MadLat Conference, Winnipeg

Just got back, will post more when I have a moment - keynote speaker was excellent, and his session on ‘Instructional Robotics’ was fantastic, though poorly attended. I expect people were put off by the title… but imagine a remotely operated vehicle, armed with camera, directional microphone, and wee video screen roaming the aisles of a distance-ed classroom, and you get the picture…

My presentation was well attended, which made a nice change from the Classics conferences I’ve gone to and given an online learning or games-related paper. Typically, the classicists are just not interested - there’ll be me, the moderator, the other two presenters, and the guy who thought that this was a session on Attic pottery….

Anyway, one nice comment at the end of my paper was along the lines of, ‘it’s very interesting to see someone actually implementing games or Second Life, and not just talking about the theoretical side of things!’ In truth, I’m not that far removed from the theoretical side, though I have subjected students to some of my experiments.

Right. Presentation is here, designed and implemented courtesy of Flypaper, whom I thanked in my talk. It might not live at that location for too long, in which case I’ll post it somewhere else, if necessary.

Dodging Bullets in Presentations

I love the circularity of the internet sometimes. My post on Flypaper got picked up by an automatic blog aggregator, and was put on “Hey Jude” under a posting on ‘The Problem With Powerpoint’. Somebody clicked on that, and wordpress stats told me about it. So I went to the post, and lo! there was this extremely well done powerpoint on ‘Dodging Bullets in Presentations’ by Rowan Manahan. Whether you use Flypaper, Powerpoint, or something else, the lessons here are extremely good. Maybe all conference presenters should view this one before they do their papers…! I know I’ve been guilty by times…

Winnipeg: MADLaT conference

Am going to sunny Winnipeg next week (think it’s stopped snowing), for the MADLaT 2008 conference, ‘E-Learning Comes Together‘

I’m presenting in Session 7, abstract below; my presentation might actually match the abstract. We’re using Flypaper to do our multimedia - they’ve been really great, crafting a template for us to use, and helping out with all the fiddlybits.

The Use of Moodle, Virtual Reality and Other Emerging Technologies in Online Classics Teaching

Session Description:

Robert Welch University is an entirely online Liberal Arts university in Appleton, Wisconsin which was approved as a degree-granting institution in 2005.

Those of us who start an online university may believe the theory “If we build it, they will come.” Students may come, but will e-learning come together for them? Once we have set up the online courses and basic communication, we must ask ourselves whether meaningful communication and class participation are actually occurring. Our students find emerging technology appealing, particularly VOIP and user-created content. How can we incorporate advances in communication and the participative web in our teaching practices?

This paper recounts how Robert Welch University evolved from simple document delivery with its Moodle learning management system (html pages, PowerPoint, mp3 files) and basic communication (asynchronous forums and real-time chat) to an immersive learning environment featuring wikis, Skype, webcam, game-based learning, YouTube videos and Second Life in order to make students active participants in their own learning.

All educators face the challenge of how to encourage students to engage with the material, but online educators face special challenges such as how to meet the needs of a diverse blend of non-traditional students and how to foster a sense of community between instructors and students.

At RWU we have come to realize that even distance learners need a social setting for their learning and that students may benefit from the kind of immersive environment which a persistent virtual world can provide. Our students will collaborate online in Second Life as they reconstruct the ruins, practice archaeological field skills and perform the Greek tragedy which they are translating.

VisitorSim: agent modeling for site management

A few years ago I developed an agent based model prototype for exploring visitor impact on archaeological sites - the idea being to model where visitors would go on a site, and to explore the consequences of alternative routings and so on. I found the presentation I made about ‘VisitorSim’ this morning, as I was looking for something else, and thought that it might be interesting to share it here. I’m interested to know if other archaeologists have ventured down this route, thoughts, ideas, etc for improving the model. I note that Keith Still, the founder of crowddynamics.com has a professional consultancy built around a similar idea, see below.

First, the VisitorSim powerpoint:

And now a page from ‘Crowd Dynamics, about the ‘Myriad II software suite’. The Venn diagram provided neatly encapsulates my own approach to ABM, networks, and archaeology; I wish I’d come across his work during my thesis years! At any rate, Myriad II looks to be an excellent piece of software, to which my VisitorSim is like a tinker-toy…

They’ve also done some analysis on historical problems:

Battlefield Detectives	Agincourt - how the battlefield geometry may have contributed to the French defeat
	Battlefield Detectives - details about the series and the book.
	Gettysburg - how the town geometry may have been a decisive factor in the battle outcome

Myriad II - Integrated Crowd Dynamics Modelling Suite

Over the last 15 years we have been using a range of modelling and analysis techniques for places of public assembly. The process of model building typically requires three different mathematical modelling disciplines. The table below shows how these methods overlap for various projects.

AGENT ANALYSIS	SPATIAL ANALYSIS	NETWORK ANALYSIS

The Year of the Four Emperors mod for Civ IV

This little video records some of the game play in ‘The Year of the Four Emperors’ mod for Civ IV that I’ve used from time to time in my teaching. Things to watch for - the opening shows how to load the mod and get it running; ‘research’ can’t be turned off in the game, but you can make it impossible to carry out (’gunpowder’ for some reason is on the list- but it’ll take ca 2600 turns to do it, by which time the game has ended); the senate takes a vote on declaring one of the contenders Emperor; towns and military units are more or less in their correct historic positions.

Powerpointed Out? Try Flypaper Instead.

I enjoy a good Powerpoint presentation. I really do. I love the cadences as presenters turn to read the slide, and then turn back to the audience, and then back to the slide… it reminds me of oscillating fans on a hot summer day…

This post is not a rant about powerpoint (but you should check out The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint, Edward Tufte).  It is to direct you to something new, Flypaper. I’m to give a presentation at a conference in a month’s time; think I’ll try this out and see if it makes for better visuals to accompany the presentation (presentation is on ‘e-learning’, so I’m using lots of multimedia, game clips, Second Life movies, etc).

It couldn’t hurt.

I think.

Serious Games Canada Summit, Montreal

I’ll be speaking in one of the sessions at the Serious Games Canada Summit in Montreal on November 27 & 28th. The focus of my contribution will be on modding in the classroom - that is to say, exploring some of the potentials, perils, and philosophical underpinnings of using in-game world- or scenario-builders. My perspective is drawn from my experience in distance and online education.

A fantastic example of what can be accomplished by adapting commercial, off-the-shelf games is discussed on Henry Jenkins blog - Revolution, a game set in one pivotal day during the American Revolution. Why mod rather than build?

“Our first decision was to forego coding Revolution from scratch and make it as a mod of an existing game. Using an existing engine enabled rapid prototyping and design. Using an existing engine also improved production quality - graphics and sound would already be at a level students would associate with professional games. Since many game companies offer modification tools to consumers for sharing new content, we wanted to explore the advantages of modding for developing serious games.

After much consideration, we settled on the Neverwinter Nights toolset. Neverwinter Nights is an RPG series for the PC that was specifically designed by its makers, Bioware Corp., to support modding projects. There was already a very robust culture of player-made NWN mods, which we could tap for inspiration and experience. We wanted to create a socially dynamic world where students would interact with both player-controlled and non-player-controlled characters, and NWN was built for character conversation, a feature we felt was crucial to the social world we wanted to model.”

The other two panelists in the session are Kevin Kee and Richard Levy (participants list).

“Kevin is Canada Research Chair of Digital Humanities, Associate Professor, Brock University, and Adjunct Professor, McGill University. He was a Director and Project Director at the National Film Board of Canada from 1999-2002, where he lead various productions, one of which received Honor able Mention at the 2002 International New Media Awards. As a university-based researcher and developer, he has lead numerous productions, including: A Journey to the Past: A Quebec Village in 1890.

Richard Levy is a Professor of Planning and Urban Design at The University of Calgary, where he serves as the Planning Director (Chairman) for the Planning Program. Since 1996, Dr. Levy has also served as Director of Computing for the Faculty of EVDS. Dr. Levy is a founding member of the Virtual Reality Lab. Dr. Levy speaks at international and national conferences in the fields of virtual reality, 3D imaging, education, archaeology and planning. His published work appears in journals such as Internet Archaeology, IEEE MultiMedia, Journal of Visual Studies, and Plan Canada. “

Slideshare and Slidecasting (and the Travellersim slideshow)

So slideshare.net has a new feature allowing the user to coordinate a podcast with a slideshow, and present it all in one neat package. Very nice. The only downside, that I can see, is that every slideshow is public. It is possible to embed a slideshare presentation into the Moodle environment, but I don’t want people not in my class to view my show back at the original slideshare website.

Here’s a sample of what a slideshare presentation looks like (my own presentation from the 2006 Congress of the Humanities at York University):

Immersive Worlds conference at Brock

What would you see if you looked at Second Life from an archaeological point of view? I asked myself that very question recently. Of course, one of the things you’d see is the enormous potential for education…. but, putting aside such instrumental uses of Second Life, and looking at it as a world in its own right, with its own cultures, you start to see some interesting things…

Here is the audio from my presentation at Brock, ‘Of Second Lives and Past Lives: Archaeological Thoughts on the Metaverse”. You can hear the points where I stop to think… somewhat like the William Shatner School of Lecture…

The file is in the .wav format because, for reasons unknown to me, the mp3 version would not upload.

Educause Immersive Learning Environments

So I went to a conference in Raleigh NC, virtually, of course, through Second Life - audio below is from New Media Consortium

&Opening Remarks [6:37m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 Richard Van Eck Keynote [38:23m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 Jim Thomas Presentation [14:30m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 Sarah Robbins Second Life Parlor Session [14:13m]: Hide Player | Play in Popup | Download

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