Educational Gaming Commons - Press Start

We have finalized the details for Blizzard's visit to Penn State!  The Director of Blizzard's University Relations program will be here to give a short presentation about Blizzard and talk about what it's like to work for the company as well as discuss job and internship opportunities.  We hope to see you there!

* Click on image for the full-size PDF

Play2 is a new bar in South Philly with a twist. Games & whopping big screens to view the games. With 18 semi-private booths, 58" LCDS and a variety of gaming consoles, it's sure to be a fun place to gather with friends, eat, drink - and play games. Check out the pics!

To me, this is just another indicator on how our culture is embracing electronic games. Soon, the ability to play games in a socially interactive environment will be as easy to reach and as transparent as cell phones.

Opportunities like this are popping up with more regularity. Is this an indicator of thye sustainability of virtual worlds in education? Train the trainer exercises usually indicate a second or third wave of coming activity in a given area.

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In February 2010 Cornwall College will be piloting the first teacher training course of its kind.  Delivered entirely online, sessions will take place in Second Life and on moodle with a blend of other web 2.0 applications including Skype, blogs, wikis and Cornwall College's own streaming media server.  The course will be taught over 3 months and will require about 4 hours a week of study together with the submission of a final portfolio.
 
The course will look at key teaching concepts such as the planning, delivery and evaluation of sessions, group motivation and behaviour management, learning styles, barriers to learning, record keeping and inclusivity, equality and diversity in practice.  Participants will also deliver a thirty minute "micro teach" session to their peers.  This can be done in Second Life or filmed in real life, uploaded to our media server and assessed aysnchronously.  Please note that this course is for people interested in teaching adults and young adults only.
 
We believe that real life, transferable teaching skills can be taught using synchronous and asynchronous methods and assessment and are looking to put together a pilot group of 6 to 10 students, already competent in using Second Life, to trail the course.  In return, we will waive course fees and offer sucessful completers both a certificate of completion and a Flip video camera.
 
If you are interested in enrolling on this course or would like further information, please feel free to reply to this email or IM Bex Mavendorf inworld.
 
Thanks
 
Bex

bexferriday@hotmail.com

Bots, or robots, are a much-needed item in Second Life for complex simulations that require the user to interact with others. It's difficult to stage a complex simulation with live actors, but the advantage of doing so is obvious - there's a real brain behind the avatar/actor.

An alternative is to use bots. By attaching some clever response scripts to an inanimate object, you can create a reasonable semblance of interactivity. Some folks call this AI, or artificial intelligence, but it's not really that at all. It just a very limited set of programs designed for a very specific purpose.

For example, if you staged a disaster with real actors, they could respond to stange or "off the script" comments, such as a rescue worker commenting on your jewelry. A bot would simply not understand this - probably responding with a neutral comment that totally deflates and stops that particular line in the conversation.

Bots in Second Life are much needed for complex simulations that can be run by any one, any time. Some folks have dabbled with this over the years, but I've not seen anything of real promise, until recently. Check out

http://caledonianblogs.net/soh-secondlife/2009/11/02/aiml-test-bot-colin...

I hope Caledonian U contines to work on this and makes their efforts readily available. It would open up a new area for educators in SL.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette recently posted a video about a very cool 3D snowball fight game created by Carnegie-Mellon University students. Check it out - very nice work by these folks.

Not Education in Jeopardy - another topic that is continuously debated in the US!

This is in reference to a recent blog post about the game Jeopardy at

http://www.hastac.org/blogs/etussey/pre-digital-edutainment-jeopardy-cla...

It's a short read - well worth the five minutes you'll spend to read it. Things that stick out for me:

• The Jeopardy game is an accepted cultural norm.
• The game can be used as a springboard for social discourse, part of a good learning experience.
• The producers of the game show have a classroom version of Jeopardy that includes authoring software and hardware used to produce a delux experience. See http://www.classroomjeopardy.com/index.aspx .

What other good things arise when we use a "standard" game like this for educational purposes?

BTW - The EGC has a version of the game, named Peril! Check it out.

Faculty are invited to attend a workshop on the educational benefits of the online virtual world Second Life on November 12 from 1:30-4:30 p.m. The workshop will take place in the Educational Gaming Commons Lab in 6A Findlay Commons at the East Halls, University Park, and will be facilitated by the Educational Gaming Commons staff and Shannon Ritter of Penn State Outreach.

Virtual worlds are 3-D, online, persistent spaces created and evolved by their users. The virtual world Second Life (http://www.secondlife.com/) offers tremendous potential for research and teaching. Within this vast and rapidly expanding place, you can do, create, or become just about anything you can imagine.

Virtual worlds provide many educational benefits. The two strongest benefits may be an immersive problem-solving environment coupled with social interactions. For example, at Penn State, Second Life is used for teaching Spanish, as a meeting spot for World Campus online and distance education students, and more. The Penn State Educational Gaming Commons hosts space in Second Life for educators.

This workshop will first introduce you to the basics of Second Life, including how to acquire a free account and to navigate within the world. The second part of the workshop will demonstrate discipline-specific uses of Second Life to spark your imagination on potential uses of this environment.

Space is limited to a maximum of 12 people. To register, complete the online form at http://tinyurl.com/EGCSLWorkshop. The form will ask you to indicate your academic discipline as well as which aspects of Second Life you would be most interested in seeing during the workshop. If you have any questions, e-mail gaming@psu.edu. The workshop is sponsored by the Educational Gaming Commons, a service of Information Technology Services.

Many of you may have heard about the EGC's work with Ann Clements and Tom Cody (Music Education), who were interested in looking at ways to bring the commercially successful game Guitar Hero into the music classroom.  The Guitar Hero project is currently being run for the second semester and is enjoying great success.  However, beginning next week, we're excited to share that the project will be taking its next step.

Though using Guitar Hero in the classroom can provide a number of benefits to music students, at the core of Ann and Tom's efforts has always been the goal of teaching Music Education majors (who will themselves, become the next music teachers) how games like Guitar Hero can be used to inspire the next generation of music students.  As a part of the project, MusicEd students have been asked to create customized songs in Guitar Hero World Tour's music studio - songs, which, based on their own experience learning to play guitar, could help younger students bridge the gap between playing a game and learning to play a real instrument.  Over the next two weeks, those MusicEd students will have an opportunity to put their efforts to the test, as they visit several music classes at Mt. Nittany Middle School and work directly with middle schoolers using the custom tracks they have created.

Be sure to check back next week - we can't wait to share how things go!

See http://www.personal.psu.edu/bxb11/blogs/brett_bixler_e-portfolio/2009/10...