Day 5 - Final Shutdown / poweroff

Reflecting back over the week long hiFives workshop, I want to thank Dr. Annetta and his group. I'm grateful for the vision to bring together this mix of students and teachers and getting them to create something.

The workshop helped me to gain a deeper understanding of the 3D worlds on the computer in respect to creating and education. The ideas I've had about how to use these tools are worth it - not to mention the good friends that shared the time with me.

I had two ideas I want to share - One: just because we can make the world in Virtuoso like the real world, doesn't mean we have to - AND - it doesn't mean that a arealistic world is more condusive to learning. I imagine a game where the player / learner is on a platform that moves up and down according to answers on a quiz. The last of the 'show and tell' students gave me the idea. He had people teleporting to boxes in the sky that fell or toppled over. I thought "Let's make these learners move." The Havok physics engine gives us the opportunity to have things move in random (interesting?) ways.

The second is the idea of place - I imagine a classroom built in Virtuoso - the units could be different areas that the student must run through. in order to get to unit 5, the player must physically (virtually?) run past units 1 through 4. Might this help activate those memories. You can communicate so much with place. For instance, in MIT 500 we went from theory to practice. One week theory, Next week practice. Only, the units 'looked' the same - same layout, color, style. What if the theory units were set high on a misty mountain top or a city in the clouds (stereotype alert!!!) and the practical units were set in a warzone or on a raging river. Lucas built some very believable, memorable environments - those could be used to help intergrate information in the learners mind.

So, as the workshop settles in my mind, I wonder what happens next. I couldn't help but think about my own experience with computer camp during this week. I wonder what Ryan, our super cool rising Senior student representative at the cool table, will do with what he learned at HiFives. He asked Dr. A how he could be more involved, and Dr. A invited him to visit with the group on campus. I hope he does.

And I hope that the little community that we established last week continues to exist. It certainly has the potential for great things! So please feel free to comment and drop me a line from time to time.

Also, I plan to keep posting my "Games in Education" links and thoughts here... so come on back or subscribe.

cheers!
newman