Playing with Technology

Game worlds as sets

Jon Breitenbucher — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 12:48:23 +0000

Well, clearly, I have not been blogging more. Warcraft is still consuming most of my free time at home. So let’s put that to good use. There are several videos on YouTube and Google video of Warcraft game play and strategy videos. These hold interest for players like me but not the general public and certainly not educators. However, there is also Machinima (In an expanded definition, it is the convergence of filmmaking, animation and game development. Machinima is real-world filmmaking techniques applied within an interactive virtual space where characters and events can be either controlled by humans, scripts or artificial intelligence.). What would such a thing look like? Here is an example.

Download This Video from You Tube | View This Video on You Tube

One can also look at Machinima.com and the Machinima FAQ.

For me the above video is an excellent example of Machinima. There are a number of filmmaking techniques visible in this music video and for someone familiar with Warcraft it shows a tremendous amount of understanding of the game world.

Warcraft has over 8 million players and a large number of those players are sitting in our college classrooms. Some of those players are even in film studies courses. In the past we might have asked these students to create a short film by developing and filming a script or adapting an existing scene. Why not move the filming into one of these game worlds? Why not combine something we know students love with something we want them to love and understand? I hope to help some of our faculty to develop projects in this direction which will give some validity to the amount of time I’ve spent playing, at that point it will count as research :-)

iTunes U goes public

Jon Breitenbucher — Thu, 31 May 2007 13:55:02 +0000

On Tuesday Apple Computer added an iTunes U area to it’s iTunes store. This should be a very exciting thing for our faculty as it provides them with access to a myriad of educational podcasts and example of what they themselves could be doing with a little help fromInstructional Technology. Wooster has been accepted in iTunes U but hasn’t returned a signed agreement. Why? First there is a requirement in the contract to maintain a certain level of content on your iTunes U account and second to meet this requirement would require that we add significantly to the Instructional Technology staff. It is a chicken and egg type of problem. Anyway, I plan to let faculty know about this new resource and will do everything I can to help them produce similar types of material.

Pipes in education

Jon Breitenbucher — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 20:17:03 +0000

See it is not about copyright.

I’m sure all of you are aware of Yahoo!’s Pipes product. I am very interested in it and how faculty can take advantage of it. However, I have not had the time to sit down and play with it. D’Arcy Norman has had some time to play with it and has a nice post titled Trying Pipes as a proto-Eduglu platform, which I encourage you to read.

Hmm, could we use this?

Jon Breitenbucher — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 18:59:59 +0000

MobiTV is a way to get TV on your cell. What if this could be the delivery mechanism for lecture captures and Profcasts? Students love their cells and they love their iPods. Maybe the much rumored Apple phone (no longer the iPhone as Linksys took that one) would create a perfect delivery channel for all the educational content on iTunes U and even allow new and innovative pedagogical developments.

What if this were part of a Smart Board?

Jon Breitenbucher — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 17:57:40 +0000

Bryan strikes again with his post about Magic Paper. What is Magic Paper?, you ask. Imagine drawing 2d objects and then animating them. That is the goal of the Magic Paper project. Imagine what it would be like in a Physics, Chemistry, or Math class if this technology was married to a Smart Board. I can see very interesting times ahead.

Engineering/math/science education what should we do?

Jon Breitenbucher — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 01:19:58 +0000

Kathy Sierra at Creating Passionate Users has a nice post on what she thinks is wrong with engineering/math/science education in the US. I tend to agree with many of the things she says. In a lot of places we don’t help students learn the skills that they will need. I would hope that at Wooster we are helping them learn the problem solving skills and techniques that they will need.

What would be good additions to Moodle

Jon Breitenbucher — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 01:09:38 +0000

After looking at some of the things on Solution Watch, I see a few that would be great additions to Moodle. The functionality of Gradefix, mynoteIT, NoteMesh, Diigo, Google Video, and Flickr added to Moodle would allow for some really cool pedagogical uses of Moodle. I’ll have to comb through Moodle.org and see if any of this is in the works.

More free music

Jon Breitenbucher — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 04:27:42 +0000

I was reading through the 200 RSS articles from today when what to my wandering eyes should appear but jamendo and free music for your ears. jamendo is a social music site where users rate artists and tag songs. Accounts are free and the music is free. If you like the music you can make a donation to the artists. There is a very wide range of music. I’m listening to some French rap right now. What a strange experience this is. I remember just enough French to get the jist of the song but not all the subtleties and clever rhymes. Bryan if you see this post check out the site and add it to your bag of emerging social software.

Craig E. Nelson at U Calgary

Jon Breitenbucher — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 01:31:55 +0000

D’Arcy posted about Craig E. Nelson visiting the Teaching and Learning Center at the University of Calgary. Mr. Nelson was talking about fostering critical thinking. D’Arcy pulled out some interesting points and if you’re interested you should read his post. Of course he talks about his new camera some more but don’t fault him for that :-)

The craft of writing

Jon Breitenbucher — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 03:37:20 +0000

There is a very thoughtful article by Amber Simmons about writing for the reader over at A List Apart. The article is geared a little toward on-line writing but the ideas are just as applicable for print. I am going to suggest this article to all the IS students in the Math department.

Resource for research on the Web

Jon Breitenbucher — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 17:09:54 +0000

The Internet Detective is a site aimed at helping students (and professors) weed out the good content from the bad. Should be a place where our FYS professors send students before their first papers are due.

Fair Use

Jon Breitenbucher — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 18:33:15 +0000

The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law has created a Web site to help scholars sort out the thorny issue of fair use. The site can be found at The Fair Use Network. This should be the first place to dirtect faculty and students if you are unsure of the answer to their question about the use of copyrighted material.

iTunes U

Jon Breitenbucher — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 02:50:02 +0000

I’ve been meaning to write about this since I heard about it on Tuesday. Apple has extended its iTunes U concept to all schools. The program has been piloted at Stanford University and the University of Michigan as well as some other schools. The idea is to provide an iTunes Music Store like experience for the digital content created by the members of the school.

I’m still a little unclear on how the service works. I am also unclear on the terms. However, I have contacted Apple and had a conversation with our internal representative about our eligibility. He felt that we would definitely qualify and we are arranging a meeting with our external Apple rep to learn more about the service and explore the possibility of enrolling. Keep your eyes open.

The end

Jon Breitenbucher — Sat, 14 Jan 2006 05:05:34 +0000

SSUG wrapped up at noon today. It was a very interesting couple of days. Bryan is always excellent and always has a ton of cool things to explore. I’ll be working with Mark and others to identify possible projects for making Moodle fit better with Liberal Arts institutions. I’ve taken a look at some of the projects currently going for blocks and modules in Moodle and am really excited by the possibilities.

Now it is time to get ready for the combinatorics class I am teaching. This time I am starting off with graph theory and and will use my friends graph in Facebook as a jumping off point for the discussion about graphs and social networks. I am also going to have students who work in groups use del.icio.us to tag resources. I may also ask some one to look at tag clouds in terms of graph theory as a project for the course. So many interesting ideas.