August 2010 Archives

On 8-24-10, Penn State World Campus hosted this Webinar. Clark Aldrich was the host for the session. I've followed Clark's writings for years; he a big advocate of educational sims, but has interesting insights on games and virtual worlds as well.

While I was not Clark's target audience for this session, I did pick up a few thoughts of his I've not heard before. One interesting distinction he makes is between three types of learning:

• Learning to know
• Learning to do
• Learning to be

Learning to know is all about cognitive skills. Learning to do is about task-related activities and applying skills. Finally, learning to be is about affective changes in an individual, the ethics behind decisions, etc.

So how does this play out in the real world? iPhone apps are, for the most part, learning to do apps. Facebook, on the other hand, is learning to be.

This is an interesting way of approaching the use of these tools/devices/sites for educational, training, and promotional purposes. Use phones for the just-in-time learning activities we need. Maybe if PSU chooses a new CMS we should look at a help system that runs on phones. Use Facebook for promotion and community discussions that lead to buy in. Share new CMS ideas on Facebook for discussion, feedback, and venting.

This has more appeal to me than shoehorning cognitive skill learning onto phones, or forcing community activities on a PC inside a closed CMS. I wonder how many times we see a new device and try to graft all our processes onto it? That just doesn't make sense and will surely lead to disappointment. Something to think about when yo9u examine your next cool piece of tech!

There's good, bad, and ugly here this year. Let's start with the bad and ugly. First, I've had a fungal tomato blight named Septoria Leaf Spot on my tomatoes for the past several years. It damages the leaves and stems of the plant, but fortunately leaves the fruit alone. Still, it seems to me the yield per plant has diminished since my garden soil got this stuff.  You can minimize this with sprays, etc., but IMO the purpose of a home garden is to get a way from all that crap.

There are several ways you can try to eliminate this fungus from the soil. First, you must rotate your tomatoes from one spot in the garden to another. I always do that anyway. Second, do not plow under dead plants, tomatoes, etc. I never do that. There is only one other thing to do, but it is a bit more drastic. Don't plant tomatoes for several years! Different sites I've checked on this give different times, but 2-3 years seems to pop up the most often. This year I decided to cheat the solution, by planting tomatoes in buckets, using and mix of soil from the woods near my house and potting soil. I tried both buckets and pails.

In my last post on this, I discussed using Abobe Acrobat to create a simple "Choose Your Own Adventure" game. In reality, this type of game is the foundation for many adventure-type computer games today. Using Acrobat is great, but if you want to take things to the next level, where you can pick things up and manipulate your environment (a type of choice not easily realized in an Acrobat solution), you'll need another method.

Interactive Fiction (IF) is one way to accomplish this. The main concern you might have with IF is it is (usually) text only. The EGC has an example of IF titled the EGC Paperchase. Play it and you'll get a feel for IF. But want about graphics, sounds, etc.?

There is a very cool (and free) program named Quandary that you might want to explore. It's all dialog-box driven, so no programming is required. Quandary produces an HTML file that you can place on the web if you have web server space. At Penn State, everyone has access to PASS space, so if you work at or attend PSU, that's not a problem. The games you develop will run on any modern browser. You can easily add graphics and sounds, but animations and movies I'm not sure about. Another drawback is you  must author on a Windows PC. You can also use a Mac running Bootcamp or a virtualization of Windows. I used VirtualBox on my Mac to create a short adventure just to demonstrate Quandary. It took me about 10 minutes to knock together. I believe that most folks could use it to create simple adventures.

So what are you waiting for! Go! Create!

Ok - if you count your time to conceptualize and develop it, no game is cheap. I'm going to conceptualize one way you can build a game that's fairly cheap, however.

Have you ever heard of the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure games? These are mostly text based, but can include graphics, and if online, animations, movies, and sound as well. The adventure is broken into chunks of text that may each be one to several paragraphs long. At the end of the chunk you are presented with a choice or possibly several choices. The choice you make has another chunk of text you are directed to, usually in the form of a page number.

Here's a tiny example:

You wake up in a dim, damp cave. Beside you is a flashlight. You can see the cave entrance in the distance.

If you pick up the flashlight, go to page 10.
If you run for the cave entrance, go to page 15.

Simple, yes? All you have to do is write the text, place the chunks on individual pages, and use some scheme to keep track of the links from one chunk to another. You can do all this with a simple word processor. That's great if you plan on printing the adventure out and want players to play it offline. If you want to create an online experience, it's a bit more complicated, but not by much.

You can do this using HTML and a simple web site. If you know how to do that, stop reading! If you are web site challenged, read on. I'll describe another technology.

Or in the lingo du jour:

If you can create a web site with links between pages, go to THE END.
If you cannot create a web site with links between pages, go to the next paragraph.

Write the adventure in your word processor. Then, you'll need Adobe Acrobat Pro and some basic knowledge on how to set up links in an Acrobat Pro document. Acrobat Pro is expensive, so hopefully you have access to it. Learning how to do linking is beyond the scope of this article, but it's about as simple a process as it could be.

Once you have those two things under your belt, you can extend the previous example by importing the word processing file into Acrobat Pro and adding links. You can get a bit more tricky and rewrite the choices like this

Take the flashlight.
         OR
Run for the cave entrance.

to make the words flow in a more natural manner. Then using Acrobat Pro links, you can set the choices to jump from one part (page) of the document to another when clicked on. As for other media such as graphics, animations, movies, or sounds, Acrobat Pro supports video, sound, and Flash, so it's possible to embed these in a document. There are some restrictions that are beyond the scope of this article, but are explained on the Adobe help site.

Now for the obvious question - "Sure it's possible to do this, but to what use educationally could I put it?" Here's some ideas.

Just about any procedural task that has right/wrong decision points is an obvious candidate here. How about a chemistry simulation, or pushing a bill through Congress?

Philosophical standpoints (yes, really) could be used here by presenting dilemmas and giving choice to solve the dilemma via different philosophical ideologies - then show the consequences for the choice.

You could use this to great effect with student orientation as an interactive guide. Plop the student in the middle of the college and let him/her work out how to get around, etc.

These are just a few ideas. I'm sure you can think of more. If you decide to try this out, let me know. I'm very interested in seeing someone develop a great adventure for higher education!

 
 

During the last two weeks in July, the Bixler family traveled to California to travel and explore the coast from San Francisco down to San Diego. What a trip! This was the longest vacation ever for me. I'm sharing some photos here, but for the full experience, see the slideshow . It's about 30 minutes long and takes several moments to load - you've been warned!

This was a great experience in diversity for me and my family. We saw many new things, were exposed to new ideas and ways of life, and it strongly impacted me. In fact, I plan on listing it as a diversity component in my next staff evaluation!

We started our vacation in San Francisco. Word of warning - we stood in line for 1.5 hours to receive our Dollar rental car. In comparison, people renting from Budget Car Rental in the area next to Dollar spent about 20 minutes in line on average.

Once we were in the Mercury Grand Marquis (dubbed "The Boat") we drove to the Fisherman's Wharf area of SF. My kids asked why the doors in The Boat were so big. "So the animals can enter two by two," was my reply.


Once we checked into our hotel, we had our first inkling that this was to be a cold vacation. Coldest CA summer on record since FDR was president, in fact. The hotel did have nice outdoor seating, however.

 

We visited the wharf area (aren't they cute!),


Ghiradelli's Chocolate,


Alcatraz,


Sausilto, and Muir Woods. The giant redwoods are very humbling, and make you aware of how much a part of nature we all are.



We also hit Chinatown and the business district.




The food in Chinatown was amazing. Chinese food in State College is dead to me for several months at least.

A trip to SF would not be complete with a trip down Lombard Street, the most crooked street in the world. Driving this street is a rite of passage, especially when driving a boat! Check out the cars in the picture - each one is on a different switchback.


We also toured the Marine Mammal Center where they rescue Sea Lions, etc. that need some help. This is a great place, one I could easily work at. It's north of SF and takes about 40 minutes or so to travel to, mostly due to traffic getting out of SF more so than distance.


From SF it was down the coast via Highway 1. This is an amazing drive, but it's not for the faint of heart. The pict here shows a stretch of road that is only half as high as it sometimes is - and no guard rails!


We stopped on the pier in Santa Cruz to stretch our legs:


Our next stop way Monterey, Cannery Row, and Pacific Grove. These are all in one location. While our hotel was in Pacific Grove, we were only about a mile from Cannery Row in Monterey.


Next to our hotel was a great restaurant - Latitudes. Do eat there if you ever get the chance. The food is amazing!


We also had a great ambassador for the area. He hung outside out hotel room window. We named him Norman, after Norman Bates, as one reviewer of our hotel likened it to the Bates Motel (s/he was wrong). We named his assistant Johnathan.


We then drove to Hearst Castle and took a tour. Words fail me here. This place is so over the top it's in outer space. I've never seen such opulence. It must have been quite the place to be  when it was in full swing.



We spent the night in a hotel in Morro Bay. Not much going on there, but it does have the US version of the Rock of Gibraltar. This is the tip of a 20 million years old extinct volcano, so I'm told.


From Morro Bay was the long drive to Los Angeles. We stopped along the way at Santa Barbara, a very nice town. We walked the pier and ate lunch just off of it.


Hollywood and LA were interesting, but possibly my least favorite part of the trip. Too touristy for me, and the lifestyles of the stars are too far removed from my lifestyle to really mean that much to me. We saw the usual things, like Mulholland Drive and the Chinese Theater:


We ate at Pink's Hot Dogs (recommended):


We took the traditional Hollywood stars tour and saw where Michael Jackson died. Here's the stop sign right next to the mansion entrance:



I took a sun bath one day. Folks in California are not nearly as liberal as you'd think, judging by the harsh stares I received:


We visited the knockoff section of the LA Fashion District. There were many bargains to be had!


Recovered from frenzied shopping, the next day was spent at Disneyland. It's no Disneyworld, but we had a great time. The only sour note was Tammy contracted food poisoning (we believe), so the ride back to the hotel was not pleasant.



After a final stop at the Hollywood farmer's market and an awesome hot sauce shop:


on to San Diego! This was my favorite part of the trip. SD is a great city, and has many surrounding areas to visit. We stayed on Shelter Island, just west of the city proper, with a great view of the city and the harbor.


Old Town in San Diego is a must see. It contains some historical building and shops.



The San Diego Zoo is another must see. It is the best planned zoo I've ever visited. The animals seem content.





The beaches are SD were cool. Literally. Too cold to swim IMO, but there were folks in it. Here's a view of Imperial Beach, just south of SD.


We ate at some great places. One was the Big Kitchen, another was The Ugly Coyote.




Both places are highly recommended. The Pacific Bean coffee shop, north of SD, is not to be missed, either. (Tammy is still recovering from food poisoning in this photo!)


The last day of our vacation, we visited Point Loma, the entrance to the SD bay. Sitting high above it all, it's a great place to take in the city and surrounding areas.


Like all good things, vacation does come to an end. Along the trip I saw things that reminded me of home and folks at work:





And finally:


And that's how I spent my summer vacation.