Archive for November, 2006

In an effort to control all the variables of building new software and web applications, project management tools and methodologies often add so much complexity that they defeat the intention of increasing development fidelity, efficiency and speed.

Getting Real from 37Signals busts those mythologies and puts web application development in perspective, though their approachtcan be applied to any software development effort. If you’re not familiar with them, 37Signals is a team who created and “…used the Getting Real process to launch five successful web-based applications (Basecamp, Campfire, Backpack, Writeboard, Ta-da List), and Ruby on Rails, an open-source web application framework, in just two years with no outside funding, no debt, and only 7 people.”

Seth Godin wrote, “Every once in a while, a book comes out of left field that changes just about everything. This is one of those books. Ignore it at your peril,” which I think is sage advice. You can read, download or purchase a hard copy of the book here…

I thought I was the only one noticing the reports of Silicon Alley’s demise were greatly exaggerated until I saw this article on Silicon Alley 2.0 in City Journal last week:

“When the Twin Towers fell, New York’s digital economy, dubbed Silicon Alley, was a major economic casualty. True, the collapse of technology stocks the year before had already deflated Gotham’s tech industries. But the 9/11 attack severely damaged Silicon Alley’s geographic heart, lower Manhattan, transformed over the previous decade into a bustling high-tech district. After 9/11, hundreds of New York tech firms closed up shop; others survived by shrinking dramatically or selling themselves for only a small fraction of their sky-high valuations of the late 1990s. As many as half of New York’s new media jobs vanished.

Nevertheless, Silicon Alley survived: and now—unexpectedly, even improbably—it is reemerging as an economic force in New York. Many of the hundreds of entrepreneurs and thousands of tech-savvy workers who flooded the city during the 1990s stuck around after 9/11, it turns out, and as Internet use becomes almost universal, these industry veterans are back with waves of new start-ups, catering to Internet surfers’ demand for more online tools and interactivity or helping New York’s mainstream industries do business better in the digital age. Their talent has grabbed the attention of industry leaders, who have made New York a key part of their worldwide networks.” Story continues here…

Overshadowed by Sony’s release of Playstation this week — but more important news if the advance of technology in education is important to you — was the announcement that the One Laptop Per Child project had taken delivery of the first production run of these $100 laptops.

As reported on BoingBoing yesterday, the machine “is Linux-based, with a dual-mode display—both a full-color, transmissive DVD mode, and a second display option that is black and white reflective and sunlight-readable at 3× the resolution. The laptop has a 500MHz processor and 128MB of DRAM, with 500MB of Flash memory; it will not have a hard disk, but it will have four USB ports. The laptops will have wireless broadband that, among other things, allows them to work as a mesh network; each laptop will be able to talk to its nearest neighbors, creating an ad hoc, local area network. The laptops will use innovative power (including wind-up) and will be able to do most everything except store huge amounts of data.” Complete tech specs are available on the OLPC site here.

The OLPC project isn’t about CPU speed, however, it’s about making it possible to give every child access to computers and the Internet regardless of location or income. Predictably (since the OLPC B1 runs Linux, not Windows) Microsoft has weighed in and calls the MIT-led effort to put a computer in every child’s hands “a laughable addition to a mud hut.” But let’s not let Microsoft’s hubris rain on this parade. OLPC is a noble and essential effort to give students in developing nations — and potentially in the  underveloped neighborhoods of this nation — equal access to computer technology and the global community.

Does Public Television have a role to play in games? Writing in Current.org this summer, Steve Behrens thinks there may be a strong connection and reports the following stats about current grant proposals:

“When CPB asked for proposals in its $20 million American History and Civics Initiative last year, a number of the 88 applicants came up with games. The same will likely be true for a similar initiative for math and science that CPB plans. Station execs say games are in the proposals from Georgia Public Broadcasting, Oregon Public Broadcasting and others. KCET partnered on a game proposal with Activision and New York’s WNET with Immersive Education Ltd.

In WNET’s game, players would dive into dramatic historic moments, says Ron Thorpe, v.p. Such as: “You’re an escaped slave child in 1857 and you’re trying to get north. How are you going to do that?
The History and Civics RFP was well designed to elicit new-media ideas and write checks to producers in appropriate stages — R&D, prototype and production — says Marion Rice, e.p. at Oregon Public Broadcasting.

The RFP noted that CPB grantmakers “anticipate that successful . . . applicants will incorporate new interactive technologies in the models and methods proposed.” Article continues here…

To make tracking the latest news on serious games easier I’ve set up a Squidoo Lens on Serious Games to consolidate feeds from several blogs and organize a few links to other online and print resources on the subject. Wondering what’s a Squidoo? Marketing guru Seth Godin had the inspiration to cross About.com, Wikipedia, blogs and social networks. The result is Squidoo, a free Web 2.0 application which makes it easy to distill the current web-based information on any given topic into a single “expert” page. To view my Squidoo Lens on Serious Games go here or to share your passion on a Sqidoo lens of your own, start here…

CNN reports in Educators Explore Second Life Online today that “A growing number of educators are getting caught up in the wave [of Second Life]. More than 60 schools and educational organizations have set up shop in the virtual world and are exploring ways it can be used to promote learning.”

“Students interact with each other and there’s a regular sense of classroom interaction. It feels like a college campus,” said Rebecca Nesson, who leads a class jointly offered by Harvard Law School and Harvard Extension. She holds class discussions in “Second Life” as well as office hours for extension students. Some class-related events are also open to the public — or basically anyone with a broadband connection.” Story continues here…

New technologies and functionality are moving from fringe to mainstream faster than ever. One of the latest fringe-to-mainstream transformations, and the inspiration for this post, is a November 3rd report from Wired that Gannett has discovered “crowdsourcing” and has rechristened its newsrooms information centers, instead of organizing them into separate metro, state or sports departments. The Wired story continues here…, there’s more coverage on the PaidContent blog here…. There’s still more on the Crowdsourcing.com blog here… as well as another Wired article about crowdsourcing in virtual worlds here….

All of which starts me wondering if crowdsourcing could be applied to educational content and technology. Consider: if the teachers and students in a learning community (classroom, school or district) could contribute, recommend and rank learning materials for clarity, quality and value, might the result be greater relevancy between learning materials and students needs, and improved learning outcomes?

What a difference a year makes. The Serious Games Summit in Washington D.C. on Oct. 30-31, the third I’ve attended, was a reminder of how exciting it is to work at the epicenter of a field with the enormous potential of Serious Games. Ben Sawyer, CMP and everyone involved deserves huge credit for producing such an excellent conference.

Serious Games Source has posted articles on the two keynotes by MIT’s Henry Jenkins on media convergence and serious games’ bredth of change and by Jack Emmert on designing MMO behaviors. Both are excellent articles which leave little to add.

Two other sessions that stood out for me were the presentations given by Dr. Shasha Barab on his science game project Quest Atlantis (QA) and by Dr. James Bower on his virtual gaming/educational website Whyville.net.

Quest Atlantis is “… a learning and teaching project that uses a 3D multi-user environment to immerse children, ages 9-12, in educational tasks. Building on strategies from online role-playing games, Quest Atlantis combines strategies used in the commercial gaming environment with lessons from educational research on learning and motivation. It allows users to travel to virtual places to perform educational activities, talk with other users and mentors, and build virtual personae.” You can find out more about Quest Atlantis here.

Whyville.net is a virtual world geared for teen and pre-teen girls and boys run by a small team of about 35 people. Self-funded at startup, corporate sponsorships now support the venture which is “within 10% of break-even” according to Bower. “Whyville’s 2 million registered ‘citizens’ come from all over the world to learn, create, and have fun together. Whyville is their world. Whyville has places to go, things to do, and of course, people to see. Whyville has its own newspaper, its own Senators, its own beach, museum, City Hall and town square, its own suburbia, and even its own economy - citizens earn ‘clams’ by playing educational games.”

I’ll reduce my other take-aways to a few websites I’ve been reading this week. For the best and latest thinking on serious games check out:

• MIT professor Henryy Jenkins - http://henryjenkins.org/
• IBM blog on games and sims - http://eightbar.co.uk/
• Another IBM blog on games - http://www.gametomorrow.com/blog/
• Master game designer Raph Koster’s blog - http://www.raphkoster.com/
• Alice Taylor’s videogame fan site - http://wonderlandblog.com/