The following video is from from Edutopia, part of the George Lucus Educational Foundation. It provides a good overview of the at the use of virtual worlds and interactive games in education. Some high schools provide virtual labs to teach science concepts, and others offer courses that teach students how to create games and virtual environments, and in turn, these student learn art, story-telling, math and computer programming concepts.
Teachers report that incorporating virtual learning in their classrooms increases student engagement and academic performance.
This video clip features Doug Whitley,from Kurt Squires and William Shafer, from the University of Wisconsin, students from the Digital Media program at McKinley High School (Washington D.C., and Eric Johnson, from Lucas Arts.
According to Mark Prensky, there are many barriers to the use of simulations and games in education, inlcuding the lack of money, time, and adequate technology. In addition, many educators are not aware of the power that interactive simulations hold for their students.
May 5, 2008
May 4, 2008
Oakland Blues: Virtual Preservation of Seventh Street's Jazz Scene, more about educational gaming MMO's
I recently attended the Visualization in the World Symposium sponsored by the Charlotte Visualization Center at UNC-Charlotte. I enjoyed the symposium because the presentations were interdisciplinary, drawing from fields such as psychology, architecture, journalism, scientific visualization, data visualization, and photography.
The audience consisted of people from a variety of disciplines. This added dimension to the discussions after each presentation, eliminating the "birds of a feather" feeling experienced at conferences that are narrow in focus.
Yahuda Kalay's presention:
One of the presentations was about the on-line interactive virtual preservation of Oakland California's 7th Street from the 1950's, a center of jazz at the time. The project was the result of collaboration between the Architecture and Journalism departments at the University of California-Berkeley. Preserving cultural heritage is important, but proves to be a difficult task. Digital media can assist with this problem through the use of modeling and visualization.
Because the project was designed to be used by people via the interent, decisions needed to be made regarding the quality of the graphics, since many users would not have high-end graphics cards installed in their computers. Garage Game's Torque engine was used to develop the game, because it contained a physics engine and also supported players and non-player characters (NPC), or virtual characters. The NPC's were programmed to provide interactive dialogues with players, and each NPC's dialogue contributed to telling the story of 7th street.
Below is the course description from a recent journalism class at UC-Berkeley that used the Oakland's 7th street videogame for many of the course assignments. It looks like it could be easily adapted for high school courses:
The audience consisted of people from a variety of disciplines. This added dimension to the discussions after each presentation, eliminating the "birds of a feather" feeling experienced at conferences that are narrow in focus.
Yahuda Kalay's presention:
One of the presentations was about the on-line interactive virtual preservation of Oakland California's 7th Street from the 1950's, a center of jazz at the time. The project was the result of collaboration between the Architecture and Journalism departments at the University of California-Berkeley. Preserving cultural heritage is important, but proves to be a difficult task. Digital media can assist with this problem through the use of modeling and visualization.
Because the project was designed to be used by people via the interent, decisions needed to be made regarding the quality of the graphics, since many users would not have high-end graphics cards installed in their computers. Garage Game's Torque engine was used to develop the game, because it contained a physics engine and also supported players and non-player characters (NPC), or virtual characters. The NPC's were programmed to provide interactive dialogues with players, and each NPC's dialogue contributed to telling the story of 7th street.
Below is the course description from a recent journalism class at UC-Berkeley that used the Oakland's 7th street videogame for many of the course assignments. It looks like it could be easily adapted for high school courses:
"J-298: Oakland Jazz and Blues (Spring 2008)This class is using a video game program to recreate and tell the story of the jazz and blues club scene on Oakland's 7th Street during its heyday in the 1940s and 1950s - a remarkable part of the city's history that has been all but lost to urban decay. An eight-block stretch of 7th Street is being recreated as a virtual world, which people can access over the Internet and then adopt avatar figures to walk up and down the streets, enter the clubs, listen to the music of the era and interact with other people logged onto the site. The virtual reality program used in the class was developed by the UC Berkeley Architecture Department, which is collaborating on this year-long project. This class involves reporting and research on the stories of the clubs and other establishments on 7th Street, the musicians and other characters who frequented the scene, the music played in the clubs, and the redevelopment projects that destroyed the area. And the class will work on how to tell the story of the clubs and the history of the area using video game narratives."
Further Reading:
OAKLAND BLUES. Virtual Preservation of Seventh Street's 1950s Jazz Scene by Yehuda E. Kalay and Paul Grabowicz, Center for New Media, University of California, Berkeley, USA JISC 3DVisA Bulletin, Issue 1, September 2006
RELATED: New Media Consortium
The New Media Consortium's overview of interactive virtual worlds used for education provides information about a variety of projects and the time-frames in which they will become fully implemented. It also provides an overview of massively multiplayer educational gaming, with resources for further reading. The NASA MMO project to support STEM learning is an example massively multi-player educational gaming.
I am excited about these innovations, since they will provide visual learners with educational opportunities that are suited to how they learn.
NASA's promotion of MMO games to support STEM learning; Vision-play's SpaceStationSim game; EASe games for children with autism spectrum disorders
NASA is looking for a partner to develop a massively multiplayer online learning game to support education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, known as STEM. The following is a quote from NASA's website regarding the advantages of providing learners with MMO games:
"Persistent immersive synthetic environments in the form of massive multiplayer online gaming and social virtual world, initially popularized as gaming and social settings, are now finding growing interest as education and training venues. There is increasing recognition that these synthetic environments can serve as powerful “hands-on” tools for teaching a range of complex subjects. Virtual worlds with scientifically accurate simulations could permit learners to tinker with chemical reactions in living cells, practice operating and repairing expensive equipment, and experience microgravity, making it easier to grasp complex concepts and transfer this understanding quickly to practical problems. MMOs help players develop and exercise a skill set closely matching the thinking, planning, learning, and technical skills increasingly in demand by employers. These skills include strategic thinking, interpretative analysis, problem solving, plan formulation and execution, team-building and cooperation, and adaptation to rapid change."
NASA's Request for Proposals document outlines the specifics for game developers who'd like to partner with NASA on this project. The MMO's target audience is teens in highschool and above, with adoption expected at the middle school level. Partners should be know how to make the game accessible to people with disabilities.
SPACESTATIONSIM
If you like games about space, or know young people who do, you might be interested in Vision-play's SpaceStationSim, which was developed in collaboration with NASA. For more information, you can visit the Vision-play website, where you can find an on-line manual for the game, screenshots, and a free demo.
Vision-Play also created four games for use with children who have autism spectrum disorders, building on the EASe CD series used by some occupational therapists to help with auditory hypersensitivity, hyperacusis, central auditory processing disorders, or sensory integration disorders. The EASe games "not only fun to play, but stimulate a child’s auditory/vestibular and visual/balance sensory inputs, and help teach them to manage noise and regulate balance." EASe games allow for three speed settings. It is not clear if they are switch-adaptible.
It will be interesting to see how these games play out in school settings!
Apr 28, 2008
Learning to Think Spatially: GIS as a Support System in the K-12 Curriculum: Free Online Book
I came across a link to an interesting book on Susana Valica's blog. Susana's master's thesis focuses on human-computer interaction and geographic information systems.
The book, Learning to Think Spatially: GIS as a Support System in the K-12 Curriculum is available for partial viewing online. This book specifically addresses topics useful to educators who are interested in visual thinking and learning and would like to improve their own visual skills, develop a better understanding of human spatial cognition, and share this with young people.
According to the authors, "..spatial thinking is powerful and pervasive, underpinning everyday life, work,and science. It plays a role in activities ranging from understanding metaphors, becoming good at wayfinding, and interpreting works of art, to engaging in molecular modeling, generating geometry proofs, and interpreting astronomical data."
If you are interested in this topic, you might also be interested in the work of Alan M. MacEachren, the director of the GeoVista Center at Penn State. I recently had the opportunity to see Dr. MacEacren's presentation at UNC-C and the Charlotte Visualization Center's Visualization in the World Symposium. I was impressed with the depth and breadth of his work.
Dr. MacEachren is the author of How Maps Work: Representation, Visualization, and Design.
The book, Learning to Think Spatially: GIS as a Support System in the K-12 Curriculum is available for partial viewing online. This book specifically addresses topics useful to educators who are interested in visual thinking and learning and would like to improve their own visual skills, develop a better understanding of human spatial cognition, and share this with young people.
According to the authors, "..spatial thinking is powerful and pervasive, underpinning everyday life, work,and science. It plays a role in activities ranging from understanding metaphors, becoming good at wayfinding, and interpreting works of art, to engaging in molecular modeling, generating geometry proofs, and interpreting astronomical data."
If you are interested in this topic, you might also be interested in the work of Alan M. MacEachren, the director of the GeoVista Center at Penn State. I recently had the opportunity to see Dr. MacEacren's presentation at UNC-C and the Charlotte Visualization Center's Visualization in the World Symposium. I was impressed with the depth and breadth of his work.
Dr. MacEachren is the author of How Maps Work: Representation, Visualization, and Design.
Apr 27, 2008
muCi: Muscle-Computer Interfaces- Link to post on TSHWI blog
Take a look at my recent post on the Technology-Supported Human-World Interaction blog about an article written by Desney Tan and his colleagues. Their recent research focused on the development and user-testing of a muscle-computer interface.
I think that the muCI system holds promise for children, teens, and adults who have special needs. I believe that this sort of interface will prove to useful in healthcare, education, homes, and community spaces, if it allows for interaction and interoperability with the technologies that people encounter in their daily lives.
This was cross-posted on the TechPsych blog.
I think that the muCI system holds promise for children, teens, and adults who have special needs. I believe that this sort of interface will prove to useful in healthcare, education, homes, and community spaces, if it allows for interaction and interoperability with the technologies that people encounter in their daily lives.
This was cross-posted on the TechPsych blog.
Apr 26, 2008
Cross Post from Tech Psych: Visualization Symposium, Visualization Day
This is cross-posted on the Tech-Psych blog.I recently attended the Visualization in the World Symposium, hosted by the Charlotte Viz Center at UNC-Charlotte. I was impressed by the variety of disciplines represented at the symposium- the speakers came from fields such as architecture, psychology, and geography. The audience was also diverse.
The slides from the presentations will be available soon, so check back to follow the links, or visit the Charlotte Visualization Center's website.
If you are interested in visual thinking, visual literacy, visual communication, and visualization in education, take the time to explore the links once they are posted!
FYI: There is a growing group of people who'd like to get a "World Visualization Day" off the ground. Earth Day is celebrated in our schools, why not a visualization day?! Dr. Kosara, the author of the Eager Eyes blog, is a strong supporter of this movement.
At the moment, various colleges and organizations offer a "visualization day" from time-to-time. If you live in the New York area, you might be interested in attending Visualization Day at City College of New York.
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