Scottish Learning Festival 2008

Only made it to the last afternoon of the Scottish Learning Festival due to teaching and other work commitments. Made it to one presentation on using a computer game to help children develop a winning mentality – and a set of psychological skills which can help lead to success. I also bumped into Derek Robertson who revealed that the first results from LTS’ 32 school trial of Dr. Kawashima’s Brain Training (16 test, 16 control) have been released – and having had a look at the results they are very encouraging indeed.

More on both, below.

Game based learning – the old fashioned way

Guess the game from the quotes:

The elementary school at the edge of this rural town has a playground that boasts little more than a swing set. That’s no problem — the hot new game is inside.

…

Lattimer points out one of her students who she said struggles with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. “In the classroom, he cannot sit still,” Lattimer said, “but he sits still for this.”

…

The game can help students develop critical thinking skills that make them better at math, reading and writing

Answer and comments below!

Lively starts to get interesting

Google’s Lively is starting to look more interesting – first steps towards true user-generated content are on their way. Well, in the ‘forseeable future’ at any rate. Whether that is six months, or six years, I could not say.

Educause Review on Virtual Worlds

The latest issue of the Educause Review is a virtual worlds special. Five feature articles, an editorial and an interview (transcript of highlights, full interview on podcast) all devoted to virtual worlds. Authors include several familiar names if you attended the recent SLEDcc event – keynoter Sarah Robbins-Bell, co-chair Chris Collins, and ubiquitous AJ Kelton. I honestly haven’t had time to do more than skim (it’s enrolment/induction this week at UWS), but this looks to me to be a  valuable collection of articles. A Richard Katz says in his editorial:

Virtual spaces—like the Internet and the web—will change society profoundly. They will change institutions profoundly. The emergence of virtual, synthetic, and immersive worlds is a revolution, and it will likely arrive sooner than we can assimilate it. Like all revolutions, the emergence of virtual worlds will present opportunities for some and threats for others.

Don’t wait for worlds to collide. Plan, experiment, plan, experiment. Now.

Forthcoming events – online and in-person

Details of a few forthcoming events relating to virtual worlds and education – online and in-person workshops through October and November. And closing with a new site keeping an eye on developments in virtual worlds for education…

SLEDcc final update – Sloodle

I still haven’t finished writing my notes from SLEDcc, and now ALT-C is already over, and I’m on the train home… oy. Something of a record breaking day for blog entries today as I turn notes into posts, so I’ll keep it brief. This post rounds up the Sloodle related activity at SLEDcc. A case-study, new free standalone tools, and our own flash-mob stylee meeting.

Grockit – Grockwhat?

A massively multiplayer online learning game, apparently. You certainly won’t learn much from the Grockit Homepage. As I write this I am on a train with very slow net connection – otherwise I’d try and watch the video of their Techcrunch presentation, where they won an award. I assume the video has some more details that their fairly opaque web-site does.

quizHUD – Exploration and Assessment in Second Life

A delayed post this…

Last week we released the Sloodle quizHUD for use in Second Life. This is a Second Life user interface ‘HUD’ extension which allows students to explore a 3D environment and participate in assessment (formative or summative) in that environment. There are some obvious similarities with the some of the tools created for the PREVIEW project (see previous post), and some significant differences. More details below…

Problem based learning in Second Life

At Emily Conradi’s talk at ALT-C. Emily is one of the project partners in the JISC PREVIEW project. They have created a range of PBL scenarios within Second Life, and worked with Daden to produce a range of tools to support the development and deliver of scenarios – some of which are to be released to the public. Which will be nice. You can get a taste of the tools here:

PhD Opportunities – Games research, Copenhagen

Fall 2008 call for PhD scholarships at the Center for Computer Games Research (http://game.itu.dk/);
IT-University of Copenhagen.

Further info: http://www1.itu.dk/sw487.asp
and
http://www1.itu.dk/graphics/ITU-library/Intranet/Personale/Stillingsopslag/VIP/Stillingsopslag%202008/PhD%20E2008.pdf

Areas of research interest include (but not limited to):
- computational intelligence and games
- player modeling
- human game interaction
- affective computing
- game aesthetics
- game ontology
- game design theory

–
Georgios N. Yannakakis
Assistant Professor, IT-University of Copenhagen