Tim Wang's eLearning Blog

I accidentally stumble upon (was looking for information on the actual Temple of the Sun) this old style game an hour ago - Temple of the Sun. Believe or not, I actually spent 20 minutes playing this "boring" educational/promotional game made by Suns Micro-systems. It is really an old school game - a 2 dimensional, dodge and left to right game. What caught my attention were those cheesy programming questions embedded in the game. I actually wanted to refresh some of my fading C++ programming knowledge. Here are some screen shots. What's amazing is the top scores underneath, don't know how did they get 7 figures! LOL...

*update* The sound recording of the session is here. It's in mp3 format.

It's happening right now... Join us at Sun Microsystems in Second Life: 123.23.63

This meeting is a follow-up to the Education Grid discussion that started at the Boston Summit a couple of weeks ago. Three platforms will be discussed: Second Life, Croquet and Wonderland. Discussion Guideline include:

1.0 PLATFORM ECOSYSTEM + EDUCATION GRID OVERVIEW
1.1 EDUCATION GRID KEY FEATURES AND CAPABILITIES
1.2 FIGURE: PLATFORM ECOSYSTEM + EDUCATION GRID
2.0 EDUCATION GRID BASELINE REQUIREMENTS UNDER CONSIDERATION
3.0 EDUCATION GRID TIMELINES
4.0 COMMUNICATION AND DEVELOPMENT PROCESSES

The full discussion outline is posted here.

Yep, they are doing it! Linden Lab has increased the price on private island purchases. The price has gone from $1250 to $1675 and the monthly maintenance fees increased from $175 to $295. This really makes me to think if Second Life is still a sustainable tool for education.

In the meanwhile, it's amazing to think about how one could of "made money" off this price surge. The "black market" on SL private island is really heating up due to the previously purchased islands owners pays a much lower maintenance fee.

Should I say we are "lucky" that we have one island already? Or it is time to "dump" it...

Sony has officially bundlled a Flash Player with their PSP system software version 2.7. Mobile gamers can now play Flash enabled games and view Flash contents on their hand held gameing devices. The Flash Player on PSP supports a screen size of 480 pixels x 272 pixels. It has fully featured XML parsing support. I am anxious to find out how are our learning tools and Pachyderm turn out on PSP... Since I don't have a PSP yet, here is a photoshoped Pachyderm on PSP picture. I am very confident Pachyderm would work fine on ths new player. :)

Guess I was a little bored this afternoon and decided to give it a try to the Chinese game platform I found last night. I have to say I am impressed by the high quality media (sound, graphics and animation) components in the game. The entire game is done in Flash with dynamic data transfer. I can totaly see an 8 years old kid being amused by the interactive cartoon figure - "xiao tian tian" (the little girl on the screen capture). Three minutes into the game, it polled me on how do I learn new knowledge: A) Reading B)Browsing Internet C)Watching TV D)Ask Parents/Teacher. It then showed me what other kids have chosen, and realizing only 19% of them browse internet. Of course I don't know how many players have being polled, but this is a very interesting concept on collecting first hand data from the varies of group of learners out there. I then learned why people "flush" (how blood flow turn people's face red etc.), and answered an easy question, then got my 5 award cards! Yay! A few more minutes I am gonna be hooked to the platform... The game is free, but it does indicate that you may "upgrade" (buy their printed books) in order to get more "power cards" for credits... Anyway, great product! Gonna browse a bit more...

An internet based eduation game was launched in Shanghai this week - "The Legendary Journey". This project is an joint venture between the East China Normal University Press and a Hong Kong communication corporation. The game was created based on the traditional curriculum and currently covers grade 1-5. The middle school and high school versions are currently under development.

The currently game is designed for the audience between 6 to 11 years of age. The platform contains components:

"daily journey", like personal diary or blog. It is aimed to help the kids to practice their writing skill. I remember I was ordered to write diaries daily back in grade 3, of course it was paper based only.

"cool knowledge base", non-boring knowledge, daily knowledge, like encyclopedia, media based...

"hot card collection", like Pockymon? Nicely designed cartoon characters that kids would love to collect and trade. Works as a credit collection process.

"journey tracking system", keeps a track of the character's travelling history. Used as student performance tracking system.

"general ranking system", uses ranks to lay out an hierarchy which creates competitions between the kids. The have something like "King of Math", "Queen of English" etc...

And much more features. It looks really fun to me, and I would love to know how the kids think of it...

For more information, please go to: http://e-legends.yikeyilian.com/