are able to buy and sell plots of land, objects they have created themselves, and so on. The world itself and its economy closely resemble that of the "first life," as some in the virtual community call everyday society.

In fact, hundreds of thousands of real dollars change hands in Second Life daily, and it would have an annual gross domestic product of around $150 million if it were to stop growing today.
Whatever Second Life is, it's clear that it belongs in a different class than the virtual realities of film and fiction that have gone before it. The closest comparison would be to online video games such as "World of Warcraft" or "The Sims Online." Users download free software that opens a portal to Second Life, and Linden Lab's servers draft models of the ever-changing world and send it back to users as a real-time video. The difference is, Second Life is not a game. It doesn't have a goal, and most resources aren't restricted. Characters can fly or breathe water, and they never age or die.

With the popularity of Second Life soaring (more than 1.2 million people have joined throughout the world), it was only natural that educators would take notice of the phenomenon and begin exploring the possibilities of turning it into an educational tool.

Linden Lab has been encouraging educators to take advantage of the multimedia and social-networking possibilities within its program. A year ago, an eMail list was started for educators interested in using Second Life. Within the year, the list has grown to more than 700 educators around the world. In addition, Linden Lab offers the purchase of private islands at discounted rates to educators and nonprofit organizations. If educators want to test out Second Life for a class, Linden Lab will even offer them a free piece of land for the duration of the class. Small private islands are sold for $980, as well as a monthly land fee of $150.

A main draw for educators in using Second Life is the improvement in interaction and expression when compared with programs such as distance-education courses. "I think that is one of the things that's so attractive to educators using Second Life," says Linden Lab community developer Claudia L'Amoreaux, or Claudia Linden as she is known within Second Life. "The quality of interaction is hard to even describe. It doesn't replace face to face, but it does enable working with people all over the world."

Despite Second Life's immense popularity, the appropriateness of its content for students is an issue. As with the web itself, there is a range of seedy activity available to users: Gambling, stripping, and virtual prostitution are easy to find if you look for them. Partially because of that, Linden Lab has set up a teen version of the world, known as Teen Second Life.

Teen Second Life, or TSL, is arranged in the same fashion as the adult version, although there is only PG-rated material available in it. The world is restricted to teens ages 13-17, and all adults other than Linden Lab employees are banned from entering the main island in the world.

In recent months, Linden Lab has begun to promote TSL's educational value. Private islands have been set up as the only place where educators can set foot if they decide to participate in the program. The privacy of the island is left up to the educator or organization purchasing the island. Users can choose whether they'd like the island to be limited to students in their class or program, or as in the case of the New York-based youth development organization Global Kids open to any teen using Teen Second Life, giving teens the opportunity to explore and participate in group projects.

Shortly after announcing a $50 million initiative on digital media and learning in October (see story: http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStory.cfm?ArticleID=6654), the MacArthur Foundation gave a grant to Global Kids as part of its goal to study the possibilities of a new learning environment within virtual worlds. With the grant, Global Kids proceeded to create the first public island within the Teen Second Life world.

What Global Kids is doing is quite rare within Second Life, says Barry Joseph, director of the online leadership program with Global Kids: "The one process that is common now is bringing your own teens into the space, which means you're working with teens who don't know that environment and training them in person. We are working with teen residents who are already there, the natives to that space, and creating programs for them."

What attracts educators to Second Life is its openness. While other programs, such as the Sims, have set goals and built a closed environment, Second Life is built from the ground up by its million-plus users. Every single object, building, character, and vehicle has been designed by someone within the virtual world. This ability to create extends into the educational part of the world.

In the real world, "when we meet with our students, we bring them into a classroom or computer lab, give them some paper and objects, and see them the same time the following week," says Joseph. "In Second Life, the Global Kids space never closes. Our workspace is their play space. Not only are they there, but they're also building everything there. They're building things they want to see in the program themselves."

Many colleges have begun to incorporate Second Life into some of their courses' curriculum, and some have held entire classes based in the virtual environment. At Seton Hall University, students taking Danielle Mirliss's Industrial and Organizational Psychology course this fall were able to use Second Life as part of a virtual team-building exercise. In it, students were given a cover story in which they were working for a public-relations firm that was building a piece on the best places and people in the Second Life world. The class spent two hours completing a structured scavenger hunt within Second Life, followed by completing a wiki and a survey.
Bradley University is one of the first colleges to adopt a course taught almost entirely in the realm of Second Life. Ed Lamoureux, associate professor in the Multimedia Program and Department of Communications at Bradley, has put together a course entitled Field Research in Second Life, which is to be taught during the school's winter term in January with a possible repeat in May. The course aims to teach real-world field research, adapt field research techniques, examine the potential of large and immersive online communities as teaching and learning environments, and expose students to this large world that has many purposes other than just gaming.

Eight students will take the one-hour-per-day course from the comfort of their home or dorm room. Each class will take place in a conference location on a virtual campus put together by the New Media Consortium, an international consortium of more than 200 colleges, universities, museums, and other learning-focused organizations, and these classes will consist of a lecture that is either live or recorded, a question-and-answer period, and student reports on their field research from the previous day.

"I've been opposed to teaching games directly, as I'm uninterested in shooting, killing, and fantasy," says Lamoureux. "But Second Life presents us with a wonderful opportunity to learn and teach about virtual environments for living and learning. [It] helps keeps me engaged and relevant to our students."

One of the more interesting uses of the main grid of Second Life is taking place at the University of Tennessee College of Medicine in Chattanooga. "I became aware of Second Life last April," says Larry Miller, the school's director of Continuing Medical Education. "I was impressed with two things this is a very cool-looking environment that would be appealing to digitally savvy young people, and this world was one that allowed for rich human interaction through the use of avatars."

As a result, the school is planning to use Second Life in several ways. Continuing Medical Education activities have been planned in which physician participants, through their avatars, will have the opportunity to see lab work and vital signs of the virtual patient avatars in Second Life. They'll also be able to ask questions related to patient behavior and risk factors. After gathering the patient data, the physicians will use web resources for treatments. Miller hopes that clever scripting might eventually allow for avatars to reflect better conditioning through exercise done in the real world.

The school also is looking into using the social networking within Second Life to establish patient support groups for cancer patients and their families. Families of the patients would be able to produce simple digital story productions that would then be shared throughout Second Life.
Many obstacles can be overcome within the Second Life world, says Joseph. "Second Life can offer the experience of what it is like to not only move beyond one's physical limitations, such as chronic pain or being confined to a wheelchair, but beyond the rules of physics, like flying. It also connects those who might otherwise be socially isolated due to illness," he explained. "This involvement can then give teens the confidence they need offline to fight their daily challenges."
There are some limitations, though, on who can be a part of the two virtual worlds especially that of the teen grid.

"Certain demographics are already there," says Joseph. "You will need to have a relatively new computer and broadband access. Also, even though it's free to get in Teen Second Life, you will still need a credit card to register. That's one of the ways [Linden Lab] can manage and maintain a youth-only space, but it makes registering a challenge for teens internationally."
While Second Life has taken off among some educators, it's unclear where it will be headed in the future. "Second Life has great potential," says Miller. "Most educators who see it will struggle with exactly how to use it, but I don't think that anyone denies the power of the experience for learning."

Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.

Links:
Second Lifehttp://secondlife.com/
Linden Labhttp://lindenlab.com/
Global Kidshttp://www.globalkids.org/
Seton Hall Universityhttp://www.shu.edu/
Bradley Universityhttp://www.bradley.edu/
New Media Consortiumhttp://nmc.org/
University of Tennessee College of Medicinehttp://www.utmem.edu/Medicine

Using World of Warcraft and Other MMORPGs to Foster a Targeted, Social, and Cooperative Approach Toward Language Learning

2006-11-24T06:48:00.000+11:00

An interesting read- Using World of Warcraft and Other MMORPGs to Foster a Targeted, Social, and Cooperative Approach Toward Language Learning
Submitted by Todd Bryant on September 26, 2006 - 2:04pm.

Introduction
Much of the current research in second language acquisition (SLA) stresses the social aspect of language acquisition. Creating a learner-centered environment that a) fosters collaboration and communication, b) keeps learners motivated and on-task, and c) gives them a say in choosing their goals and how to achieve them, can be extremely challenging. Students will benefit from a framework that offers a wide variety of solutions to a given “real life” situation--solutions that require different amounts of time as well as vocabulary and grammar in the target language.

MMORPGs
Many of these goals can be achieved using simulations or gaming. For foreign languages, games—especially massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs)—create a simulated environment of language immersion where students are given the opportunity to apply their language skills toward “real life” goals within an extensive context that is, by design, supportive of a wide variety of solutions. Because this framework already exists, the teacher is free to spend his or her time playing the role of guide, making sure students stay on task and receive the additional information they need to overcome obstacles on their way toward achieving their goal.

For those not familiar with MMORPGs, they are online role-playing games where players move, act and communicate with other players in an internet-based virtual three-dimensional environment. “Winning” is usually not the point of a MMORPG; rather, players group together online to achieve certain goals and thereby progress through the game. Communication plays a central role in the game. Audio and video are embedded throughout the environment, and it is also necessary to communicate with other players in the game through audio messengers or text chat programs.

World of WarcraftI chose to focus on the game World of Warcraft for several reasons:
- At the moment, it is by far the most popular MMORPG and has a truly international scope with dedicated servers in the U.S., Europe and Asia.
- It allows for localization of the game into different languages.
- The structure of the game is similar to most MMORPGs.

World of Warcraft is a fantasy game populated with elves, dwarves, and other fantastic characters. Players choose their “race” and are given “quests” or tasks. In order to complete these tasks, the player is required to speak to characters controlled by the software, read texts, and speak and collaborate with other players through text chatting and messengers. This final aspect separates MMORPGs from other more traditional games. By making communication among the players a central aspect to the game, it provides a unique opportunity for teachers to make use of an already-existing virtual environment that requires students to use the target language to communicate with native speakers in order to achieve a goal.

The Social Environment of Language-Learning

Recognizing the social aspect of learning a language is key to understanding the potential of MMORPGs in a foreign language classroom. We gain a true understanding of a word’s meaning, a grammatical construct, or proper use of a phrase not by translating into our native language, but rather by placing it within context. This context, whether we are reading or speaking, is inevitably a social one. Natural language never exists within a vacuum. One of the principal thinkers in this area is James Paul Gee. Gee refers to a family of related viewpoints that he calls “situated cognition studies” that states that “the meaning of language is not some abstract propositional representation that resembles a verbal language. Rather, meaning in language is tied to people’s experiences of situated action in the material and social world."[1] While Gee’s focus is primarily on first language acquisition among children, we have seen this theory extended to second language acquisition as well. Dwight Atkinson outlines basic principles for a sociocognitive approach to SLA beginning with the environment: “Language is learned in interaction, often with more capable social members. Classroom teachers are part of this group where second languages are concerned, but only a part—peers, mentors, role models, friends, family members and significant others can also fall into this category.”[2] He also cites previous works emphasizing the active nature of language learning within this environment, where “…language and its acquisition from a sociocognitive perspective, would be seen in terms of ‘action’ and ‘participation’—as providing extremely powerful semiotic means of performing and participating in activity-in-the-world.”[3] Regardless of whether we are talking about first or second language acquisition, the basic principle remains consistent: language is the necessary tool for the language learner to complete tasked-based activities that require social interaction and collaboration in a “real world” environment.

Games and Simulations

While most of us agree with this in theory, creating the environment and tasks while covering the required material, keeping students motivated, and remaining on task can be daunting. Long before MMORPGs existed, teachers have used games and simulations to achieve these goals. There are many different types of simulations and games. Some involve technology, such as the text-based MUDs (multi-user domains) and MOOs (MUDs, object-oriented) used by language teachers in the past. Others such as the “virtual UN,” mock trials, or role-playing games do not use technology at all.

Regardless of how the simulation is implemented, there are two basic criteria to keep in mind before considering its use in foreign language instruction. First, the students must have the sense of being immersed in a different environment. Second, the students must then be charged with accomplishing a goal that requires use of the target language. The benefit of such an environment is that language becomes a means to an end rather than a goal in itself. This type of instruction is often referred to as task-based learning, where tasks are defined as “activities that involve individuals in using language for the purpose of achieving a particular goal or objective in a particular situation.”[4] Students then collaborate on the task in groups, creating a social environment and allowing the teacher to play the role of guide for each of the groups instead of the more traditional role of judging correct and incorrect for grammar and vocabulary. Simulations also do not focus solely on one aspect of the language. Instead, learners are motivated to use and master different linguistic patterns in order to succeed at a given task.

Simulations also allow for students to take an active role; “learning by doing” is another principal tenet of social cognitive theory. Students no longer expect to be given information from the teacher; instead, discovering information is a built-in aspect of the game. This is especially helpful for more introverted learners. Simulations have been shown to be less stressful for students than participating in a more traditional language-learning environment.[5] Simulations also foster the most useful form of interaction: a conversation without a predetermined outcome.[6] Through the game, students will discuss their own goals, then work to achieve them. The simulation allows this to happen within a framework that keeps the learners on task. This type of interaction among students has been shown to be beneficial. García-Carbonell, Montero, Rising and Watts point to studies at two universities in Spain which used telematic simulations where students were involved in a simulation over the internet to create an international forum of negotiation and debate in order to improve their English language skills. In both instances, the simulations showed that students attained a higher level of communicative language ability than in courses that did not use simulations.[7]

Games such as the World of Warcraft provide these benefits in addition to several advantages over more traditional simulations. One of these advantages is the presence of native speakers. Because the game creates different virtual worlds based on country, it is possible for students in the United States to enter the virtual World of Warcraft world in Germany, Spain, or France. This world is already populated with native speakers looking for others with whom they can collaborate on quests and adventures. This is a huge step toward creating an authentic virtual reality where the students are naturally immersed in the target language. Teachers also can enter this world and play the role of guide, introducing the students to other native speakers in the game and providing support when students become lost or frustrated. The result is a truly cooperative environment for language learning.

Another key benefit for commercial MMORPG games is the effect on student motivation. The game provides an opportunity for students to practice language skills within a system designed to provide feedback and demonstrate progress. Once students are introduced to the game in class, there is a very reasonable expectation that many of them will continue to play on their own. In his article “The Psychology of Massive Multi-User Online Role Playing Games,” Nicholas Yee discusses the profile and patterns of a typical gamer. Yee found that the average MMORPG player spends almost 23 hours a week playing the game.[8] Yee also explored the social effect of spending this amount of time in a virtual environment and found that players become emotionally involved in the game and attached to the other players, forming platonic and romantic relationships that extend to the real world. We should also not assume that only younger male students would be interested in such a game. Indeed, the average age of a MMORPG player is 27[9] and women comprise 43 percent of the overall gaming market.[10] Given these facts, we can see how an MMORPG game could have a wide and general appeal among our students and provide them with a social environment in which to practice their target language. Given the amount of time many of these gamers spend in such an environment, learners introduced to such an environment could experience a dramatic increase in authentic input and communication, compared to what a more traditional classroom could offer on its own.

Modal Verbs and Second-Semester German

To give an idea of how this could work, I asked a second semester German student to be part of a lesson focusing on the modal verbs in German. After a traditional introduction involving conjugation and word order, she was sent home with basic instructions involving the World of Warcraft game and told to create a character within the fantasy world and familiarize herself with the game’s basic functions (moving, chatting, etc). After some discussion, we decided to create characters of the Tauren race. For those not familiar with World of Warcraft, the Tauren are a “race” as are elves and dwarves. The story behind the Tauren and their imaginary culture borrow heavily from Native American history and legend. We both signed into the game. My character’s name was Professor. My student chose the much more creative and humble name of WeedPicker. Our first step was then to decide on a quest that would also function as our task. I have bolded the modal verbs.

7/14 09:34:59.219 [Gruppe] Professor: Was sollen wir tun? (What should we do?)

7/14 09:35:16.656 [Gruppe] Professor: Hast du ein Quest? (Do you have a quest?)

7/14 09:37:26.408 [Gruppe] Weedpicker: Töten wir etwas (We kill something)

7/14 09:37:54.768 [Gruppe] Professor: Nur irgendetwas töten? (Just kill anything?)

7/14 09:37:59.596 [Gruppe] Professor: Wir sollen... (We should…)

7/14 09:38:14.487 [Gruppe] Weedpicker: wir sollen eine Quest finden? (We should find a Quest)

7/14 09:38:25.768 [Gruppe] Professor: Gut (Good)

7/14 09:39:38.066 [Gruppe] Professor: OK, dann kannst also mit diesem Mann reden. (OK, then you can speak with this man)

7/14 09:39:46.113 [Gruppe] Professor: Dann bitte das Quest mitteilen (then share the quest)

At this point my student clicked on a character controlled by the computer. She was greeted with an audio greeting in German and presented with two paragraphs of text describing a quest. In this case, it was a tribal elder offering us the chance to prove ourselves by gathering meat and feathers for the village.

7/14 09:39:49.269 Quest angenommen: Die Jagd geht weiter (We both receive notification that my student accepted the quest, “The hunt continues”)

7/14 09:39:56.707 [Gruppe] Professor: Gut gemacht (Well done.)

7/14 09:40:22.973 [Gruppe] Professor: Hast du die Beschreibung gelesen und verstanden? (Have you read and understood the quest?)

7/14 09:41:44.333 [Gruppe] Weedpicker: ja, Ich verstande der Quest (Yes, I understoods the quest)

7/14 09:41:55.880 [Gruppe] Professor: ich verstehe... (I understand…)

7/14 09:42:04.834 [Gruppe] Professor: oder ich habe das Quest verstanden (or I have understood the quest)

7/14 09:42:13.693 [Gruppe] Professor: OK?

7/14 09:42:22.037 [Gruppe] Weedpicker: ok, Ich habe verstanden (I understood)

7/14 09:42:29.318 [Gruppe] Professor: Gut (Good)

7/14 09:42:41.365 [Gruppe] Professor: so, was müssen wir machen? (So, what do we have to do?)

7/14 09:43:36.085 [Gruppe] Weedpicker: wir brauchen zehn bergpumapelze (We need 10 mountain lion hides.)

This is just a small portion of the text but representative. For the next half hour or so we continued to text chat about where we should hunt, our progress, how best to hunt, etc. We played the game until our task was completed, in this case, the gathering of 10 feathers and meat from the hunt through collaboration and communication via text chat. When appropriate I tried to use modal verbs and encouraged my student to reply in complete sentences. However, it is important to note that having the focus on task as opposed to the grammar forced her at times to reach to try other grammatical forms. Having just started her second semester, my student has not been formally introduced to the past tense. Using a German/English dictionary that is running on her machine, she quickly looks up a few words and attempts the phrase, “I have understood.” Since we have not covered past tense yet, I simply correct her then continue with the game. The focus stays on the task at hand.

Once we complete the quest, our session is over. However, it is important to tie these activities back into the class and give students a chance to correct their errors. As a warm up, I would ask the class what they thought of the quest, then display parts of the transcript. Students would then work in groups to find any errors and correct them, giving them a chance to reinforce the grammatical rule while maintaining the social and goal-oriented environment of the classroom.

Getting Started

I hope I have given a general idea of a lesson involving World of Warcraft that is flexible enough to accommodate beginning-to-intermediate level students. There are some issues to consider:

- Not every student is going to fall in love with the idea of playing games as homework. Instructors need to emphasize that the game, like any homework, is practice ground for what is being taught in class with the advantages mentioned above.
- There is a cost involved. Each student would require a subscription of $15 per month. Over the course of a semester, this would amount to roughly the same cost as that of a workbook.
- I would like to point out that playing the role of “guide” is an ideal task for a teaching assistant. It does not require nearly as much experience in lesson design and classroom management as a traditional classroom. Rather, it provides an environment where the tasks, roles, and goals are already set. The guide only has to point the students in the right direction, and provide corrections or help when necessary.

If you decide that World of Warcraft is worth a try, you will need the following to get started:
- The European version of World of Warcraft. I received mine through UK Ebay.
- World of Warcraft language packs. http://tinyurl.com/yyjcdq Each language then has its own executable file. I then delete the English version .exe.
World of Warcraft requires regular updates as the world expands. These downloads use peer-to-peer BitTorrent technology, and they may be blocked by your school’s firewall or packet shaper. You can receive the updates the old fashioned way from sites such as FilePlanet. Note, this also means you cannot simply “freeze” a machine until the end of the semester since World of Warcraft will be receiving updates on a roughly weekly basis.
- /chatlog is the command to save your text chats.
- If the students are going to enter the world as a group with a TA, you may wish to them speak with each other while playing game through an audio messenger such as Skype. This will allow them to speak instead of text chat and create a private channel from the other online players. If you have a large group, the best free option would probably be to set up a skypecast. - Skypecasting is a free service offered by Skype that allows a moderator to invite a fairly large number of guests to an online discussion. It is still in beta. You can find more information here: https://skypecasts.skype.com/skypecasts/home

Depending on your situation, you may want to consider other games. If the updates and monthly fee are an issue, take a look at Guild Wars. Guild Wars is similar to World of Warcraft, though less extensive. The virtual environment grows by purchasing expansion packs that function as well by themselves. This is unlike the World of Warcraft model where updates are added each month as a “free” and required download in exchange for the monthly fee. It provides different languages including German, French, and Italian along with the ability to choose a European server. That being said, I have not had much chance to play the game myself. Though Guild Wars states that they try to place players according to language, the boundary does not appear to be as distinct as it is in World of Warcraft where each language has its own server. Before you start with a class, be sure to play some in the target language and check that the environment of the game is not a mix of numerous European languages. If you teach Japanese, you will need a different game, though you should have no shortage of options. Final Fantasy is the most well known along with Ultima Online, though again, make sure you are getting the Japanese version with the ability to connect to servers in Japan.

Looking only at the cover of most video games, one would certainly not jump to the conclusion that they have a place in a rigorous academic curriculum. However, foreign languages are uniquely flexible. If the game provides authentic language content and requires communication in order to progress through the game—and our students are willing to spend hours of their time immersed in this environment—we can greatly increase not only their overall exposure to the language but their motivation to learn as well.

NOTES

1. James Paul Gee, “Reading as situated language: A sociocognitive perspective,” Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 44:8 (May 2001): pp. 714-715.2. Dwight Atkinson, “Toward a Sociocognitive Approach to Second Language Acquisition,” The Modern Language Journal 86:4 (2002): p. 536.3. See Barbara Rogoff, Apprenticeship in Thinking: Cognitive Development in Social Context (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990); Barbara Rogoff, “Cognition as a Collaborative Process” in D. Kuhn & R.S. Siegler (Eds.) Handbook of Child Psychology, Vol 2: Cognition, Perception, and Language, 5th Edition (New York: Wiley, 1998): pp. 679-744; Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).4. Amparo García-Carbonell, Begoña Montero, Beverly Rising and Frances Watts, “Simulation/Gaming and the Acquisition of Communicative Competence in Another Language,” Simulation & Gaming 32:4 (2001): p. 483.5. See Howard Rose, Design and construction of a virtual environment for Japanese language instruction (Unpublished master’s thesis, University of Washington, Seattle, 1996); Howard Rose and Mark Billinghurst, “Zengo Sayu: An immersive educational environment for learning Japanese,” Technical Report No. 4-95 (Seattle: Human Interface Technology Laboratory, University of Washington, 1995). (Both studies cited in K. Schwienhorst, “Why Virtual, Why Environments? Implementing Virtual Reality Concepts in Computer Assisted Language Learning,” Simulation & Gaming 23:2 (2002): p. 201.) See also Robin Scarcella and David Crookall, “Simulation/Gaming and Language Acquisition,” In D. Crookall & R. Oxford (Eds.), Simulation, Gaming and Language Learning (New York: Newbury House, 1990), pp. 223-238. (Cited in T.G. Saliés, “Promoting Strategic Competence: What Simulations Can Do for You,” Simulation and Gaming 33:3 (2002): p. 282.)6. Amparo García-Carbonell, Begoña Montero, Beverly Rising and Frances Watts, “Simulation/Gaming and the Acquisition of Communicative Competence in Another Language,” Simulation & Gaming 32:4 (2001): p. 486.
7. Amparo García-Carbonell, Begoña Montero Fleta, Beverly Rising and Frances Watts, “Simulation/Gaming and the Acquisition of Communicative Competence in Another Language,” Simulation & Gaming 32:4 (2001): p. 487.8. Nicholas Yee, “The Psychology of Massively Multi-User Online Role-Playing Games: Motivations, Emotional Investment, Relationships and Problematic Usage,” to appear in R. Schroder & A. Axelson (Eds.), Avatars at Work and Play: Collaboration and Interaction in Shared Virtual Environments (London: Springer Verlag, 2006): p. 9.9. Nicholas Yee, “The Psychology of Massively Multi-User Online Role-Playing Games: Motivations, Emotional Investment, Relationships and Problematic Usage,” to appear in R. Schroder & A. Axelson (Eds.), Avatars at Work and Play: Collaboration and Interaction in Shared Virtual Environments (London: Springer Verlag, 2006): pp. 9,10,15,25.10. Christine Cook, “Heading the Girl Game Revolution,” Christine Cook, http://www.peachpit.com/ Article accessed 9/3/06 at http://www.peachpit.com/articles/printerfriendly.asp?p=424448

SimTect 2007 "Simulations- Improving Capability & Competitiveness"

2006-11-24T06:16:00.000+11:00

SimTect 2007 has been announced as being held at the Brisbane Convention Centre, June 4th- 7th.

The titile of this year's exhibition and conference is "Simulation - Improving Capability and Competitiveness."

The conference convenor, Jawahar Bhalla, posted the following message on the SimTect 2007 homepage-
In this increasingly outcome and efficiency focused environment, organisations strive to do more, and to do it better. This applies to customers and suppliers alike, in all sectors — including defence, aerospace, mining, construction and transport.

Our theme “Simulation - Improving Capability and Competitiveness” focuses on the opportunities that simulation provides to understand and improve the way we operate now, and into the future. It encompasses the use of simulation for experimentation and analysis, concept and capability development, system design refinement and validation, process and systems modelling, and in the training of users.

The SimTecT 2007 Conference and Exhibition builds on the success of the previous twelve SimTecTs to provide an opportunity for the simulation community to discover the latest research and product advances, and to discuss applications with developers and users.

More info is available at-
http://www.siaa.asn.au/simtect/2007/2007.htm

Gamers seeking real thing face recruitment barrage

2006-11-24T06:10:00.000+11:00

From The Age...

Gamers seeking real thing face recruitment barrage
September 26, 2006

http://tinyurl.com/tbb4h

The Defence Force's latest battleground is online.
By Nick Miller.

THEY'RE young, teeming with testosterone and they want to blow things up.

But the Australian Defence Force's key recruiting demographic watches less and less TV, preferring to go online or play video games. So the ADF, with online partner Visual Jazz, is putting free war games on the internet as a recruiting tool.

Last week Melbourne-based Visual Jazz released Extreme Battleships, a 21st century upgrade of the classic game designed for the Windows Live Messenger service.

Users can play against any of Messenger's 4.4 million Australian members or other MSN contacts overseas.

The strategy game showcases the Royal Australian Navy, its ships, technology and job opportunities, and links back to the main recruiting site at defencejobs.gov.au.

Last October the company released the fight-flight sim ADF: Aviator featuring 3D virtual aerial combat missions around the world.

More than 18,000 people have downloaded it. But this pales in comparison with genre leader America's Army, which boasts 7.5 million registered players.

Visual Jazz general manager Konrad Spilva says he used America's Army as a case study when he pitched the idea of ADF: Aviator three years ago.

"Their target market of 17 to 25-year-old males spends a lot of time playing computer games, rather than watching TV," he says.

Aviator was put together in four months. The development team travelled to air force bases and interviewed pilots about real-life missions but the main complaint from hard-core gamers was that it lacked the sophistication of most PC and Xbox games.

"They want more missions, more aircraft, they want to know more about actual ADF tactics - combat realism," Mr Spilva says. The team is working on a new version of the game that will provide all that, plus a multiplayer element.

With Battleships, the team is targeting MSN Messenger's 4.4 million registered users, the vast majority of whom are aged 15-24.

Initially the ADF thought about sponsoring an existing game but instead decided to make their own to take advantage of new graphical functions in the recent Live Messenger upgrade.
In its first four days the game had more than 55,000 visitors. By Sunday about 20 per cent were returning players.

Mr Spilva says his company has no ethical problems with making war games designed to entice the nation's online youth to try the real thing.

"It is actually a nice feeling working on something that does more good than harm, rather than just selling a product," he says. "It's not just moving something off a shelf, it's helping the navy and air force which do an important job."

Earlier this month Prime Minister John Howard admitted a recruiting crisis had left the Australian Defence Force short of about 1200 personnel.

He announced a $10 billion plan to increase the army's size by two battalions, or 2600 personnel, with more generous pay and better conditions.

Defence Minister Brendan Nelson loves the idea of online war games with a recruiting edge, says Richard Howarth, national marketing manager for defence force recruiting.

"(Aviator and Battleships) are part of an overall strategy to grow our market interest a little bit broader, beyond those who are 100 per cent interested in a career with the ADF," Mr Howarth says.

"It's there to be fun and engaging. But if you want to find out more about the ships, or technical trade roles in the navy, there's a click-back to (the recruiting website)."

About 70 per cent of the navy's target recruiting demographic has broadband internet and wants a broadband experience, he says.

With that in mind the ADF is creating a "navy lifestyle" site, to be launched next month, which uses Flash and video to show the real nature of life at sea.

Bill Gates Speech to High School Students on the Realities of Life!

2006-11-22T10:39:00.000+11:00

Now this is not directly related to the use of simulaitons and games in education, but I did get a good laugh out of it....

To anyone with kids of any age, here's some advice.

Bill Gates recently gave a speech at a High School about 11 things they did not and will not learn in school.

He talks about how feel-good, politically correct teachings created a generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this concept set them up for failure in the real world.

Rule 1: Life is not fair - get used to it!

Rule 2: The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity.

Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.

Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.

If you can read this - Thank a teacher!

Queensland Police - Incident Command Training

2006-11-06T13:40:00.000+11:00

In conjunction with QMI Solutions Ltd, Queensland Police Service has implemented a virtual reality simulation system for training Police Officers incident command.

Read on at-
http://www.qmisolutions.com.au/article.asp?aid=77

The Challenge
Most people's first reaction to an incident or hazardous situation is to contact emergency services. Without doubt, there is a public expectation that these response teams will automatically know how to deal with and resolve any given situation - particularly police departments called upon to deal with all types of scenarios, from domestic violence situations, burglaries and traffic incidents to potential terrorist threats.

What isn’t so visible is the high level of training and experience that goes into consistently meeting these expectations. Yet the very nature of emergency service departments’ work can sometimes limit the level to which training can be taken. Mock-ups of ‘real-life’ situations can be very difficult, sometimes dangerous, expensive, and more often than not, impossible exercises to carry out.

Queensland Police has found a way around this, becoming the first police organisation in the world to use virtual reality technology to enhance training methods. Using powerful visualisation technology, situations considered too dangerous or costly to recreate in the real world, such as fires, terrorist attacks, hostage situations or traffic accidents, are now possible through virtual recreations of live situations.

The Solution
Queensland Police has piloted a training programme using Silicon Graphics visualisation solutions to prepare officers for all manner of day-to-day situations and potentially dangerous occurrences – in a safe, controllable and measurable training environment. The training application was developed by "Reality Works", a service bureau at QMI Solutions in Brisbane. The application is powered by a Silicon Graphics Reality Center installation at QMI that consists of an Onyx 3000 visual supercomputer with three powerful projectors displaying a single merged image on a large spherical screen with a 160° field of view, completely immersing users in the environment.

Project officer for Queensland Police, John Rolfe, states "Reality Works offered us a unique method of supplementing our Incident Command Training. Using highly realistic ‘live’ scenarios immerses participants and puts theory into practice. This training environment enables us to significantly enhance officers’ situational awareness, decision making and command and control skills. The facility also allows us to run between 6-12 officers through the scenarios in a session, significantly reducing the cost and time usually involved in individual ‘real-life’ training".

"We were impressed with the professionalism and efficiency which the Reality Works and SGI team showed in progressing the project from proposal to implementation stage. Within just 8 weeks the whole development, including building the 3D model scenario, was complete", he continued.

The Results
The pilot project was designed to simulate the initial response of officers at an incident. In the virtual reality room, groups of officers are immersed in the virtual scenario and required to assess, contain and respond to the situation being presented to them.

Meanwhile, new information and unexpected elements are constantly being introduced to the scenario by a group of senior officers who are in contact with the trainees by radio from another control room.

"The SGI system is highly intelligent, interactive and adaptive – as such, the computer-generated scenarios present trainees with completely different outcomes dependent on whatever new elements the controllers introduce and decisions made, making the training as comprehensive and realistic as possible," said Andy Dennison, Reality Works Centre Manager.

Extensions to the initial environment might include:
- Movement of traffic and people around a scene
- Weather
- Time of day
- Audio cues such as radio messages, traffic noise, gunshots

Each participant takes a turn in the hot-seat where they are required to take command of the situation, navigate around the scene, determine how they want to run the operation and deploy resources around the area as appropriate.

"This would mean tactically placing officers or cars at certain locations, and assessing whether to involve additional resources - such as dog squads or specialist support. It’s vital for officers to have the ability to quickly assess, contain and resolve any contingencies ," said John Rolfe.

Once the exercise is complete, reviewers can navigate to an overhead view of the site for a debriefing exercise and evaluation of the participant's courses of action, and have the ability to overlay a ‘model’ answer that shows the most appropriate course of action.

The Future
Given the success of the pilot project the QPS is considering using QMI's Reality Centre as a regular feature of Incident Command Training. Looking to the future we may build on current abilities with virtual training for officers in environments other than the one already created.

For more information or advice, please contact:
Consultant: Geoff Wakeley
Phone: +61 7 3364 0700
Email: info@qmisolutions.com.au

Virtual world: tax man cometh

2006-11-06T08:24:00.000+11:00

Some food for thought....

Virtual world: tax man cometh
Email Print Normal font Large font NICK MILLER
October 31, 2006
http://tinyurl.com/y74ut9

Best consult your accountant before selling your Level 60 gnome warlock, for you may end up facing a terrible foe: the tax man.

Virtual lifers making virtual fortunes in virtual worlds such as World of Warcraft or Second Life could face a real tax bill, the Australian Tax Office warns.

"If you are getting a monetary benefit then it's not treated any differently
- normal rules apply," an ATO spokeswoman says - in what is believed to be a world first.
"Your income will not be treated any differently than if you earned it working nine to five in an office."

If a virtual transaction has real world implications - if it can be attributed a monetary value - it attracts the attention of the Tax Office. Sites such as slexchange.com set rates for swapping Second Life's Linden dollars for "real" money.

"The real world value of a transaction may form part of your taxable income, even if it is in Linden dollars," the ATO spokeswoman says. "In addition, there may be GST to consider."
In other words, if you are turning over the equivalent of more than $50,000 selling virtual jewellery to Second Life avatars, you must get an ABN and register for GST.

People trading in virtual worlds should consider very carefully whether they are conducting a business or a hobby, the Tax Office advises.

If conducting a business, then all money earned is generally assessable income. But expenses, such as the cost of computer equipment for accessing the virtual world, can be deducted. Any loss can be offset against other income.

A US congressional committee is tackling similar issues, debating whether new regulations should give the Internal Revenue Service the power to tax virtual economies.
The Republican head of the committee, Jim Saxton of New Jersey, has said taxing virtual transactions would be a mistake.

The online world Second Life hosts a thriving and rapidly growing community. Companies such as Toyota and computer maker Sun Microsystems have established virtual presences there. Adidas and American Apparel sell clothes and accessories for people to dress their avatars (animated characters) there, and Starwood Hotels has built a virtual version of "aloft", a new hotel chain it plans to open in the real world in 2008.

Players spend about $US350,000 ($A459,000) a day on average, or about $US130 million a year, and usage is growing in double-digit terms each month. At the time of writing $257 Linden dollars cost $US1.

Adapting Commercial Off-The-Shelf Games for Military Simulation

2006-11-04T21:11:00.000+11:00

Adapting Commercial Off-The-Shelf Games for Military Simulation
The Defence Science & Technolgy Agency http://www.dsta.gov.sg/DSTA_Horizons/2005/06.htm

ABSTRACT
The interactive digital medium of computer games holds promise for application in the realm of military simulation. This paper presents the Defence Science & Technology Agency (DSTA) and the Singapore Armed Forces’ (SAF) initiative to leverage commercial computer games for military applications, how several SAF schools have adopted modified commercial games to enhance classroom instruction, and our future plans to extend the use of games in the SAF.

INTRODUCTION
It is a common perception that computer games and military simulators are very different entities. Many games entertain by drawing participants into a virtual world that calls for a suspension of the user’s disbelief; military simulators, on the other hand, seek to attain a high level of realism in order to derive meaningful simulation results. In reality, they both share a common set of enabling technologies, and it is beneficial to both the game industry and military simulation community to tap each other’s innovative solutions (Zyda and Sheehan, 1997). This paper describes the DSTA-SAF initiative to exploit computer games for military applications, the approach adopted in successfully modifying suitable commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) games to find relevance for training, and our future plans.

CONVERGENCE OF SIMULATION AND GAMES
Military simulation systems evolved as sophisticated applications that run on high-powered computer workstations, while computer games were initially programmed by hobbyists to run on machines like the Commodore Amiga (Herz, 2002). However, the availability of faster processors, larger hard disks, and graphic accelerators to PC owners enabled game developers to leverage advances by computer scientists in areas such as real-time 3D graphics, artificial intelligence and networking. The increasing power of the PC heralded the rise of the extremely lucrative game industry that has since produced numerous titles that begin to rival military simulators in terms of the level of detail and richness of experience.

GAMING IN THE MILITARY
Indeed, the potential of computer games as a cost-effective conduit to motivate and engage a game-savvy generation of soldiers in repetitive tactical thinking “anytime, anywhere”, has not gone unnoticed among various armed forces.
In 1995, the US Marine Corps had the prescience to take advantage of the Doom shareware in the development of Marine Doom, which was designed to hone the teamwork and coordination of four-soldier fire teams (Riddell, 1997). The advent of fully 3D games presented new possibilities for military application. In the past few years, the US Army has spent millions of dollars to work with developers to create various games, including America’s Army, which started out as a recruitment tool but has since been used to train future officers at West Point (Roth, 2003). Another such game is Full Spectrum Warrior, which aims to train squad leaders in real-life combat tactics of urban warfare (Reuters, 2003).

While these games developed by the US Army have since been introduced into the mainstream gaming community, several COTS games such as Delta Force 2, Steel Beasts, and Falcon 4.0 have also been adapted by various armed forces to enhance their relevance to military training (Macedonia, 2002; Calvert, 2003; Zyda and Sheehan, 1997).

LEVERAGING COTS GAMES THROUGH MODS
Adapting a game for military application typically involves engaging a game developer to create customised game content under strict licensing agreements. However, this may soon be the exception rather than the rule. Game-development toolkits, once the tightly-guarded bastion of game developers, have been made increasingly available by developers, to the delight of an emerging breed of gamers – the mod makers (The Straits Times, 2003). With access to the tools used to create games, these technically-inclined gamers are able to create new content – characters, weapons, vehicles, maps, missions – collectively forming modifications (or mods, in gaming jargon) of the commercial game, which they then freely share with other gaming enthusiasts over the Internet.

A good mod will invariably garner plaudits from the gaming community, and the status and acknowledgement awarded its creator is motivation enough for mod makers to spend countless hours creating new content (Herz, 2002). The game developers also stand to benefit as mods become a source of new content that extends the shelf life of games (Smed and Hakonen, 2003). It is this symbiotic relationship between game developers and mod makers borne out of the unique social ecology of games that we wish to leverage in the modification of COTS games for the SAF.

THE DSTA-SAF EXPERIENCE
As a conscript armed force, the SAF has a large pool of young national servicemen, many of whom are eager gamers. Several full-time National Servicemen (NSF) displayed great interest and aptitude as mod makers during various formation trials conducted in early 2003 to identify suitable COTS games that may supplement the SAF’s existing training curriculum. Under the direction of the officers-in-charge, these NSFs embarked on projects to create new game content specific to their respective arms formations, thus enabling the formations to quickly move ahead and incorporate these relevant mods in their training curriculum. In addition, students from Singapore’s Nanyang Polytechnic with skills in digital media design and information technology were engaged to create localised game content for the SAF’s use across the various arms (see Figure 2).

There are many benefits in leveraging COTS games to create mods for the SAF. First, there is low risk and little cost involved. In developing a game for commercial release, the developers would no doubt have allocated a significant budget towards the research and development of a robust game engine with leading-edge technology. By creating mods of COTS games, we are thus able to leverage the sophisticated game technology already in place for a fraction of the cost.

Secondly, the game-development toolkits released by the game developers provide a layer of abstraction from the underlying code, allowing experienced mod makers to create game assets with a relatively short turn-around time. While the tools may take some time to master, there is a wealth of online resources in the form of tutorials, videos, and forums to help novices shorten their learning curve. Our specific approach of involving NSF and polytechnic students in the process of creating mods for the SAF allows us not only to tap on their interest and skill sets, but also serves as an effective vehicle to reach out to this technology-savvy generation and welcome their contributions towards the SAF’s innovative approach to training.

Whilst COTS games offer proven game technology, the cultural infrastructure of the gaming communities also facilitates an informal yet invaluable source of feedback for the verification and validation of game models. In traditional military simulators, much care is given to verify and validate the accuracy of the simulation models, often requiring many man-hours dedicated to model testing. In the case of COTS tank, naval, and flight simulation games or other combat simulation games, the experienced soldiers amongst the pool of avid gamers will ferret out any inaccuracies in the game models and highlight them via reviews and forums. These errors may then be rectified by the developer in subsequent game patches, resulting in better fidelity game models.

CONSTRUCTING A WHOLE NEW VIRTUAL WORLD
Armed with the arsenal of professional game-development toolkits and third party utilities, mod makers have unleashed their creativity in pushing the bounds of the underlying game engines. A salient example is The Chain of Command, a mod of Operation Flashpoint developed by a diverse group of dedicated fans brought together by the common desire to create large scale strategic combat simulations on top of the original section-level tactical first-person shooter. In addition to strategic level gameplay, the mod makers have also created artillery units, torpedoes, mines, and combat divers to extend the spectrum of possible operations in the game.

The exact process of mod-making differs from game to game but they are likely to involve similar steps. The remainder of this section serves to provide an idea of what is involved in the creation of an SAF mod of Operation Flashpoint.

New game assets such as SAF weapons and vehicles as well as localised buildings and vegetation are modelled using Oxygen Light, the official modelling tool released by Bohemia Interactive Studio (BIS), the game’s developers. Photo-realistic textures prepared from actual photographs are then applied to the polygons of the 3D models. Key components of the model are identified with predetermined tags in order for the engine to associate the appropriate attributes with them. For instance, both ends of the SAR21 rifle barrel have to be tagged so that the engine can calculate the bullet’s trajectory.

After the game assets have been modelled, their in-game behaviour is specified in a configuration file that provides information to the game engine via parameters such as vehicle speed, armour values, effective range and damage of ammunition. The daunting task of defining all the parameters of a new game asset is eased considerably by using the parameters defined for an existing similar object. For instance, a new armoured personnel carrier like the SAF Bionix Infantry Fighting Vehicle could inherit the parameters of the existing M113 armored personnel carrier, leaving the mod maker to change only the parameters for which the Bionix differs from the M113.

Custom maps may also be created using Visitor 2 Light, the official terrain editor released by BIS. Geo-specific terrain may be modelled based on the Digital Elevation Model (DEM) of geographical areas. However, there is some pre-processing that needs to be done to the DEM file before it may be imported into the terrain editor. Alternatively, a generic heightmap may be used in the modelling of geo-typical terrain.

Once the elevation profile has been imported into Visitor, ground textures such as grass, rock, or sand are applied to different parts of the terrain. Localised objects such as kampung huts, a Command HQ building, lamp posts, and vegetation such as mangrove, coconut, and banana trees created in Oxygen Light are then imported into the project and may be placed on the island as desired. Lastly, a network of roads is designed.

After the custom map and game assets are completed, everything is put together in the mission editor that is shipped with the game. The mission editor provides a fairly intuitive graphical user interface for gamers to define simple rule-sets in the creation of new missions. More complex scenarios may be designed with additional scripting of the computer-controlled units’ behaviour.

CHALLENGES
A strong element of creativity is integral to game object modelling and mission design to make for compelling gameplay. It is this creative aspect that sets COTS games apart from traditional military simulators and it should be pre-eminent in any effort to adapt COTS games to incorporate military training curriculum.

A more difficult challenge to surmount in adapting COTS games for the military is the lack of access to the underlying source code. This presents limitations to the degree that the original game may be modified. For instance, the important phases of mission planning and After-Action Review (AAR) may not be easily incorporated in a game without tweaking the source code. However, there is a glimmer of hope that more developers would embrace the open source movement that has been proven commercially viable by developers such as id Software. The decision taken by id Software to release the source code of Doom and Quake has given rise to a myriad of extensively modified games (Au, 2002). If more game developers adopted the same mantra of free information access, it would pave the way for more extensive modifications of COTS games to meet specific military interests.

USE OF MODS IN THE SAF
The versatility of Operation Flashpoint mods has found innovative applications in the various SAF schools to engage trainees in achieving learning objectives. Incorporating these mods into the training curriculum has yielded additional benefits such as savings in training resources and increased realism in conducting drills involving various members of a combat unit. The following paragraphs highlight the initiatives taken by the School of Armour (SOA) and School of Combat Engineers (SOCE) in creating custom game content to suit their specific needs.

The SOA has embarked on an ambitious project to create models of its vehicles such as the Ultra OWS, SM1, Bionix, and Bronco (see Figure 5) for use in custom training scenarios. Played in multi-player mode, the missions provide an environment for trainees to practise the various drills as well as hone their situation awareness and team-fighting skills. The Ultra OWS and SM1 models, along with a simple block mission, may be downloaded from the portal for SAF National Servicemen at http://www.miw.com.sg and played with the COTS Operation Flashpoint: Game of the Year edition.

The SOCE has also created new content such as concertina wire, mines, booby traps, and other equipment specific to their scope of operations and incorporated these in multi-player missions to enhance classroom instruction. This has proven to be an effective way of conducting dry runs as a preamble for actual field lessons or exercises. Trainees are able to quickly gain a clear understanding of the ground picture and their respective roles through hands-on gaming sessions. This translates into cost savings in the conduct of field exercises; for instance, there is less wastage of materials compared to previously when trainees were more unfamiliar with their drills. Besides enhancing classroom instruction, mods are also explored as an alternative to field lessons as a wet weather programme, or to overcome limitations of manpower and resources, and safety considerations that result in unrealistic battlefield scenarios.

FUTURE PLANS
As a repertoire of SAF mods is being built, some of these may be made accessible through online gaming. This would be an effective medium to reach out to NSFs and constantly engage them in tactical decision-making. While mods find even more application for training, we are also exploring its potential for military experimentation. The versatility of mods lends itself as a promising proxy world for the evaluation of war-fighting concepts.

SUMMARY AND PERSPECTIVE
As PC technology advances in response to market demand, COTS games will continue to grow in sophistication and complement military simulators in providing virtual environments that are rich in detail. This trend, coupled with the low cost of games and the ubiquity of PCs has motivated a closer examination of the relevance of COTS games to the SAF. The release of game-development toolkits by commercial game developers has been a boon in providing us a means to create customised content and mission scenarios to suit the SAF’s training needs with a short turn-around time.

The initial projects undertaken by SOA and SOCE represent the first steps in our commitment to fully explore and harness COTS games in engaging our next generation of soldiers. Overall, the results and feedback have been positive, paving the way for future projects as we seek other ways that this commercial interactive digital medium may cross over to meet the needs of military simulation in the SAF.

REFERENCES
Au, W. J. (2002) Triumph of the mod, Salon.com - Technology and Business.
Calvert, J. (2003) Danish Army to train with Steel Beasts, GameSpot, 6 January 2003.
Herz, J. C. (2002) Computer Games and the Military: An Industry View. Defense Horizons, 11.
Macedonia, M. (2002) Games Soldiers Play. IEEE Spectrum, March, pp.32-37.
Reuters (2003) Video game hones US soldiers’ fighting skills. Retrieved from The Straits Times, May 17 2003.
Riddell, R. (1997) Doom Goes to War. Wired Magazine, 5/04.
Roth, P. (2003) ‘America’s Army’ is Big Hit, And Not Just with Civilians. Wall Street Journal, May 16 2003.
Smed, J. and Hakonen, H. (2003) Towards a Definition of a Computer Game. TUCS Technical Report (553).
The Straits Times (2003) Here come the mod makers. The Straits Times, 5 December 2003.
Zyda, M. and Sheehan, J. (eds). (1997) Modeling and Simulation: Linking Entertainment and Defense, National Research Council.

BIOGRAPHY
Gwenda Fong Su-Yi is a Development Engineer (Simulation and Wargaming Solutions Centre). She works with the SAF Centre for Military Experimentation in the design, conduct, and analysis of experiments that explore future warfighting concepts. Her involvements include live experiments that aim to shape the Command Post of the Future, as well as the exploration of operational concepts using agent-based simulation. A PSC Overseas Merit Scholar, she pursued her studies at Stanford University, USA, where she obtained her BSc. (Dist.) and MSc. in Electrical Engineering in 2001.

Why Commerical Off the Shelf Games Will Not Work in Education? And What Is The Alternative?

2006-11-04T20:55:00.000+11:00

There's always two sides to a story- in this case, an argument against the use of COTS in education... Luke

Why Commerical Off the Shelf Games Will Not Work in Education? And What Is The Alternative?
From the Random Walk In Learning blog at http://tinyurl.com/ydvrbt

Abstract: The paper argues that commercial off the shelf games lack the key features to become an effective tool. The alternative of using role play simulation generator, in which the content provider and teacher have full control is a better and more affordable alternative.

Abstract: games, education, role play simulation

Introduction
There is a lot of hype on using commercial games in education lately [1]. James Paul Gee [2] shows us that everyone can learn something from games. Clark Aldrich [3] talked about how to select, research, build, sell, deploy, and measure the right type of educational simulation for the right situation. John C. Beck, Mitchell Wade [4] argues that gamers glean valuable knowledge from their pastime and that they’re poised to use that knowledge to transform the workplace. The premise is that commercial games are interesting to educators because they are immersive and offer the possibility of a higher fidelity learning environment. Commercial games are engaging and hence by using commercial games, educators can both adapt to the learners and engage them. Commercial game is the modern Trojan Horse for conquering the minds of our next generation – so many of us hope!

Unfortunately, this is not an informed and balanced expectation when applied to formal education, especially when a specific knowledge and learning outcomes are required for a board cohort of learners. There are millions of failed commercial games. So not all commercial games are engaging. Different genres of games attract different gamers. So even successful commercial games are not universally engaging. Commercial game designers single-mindedly create engaging games. When we try to add additional requirements, such as delivering learning outcomes, the result is disastrous. Game designers acknowledge the problem as evidenced by all the conferences about “serious games” lately [5].

Successful commercial games cost millions to develop. Education does not have that money. Even if education does have that money, one would question the wisdom of investing such good sum of money in commercial game design without the evidence of feasibility and effectiveness.

A commercial game may cover a topic in a subject domain. Education covers thousands of topics in thousands of domains. Again, in order to cover many topics in many subject domains, we need thousands or millions of games. Learners do not have the time to play all these games. Education will not be able to afford the cost of building such games.

Angela McFarlane, Anne Sparrowhawk & Ysanne Heald [6] pointed out also that many of the skills valuable for successful game play, and recognised by both teachers and parents, are only implicitly valued within a school context. Teachers and parents both valued the conversation, discussion, and varied thinking skills demanded by some of the games employed. However, these alone could not justify the use of the games within a crowded school curriculum.

However, game developers and gamers do tell us one very important message. Games can engage some learners and can be a vehicle to provide learning. Quoting Angela McFarlane, Anne Sparrowhawk & Ysanne Heald again, Games provide a forum in which learning arises as a result of tasks stimulated by the content of the games, knowledge is developed through the content of the game, and skills are developed as a result of playing the game. The argument here is not to discount the fundamentals of games. I argue here that commercial off the shelf games are unsuitable for use in formal education. We can find valuable lessons and design concepts from games to better do our job.

Some Uses of Commerical Off the Shelf Games
SimCity [7] is one of the most successful commercial games and has been used quite extensively by educators. Player assumes the role of the chief architect and mayor of a city. Player is responsible for building and managing the city. As the player builds the city, in-game SIMS (simulated citizens) would come to the city, engage in different activities and generate a tax base for the player to continue developing the city. In the paper Playing With Urban Life: How SimCity Influences Planning Culture [8], Daniel G. Lobo explained that the work of Forrester, Alexander, and Rybczynski have served as SimCity’s foundational ingredients. It seems to be an endorsement of the use of SimCity for urban planning courses where Forrester, Alexander, and Rybczynski’s models are examined. However, Lobo pointed out that the SimCity’s game goal is to build a megacity and the player is given absolute power of being the “god” in the simulator. “Unwieldy growth and megalomaniacal, destructive behavior are the two poles of city operation and the player’s most likely courses of action.” This is not the kind of message we want to give to our learners. As a commercial game and limited by the demand of engagement, the game goal cannot be modified. These undermine the usefulness of the game in serious educational settings.

X-plane [9] is a very interesting flight simulator. Firstly, it is developed and marketed by a one-man company called Laminar Research based in the owner’s home. Secondly, people have been asking how he can compete in the flight-sim business, make money and survive since 1994. The answer lies in the way x-plane has engaged a wide community which supported the development. Thirdly, this simulator allows users to create planes - different type of planes including Space Shuttle [10] and simulated flight in the atmosphere of Mars [11] to amazing accuracy of the Physics involved. Fourthly and most incredibly, x-plane received FAA approval to train pilots towards their commercial certificate [12]!

Amazing as it may sound, I downloaded a demo copy and tried to “play” with x-plane to fulfill one of my childhood dreams of becoming a pilot. After installing the software, I looked at my monitor and my brain went blank. I knew I wanted to fly, but to where and why that particular city. Suddenly, I did not know what I wanted to do with the simulator! I lacked a “game goal”. May be I should have a friend with me and compete to land the plane in bad weather or do some flying upside down tricks.

These two stories tell us two things.

First, educational use of game will require the game’s underlying black box to be opened. SimCity’s failure of being a good educational game is because of its underlying black box does not allow educator to either modify the underlying models or to adjust the game goal to match the curriculum.

Second, an amazing game like x-plane is not engaging to me (even I have a childhood dream of being a pilot) because I have not formulated a game goal. X-plane does not have an implicit game goal, making it more like a simulator than a game. X-plane is successful enough to be endorsed for FAA certification because of the accurate underlying Physics-engine modeling of the aerodynamics of the air-foils. It is basically a simulator. Learners need to create their own game goals. The other power of X-plane is that people can create different planes for x-plane. Hence if you in the process of obtaining a commercial pilot license for a particular plane, you can either get that plane from someone or create your own. SimCity’s failure as a simulator is exactly because there is an implicit game goal in the game – and the game goal does not necessarily match (in some cases, actually contradicts) the learning objective!

The Role of Game Design
I started this essay by proclaiming that commercial, off the shelf, games will not work in education. I also admit there are critical elements of game designs which are useful and informative in our endeavour to create engaging learning. Next, I will explain what I have learnt in the last 5 years as Fablusi [13] creator. Fablusi is an online role play simulation platform on which educators can create and deliver their own role play simulations. I am in a privileged position to be able to see many engaging role play simulations being prepared and delivered to hundreds of learners in a broad range of subject areas.

Game Goals And Learning Objectives
Here, I want to make explicit the distinction between game goals and learning objectives. Game goal is the position a player wants to achieve at the end of the game within the context of the game. It is the “winning” position. Learning objectives are things an external institute (one who provided the games in the first place) wants the players to acquire during and/or after playing the game.

Game goal is a powerful motivator. If the game goal requires the learning of something, players will have a strong incentive to get that knowledge in order to achieve the game goal. The essence of “goal-based learning” can be summarised by Roger Schank’s [14] question: “Why would anyone learn anything if not to help in the pursuit of a goal?” [15]. By creating a scenario and giving a learner a role in the scenario, Schank set up a goal for the learner. In pursuit of the game goal, the learner seeks out advice from experts (provided as short video clips in one implementation I have seen), makes decisions and eventually achieves the game goal. Although I called that particular implementation a glorified multiple choice, there is obviously an engaging facet for many learners.

The Scarlet Letter Simulation [16], a role play simulation [17], is “a psychological examination of the values, mores, and traditions impregnating American literature as portrayed by Nathaniel Hawthorne's characterization of early American Puritan culture. The simulation aims to explore the themes of sin, hypocrisy, repression, self knowledge and the fall of Puritan society. Players will experience the conflicts inherent in questioning why individuals struggle with their actions and feelings, why individuals feel the need to chastise others, and how individuals deal with the conflicting desires of nature and the demands society”. Some of the roles in the simulation are taken from the novel, some are created by the simulation designers Mary Noggle and Roni Linser. To start the game, players are asked to write a “role profile” which gives a description of the role (and the hidden agenda of the role). This set up a game goal and the ownership of the role. Unlike Schank’s implementation, the game goals for each player are not the same although there is a common learning objective. Furthermore, as the game progresses, the game goal can and may change. We [18] call this dynamic goal-based learning.

Again in the Scarlet Letter Simulation, the game started as the moderator released a “kick-start” episode – a compelling reason for the roles to act. In fact, in this simulation, two kick-start episodes were used. The second one brought the players to a time 15 years later.

Engagement is about engaging the mind. When the players own the role they play and have the freedom to do what they wanted to do – and enjoyed/suffered the consequence of their in game actions, the engagement is overwhelming. When the Scarlet Letter Simulation was used, all students read the text thoroughly, some several times in order to understand the characters, the circumstances surrounding the story and the historical context. This was the first time in the history of that course that all students did extensive research beyond the basic reading in order to play the role. This is the power of game goal.

Commercial games are technically challenging to create, partly because of the sophisticated rendering of fast moving graphics. As a commercial game, production value counts. However, judging from purely “engage-ability” point of view, the engagement of the mind is more important and valuable. Of course, if education can afford it, there is no reason why we should not adopt high fidelity rendering. When a balance needs to be made, I will lean towards engaging the mind rather than on production value of the game.

Creating role play simulation on the Fablusi platform is free and requires little to no technical knowledge. This does not imply creating an engaging role play simulation is easy. But, at least a content provider can focus on the core value – delivering the required knowledge and learning outcome. High value graphic production is optional. Like chess, the production value of the chess pieces is secondary to the engaging nature of the game.

Conclusion
I believe that a direct adoption of commercial off the shelf game, an attractive proposal as it might look at first glance, is not the best approach we should take. Rather, I suggest that we should look beyond games and identify what really capture the minds of our students. Engagement is about engaging the mind. Creativity is about the creativity of the students, not the game designer.

In this essay, I have shared with the readers several key messages. The most important one is about the design of game goals which must align with learning objectives. If a game is engaging and the game goal is compelling, the players will master what is required to achieve the goal.

The limitation of commercial off the shelf game is the lack of transparency of the underlying game goals and inflexibility to modify the game goal. Successful games used in education are more like simulators. The teacher still needs to design appropriate game goals to gradually lead learners to the learning outcome. Fablusi online role play simulation platform provides an engaging platform based on an universal game genre (we role play since we are born) where content providers can model a social environment, set game goals and deliver the role play simulation in matters of days.

I suggest we should modify our workshop title to: Workshop on the Design of Educational Environment to deliver Pedagogical Games Goals.

Reference
[1] See for example Begona Gros, (July 2003) The Impact of digital games in education, http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue8_7/xyzgros/index.html
[2] James Paul Gee (2003), What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy
[3] Clark Aldrich (2005), Learning by Doing: A Comprehensive Guide to Simulations, Computer Games, and Pedagogy in e-Learning and Other Educational Experiences
[4] John C. Beck, Mitchell Wade (2004), Got Game: How the Gamer Generation Is Reshaping Business Forever (Hardcover)
[5] See Serious Games Initiative (http://www.seriousgames.org/index2.html);
Serious Games Summit (http://www.seriousgamessummit.com/); Game Develops Conference
(http://www.gdconf.com/conference/seriousgamessummit.htm); and many other conferences just in 2006.
[6] Angela McFarlane, Anne Sparrowhawk & Ysanne Heald (2005), Report on the educational use of games,
online http://educationarcade.org/files/videos/conf2005/Angela%20MacFarlane-2.pdf
[7] http://simcity.ea.com/
[8] http://www.americancity.org/article.php?id_article=21
[9] http://www.x-plane.com/
[10] http://www.x-plane.com/orbiter.html
[11] http://www.x-plane.com/mars.html
[12] http://www.x-plane.com/FTD.html
[13] http://www.fablusi.com
[14] http://www.engines4ed.org/hyperbook/misc/rcs.html
[15] Schank, R. 1992. Goal-based scenarios. Chicago: Northwestern University Institute for the Learning Sciences.
http://cogprints.org/624/00/V11ANSEK.html (The original context of “goal” is clearly articulated in the first sentence of Schank’s paper: “Every aspect of human behavior involves the pursuit of goals.” Here I am not particular keen to distinguish between life-long goal or game goal. The idea applies to whether is learner is pursuing a life-long goal or a short-term game goal.)
[16] Mary Noggle (2005) A Novel Simulation for the Literature Classroom, online: http://www.simplay.net/LOW/papers05/novel_simulation.pdf
[17] http://www.fablusi.com/renderer/default.asp?simID=rps2_94osy-1jpg
[18] Som Naidu, Albert Ip & Roni Linser (2000), Dynamic Goal-Based Role-Play Simulation on the Web: A Case Study,
online: http://ifets.ieee.org/periodical/vol_3_2000/b05.html

Wendy Harmer- Warlike family fun

2006-11-02T09:59:00.000+11:00

Wendy harmer has weighed in on the disucssions about World of Warcraft- food for thought...
http://tinyurl.com/y4y7t6

Wendy Harmer
October 31, 2006
Next

The debate is perennial, but at least one family finds real benefits in video gaming.
THE familiar "thwack, swish , thwack , clank. AAAARGH!" coming from the computer room tells me my eight-year-old son is grinding in the World of Warcraft. He's belting the hell out of assorted Taurens and Undead with his level 30 Paladin, but little does the young bloke know that there's a bigger battle being waged off-screen.

The forces of the Horde and the Alliance are hard at it again this week, debating the merits of the on-line game, which now boasts some 5 million players worldwide. A new exhibition at London's Science Museum asks the question: Are video games a blessing or a curse? Opinions are as widely divergent as the traverse across The Great Sea between the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor.

You know the arguments by now: video games are either turning our kids into brain-dead, addicted cyber-lumps or training a super-race of analytical multi-taskers. Of course, the video game debate is a replay of the television argument that still rages half a century later. My father, a primary school teacher for some 40 years, thinks TV is one of the greatest educational tools ever invented. I feel the same way about video games. And, I believe, there's only one sure way to battle the so-called evils of on-line gaming - play right alongside your kids.

My father spent many hours watching television with his four children. He de-constructed the magic of the ads: "That toy racing car doesn't go by itself. You have to push it with your hand."
"Awww, Dad."

He wrecked many a TV show too: "There's a bloke inside that robot."
"Awww, DAD!"

But, looking back, I see we were given valuable tools that enabled us to be critical consumers of the medium. Likewise, my son and I play WoW together. ( I often muse on whether the Warcraft community has any idea that our on-line persona as a tough Level 30 Paladin is inhabited by an eight year-old boy and his 50-year-old mum!)

There is no doubt that the game is compulsive entertainment. The bloke who sold it to us said he'd been playing it for two years (that was a clue). I watched my son graduate from CD ROM games to Neopets and Club Penguin on-line, but with WoW he (we) have found the real thing! Game on!

From my observations, he's learning an astonishing range of skills.
One New York study found that surgeons who played video games were 30 per cent faster and more accurate than their non-gaming colleagues. Video games are used by the military to train fighter pilots. Problem-solving under stress, strategic and analytical thinking are two key areas where gamers do well.

However, through the virtual society in WoW, my son is also learning something more subtle: how to be a good citizen. As a member of a guild, he sees that if he actively participates in the social niceties, he will build a bank of goodwill that will be useful for his personal aims. From joining in party battles he learns that his contributions are critical for the success or otherwise of a mission.

These are big lessons for little boys who can be extremely ego-centric. The same lessons are learnt when my son plays in his rugby league team, but in the Warcraft world he is often playing alongside much older people who have high demands on courteous behaviour and fair conduct.
There is a need for competence in numeracy in many video games. My son has mastered the intricacies of the Stormwind auction house - how to research the going price for an item and then list it, so it will sell.

He has also learnt how to manage his stash of gold and spend it wisely, although he does have a weakness for buying pets, when his mother would rather a new spell.
As for his literacy skills? He has now been advised (by his maternal Guild Master) that he has to spend 15 minutes a day to learn to touch type - the same amount of time his younger sister devotes to her piano lessons. Players of WoW will already know that speedy and accurate reading is essential to good game play.

A further charge made against video games is that they are a solitary pursuit; however, my son's friends play the game too. They either play together on one computer, taking turns, or meet on-line. The most remarkable thing of all is to watch them charge into the backyard, armed with plastic swords and helmets, to play Warcraft in the real world (bad luck for the chooks that have to serve as hostile vultures!). I remember my brothers watching Bonanza or Gunsmoke and playing cowboys and indians down the local creek. In the end, thankfully, little boys will be little boys.

I am determined my son will never have a computer in his bedroom, even if it means that I will be accompanied by the "thwack, swish, clank" of his gaming for years to come. A new study from the Stanford University School of Medicine concludes that an indicator of internet addiction is a need to hide on-line activity from friends, family and colleagues. As long as the two of us are fighting over whose turn it is to have a go, I figure that can't happen.
Just as the great television experiment is still being played out, the educational outcomes for the video-game generation will not be known for many years. But with the industry now worth an estimated $A32 billion worldwide, there's one thing you can guarantee - we'll be having this argument long into the future.

I also know for sure that if our house is ever attacked by a yowling pack of Flamescale Dragonspawn , Heavy War Golem and Mottled Raptors, my son and I will be ready! Beware!!

Zoo Tycoon Approved To Use In Schools

2006-10-31T15:19:00.000+11:00

It appears that Zoo Tycoon is gaining popularity and acceptance into various school curriculums.

Ohio- http://www.ohio.k12.ky.us/Technology/kets_requests.htm (See reference #OHIO-03-026)

Tucson Arizona- http://instech.tusd.k12.az.us/SoftwareWS/ApprovedSoftware.doc (Last entry)

Alabama- http://uasa.ua.edu/Files/Curriculum_modules/module76.pdf (Referenced throughout the document)

Murdoch University- Game Development Competition

2006-10-30T14:58:00.000+11:00

The Second GameDC is a challenging competition for all school students in Year 12 and below. The software to be used to develop the game for entering the competition is Game Maker, which is available from: http://www.gamemaker.nl/games.html

This competition is supported and sponsored by the Department of Industry and Resources in Western Australia

F.A.S.- Summit On Educational Games

2006-10-30T14:50:00.000+11:00

The Federation of (American) Scientists has just put their weight into the games and learning debate (they normally act/speak on nuclear issues)

With a report you can find here: http://fas.org/gamesummit/

Some educational games produced by FAS include-

Multi Casualty Incident Response Training for Firefighters
http://www.fas.org/main/content.jsp?formAction=297&contentId=77

Immune Attack
http://fas.org/immuneattack/

Discover Babylon
http://www.discoverbabylon.org/

Screen It! 2006

2006-10-30T14:40:00.000+11:00

Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) is running competitions in making games, films (including mobile phone films) and animations. The name of the competition is Screen It! There are cash prizes.

More info at- http://www.acmi.net.au/screenit_2006.htm

World of Warcraft- A View From The Top

2006-10-30T14:23:00.000+11:00

The following link is to a blog about a person who was addicted to World of Warcraft and a caution to others that may be fiunding themselves addicted to it. The comments from other readers at the bottom make for some interesting reading also.

A quick extract, "I just left WoW permanently. I was a leader in one of the largest and most respected guilds in the world, a well-equipped and well-versed mage, and considered myself to have many close friends in my guild. Why did I leave? Simple: Blizzard has created an alternate universe where we don't have to be ourselves when we don't want to be. From my vantage point as a guild decision maker, I've seen it destroy more families and friendships and take a huge toll on individuals than any drug on the market today, and that means a lot coming from an ex-club DJ."

The full blog is at- http://tinyurl.com/ujp4z

Games Are Good For Learning...But Not Just Because They Are Games

2006-10-21T20:11:00.000+10:00

"What Video Games have to teach us about Learning and Literacy. Good computer and video games are learning machines. Despite being long and complex, they get themselves learned and learned well, not just in tutorials, but as part and parcel of playing the game to the end. Thus, designers face and largely solve an intriguing educational dilemma, one also faced by schools and workplaces, as well: how to get people to learn and master something that is long and challenging - and enjoy it.

Schools, workplaces, families, and academic researchers have a lot to learn about learning from good computer and video games. In this talk I will explicate the learning principles that are built into good video games and discuss their implications for learning in and out of schools for a global, high-tech, and risky world."

For the full video, go to-
http://tinyurl.com/y7stvx
(Running time is a little over 1 hour and 20 minutes)

Research: Teaching With Games

2006-10-18T11:09:00.000+10:00

This report outlines the context, objectives, methods, findings and key messages arising from the Teaching with Games project.

The report:
- offers an overview of teachers’ and students’ use of computer games and attitudes towards computer games in schools
- identifies factors which impact upon the incorporation of computer games into existing school practices
- describes the processes by which teachers plan and implement games-based learning in existing curricular contexts.

Go to-
http://tinyurl.com/obhrg

The full report is at-
http://tinyurl.com/17a

Survey on students' attitudes to games and learning-
http://tinyurl.com/yczgd4

Survey on teachers' attitudes to games and learning-
http://tinyurl.com/w2hfu

A bit more on Second Life...

2006-10-14T02:26:00.000+10:00

As I said in my previous post, the presentation about the use of Second Life in education really posed a lot of questions for me. On the way home with collegues who attended Converge, it was certainly the hot topic in terms of the potential uses and unfortunately, the potential dangers.....

Anyway, a couple of links that may be of interest (Also use the search function above and check out the archive to other articles on this blog about Second Life)-

In The Grid- A Magazine about Second Life http://www.jasonpettus.com/inthegrid/mag01.html

Popular Science Photostory http://tinyurl.com/yzf9ps

Popular Science- Your Second Life Is Ready http://tinyurl.com/l3zkd

A Quick Reflection on Converge

2006-10-13T19:11:00.000+10:00

Just got back from 2 days of overall some pretty inspirational stuff for me.

I'll endavour to do a full report back this week, depending on time however a few quick points...

Every workplace needs a Nigel Paine! So inspiring and interesting to listen to.
Really enjoyed Clint Smith's demo of Live Classroom. I haven't used it before and am very keen to see this concept pursued at work
Some real food-for-though on many levels of the use of Second Life in the classroom after listening to the presentation by Malcolm Jolly (Gippsland TAFE)
From a simulations perspective, enjoyed the Nursery Live 2 demonstration.

Flight Simulator X

2006-10-10T13:50:00.000+10:00

Flight Simulator X is coming!!!!

The 10th addition to the highly successful "Flight Simulator" franchise, "Flight Simulator X" will immerse players in a beautifully rich and realistic world, offering a completely new and innovative gaming experience with dozens of new aircraft to choose from, including the AirCreation 582SL Ultralight and Maule M7-260C Orion with wheels and skis.

Immersive world

"Flight Simulator X" offers players a rich and innovative gaming experience with new technological advancements, incredible graphics and added realism including weather, time of day and seasons.* Mission-based gameplayWith more than 50 new missions to choose from, aviators can build their skill levels and engage in even more stimulating gameplay than before.

New aircraft
Flight Simulator X will enable pilots to fly the aircraft of their dreams, from the DeHavilland DHC-2 Beaver floatplane and Grumman G-21A Goose to the AirCreation 582SL Ultralight and Maule M7-260C Orion with wheels and skis.

Connected world

Through increased online gameplay capabilities, "Flight Simulator X" offers players a connected world where they can choose whom they want to be, from air-traffic controller to pilot or co-pilot.

Interactive airports

More than 24,000 airports feature AI-controlled jetways, fuel trucks and moving baggage carts, allowing players to explore their hometown or venture to a favorite far-off city.

For all the flight sime fans, check out some of thescreenshots above and details at avarious websites-

Microsoft- http://www.microsoft.com/games/pc/flightsimulatorx.aspx

Game Spy- http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/flight-simulator-x/679528p1.html

Wikpedia- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Flight_Simulator

The Metaverse Roadmap

2006-10-10T08:38:00.000+10:00

What happens when video games meet Web 2.0? When virtual worlds meet geospatial maps of the planet? When simulations get real and life and business go virtual? When you use a virtual Earth to navigate the physical Earth, and your avatar becomes your online agent? What happens is the metaverse.

Taking its name from the immersive virtual world imagined by Neal Stephenson in his visionary novel, Snow Crash, the Metaverse Roadmap (MVR) is the first public ten-year forecast and visioning survey of 3D Web technologies, applications, markets, and potential social impacts. Areas of exploration include the convergence of Web applications with networked computer games and virtual worlds, the use of 3D creation and animation tools in virtual environments, digital mapping, artificial life, and the underlying trends in hardware, software, connectivity, business innovation and social adoption that will drive the transformation of the World Wide Web in the coming decade.

The MVR explores multiple pathways to the 3D enhanced web, not a single path to a "3D-only" web. An array of 3D web enhancements are emerging, visual extensions to the participatory web technologies now sweeping the online world.

Social search, the archiving and sharing of our favorite online and real world activities, ideas and experiences, is coming of age and going visual. Wikipedia, with over 4.6 million articles in 200 languages, is now the 20th most-visited website. Social photosharing communities like Flickr bring us into each other's visual lives as never before. Democratic social bookmarking, blogging, and syndicating sites like Digg have grown from 17,000 to 400,000 users in 12 months. Video-enhanced social networking sites like MySpace and Bebo now have over 200 million unique collective users. YouTube, currently the most popular of internet video sites, has 100 million downloads and 65,000 uploads per day. New browsers like Flock make blogging, RSS syndication, ranking, sharing, and commenting easier than ever before.

Among social virtual worlds, the 2.5D world Habbo Hotel now has 7 million youth users in 18 countries. The 3D virtual world Second Life has doubled from 160,000 to 330,000 accounts in four months (March to July 2006). The global market for asset trading, object creation, and services rendered in virtual worlds is estimated at anywhere from $200 million to $1.5 billion per year (mostly undocumented and untaxed at present). In Japan, social networking sites like GaiaX entice their users into online games and virtual worlds as just one of many social options. Early location-based games are emerging in Asia.

In the simulation space, virtual humans are being explored for their online educational ability. Virtual prototyping software is making great strides in industry, bringing us closer to an era of Fab Lab prototyping and product hacking/customization. 3D navigation systems are emerging in the automotive market in Japan and Europe. Local-positioning systems, like 3M's RFID Tracking Solution, and modeling advances like ArcGIS, Google Earth, and SketchUp are allowing us to create "mirror world" versions of physical space like never before...

For more info, go to-
http://metaverseroadmap.org/

Hand To Eye Conference 2006

2006-10-10T08:31:00.000+10:00

An interesting conference....

http://www.handtoeye.net/

Hand to Eye – What Do We Learn From Games, is an annual conference event held during the GameCity festival. This year it will be hosted by Nottingham Trent University in partnership with New College Nottingham, Djanogly City Academy and Broadway Cinema, and is supported by the Department for Education and Skills.

Interactive entertainment and videogames are ubiquitous but poorly understood. While our schools create “digital natives”, the world of work is unequipped to fully utilise their new talents. With a media profile that barely registers beyond “trivial” and is usually just “bad”, and an industry defence strategy of repeating the sentiment that videogames “have some good aspects”, the truth, as ever, is more complicated.

This two-day conference takes the first exploratory steps towards explaining the subtleties, opportunities and truths involved with playing videogames.

Hand to Eye will feature leading edge teaching practice, games industry experts and discussion of how the skills required to play commercial videogames have taken on educational and cognitive aspects worthy of note and understanding.

Speakers and subjects

Specific examples of the implicit learning strategies in commercial videogames.
Examples of commercial videogames being used and adapted in the classroom.
Blue sky projections – learning in and with videogames
Audience and related professions
Educators interested in learning how the classroom techniques utilising videogame technology.
Games industry professionals can engage directly with the core of these new markets.
IT leads in RDAs, local councils and government who need to understand how the new generation of school leavers will change the face of the workforce forever.

In this launch year, Hand to Eye makes no claim to be providing answers, but aspires to be asking and exploring the best possible questions.

Converge: E-Learning Conference

2006-10-10T07:50:00.000+10:00

Featuring:

Two superb key note speakers who are international leaders in e-learning and emerging collaborative tools for learning: Nancy White from the USA and Nigel Paine from the UK
Highlights of the 2006 LearnScope and Victorian E-learning Grant projects
Presentations from the 2006 Australian Flexible Learning Framework's New Practices, Inclusive E-learning, E-learning Networks, Creative Community Partnerships and Industry Engagement Projects
Practical workshops by e-Works on the new TAFEVC3, e-portfolios, learning objects and PDAs, voice tools, designing e-learning, and using Flexible Learning Toolboxes
Other exciting workshops and presentations on e-learning

This Victorian event is the most exciting e-learning opportunity in 2006, and you will not want to miss it!

More info at-
http://www.aspinonlineconsulting.com.au/converge/

I'll be going to both days, so I'll let you know my thoughts....

Website Focus: Fantasy Health Minister

2006-10-10T07:36:00.000+10:00

Had an interesting link sent to me, Fantasy Health Minister.

Now anything that has fantasy in the title immediately got my interest! However, when I checked it out, it wasn't quite what I was expecting but I thought made for an interesting concept.

Check it out at http://www.policyforum.co.uk/game/

From the website-
Welcome to Fantasy Health Minister, the game where you take charge of the nation's health.

The object of the game is to improve the health of the nation and increase your political popularity whilst staying under budget - and keeping the people depending on you happy.

The game is played over four sessions in office, during each of which you can make up to eight policy decisions. At the end of each session, you will receive a status report that shows how well you did, and where you could improve.

3Dsolve Selected to Join America’s Army Development Team

2006-09-22T08:13:00.000+10:00

Simulation Learning Leader Contributes Serious Gaming Expertise and Proven Military Track Record

CARY, N.C. (September 20, 2006) — 3Dsolve Inc., The Simulation Learning Company, today announced that it has been selected to join the America’s Army development team—more than a dozen government organizations and private software firms working together to create authentic military training and deployment simulation scenarios.

While America’s Army is probably best known as the creator of one of the five most popular PC action games played online, with almost seven million registered users and over 2,000 game servers, it was initially built as a recruiting tool and originated in the U.S. Army’s Office of Economic Manpower & Analysis. As the number of organizations that built applications on top of the America’s Army platform grew, the Software Engineering Directorate at Redstone Arsenal, AL, was selected to manage the effort. Today the $13 million platform boasts nearly 30 completed or in-progress projects to date and is managed by 60 full-time government employees and contractors at a variety of sites across the nation.

Members of the America’s Army development team gain access to an extensive repository of training objects and articles, allowing them to build upon existing objects and accelerate the delivery of training applications. America’s Army also provides partners with access to Unreal Engine 3, the complete game development framework for next-generation consoles and advanced PCs.

“3Dsolve brings together a unique combination of deep computer gaming experience, proven simulation learning expertise, and a solid understanding of how to work with military customers,” explained Chris Chambers, deputy director of the Army Game Office. “We expect them to make immediate contributions to the America’s Army program, and to help even more organizations take advantage of simulation learning solutions based on the America’s Army platform.”

3Dsolve is proud to be the only America’s Army team member with US Army Training and Doctrine Command validated, SCORM-compliant, Level 4 Interactive Multimedia Instruction experience, having successfully delivered e-learning solutions to a number of commands within the Army and other branches of the US military. As a member of the America’s Army development team, 3Dsolve can offer Department of Defense (DoD) and civilian federal agencies a streamlined approach to America’s Army-based opportunities and a simplified contractual process.

“We look forward to helping our government customers benefit from this new partnership and this outstanding training platform,” said Richard Boyd, chief executive officer of 3Dsolve. “We’re also excited about the opportunity to reach other organizations through the Army Game Office’s extensive network of partners and customers.”

About America’s Army
In 1999, US Army recruiting numbers hit their lowest point in 30 years. As a result, the US Congress approved aggressive and innovative military recruiting efforts. With a $2.2 billion recruitment budget, the DoD set out to revamp the Army’s image. In addition to a new slogan and NASCAR racing team sponsorship, an Army Game Project was developed by the MOVES Institute at the Naval Postgraduate School. On 4 July 2002, the first version of America’s Army for the PC was released at a cost of $7.5 million. Popularized by free distribution, free servers, and gameplay and quality compatible to leading commercial games, America’s Army quickly gained popularity. In addition to the PC version, there are now Xbox and PlayStation versions available. For more information and free game downloads, visit America’s Army online at http://www.americasarmy.com.

About 3Dsolve
3Dsolve, The Simulation Learning Company, creates collaborative simulation learning solutions for government, military, and corporate applications, a market estimated to reach $37 billion by 2011. 3Dsolve’s simulation learning products use realistic, interactive 3D graphics, based upon industry standards, enabling users to learn by doing. In each of the last three years, 3Dsolve has been named as one of Military Training Technology magazine’s Top 100, the “companies that have made a significant impact in the military training industry,” with special awards for innovation and rising status in 2005. 3Dsolve’s headquarters are in Cary, North Carolina, near world-renowned Research Triangle Park. Visit 3Dsolve on the Web at http://www.3dsolve.com.

LandWarNet Goes to School

2006-09-07T07:44:00.000+10:00

Interesting initiative by the US Army
http://tinyurl.com/mdsgc

The Army’s vision of a comprehensive network linked by everything-over-Internet-Protocol technology is taking shape in human form at Fort Gordon, Ga., with the initiation of LandWarNet University.

By Karen E. Thuermer

The Army’s vision of a comprehensive network linked by everything-over-Internet-Protocol technology is taking shape in human form at Fort Gordon, Ga., with the initiation of LandWarNet University (LWN-U). The Army Signal Corps’ newest training environment started in February and is expected to be fully operational by October.

LWN-U was funded with $30 million earmarked by the Army to update its training infrastructure and organization at the Signal Center. The goal is to train soldiers to operate mobile IP networks.

It is one of a handful of top Signal Center priorities that also includes supporting the global war on terror, transforming the Army Signal Center training, modernizing signal equipment, and restructuring the Signal Force. These efforts are vital to the Signal Center and the Army as a whole, said Brigadier General Ronald Bouchard, deputy commanding general/assistant commandant for the Army Signal Center and School.

“LWN-U has the potential to be larger than the Signal Center itself,” Bouchard said. “We will be providing training and support to warfighters.”

LandWarNet represents the Army’s constellation of computer and communications networks under the DoD-wide Global Information Grid (GIG), which provides the platform through which all networks are able to communicate. The concept includes all Army networks, from sustaining military bases to forward-deployed forces, and supports users around the world.

But soldiers and military leaders must be educated on LandWarNet, which includes technology that may extend far beyond the legacy systems on which many have been trained. That’s where LWN-U comes in.

The mission of LWN-U “is to continuously train and educate soldiers and leaders from the classroom to the battlefield by integrating training between multiple enabling organizations in order to provide network-enabled battle command in support of leader-centric operations.”
The training needs to span the entire Army among multiple enabling organizations, Bouchard emphasized. “This includes its colleges and centers, Battle Command Training Centers (BCTC), and Centralized Training Support Facilities (CTSF). The concept of LWN-U is to synchronize these domains to better train and educate soldiers when and where needed.”

To achieve that end, LWN-U sets out to change the way signal soldiers are trained and updated in their skills for their military occupational specialty, so that they think about how the Army works with the other services in the realm of Joint Task Forces.

“We want to provide training for certainty and educate for uncertainty” Bouchard said. “Through education we can provide the appropriate foundation for soldiers to think on their feet in the complex world they are operating in.”

The benefits of LWN-U are already evident to one student, Warrant Officer Michael Bailey. “Here they supply us with all of the equipment and the instruction that ties well in one class to another,” he said. “In the past when I went to school, we did not have the equipment. They gave us the training at the unit, and every unit was trained differently. LWN-U makes it easier not only for a solider, but for the leader as well. Now that I’m being trained as a leader, I will be able to give my soldiers the training I receive.”

Multifunction Signaleers
A key issue facing LWN-U is to prepare soldiers to handle a wide range of changing COTS-based systems in a variety of situations, rather than master a small number of proprietary systems based on standardized equipment.

“If we educate soldiers on how to utilize equipment across the board, they will have more flexibility and adaptability in a wider host of situations,” Bouchard said. “In turn, this type of training allows the Army to take advantage of the latest and greatest technology available.”
That’s why constantly updating training is important. A soldier may have been trained on the legacy Mobile Subscriber Equipment (MSE) System, but the Army can not afford to be locked in a position where it must find outdated replacement parts if this equipment breaks down.
Consequently, soldiers at LWN-U will now be educated on the fundamentals of the equipment.
“The goal is to create a multifunctional signal soldier, whereas today, one signaleer may be responsible for installing radio systems while another may be the switch operator. The new paradigm may require a soldier to be capable of handling both tasks. The idea is to streamline the number of military occupational specialties.”

Even the method of instruction has changed. “In the past, classroom instruction revolved around formal presentations. Then soldiers were trained on equipment,” Bouchard said. “Once they were proficient on the equipment, they would proceed to the next lesson.”

But today’s generation of soldiers learn differently. “They are much more hands-on,” he explained. “The training strategy is to support learning in all phases so that the soldier will be a contributing member of the unit from day one. In fact, those who are being trained [in July] may be in Afghanistan and Iraq before the end of the year.”

Given this immediacy, soldiers are initially put into an advance immersion environment that replicates a contemporary operating environment. “This advanced immersion allows them to acquire common technical skills in a complex tactical environment,” Bouchard said.
The soldiers then progress into their core competency training, where they are educated on their specific specialties. The soldiers’ training and education is culminated in a capstone exercise that allows them to demonstrate their skills in a tactical environment.

To accommodate this change, the Signal School House has been revamped to provide more relevant and rigorous training with equipment simulations and hands-on equipment. The School House has been re-fitted with modular classrooms and training labs for the Joint Network Node, the system developed by the Army to meet the communications needs in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Simulation packages, especially those on the Web, make it possible for soldiers to practice their skills until proficient. They then go onto hands-on equipment,” he explained. “This allows the soldiers to progress at their own pace.”

Another initiative is to make every classroom an environment that emulates a Command Post. This objective is to produce signal soldiers and leaders who can operate over the full range of the GIG, are prepared for the complexity of the network, capable of maneuvering the network in support of full spectrum operations and able to integrate information systems and battle command, and understand the capabilities of LandWarNet.

Virtual School House
The ultimate goal is to provide LandWarNet education via lifelong learning anywhere the soldier or leader may go during their career in the Army. This will be accomplished by LandWarNet-eUniversity (LWN-eU). LWN-eU is the Army’s new virtual continuing education tool that was launched in April.

“From LWN-eU the soldier can acquire what LWN information they need to know to include learning via equipment simulations,” Bouchard said. “The soldier can even access and download LWN-eU deployed anywhere in the world to include Iraq and Afghanistan.”

LWN-eU can also operate like a Virtual Extension Campus delivering distance education programs. Some recent LWN-eU Virtual Extension Campuses were established for the 22nd Signal Brigade in Baghdad, 506th Regimental Combat Team at Fort Campbell, Ky., and the 7th Signal Brigade in Germany.

Another objective for LWN-eU is to support training and education throughout the Reset, Train-up, and Ready cycle of the Army Force Generation (ARFORGEN) Model. Other objectives include the development of career maps that map and record a soldier’s military and civilian education opportunities to obtain college credits for the completion of university degrees or certifications.

“As soldiers get credit, this would go on their automated transcripts,” said Bouchard. “This system would also tell soldiers what specific skills they need as they progress in their careers. Ideally, the system would work with a number of colleges and universities to link a cooperative degree program. The goal is to become a more professional Signal Corps.”
As the Training and Doctrine Command’s executive agent for lifelong learning, the Signal Center continues to explore ways to deliver Web-based training in support of resident and non-resident training and education. This also includes ways of collaborating with other services on the sharing of LWN-U training products.

“Besides our Virtual Training Campuses, we are looking at ways of supporting training at unit locations by putting network trainers on site and conducting standardized training tailored to the commander’s needs and requirements,” he explained. “The concept is that the more training we are able to do at the unit level this reduces the amount of training the soldier will require in the School House for future training.”

The LWN-eU is already attracting attention from other branches of the military. In June, Marine Brigadier General George Allen, director for command, control, communications and computers and chief information officer for the Marines, visited Fort Gordon to review ways to include LWN-eU training products in that service’s schools.

On the corporate side, executives from Cisco have also paid LWN-U a visit. “They were enthusiastic to see what we are doing,” Bouchard said. “We are leading the way in using equipment simulations in training.”

The expected outcome of this training and education initiative is to create a more agile and adaptive soldier and leader. Brigadier General Randy Strong, commanding general of the Signal Center and School, sees the future of the Signal Regiment as “the provider and integrator of information through network-centric information technology systems. We must be the Tactical Operation Center’s information systems integrator and enable information management/knowledge management for the warfighter.”

Some Online Video Games Found To Promote 'Sociability'

2006-09-07T07:24:00.000+10:00

Interesting food for thought-
http://www.emaxhealth.com/7/7080.html

Online Video Games and Sociability

Hang in there, parents. There is some hopeful news on the video-gaming front. Researchers have found that some of the large and hugely popular online video games - although condemned by many as time-gobbling, people-isolating monsters - actually have socially redeeming qualities.

In theory, anyway. After examining the form and function of what's known in the trade as MMOs - massively multiplayer online video games - an interdisciplinary team of researchers concludes that some games "promote sociability and new worldviews."

The researchers, Constance Steinkuehler and Dmitri Williams, claim that massively multiplayer online video games function not like solitary dungeon cells, but more like virtual coffee shops or pubs where something called "social bridging" takes place. They even liken playing such games as "Asheron's Call" and "Lineage" to dropping in at "Cheers," the fictional TV bar "where everybody knows your name." "By providing places for social interaction and relationships beyond the workplace and home, MMOs have the capacity to function much like the hangouts of old," they said. And they take it one step further by suggesting that the lack of real-world hangouts "is what is driving the MMO phenomenon" in the first place. The new conceptual study was published in early August in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication under the title, "Where Everybody Knows Your (Screen) Name: Online Games as 'Third Places.'"

Steinkuehler is a professor of education at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and Williams is a professor of speech communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The term "third places" was coined in 1999 by sociologist Ray Oldenburg to describe the physical places outside the home and workplace that people use for informal social interaction. Steinkuehler and Williams argue that online spaces, such as those found in massively multiplayer online video games, should also count as third places for informal sociability, "albeit new and virtual places." MMOs are graphical 2- or 3-D videogames that allow players, through their self-created digital characters or avatars, to interact with the gaming software and with other players, to build "relationships of status and solidarity." While still in-game, players can hold multiple real-time conversations with fellow players through text or voice.

The games the researchers studied - "Asheron's Call I and II" and "Lineage I and II" - represent "a fairly mainstream portion of the fantasy-based MMO market," the authors wrote, where rewarding players for cooperation and the formation of long-term player groups or "guilds" is part of the game. Game play in MMOs is not a "single solitary interaction between an individual and a technology," the researchers wrote, "but rather, is more akin to playing five-person poker in a neighborhood tavern that is accessible from your own living room." Steinkuehler and Williams also found that participation in such virtual third places "appears particularly well suited to the formation of bridging social capital - social relationships that, while not usually providing deep emotional support, typically function to expose the individual to a diversity of worldviews," they wrote. "In other words," Williams said, "spending time in these social games helps people meet others not like them, even if it doesn't always lead to strong friendships. That kind of social horizon-broadening has been sorely lacking in American society for decades."

Over the last few years, Williams has published a number of studies that have challenged the common and mostly negative beliefs about game playing. For his work on online games as third places, Williams drew on an earlier study of "Asheron's Call," for which he combined survey research and experimental design and focused on "issues of social capital and real-life community," he said. He even played the game and conducted 30 random interviews, asking players about their motivations for playing, their in-game social networks and their life outside the game. "There were both positive and negative outcomes," he said.

In her earlier study of cognition and learning in massively multiplayer online video games, Steinkuehler conducted a two-year ethnography of the "Lineage" games, her goal being to explore the kinds of social and intellectual activities in which gamers routinely participate, including individual and collaborative problem solving, identity construction, apprenticeship and literary practices. She conducted repeated interviews of 16 key informants throughout the study. Their overall conclusion in this newest study: "Virtual worlds appear to function best as bridging mechanisms, rather than as bonding ones, although they do not entirely preclude social ties of the latter type."

While they continue to draw fire from many critics, massively multiplayer online video games attract more than 9 million subscribers worldwide, who spend on average 20 hours a week "in-game."

"To argue that their MMO game play is isolated and passive media consumption that takes the place of informal social engagement is to ignore the nature of what participants actually do behind the computer screen," the authors wrote. Still, they suggest that heavy game play might not be healthy in the short term for people who need strong connections, since it could take the place of strong offline relationships. "It's really a question of what kind of balance the person has in their life," Williams said. "For that reason, online spaces are not a one-size-fits-all phenomenon that can simply be labeled 'good' or 'bad.' " The authors suggest that now may be a good time to reconsider how new media are affecting people. "Perhaps it is not that contemporary media use has led to a decline in civic and social engagement, as many have argued, but rather, that a decline in civic and social engagement has led to a 'retribalization' through contemporary media."

Harvard course to be offered as an Extension/Distance education through virtual world

2006-09-07T07:20:00.000+10:00

CyberOne Course Announcement

Prof. Charles Nesson, co-founder of the Berkman Center, and Rebecca Nesson will be offering the first Harvard course to be open to the public as well as the the first Harvard course to be offered as an Extension/Distance education through virtual world Second Life.

Check out this video. In it the Nessons explain the substantive focus of the course, as well as how everything will be coordinated. For more information, including taking the course, please visit http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/cyberone.

Virtual Ancient Egypt curriculum introduced into the classroom

2006-08-30T09:14:00.000+10:00

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

2006-08-30T08:26:00.000+10:00

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

2006-08-30T08:07:00.000+10:00

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

2006-08-30T07:49:00.000+10:00

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

2006-08-29T11:37:00.000+10:00

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

2006-08-23T14:48:00.000+10:00

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

2006-08-18T11:26:00.000+10:00

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

2006-08-14T12:13:00.000+10:00

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

2006-08-10T09:22:00.000+10:00

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

2006-08-02T10:56:00.000+10:00

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

2006-08-02T10:44:00.000+10:00

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

2006-08-02T10:40:00.000+10:00

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

2006-08-02T10:36:00.000+10:00

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?

2006-08-02T10:34:00.000+10:00

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

2006-08-02T10:28:00.000+10:00

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

2006-08-02T10:24:00.000+10:00

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

2006-08-02T10:11:00.000+10:00

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

2006-08-02T09:56:00.000+10:00

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

2006-08-02T09:51:00.000+10:00

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

2006-08-02T09:45:00.000+10:00

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

2006-08-02T09:20:00.000+10:00

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

2006-08-02T09:16:00.000+10:00

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

2006-08-01T07:59:00.000+10:00

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

Can Flight Simming Get Anymore Serious Than This?

2006-07-31T10:08:00.000+10:00

This is an Australian home made cockpit replicating the 747!

More info and photos at http://www.hyway.com.au/747/