3 posts tagged “gaming”
The Ohio Learning Network Second Life Learning Community in Northwest Ohio (whew!) met for the first time this year and discussed recent projects in Second Life. Radhika Gajjala is working with two graduate students on the a bi-lingual educational exchange project (English and Japanese).
Cassandra Jones is teaching "Women in Sci-Fi," an American Culture Studies class. She is using Second Life to explore fandom and the many ways in which people express their interest or participate in fandom. Cassandra lead the group on a field trip to the Star Trek Museum of Culture in Second Life. We were also joined by Montana Miller, Richard Anderson from Psychology and Chris Wammes from ITS.
A portion of the discussion was focused on creating a survey for students using Second Life. What sort of initial reactions, experiences, or change in online practice did Second Life facilitate? Perhaps these responses change over time as the students become more familiar with the virtual world.
We also dedicated a short amount of time looking at:
- A "chat logger" which records local chat even when your avatar is not there
- The new planetarium on BGSU island (SLURL) and
- The ongoing construction of the Writing Center on the BGSU virtual campus (SLURL).
Now this virtual world is completely internet based... no aps to download, no real learning curve. Definitely a different experience for me, coming from Second Life. But I was so interested because, well... the one thing I'm always saying to my friends as we sit on Second Life while watching TV in real life is: "I wish we had TV in SL." (My educational buddies are going to kill me for saying that.)
But isn't that what's coming? Isn't that where the Mac TV went wrong?! Where's my chat on TV?! I want to chat with my friends while watching movies or sports or whatever!
Anyways, here are a couple of screenshots... Besides the 'sponsored' content that Sony Pictures has provided for you to watch the makers of Gaia also have user uploaded content. This means Family Guy, Clerks 2 (full movie) and a lot more. I'm sure someone somewhere is cracking down on this and it may not go on much longer... but for now. It's one of the only reasons I've seen to even venture into Gaia Online.
Passively Multiplayer or PMOG
The PMOG Research paper
A while back I heard about Justin Hall's idea for a Passively Multiplayer Online Game that would track your web surfing and give you points. An idea based off of the leveling system used in MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games).
It has occurred to me that much of what has been established as regular practice in e-learning could easily be tracked with such "myware" (spyware that consicoulsy tracks the data your computer generates for personal benefit) and later reported to the teacher in terms of stats and points.
Currently, PMOG only tracks the sites you frequent. Passively, you don't have to do anything to "play" but go about your normal online lives. However "quests" can be created so that you may actively choose to explore what others have. Further improvements to the game are in development, such as tracking how often/much you contribute to peer production sites like Wikipedia, Flickr, YouTube, etc...
Imagine being able to track a student's involvement in class by the number of 
"quests" they complete... quests that the educator, or better yet, the students create. These quests can be based on research, blogging, editing or gathering information, collaboration, or communication.
Also, a fictitious element has been added that divides players (by the data of course) into a certain archetype of internet personality. See pic at left for more info.
There is still a lot of work to be done in the way the system works (it doesn't actually track how often you blog, post picks, or edit wiki's at this time). But I see great potential here for:
- engaging the student through competition in rank
- identification of study habits (good or bad)
- easily tracking what materials are most attractive vs. beneficial
- and what Hall calls "Literacy for Personal Data Control" or actively tracking one's own digital paper trail
