I just spent the last hour hanging out with Raph Koster and his crew and about 90 other keeners during the Metaplace developer’s chat and demo and all I can say is “Wow!”
Continue reading ‘Sneaking a peak at Metaplace’
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Archive for January, 2008
[from main page] The librarians are coming! The librarians are coming! And I’m going to meet them. On Friday anyway. At the OLA Super Conference. Say around 2 pm? The Orca booth sound good? Great! See you there. Play your cards right and you could walk away with your very own copy of Wild Ride! (and by play your cards, I mean come and say hi to me.)
And while you’re there, say hi to Patricia Storms too! She’s going to be signing her spooktastic book, 13 Ghosts of Halloween and presenting at the annual CANSCAIP Mass Book Launch (which isn’t a book launch happening in a Catholic church, thank – er, whomever.)
See you there!
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My virtual visit to the EduCon 2.0 conference in Pennsylvania wrapped up on Sunday afternoon and I was left with a great feeling of excitement about what lies ahead for education and technology. I also left with a new appreciation for that twitch-happy communication thingy, Twitter.
Continue reading ‘Tweeting at Educon’
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EduCon 2.0 is happening right now in Philadelphia and I’m attending some of the sessions from the comfort of my office (and my comfy pajamas too) via their ustream channels. On the educon wiki, they describe the conference like this:
EduCon 2.0 is both a conversation and a conference.
And it is not a technology conference. It is an education conference. It is a School 2.0 conference. It is, hopefully, an innovation conference where we want to come together, both in person and virtually, to discuss the future of schools. Every session will be an opportunity to discuss and debate ideas—from the very practical to the big dreams.
I found out about EduCon via Konrad Glogowski’s blog of proximal development, which offers a great look at using tech like blogs in the k-8 classroom. Worth checking out for sure.
Okay, back to the conference and then back to pelt collecting . . .
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I am always up for exploring a new video game, so I was very pleased to be invited to the private beta-test of Mythos, the new mmo from Flagship Studios, the original developer of the Diablo franchise of games.
I barely remember signing up for the beta months ago, but the invite came on a night when I had a few hours free, so into the game I went.
Downloading and installing the game was painless and within 15 minutes I and my first avatar created: Findlewick, a cigar-smoking, bespectacled gremlin with some serious attitude (that’s his ugly mug above.) He was short, grumpy and had kickin’ hair. I liked him right away.
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It’s been a while since I’ve been tagged by a meme, but I am honoured to be tagged by Izzy Neis, who runs a great blog that helps me stay on top of what’s happening with kids and tech. In keeping with my 08 resolution to blog more, I’m going to give it a try.
Continue reading ‘Eight things you didn’t know about me . . .’
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[via Virtual World News] NASA sees potential for virtual worlds as learning environments. The organization has just announced a Request for Information about developing an massively multiplayer online learning game. This is what I was talking about when I asked whether there is any educational potential for virtual worlds. NASA seems to think so.
According to the RFI posting, NASA sees potential for real, innovative, non-standard learning in virtual worlds and mmos:
MMOs help players develop and exercise a skill set closely matching the thinking, planning, learning, and technical skills increasingly in demand by employers today. These skills include strategic thinking, interpretative analysis, problem solving, plan formulation and execution, team-building and collaboration, and adaptation to rapid change.
A world based around science research provides exactly the type of epistemic frames that Shaffer and Gee talk about in their work.
This is a good sign and I think we’ll see more big names moving into educational virtual worlds for kids and hopefully evolve past the mini-games for coins cycle being repeated by many of the current offerings.
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[via terra nova] Jullian Dibble, author of the fantastic Play Money: Or, How I Quit My Day Job and Made Millions Trading Virtual Loot is releasing his first book My Tiny Life as a free pdf under a Creative Commons license (you can also buy a version tied up with string at Lulu if you want.)
I read Play Money about a year ago and was blown away from the first page – so much so that Melanie was terrified that I was going to try and replicate Dibble’s experiment of making a living by exclusively buying and selling virtual items. I didn’t, but I won’t say I wasn’t tempted. However, aside from the coolness that this book is now finally available after being out of print for a while, is the story of how My Tiny Life was set free. If you’re at all interested in copyright and Google’s slightly totally terrifying Google Book Search, (formerly known as Google Print Program) then Julian’s story is worth checking out. And while you’re at it, download My Tiny Life and spread the word.
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“The flickering of the screen accompanies most of them before they go to school, when they return home, as they consume their evening meal and then – for 63%, far more than read a book each day – in bed at night. The study of five- to 16-year-olds shows that four out of five children now have a TV set in their bedroom.” Life through a lens, Guardian
I found this slightly depressing article in the Guardian just before I went to bed last night and it’s been resonating with me ever since.
Continue reading ‘TV ubiquitous for UK kids’
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