It seemed appropriate at the start of a module devoted to games based learning to start by reflecting on my experience of gaming, particularly in the digital realm. My earliest memories of computer games are of the Atari, hooked up to our big ol' 80's TV playing Pong (was this just tennis?) for long periods of time against my brother. For a pair of children who had access to a garden, tennis racquets and a patio wall that served the purpose of a net it is an interesting indicator of the novelty of the games console that we spent so much time sat 2 feet from the screen playing this version. Beyond that early memory we graduated to the games console. We had a Gameboy between us, and used to be assigned strict turns to play Tetris. We had Mario, and other platform games but I distinctly remember spending far more time on the puzzle games. It'd be somewhat crude to assign personality types to game styles, but I do wonder if there is something in that. From there we moved through a couple of Playstation models. Game style was far more varied there, and generally followed the popular trends of the day. Certainly an indication that the social aspects (peer pressure) of gaming with others started to kick in. At that stage we were certainly not playing others online, but certainly discussion about games at school influenced our choice of purchases. Mortal Kombat, Tomb Raider, Gran Turismo are the titles that stick out in my head now but there were many more. In terms of timeline it might be a little wooly but around about the same time we got our first computer, and the wonders of dialup Internet access. I can still remember the sound identifying when the modem had successfully connected. I had two real loves on that Acorn, Sensible Soccer (the never fail to score at the edge of the D thing was great), and Sim City. If Gladwell claimed mastery is at 10,000 hours I think we probably got pretty damn close in the few years we played. Certainly if you consider that our Sims ran in faster than real-time we definitely were. Interestingly, I can't remember the Internet enhancing my gaming experience at all. As an aside- there was something about Sim City that strikes me as unique now. We devoted hours to building cities, planning layouts, transport networks and the like in order to see them destroyed. Our goal was to build something and then initiate the disasters. Seeing the city ruined and bankrupt never felt like a bad thing, just an opportunity to modify strategy and try again. At a step back (and 20 years post..) repeatedly adapting strategies to minimise failure is not an immediately sell-able concept for a game but certainly one that appealed to me. Realising the correct save/revert to saved technique while experimenting was something that I think I could accurately claim is a skill I need almost daily in my current role, and one that I certainly learnt from games. As a group of software developers I'm not sure my intro to version control should have been here, but it probably was. Leaping forward the web properly kicks in, and my next major milestone is gaming while at University. It was early days for web games, but simple puzzles and (weirdly, considering the technology available…) online versions of the old-school Tetris style games were popular. My shared house had a Gamecube which was largely used for social gaming in a similar way to the board games we also had (a damn expensive board game..), we played Quake online in small communities (largely of people we knew in RL), and Championship Manager was something that I would say actually disrupted my studies (and was probably the cause of one of my housemates failing and dropping out in year 1). I can also claim to have become an expert virtual skateboarder courtesy of Tony Hawk during this period while never actually physically attempting the activity... Jumping over a whole set of events we're largely now at the current. Gaming for me now is almost entirely on portable devices. As a group of staff in previous years we spent a lot of time playing Travian, again about the community experience and team building, but it started to disappear as the time commitment grew. Or, it disappeared as the group started to get to know each other and we found other common interests beyond the game activity itself. I can't actually prove that, but I imagine my colleagues would confirm. The conclusion of this is about the future. Games for me are now about potential. What is it that makes me spend 4 hours last week playing golf on my iPad, but 0 hours actually on a golf course? More importantly, what is it that motivates our students to devote hours to achieving something that has no major impact on the things that we measure on them on, whether that is grades, careers, salaries, or whatever measure you choose? Are we measuring the wrong things? That is why this is important. Game mechanics motivate us to do more for the pure enjoyment of doing it, and if you think back through your own personal gaming history you'll find that you're learning skills along the way without realising it. Over the posts that follow I intend to explore my own learning experiences through games, and start to develop some ideas about how we can encourage this in our schools. And more importantly, in our students.

With kind support from Edmund Edgar I have been experimenting with the "Demo Object" in SLoodle, which is a stub or template for developing customised objects in Second Life or OpenSim which can connect with a corresponding module in the Moodle VLE.

Moodle Module Setup

The Moodle "demo-1.0" module is in the standard SLoodle distribution - I am using version 2.0.10 alpha. And can be found in mod/sloodle/mod/demo-1.0.  The object_definitions/default.php script should be altered to "show" the object in the inworld Rezzer.

Edmund Edgar points out:

Note that if you have syntax errors in an object definition file or extra whitespace outside the PHP brackets, lots of things will break.

The in-world object will need an extra script:
         .../mod/sloodle/mod/set-1.0/sloodle_rezzer_object.lsl
which deals with setting up communication with the server, and sends linked messages to any other scripts in it with information about the Moodle server it needs to connect to, and any other configuration parameters it might have.

Inworld Object Setup

1. An object should be created in world with default name "SLOODLE Demo Object" or an alias "SLOODLE 1.1 Demo Object" both of which are permitted by settings which act as exemplars in object_definitions/default.php
2. Into this object, two scripts should be placed. One is obtained from .../mod/sloodle/mod/demo-1.0/sloodle_mod_demo-1.0.lsl The other is a generic script and can be obtained from .../mod/sloodle/mod/set-1.0/sloodle_rezzer_object.lsl. These are the base that can be used to create a custom module.
3. Set the permissions of the in world object and its scripts as appropriate and then take a copy into inventory. 
4. Drop that object into the contents of the inworld SLOODLE Rezzer.

You should now be able to use the Rezzer as normal to select an appropriate SLOODLE controller and scene, and then under "Other" objects you will find the "Demo Object"  which you can add to the scene.   After it rezzes in a default position close by the Rezzer, reposition it where you want, and then hit the "Freeze" button on the Rezzer screen to sync the current position of the scene objects.

Other Templates

There are some other objects in the SLoodle kit which can also act as guides, such as the "SLOODLE Tracker Button" which when clicked in world communicates with a Moodle module and gives a message back.

Current Status

At the time of writing I have the SLOODLE Demo Objects rezzing from the SLOODLE Rezzer, but don't yet have Moodle responding through it. Testing continues.

I have always been fascinated by fast cars, advanced planes and spacecraft and there is a thread running through my interests which I have been able to explore while creating my "Life Wall" - http://atate.org/ as part of the MSc in e-Learning Digital Cultures course - so this blog post fills in some background.

Fast Cars

Many members of my family have been involved in motorsport at a number of levels, and I got the bug early on. I had a scrambling motorbike that we used in fields adjacent to our house in Knottingley, West Yorkshire, and later developed a drag racing sprint bike that we raced at Ricall aerodrome on Drag Racing weekends with the North of Britain based British Quarter Mile Association (BQMA). I was already a rally car navigator for my older brotherSon local De Lacy Motor Club events before I could legally drive myself. I can read a map as if its a 3D model laid out before my eyes. We were taught to drive by my dad in our field and on local aerodromes, and I used my brother's (fast racing) go-kart a few times. Scary to be that close to the ground at nearly 100mph. I passed my driving test almost as soon as I was 17, joined the De Lacy Motor Club and competed in local rallies and driving test and motorcross, and I have a few trophies to show for the effort.

But my interest in fast cars and vehicles went beyond that. I loved the engineering cutaways shown in the "Eagle" comic each week, and I followed a number of UK and US Hot Rod and Drag Racing communities via magazines. I was lucky to be taken by my elder brother to see the first visit of the US Drag Racing Team to the UK, who brought over the dragsters then just touching 200mph from a standing start in a quarter mile sprint. Don Garlits, Don Prudehome, Tony Nancy and the other famous racers of the 1960s were all there when I saw a 200mph run at RAF Woodvale in Lancashire. I was an avid followers of the fascinating battle for the land speed record in the US between Art Arfons and Craig Breedlove as they went through 400mph, then 500mph and then 600mph in the space of a couple of years. My dad took us over to see Donald Campbell doing some of his trials runs on Coniston Water in the UK Lake District. I continue to follow the more recent land speed records attempts and have been a supporter of Richard Noble and Andy Green's supersonic record car in 1997 with my name being carried in certificates in the car as it did its runs at Black Rock Desert in Nevada. I now support the new Bloodhound SSC car being designed to do 1,000mph. My name will be on its tail.

Fast Planes

The early 1960s were a good time for those interested in fast planes and supersonic or hypersonic travel - with the X-15 rocket plane able to do hundreds of flights straight up into space and back on a ballistic trajectory. We are only just getting back to the time that will be reasonably feasible again with Virgin Galactic's SpaceShip Two. Though it was not something that was known about to the general population in the 1960s, it later transpired that the SR-71 Blackbird was routinely flying at Mach 3 or more for many hours on high altitude spying and scientific missions since the 1950s. I still find the SR-71 the most beautiful aircraft and take every opportunity to visit one in the museums around the world as I travel. And I take one for a spin any time I can in Flight Simulators.

Far Space

So with these interests, its not surprising I was also interested in space. I was interested in space before sputnik flew, and already had (and still have) a well thumbed copy of Patrick Moore's "Boys Book of Space", with pencil drawings of the features of the moon in the back from my pre-teen years. I lived through the early Space Race years, and have my collectors cards that went from Sputnik up to visionary deep space probes and talk of a "Grand Tour" of the solar system which I loved the idea of. It would be some years before my AI planning software was used by NASA JPL as a basis for Steve Vere's Deviser planning system that would (after its launch) model the activity of the Voyager spacecraft which actually flew this Grand Tour mission, and continues to send tweets which I receive each day of its position far beyond the Solar System edge.

I have ready to use luggage labels (issued for promotional purposes) when I registered my interest in Thomas Cook flights to the Moon!

I am a Fellow of the British Interplanetary Society which is a fantastic way to stay in touch with space related activities as an amateur. But I have also worked professionally with the European Space Agency consulting on autonomous spacecraft, and worked on projects with them on planners for the ERS-1 spacecraft and a system for assembly. integration and test of Ariane launchers. Our work at AIAI has also fed into telecommand systems for EUMETSAT metrological spacecraft and for ground station planning for the UK Skynet observation spacecraft.

One thing we have found to be a great way to stay in touch with missions has been to place our name on lists carried on CDs, chips or plaques on board exploration spacecraft. We have had our names on the Opportunity and Spirit rovers now on Mars, and our name was carried on a chip on-board the return capsule on Stardust sample return mission to Comet Temple 1. The chip should be in the Smithsonian museum in future. Our names were also on the Deep Impact comet penetrator mission. Our names and photos (and those of my virtual world avatar after an invitation from a NASA Colab group I am part of in Second Life) have flown on each of the last flights of the Space Shuttle in the last 12 months. Unfortunately, we just missed seeing one launch while in Florida after a launch scrub, but did visit and see the penultimate Space Shuttle Discovery on its pad at Cape Canaveral. But in the past we have seen two shuttle launches. And we will shortly be off to Mars again on the new "Curiosity" Mars Exploration Lab.

Forever - To infinity and Beyond

But perhaps the one I find most interesting, is that our names and a poem I wrote were carried alongside other digital artifacts on board the European Space Agency's Huygens Titan lander taken by the Cassini spacecraft to Saturn. All contributors were provided with a copy of the whole set of artifacts by ESA when the content were completed before launch. We followed that whole mission. Huygens drifted down through methane clouds gently to land in soft terrain on the shores of a liquid methane lake overlooked by the rings of Saturn through a hazy sky.

Drift down through the clouds... We're with you.
Swing slowly on the parachutes aloft...

Our names now stand by that methane sea, at a point in the solar system beyond the distance where the Sun will eventually grow in its red giant stage and consume the Earth. To infinity... and beyond...

[Blog post originally on Digital Cultures on 8-Oct-2011. Reposted on Holyrood Park IDEL11 Blog for Presentation Purposes]

My earlier blog postings have described my own preferred approach to the creation of a PLE which at its outer level is simply an easily customised web page.  I chose a freely available well constructed CSS1 stylesheet that maximised the viewable area of the central content when viewed on a wide range fo devices and browsers, using a layout that allows for flexible width.  Below this top levele entry web page a number of directories hold the locally stored content, for my own images, screenshots, and resources that it is suitable to provide locally (i.e. have no copyright issues) and these can be pulled into the web page via relative URLs to allow for the whole PLE to be easily shifted to a new hosting environment, used locally off a memory stick, or cut to CD.  The resources and images can also be used in other blogging and course discussion forums via URL reference where appropriate.

This approach works fine for me, as I am comfortable with using a simple text editor to edit HTML directly, and have a simplistic but working understanding of the CSS style sheet approach.  I also can access an area where I can store and serve the files easily.  But this custom approach is not suitable for all.  Technically a way to create such a custom web area and make changing its content and layout easier would be preferable for some. There are many drag and drop frameworks for dropping in content in "frames" and an emerging set of "widgets" that can be dropped into "containers" in such self hosted web sites using a number of script libraries.  Again, this can be quite technical to initially set up, but easy to use thereafter. I do worry about the long term stability of some of these mechanisms though, and they do mean that the contents have to be served using a web server, rather than it being possible to simply copy and use the files on a memory stick or off a CD locally on a single computer off-line Some blogging frameworks like WordPress, richer content management systems like Drupal and Joomla, and commercial platforms like iGoogle provide simple approaches for columns of content with inclusion of "blocks" made up of various types of content, widgets and frames.

The issue of security and legality must also be taken into account.  there can be legal constraints on the monitoring which an institution is obliged to perform on its own staff communications, and in some cases on the official communications of its students.  Issues of copyright infringement may also need to be investigated.  These legal requirements can be made more difficult in highly decentralised and personalised environments.

A study of the use of personal web sites as the basis for PLEs at Graz University of Technology (UT Graz) in Austria (Taraghi et al., 2010) described a set of issues to be considered before going on to describe their own framework and approach. They base their approach on work by Schaffert & Hilzensauer who describe seven crucial aspects to consider in the adoption of PLEs:

• The role of the learner
• Personalisation
• Content
• Social involvement
• Educational & organisational

So, it is important to look at ways in which the basic approach of using a personalised web page and web area as the basis for a PLE might be made more widely accessible and accesptable within the constraints of an educational institution's role and requirements.  An educational establishment can encourage the use of PLEs alongside their institutional learning support systems.  It could seek to provide a framework or "template" approach which all students can adopt and adapt a framework or arrangement that suits them, and that they feel comfortable supports them and the degree of autonomy they seek.

Reference

Schaffert, S. and Hilzensauer, W (2008) "On the way towards Personal Learning Environments: Seven crucial aspects," in eLearning Papers, no. 9, July, 2008.

Taraghi, B.,  Ebner, M., Till, G. and Muhlburger, H. (2010) "Personal Learning Environment - A Conceptual Study", iJET - Volume 5, Special Issue 1: "ICL2009 - MashUps for Learning", January 2010.

I am experimenting with a style of non-linear essay employing a customised Typographical Visual "Neo-Grammar". It involves experimentation with expressing the core message carrying semantically tagged "connectors" in a type and layout style and with interactive linking capabilities well suited to on-line communications of layers of content.

Grammar ::=  <Planet>: <Locale>: <Connector>  [ — <Annotation> ] 

<Connector> ::= <Token> ⊃—⊂ <Token>

Token gives identity elements, citations and references.

Its Halloween, and the Zombies have attacked!

There has been a bit of a  struggle to get the "cron" job running on the Moodle setup.  cron.php is an admin routine that is run every few minutes to do a number of maintenance things, like pulling in information feeds, external blogs, clearing away pending messages, etc.  It need a bit of setting up and a couple of different mechanisms using the Windows Task Manager had not been working correctly.

I had settled on a way to initiate the cron.php script by calling it from a job every few minutes which launched the Firefox/Mozilla browser run the job, and then should have terminated.  I got that suggestion off blog postings by others who has similar problems getting cron to run.  It seemed to work after I set it up on testing, so I left it for a day or so...  But when I came back... spookily... there were many "Zombie" processes running.  My colleague experienced in these matters tells me that happens when you launch a browser to run a script in a web page and he had seen this issue before.

We are also still working to get the outward bound e-mail going on our Moodle 2.1.2 setup on Windows.  This is way more complicated than it should be with many layers involved.  Settings are all over the place in Apache, PHP, Moodle and beyond your machine in the SMTP server you use, as well as perhaps in multiple firewalls and out bound messaging spam filters on the way.  We have been gradually picking our way through these layers.  Our University will not allow e-mail out with a "from" address that is not validated as a legitimate University address - sensibly.  So we are having to use a "Moodle Admin" address personally tied to a staff member at the moment, which is not ideal. We have established a "noreply" address that will validate now too. More layers to work out before its working properly I am afraid.

In general, I also am finding a lot of Moodle settings are hidden away a bit or are in several places or in multiple layers whic all need to coordinate. Things like e-mail setup is under Site Administration -> Plugins -> Message Outputs -> E-mail.  The site admin/support e-mail addresses also appear there and in Site Administration -> Server -> Site Contact.  Rooting round to change the roles an individual is assigned is also convoluted, rather than just a set of check boxes off the user page you have to edit roles... and not via the edit button but by knowing to click on the role title hyperlink. And some roles are considered "System Roles" which are changed on a different web page.

I am enrolled on the on-line Stanford AI Class... http://ai-class.com - along with 150,000 others - to watch how they present and deliver the "Introduction to AI" course, to see how the on-line assessment and quizzes work, and to see how student interaction with tutors and each other is arranged.  Its been an interesting experience so far. Everyone seems to be enjoying the course and the community.  The short video segments for each lecture are broken up with quizzes to check understanding as you go along.  Often with check boxes and type in areas overlaid with the video material itself.

 

 

The PebblePad ePortfolio system is used to support personal learning spaces in the University of Edinburgh

• http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/information-services/services/learning-technology/e-portfolios
• http://www.jisc.ac.uk/eportfolio

If on EASE, you can log in via http://www.pebblepad.co.uk/edinburgh/pebblepad.aspx or launch from a button on MyEd with EASE login as student (MyEd - under Studies tab) or staff (MyEd - under Teaching tab).

My first experience indicated that creation of a trivial note with a few pasted web links was a very time consuming process, far beyond its value... and the resulting links note was poorly accessible with many steps to retrieve it or edit it.  The system seems designed for a very small number of assets rather than many tyhousands of assets in complex structures that would be needed in a serious personal learning environment for the future.

Reading Boellstorff (2008) and his stories of virtual world encounters.... I have some related observations. This may get a bit deep and multi-layered.. I like layers of storytelling and meaning :-)

Some of you may (or may not) have noticed that my avatar changed appearance during the Second Life building tutorial this week. My normal bearded avatar and flight suit outfit (there is a whole history behind that too) .. changed to be a little red round ball. Why?

When "I" (Austin) am "he" (Ai) he normally shows attention and is responsive to what is happening around. I do not like "busy" and "afk" indicators and prefer to log out - or go elsewhere in world. I am not happy to leave my avatar unattended and feel it would be rude to do so... though I have no problem with others adopting that style of use of virtual worlds.

For a few years I used some text only and mobile device or low bandwidth non-graphical clients like Radegast and iPad's Pocket Metaverse. I was always unhappy that I had no idea what my avatar would look like, how it would be positioned, that it might face wrongly to those I interacted with, and it was difficult to make the avatar appear such that it was clear I was on a text chat/IM only client.

So I put some effort into designing an avatar that reflected this state of affairs. This was a Personal Satellite Assistant (PSA)... a real device NASA is working on for the Space Station that uses AI technology. It acts as an assistant to relay messages, give instructions and help, and record via camera things going on in experiments in the Space Station. It hovers near astronauts to help them, or can be sent to perform tasks. It has a screen on its front to show astronauts images, video, messages, etc. I have explicit permission from NASA Ames Research Lab to use the image of the skin of this device in my work and in virtual worlds .

I have used a sphere with this PSA skin for a number of AI driven and autonomous devices in Second Life for several years. Enter any I-Room (http://openvce.net/iroom) and there will usually be one at the entrance to act as a greeter or sensor sending back visitor and status information to our intelligent system over the web.

So I created the Ai PSA Avatar with the PSA shape, size and skin, and showed on the screen a portrait image of "Ai" to show its him that is watching as if over a video teleconference link - i.e. not immersive and "in world" fully.

Even though not on a low bandwidth or text client at the SL building tutorial, my attention was elsewhere. In fact my camera was not even in the same region as the tutorial space. I was looking at an object in a distant region that had the properties I wanted to copy to replicate a complex object I did not know how to build. But I did not feel comfortable just leaving "Ai" unattended... and did not want to fly away to get the information. I have the same issue when I am looking at web pages, or using other applications alongside the Second Life viewer. This was a case when it felt exactly right to use the Ai PSA avatar.

I see this as "Ai" looking through the "PSA" robot floating in the meeting space... "I" am behind "Ai" but its "Ai" that is disconnected from the meeting space.

Boellstorff, T. (2008). Personhood. In Coming of Age in Second Life (pp. 118-150). Oxford: Princeton University Press.

[First posted on IDEL11 Discussion Forum, 19-Oct-2011]