The future of gaming

Games based learning is one of the most important strategies for 21st Century education. We have enjoyed playing games since time immemorial, and video arcade games such as Asteroids and Space Invaders of the 1970's were just the start of the emergence of digital games. Recently, with the development of handheld controls (such as the Nintendo Wii), 3D screens (Nintendo 3DS) and non touch gestural and voice controls (Microsoft's XBox 360 Kinect) games have become increasingly captivating, and have an immersive quality. Games, whether digital or analogue, have the capability to motivate learners, challenge them to improve their dexterity, problem solving and reasoning skills, encourage teamwork and collaboration (Nemerow, 1996) - especially social games such as World of Warcraft or Call of Duty - and performance is under constant peer review. These match some of the key skills required to succeed in the world of work where digital technology is prevalent. Thiagarajan (1998) believes that games have five major characteristics that are important for learning, These are conflict, control, closure, contrivance, and competency. Clearly, digital games have a great deal to offer the future of learning. So what can we expect of games based learning in the future?

Recent interviews in the magazine Short List by Ellison (2012) feature the opinions of several acknowledged video games experts. Ben Wilson, editor of Official Playstation Magazine UK believes that games will continue to improve in quality, with characters exhibiting more realistic human behaviour. Drivers in racing games for example, 'could be pressurised into making errors, footballers might make more realistic runs, or be angered into reacting to a late lunge or a dig in the ribs.' David Darling, who is one of the co-founders of Codemasters, sees games consoles becoming even smaller, and agrees with Wilson that the resolution of graphics will continue to improve. His main contention though is that games will become more augmented, and tied into the human emotions via retinal projection. Darling sees us playing games in the near future by proxy, controlling our avatars from a distance, with our senses stimulated so that we feel we are 'virtually there.'

Brain control is also something predicted by David Cage. The visionary designer who is behind PS3 games such as Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls, believes that in the future, games playing will be radically different, requiring no controls. We will simply think our way around the game using our mind power, using directly implanted sensors. Jon Hicks, editor of Official Xbox 360 Magazine also takes a futuristic view. He feels that we have just about reached the limits of what we can achieve with screens and controllers. The next stage, he says, is to place the gamer even deeper into the virtual world. He believes that motion sensors will use information about our body postures, facial expressions and biofeedback to tap into our emotions, and then do 'amazing or even terrifying things with that information'. Combine this emotion tracking with augmented reality and we are approaching the ultimate experience. 'Imagine a Silent Hill game that can work out how scared you are, and change accordingly' he says, ominously.  

Whatever the future holds for gamers, we can be sure it will be different, more enhanced and more realistic than it is right now. So remember, the next time you venture into Azeroth, or don the hood of Connor Kenway, you may be taking your first steps toward a brave (and very scary) new world where reality blurs with fantasy, and where your learning will never be the same again.

References

Nemerow, L. G. (1996) Do classroom games improve motivation and learning? Teaching and Change, 3 (4), 356-361.
Ellison, J. (2012) You're going to need a bigger living room. ShortList, 8 November, 250, 49-52.
Thiagarajan, S. (1998) Ask Thiagi. Thiagi Game Letter, 1 (4), 6.

Photo by Steve Wheeler



The future of gaming by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Interactions of the fourth kind

Interaction. For many teachers, it has become the keystone of contemporary education. Many studies into the importance of interaction in education have been conducted. We all have different definitions of what interaction involves, but most of us agree - it's an important component of learning. According to theorist Michael G. Moore, there are three types of interaction. In an editorial piece in the American Journal of Distance Education in 1989 Moore outlined his three levels. The first, learner-teacher, is the most likely kind of interaction to be found in traditional classroom settings, but with the age of social media and other forms of digitally mediated communication, interaction can now be just as rich an experience when conducted at a distance.

The second type of interaction, according to Moore, is the learner-learner kind. Generally, this kind of interaction can be seen in the informal conversations that take place outside the classroom, in the common room, at the pub, waiting for the bus home. And yet, in formal learning settings,  learner-learner interaction can be used as a valuable pedagogical technique to encourage free thinking, deeper engagement with the topic, debate and discursive activities, collaborative learning and much more.

Moore's third kind of interaction is learner-content. This is probably the least formal of the interactions in terms of its place in the classroom. Although some learner-content interaction can be observed, with the momentum now toward more discussion, project work and collaborative learning within the classroom, student-content interaction is more likely to occur outside the classroom, at home, at work, on journeys. 

In 1994, Hillman, Willis and Gunawardena suggested a fourth kind of interaction - student-interface. In the digital age, this is the first point of contact between students and all other kinds of interaction. Students now interact more or less continually with their peers, their tutors. The article called for "design strategies that facilitate students' acquisition of the skills needed to participate effectively in the electronic classroom". Hillman et al hit the nail on the head 18 years ago, as new computer systems emerged. Even more than ever, in the age of new handheld devices, wearable computing and natural gesture technology, we need even more effort put into understanding how learners interact with their tools and technologies.

How for example, might students learn differently using touch surfaces such as the iPad, when compared to non-touch devices such as the X-Box 360 Kinect? There is discussion about the advantages of game playing using haptic perception (sense of resistance and tactile feedback) devices such as the Nintendo Wii handset over powerful gestural but non-touch controlled interfaces. What about the several human senses that are brought into play when such tools are used? What can we learn about ourselves and our environments when proprioception (the relative position of our limbs and body in relation to each other) and equilibrioception (the sense of body movement, balance and acceleration) are called into use? For a long time we have focused on the main senses (audio and visual, and to a lesser extent kinaesthetic) at the expense of the many other human senses, but with new technologies increasingly available for learning, it is now time to study the effects of the fourth kind of interaction in greater detail.

Image by Alvaro Canivell

References

Hillman, D.C.A., Willis, D.J. and Gunawardena, C. N. (1994) Learner interface interaction in distance education: An extension of contemporary models and strategies for practitioners. The American Journal of Distance Education, 8 (2), 30-42.

Moore, M. G. (1989) Editorial: Three types of interaction. The American Journal of Distance Education, 3 (2), 1-6.


Interactions of the fourth kind by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Games based learning

Games based learning as expected, had a highly visible profile at this year's Learning without Frontiers festival, in London. Take David Samuelson for example. As Head of Augmented Reality development for Pearson Education, he must have one of the coolest jobs in the world. He gets to explore all the latest possibilities technology can offer to education, and to ask the "what if?" questions each day.
In his invited presentation at today's Learning Without Frontiers festival, David emphasised what his audience already believed - for children, video games are an ideal, natural medium for learning. Kids love playing games, he said, and they learn from them without effort or inhibition. They are often 'in the flow' and don't have any hang ups about expressing themselves. He is interested in mashups - where augmented reality can be embedded within games. It's a new generation of games that is emerging, but with the advancement of games console design, the new 3DS Nintendo screens, and the natural gesture controls of devices such as XBox 360, the time is right. The universal appeal of games must be a natural extension to learning in formal situations. What excites him most is the story telling that is seen in the latest games, for example Heavy Rain.

Another invited speaker at #lwf is Dawn Hallybone, the ICT co-ordinator and senior teacher at Oakdale Junior School in Essex, whom I had the pleasure of meeting at the LWF teachmeet on Sunday night. She had entered into the spirit of the fancy dress teachmeet and was wearing a luminous pink wig. In a very engaging presentation today (without her wig), she talked about playful learning and highlighted how handheld devices such as the Nintendo DS (used in her school as a brain training tool) and games such as Professor Layton puzzle adventure stories can be used to inspire kids to learn a range of key skills such as literacy, numeracy, problem solving, team working and interpersonal communication.

Dawn uses an innovative combination of tools including the Nintendo Wii, to engage kids in scenarios that take on a 3D immersion effect. They become so engaged in their characters and activities, they forget where they are, she explained. Dawn also eulogised over how Twitter has enabled her and her colleagues worldwide to connect and share their ideas on how they are using these tools in new and exciting ways to enhance learning in formal settings. They have set up a games network, pooled their meagre resources, and have purchased a library of games that can then be shared across all the schools that are members of the collective. Long may it continue.

Games based learning by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Child friendly technologies

Along with some of my third year Primary education students I'm presenting four papers at the Plymouth e-Learning Conference later this month. One of the papers, co-written by Gareth Excell and John Edwards, is entitled: How can child-friendly technologies enhance children’s learning? I'm particularly excited by this one, because the notion of 'child friendly' technologies has not been addressed that often in the recent literature. It may even be a new term for educators to consider. Fact is, most technologies children like to use informally, are banned by most schools.

I had a conversation with a veteran secondary school teacher last night about the use of personal technologies in schools. He came to the conclusion that although devices like mobile phone could be used to great effect during lessons for texting dialogue, he and his colleagues would be very reluctant to do so, unless they had total control over what students could text and who they could text it to, during the lessons. Regardless of the reticence, child friendly technologies will come to the fore I believe, and it is important for teachers to begin discussing now, what the pedagogical potential is, and what safeguards they need to employ to make them a success.

Here's the abstract of the paper (comments are very welcome):

Technology is now a central component of the Primary teacher’s toolkit, and there has been a significant increase in the use of learning technologies in classrooms in recent years (John & Wheeler, 2008). However, several technologies have been viewed as undesirable when viewed in a formal education context. Such devices, including Nintendo game consoles (Wii and DS), mobile phones and iPod Touches can be identified as ‘child-friendly’ technologies, because they are fun and culturally relevant to children, yet they are perceived as either troublesome, or having little relevance in a formal education setting. Teachers often use technology to support their own teaching, but may often fail to see the relevance of child-friendly tools as a means to support children’s learning. Further, many schools have banned the use of such devices due to a perceived threat of misuse and abuse.

In this paper, we contend that child-friendly technologies should be considered as serious learning tools in the formal learning environment of the primary classroom. Several previous studies have established that handheld and mobile technologies have relevance in formal education to encourage collaborative and project based learning (Norris & Soloway, 2004) especially when coupled with social media (So et al, 2009). Such studies reveal that children collaborate more freely, engage more readily and enjoy learning more.

Our study initially involved identifying the range of child-friendly technologies available, and then theorising how the most popular devices might be successfully embedded into the Primary classroom. This was achieved by delivering the same lesson to two groups of children, once using the child-friendly technologies, and once using no supporting technology. We hypothesise that children will engage more with learning when they are able to access technologies they are comfortable and familiar with. We will reveal our results from this study during the presentation.

References
John, P. D. and Wheeler, S. (2008) The Digital Classroom: Harnessing the power of technology for the future of learning and teaching. London: Routledge/David Falmer.
Norris, C. and Soloway, E. (2004) Envisioning the Hand-Held Centric Classroom. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 30 (4), 281-294.
So, H-J., Seow, P. and Looi, C. K. (2009) Location matter: leveraging knowledge building with mobile devices and Web 2.0 technology. Interactive Learning Environments, 17 (4), 367-382.


Image source

Noughties ... but nice

The first decade of the 21st Century was highly significant for personal learning. Such a vast array of new personal devices and web applications was introduced that have become so deeply ingrained in our everyday lives, many of us would probably feel at a loss if we were suddenly transported back to 1999. If we time jumped from then to 2009, the way we now communicate, learn, search for information, share content and consume entertainment would be unrecognisable. The concept of personal learning environments was also introduced, as a counterpoint to the notion of the VLE. Here are just a few of the personal technological innovations (good or bad) that emerged in the noughties:

Mobile ringtones: OK.... perhaps we could do without ringtones. Those irritating little tunes you hear on the train, in the supermarket queue and even interrupting performances in the theatre have actually grossed over £112 million in sales in the UK alone, and they ain't finished yet. As the next generation of mobile users comes of age, they too will demand that their favourite tunes be made into ringtones. The music industry must be rubbing its hands with glee.

iPods and Podcasts: The Touch, the Nano, the Shuffle, the Classic, you name it, versions of the iPod popped up and grabbed our attention in the noughties. First appearing in 2001, the iPod series is now the most successful digital audio player in history with over 220 million worldwide sales at the time of writing.

The Nintendo DS (Dual Screen) appeared in 2004 and was one of the first handheld games consoles with a built in microphone and wireless connectivity. The dual screen technology was not as smart as we first thought, but never the less, it's a great little device to amuse yourself with for a few hours whilst waiting for a train, on the bus, or in the dentist's chair (eew).

The iPhone: Apple strikes again. For most people who have them they are the best thing since sliced bread. But there are those who absolutely hate this smart, touch surface mobile phone. Battery life sucks, the camera on the first series was naff and they are expensive when you are locked into an O2 contract. But they have revolutionised mobile phones with their pinch gesturing and responsive multi-touch screens, and with several copycat devices available, there really is no going back now.

Social networking sites: Facebook (2006), Myspace (2003), Bebo (2005), LinkedIn (2003) and other sites together have changed the face of social networking for ever. For good or bad, millions of users worldwide flock every day to their favourite social networking sites for their daily fix of pokes, foodfights, online games status updates and live chat. Friends and friends of friends - the race is on to see who can collect the most links to people they will never ever meet. Seriously, social networking has blurred the boundaries between public and private, business and leisure, even good and bad taste. The way you manage your on-line identity is more important than ever. Nothing it seems, is 'yours' anymore - once you have posted personal information or photos to Facebook, they are no longer simply 'your property'. They are there forever, and burying the past may prove to be a problem for many...

YouTube: Freaking out, spoofing, parodies, pirated music videos and plenty of dross - that's YouTube for you. Before Youtube it was very difficult to upload your video clips to the Internet. Youtube made it easy for millions. If you want to know a fact you Google it, but if you want to see a clip, you YouTube it.

Nintendo Wii: This small object of desire appeared in November 2006. If we were cynical, we could surmise that Nintendo worked out if all their games playing customers continued to sit on their backsides, they would get fat and die of heart attacks. So they invented an active sports style handset to get games players up and moving about, thus keeping them alive longer so they could earn more money and spend it on Nintendo games and Wii technology. Clever.

Wikipedia: Created by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger in 2001, Wikipedia has grown rapidly to become one of the largest reference web sites, attracting approximately 65 million visitors each month. It's the first stop students make when they need to know something, and also the most vilified reference source for many scholars and academics. Where else would most of us go though, for quick information.

Google apps: Streetview, Scholar, Google Earth, Docs, etc - all of these applications appeared in the last decade, and have revolutionised the way we learn, work together, look up information and generally play out our online lives. Augmented reality was introduced as a result of the combination of a number of smart device apps including mashups, global positioning and touch screen technologies. The coming decade will see smart devices, augmented reality and haptic semantic applications coming of age. We will then see how these can be applied to enhance and extend the personal learning environment.

...and of course.... there was Twitter: Forget all the celebrity rubbish and media hype. Twitter is one of the best stripped down social networking tools available to humankind. Don't be deceived by it's simplistic appearance though. It's a powerful tool with plenty of filtering capability and its amplification and connection potential is yet to be fully tapped. Twitter and its third party bolt-on tools will be one to watch in the next few years.

So what are we to make of this truly technological ten years? We have seen radical shifts in our views of identity, relationships, copyright, communication and learning. These are deep changes that will not be recinded, and as we move into an ever more connected society, the changes will increase in their pace and intensity. Personalised learning has never been so easy to establish, and never more contentious. No-one can quite agree on what a personal learning environment is, but that is predictable, because for each of us, it is something different. And what of the future? We don't know what the next decade will hold, but we do know this - it will be increasingly connected. It will also be different - probably more different than we can begin to imagine.

Image source

Networked noughties 2006-2009

This is a continuation from yesterday's post and the last in my series on the technological innovations of the last decade.

March 2006 was the year I first began to take an interest in Web 2.0 and social networks as potentially useful educational tools. With my colleagues Boulos and Maramba I published my first Web 2.0 article: Wikis, blogs and podcasts. 2006 saw the launch of Twitter - now one of the most popular live status update tools worldwide. Twitter is perhaps best known in the media for its many celebrity users, and their ability to attract hundreds of thousands or even millions of 'followers', but it is increasingly used as a conference backchannel, and is now finding its footing in education.

Another major player in the world of social networking was birthed the same year. In September 2006, Facebook came late to the party, but within a short time (March 2008) it overhauled Myspace as the world's favourite social networking tool. Facebook now attracts more thrid party apps than you can shake a stick at, including popular games such as Mafia Wars and FarmVille.

March 2006 was the month we bade farewell to the standard video tape as major retailers stopped selling VHS on the high street. The same month saw the Blu-Ray format being launched in the UK. Google purchased YouTube in November for an estimated 1.65 billion US Dollars, and just in time for Christmas, Nintendo launched the Wii handset.

2007 was a momentous year for touch screen technologies - in June the Apple iPhone became available and changed the way people used their mobile phones. In August of the same year, it was announced that Google had become the most used search engine on the web.

2008 saw the launch of Spotify - a peer to peer music streaming service, the purchase of Bebo by AOL for 850 million US dollars, and the start of the UK digital switchover (in the Border TV region).

The year just gone has been a relatively quiet one in terms of social networking, but behind the scenes, it is highly likely that the digirati are working away at the next generation of apps, widgets and services. In June 2009, the UK Government published its Digital Britain Report, committing the UK to a universal broadband provision by 2012.

Time will tell how many of these innovations will survive, mutate or crash and burn, but this much is clear: The way we communicate, share and access information, and consume entertainment has changed forever. The decade just passed is a significant decade in terms of technology, but it is also significant in the ways it has altered our perceptions of privacy, property, identity, copyright, commerce, relationships and society. Some shifts have been subtle, others more radical. We don't know what the next decade will bring, but we do know that change will accelerate to meet the demands of a volatile economy, uncertain future and an entirely new generation of technology users that will pass through our education institutions.

I wish you and those close to you a peaceful holiday season and a successful new year.

Image source

This generation learning

"Kids are so lucky!" read the tweet. This was in response to a video link I reposted on Twitter today. The title was 'Next Generation Learning' and in the short video, an 11 year-old boy called Harry takes us on a tour of his school. In year 6, he and his classmates use interactive white boards, Wii technology, voting systems and a whole range of ICTs to support and enhance their learning. There are also links so that he and his parents can participate in the life of their school wherever they are, using Internet links and handheld technology. Here's the video:



It's not so far from the truth, and some schools in the UK are already tapping into these tools. I know. I've seen them using them. How long before all schools in the UK and elsewhere in the industrialised world adopt these tools wholesale? What is stopping them? Political issues? Teachers or headteachers reluctant to use them because they are problematic? Economic constraints? Simple fear of the unknown? All of these are reasons some schools stumble in the march forward to new ideas. But I think the most trenchant barrier to grand adoption of emerging technologies is time. Teachers quite simply don't have enough time to do anything other than survive during the working academic year. And then the holidays are spent recovering from the relentless onslaught of planning, teaching and assessment cycles. When the governments of this world stop testing and measuring everything to destruction and start seeing learning as a means to an end rather than as an outcome, then we may see some changes. Then it won't be next generation learning - it will be 'this generation learning'.

OK. End of rant. (Steps down off his soapbox).

Being myself

As a psychologist, I'm very interested in the concept of identity. I have studied it, written about it, and introspected (self questioned) on it and in particular, asked how identity can be manipulated in 'cyberspace'. This particular blog post is rooted in several others I posted in December, but notably two: 'It's only me' (which was about my Twitter and Flickr avatar @timbuckteeth) and 'The new Mii' which focused on 3D avatars such as those we create to represent ourselves when we play on the Nintendo Wii.

It all came to a head earlier this week when I mischieviously posted up on Ning that it was my birthday on 12 January (the same day the Digifolios and Personal learning Spaces online workshop kicked off). It wasn't my birthday though... mine is actually on June 16. As far as I know, only dear old Queen Elizabeth II has two birthdays (and presumably if there is a Queen Elizabeth III she will have 3 birthdays!). But I wasn't lying though. You see, January 12 is actually the day I created Timbuckteeth. And he is now two years old. So was it my birthday really? During his short little life, he has become a part of my online identity, and it has now got to the stage where not only do people address me as 'Mr T-B-T' online, I am also occasionally called 'Tim' by my f2f students. More than a dozen online friends wished 'me' a happy birthday on 12 January. I passed on the greetings to Tim of course.

The next day, when I came clean on Twitter about the birthday, Alexandra Grant-Paul (over in Canada - @AlexnWonderland) came up with a really interesting social question when she asked: How much ARE we our avatars?

Got me thinking it did. So I challenged her to write about it. She did, and her latest blog post 'Me and my avatar' is evidence of her thoughts. Alex poses some interesting questions and makes some amusing yet challenging comments about how we choose to represent ourselves to others, and how we are so good at changing our personae. It's well worth a read, and it'll get you thinking, I promise you.

So here's my closing comment: The social philosopher Erving Goffman (another Canadian!) proposed a theory of 'being' in which he likened us to actors on a stage (known popularly as the Dramaturgical model'). We manage our impressions most carefully, he claimed, when we are in our 'front stage' roles - that is, when we have an audience. This is in stark contrast to our behaviour when we are 'back stage', that is relaxed and with people we feel more comfortable with. Then we can be our true selves. In our front stage roles, we are subject to costumes, scripts, props, etc., but in our back stage roles, we can truly be ourselves.

But are we not also ourselves when we are front stage? Just a different version of the self? And when I create an avatar to 'represent' me, does the avatar change me? Or diminish me? Or enhance me.... when I am online? How much of 'me' is actually invested in the avatar? And finally, how much is my impression actually able to be managed by my avatar, when other people encounter 'him' in cyberspace. Your comments in the comments box below please (Open ID of course!)

(Image source: Rosemountgroup.com)

The New Mii

What is so fascinating about avatars? How is it that our digital identity can be so fluid and flexible, and yet it can become something that is so vitally important to us when we venture into a digital environment?

For the uninitiated, The word Avatar comes from the ancient Hindu (Sanskrit) word 'avatara', of which the original meaning is 'incarnation'. In recent years (ever since it was first repurposed in 1985 from the Ultima Games set) the word avatar has become synonymous with the digital representation of an individual's identity. The avatar is now 'you' in another, technology mediated format. It can take the form of a 'buddy pic' on Twitter for example, or can be a sophisticated 3D rendering of your persona.

I was reminded of the function and purpose of the avatar when we recently introduced the Ninetendo Wii to our family over Christmas. The kids love it. We adults love it. It can become addictive if you let it. The Wii is quite simply a revolution in home entertainment and gaming experience. And the Wii demands that you create your Mii - your Wii avatar - so you can start playing the excellent 3D games it supports. Many discussion groups and web pages have sprung up to inform this activity (see for example the YouTube video on how to create a Penguin Mii) and it can be quite a creative process.

So you create your Mii based on how you want to appear on the screen as you play games. What choices do you have? Well, they are very wide. Similarly to other 3D virtual environments such as Second Life, you can create facial shapes and expressions, features, genders, ages, heights, body shapes, and adornments. You can of course, also have several avatars, for different purposes. Your first impulse is to create an avatar that represents you accurately. That's what I did, and then I soon got bored. So just for fun, my wife and I created a 'little old lady' avatar with her hair in a grey bun, whom we named 'Hilda'. It was hilarious to watch Hilda beating the tar out of other computer generated avatars half her age during a Wimbledon tennis match. I also have another avatar called 'Fat Barry' who is overweight, unfit, balding, and completely useless at just about everything. He is my complete antithesis of course! I always use his avatar to play my wife at golf, because if she doesn't win, my life is over.

But putting the entertainment and fun to one side for a minute (I know - these are important components in learning!) there is a serious side to avatar creation. Your avatar, according to some theorists, is an extension of you. So perhaps this is why so many people treat it so seriously. I have encountered some extremely impressive and elaborate avatars in Second Life, most of whom bear no resemblence whatsoever to their real life creators. It is of course a licence for pure fantasy, but there is a serious purpose behind it. I have posted previous blog posts on this subject including It's only me, and Multi-me, and I am increasingly interested in the issues faced when we 'distribute' our presence across several media and virtual environments simultaneously. I will write more about my own thoughts on avatars and digital identity over the coming year, and would appreciate any comments and dialogue with those of you who are interested in developing this subject further in the context of education and training.

We are not lost

We have a 3D immersion cinema here at the University of Plymouth. It's a converted planetarium, which among other things, is now used to research some of the principles of virtual reality. I take visitors there just so they can experience the 'Wow!' factor. But how far down the road to full immersive experiences in education are we? We have handheld devices such as the Nintendo Wii, and sites such as Second Life which offer us a semblance of immersive experience sans the headset devices and much vaunted VR systems we heard so much about in the 90s. VR headset versions are being used in a variety of learning contexts such as military training, but how effective are they? And do we actually need them anymore? Popular fiction writers dwelt on the capacity of virtual reality to inspire, excite, terrify and bemuse, as in the Michael Crichton novel Disclosure:

He brought the headset down from the ceiling and started to place it over her eyes.
“Just a minute.” She pulled away. “What is this?”
'The headset has two small display screens. They project images right in front of your eyes. Put it on. And be careful. These things are expensive.”
“How expensive?”
“A quarter of a million dollars apiece.” He fitted the headset over her eyes and put the headphones over her ears.
“I don't see any images. It’s dark in here.”
“That's because you’re not plugged in, Louise.” He plugged in her cables.
Sanders stepped up onto the second walker pad and brought the headset down from the ceiling. He plugged in the cable. “I'll be right with you.” He said.
He put on the headset.
Sanders saw a blue screen, surrounded by blackness. He looked to his left and saw Fernandez standing beside him. She looked entirely normal, dressed in her street clothes. The video was recording her appearance, and the computer eliminated the walker pad and the headset.
“I can see you,” she said in a surprised voice. She smiled. The part of her face covered by the headset was computer animated, giving her a slightly unreal, cartoonlike quality.

Crichton painted a picture of a high cost, graphically rich, and exotic multi-media based technology into which users could mentally immerse themselves, and into which social interaction and interpersonal communication were embedded. It was a technology where the edges between reality and fantasy were blurred and where the interface between human and computer faded to grey within the mind of the user. Crichton's story was the unadulterated fiction we would expect, particularly with large cash advances and a Hollywood movie deal in the offing. This set of possibilities became the central theme for the cult movie series 'The Matrix' in which the boundaries between reality and virtuality were blurred. How does VR work on the mind so well, deceiving people into believing they are having some kind of 'real' experience? And do we need visors anymore now we have Second Life, the Wii and other apps which can 'fool' us almost as well...?

The media expert Derrick de Kerckhove sheds some important light on this question in his book 'The Skin of Culture'. de Kerckhove relates the story of a colleague who was visiting the wilds of Ontario, with an Alonquin Indian guide to look after him. At one point, he turned to his Indian guide and suggested that they may be lost. 'We are not lost', replied the guide, 'the camp is lost!'. This disconnect in cultural perceptions of space was not lost on the colleague, who realised that in his world space was fixed and he was a free agent wandering around it. His guide saw a different perspective, where the only fixed point was himself, and the rest of the world flowed by as he moved it under his feet. This is the exact same principle employed by VR systems to fool the individual into thinking s/he is moving around and encountering objects when in fact s/he is fixed in space.

This principle will sustain itself as the virtual experience in all its guises continues to perplex. But what it will look like is probably still beyond us.

Plymouth Rocks

Well, now that the dust has settled on this year's Plymouth e-learning Conference, it is time to reflect. The verdict was that Plymouth rocks! It seems from the many positive comments we received that it has been a great success. 80 delegates attended the event today, to hear Professor Mark Stiles give a keynote on the tensions between institutional and student control over learning. Over 25 papers, demonstrations and workshops were also presented (Jackie Sitters, above, presents a paper on wikis in higher education), featuring Second Life, blogs, wikis, webcasting, handheld and mobile technologies, and there were lunchtine demonstrations by BlackBoard and our own home grown Leatning Technologist team. The latter was something of a triumph, because the LT team were able to present a neat version of the Nintendo Wii surface hack, which impressed a lot of those present.

Left is a picture of the final plenary where Ray Jones (University of Plymouth), Helen Keegan (University of Salford), Mark Stiles (University of Staffordshire) and I took part in a panel session. We answered questions from the delegates on the semantic web, plagiarism, sustainability and the future of e-learning, as well as revisiting issues such as ownership and control, formal vs informal learning and transparent vs opaque technologies. We are already planning next year's event which will take place over two days, on 23-24 April 2009. There will be at least two keynote speakers, a social event and conference dinner. Some photos from the day are available for viewing on Flickr.

Wiimote control

Yesterday, in the technology section of BBC Breakfast, I watched as Rory Cellan-Jones talked to Bill Gates at a Las Vegas Techno-Fair. Gates (of Hell) was demonstrating a new, and sickenly clever table top touch screen computer, the 'Microsoft Surface' which he confidently claims, millions of punters will have bought over the next 5 years. He's probably right, I thought, and there goes a few billion more dollars into Mr Gate's already obscenely bulging trouser pockets (priced at around $10,000 a piece, it wouldn't be long...)

Then, lo and behold, the angel of heaven descended, and brought us great tidings of joy (I know, I know ..... that was last month...). A wizz kid called Jimmy Chung Lee has just created a hardware hack on... wait for it... the Nintendo Wii. Using nothing more than a few simple ballpoint pens, he replaced the guts with Infra Red lights. Because the Wii works by tracking IR lights, any surface, whether a projector screen, an LCD screen, or even a coffee table top can be turned into a multi-touch screen similar to the iPod Touch or Microsoft Surface. And what's more, the software can be downloaded for free. Hooray! So is that hard cheese for Microsoft? Wii hope so....

Buzz words for 2007

Running under the title of Schott's Alamanac, the Times newspaper today carries an article about all of the new buzz words that have supposedly been introduced in 2007 and suggests that these are the words that will define the year. Many of them are technology words already familar to Edubloggers and some are irritatingly unfamilar.... shall we?

• Podslurping: Illicit copying of data to a portable storage device (e.g. iPod)
• e-Thugs: Online cyber bullies
• Lifecasting: Webcasting all your life's activities 24/7
• iSlavery: Apple's attempts to lock iPhone users into one network provider
• Macolyte: Someone who worships at the altar of all things Apple
• Network promiscuity: Tendency by social networkers to spread their membership across FaceBook, MySpace, Bebo, etc... (See also FaceHooked, an addiction to FaceBook; Face vs Space, war for supremacy between FaceBook and MySpace; FaceBlocking, where companies ban employees from accessing social sites at work)
• GoogTube: Offspring of the marriage between Google and YouTube
• Flog: A fake blog run by a company or marketing agency posing as a real-life consumer
• Upgrage: Upgrade rage experienced by all those installing Windows Vista
• Exergaming: Unlkely combination of exercise and gaming (Wii all need it)
• Cyber-vetting: Use of the web to assess the (inter)NET REP(utation) of potential employees
• UGC: User generated content
• Blogola: Fees (or bribes) paid to bloggers for favourable comments (Never had any offered...)
• Digerati: Elite members of online communities and computer industry
• Meganiche: The theory that because of the vastness of the Internet, even obscure items or content can receive massive exposure and publicity

Well fancy that. Any of the above resonate with you? Some of it sure does with me. But some of them go back a few years, so although they may now define 2007, some may actually also define the first few years of this century, I think.

Taking the Wii

Well it's official. Video games are better for your kids than watching TV. A recent report in The Psychologist [20 (1), pp 26-29] by Kevin Durkin (University of Strathclyde) entitled 'Myers, Media and Modern Times' tells us that although video games have been given bad press in the past, there may be hope.

Video gaming has been held responsible for a number of negative effects including addiction, impairment of family life and peer relations, damage to school performance and even obesity and aggressive behaviour.

Now, says Durkin, a study of over 1000 American 16 year olds has shown that low and high players of video games show less substance abuse than 'never players'. Low and high players of video games also reported higher levels of family closeness and attachment to school than did 'never players'. There must be something in this lark then. 1000 American kids can't be wrong. I'm on to Amazon right away to buy the new Nintendo Wii for each of my kids.

PS: Actually folks, all joking aside, it's an informative article - get hold of it and read it if you are interested in media effects on young people.