Tim Wang's eLearning Blog

UBC Student Services launched a virtual campus tour this month. The virtual tour is created using Adobe Flash. It highlights the students life on UBC campus. The presentation was well put together and delivers an interesting perspective about UBC. It covers topics like the beautiful UBC campus, student spaces, the city Vancouver, places to learn, life on campus, student residences, Athletics and much more. Check it out if you care to learn more about the university I am working for...

I am invited by Dr. Pina, Manuel to co-teach a third year Fine Arts course - Visual Arts 311 section 001 - "A Vancouver Story". The aim of this course is to explore the local urban space and the ways we experience it. To achieve this, the class will focus on what might be seen as a new form of narrative: one closer to our perception of reality; one that involves different media sound, video, photography, and text- in a non linear environment.

Students in the class are expected to collect and produce audio and visual components of the local communities that based on the novels they read in class. The pieces will then be stitched together into a visually Appealing "Story of Vancouver" using Adobe Flash. Students in the class are very talented in film editing and graphic design. Their previous works with Video and Audio really impressed me. I am involved with the students' works from a technical level which would allow me to inspire and guide them to the final product. I am looking forward to their published work which will for sure be shared via my blog. So, stay tuned!

Sim 2 University Expansion Pack will be out on Mar. 1st, and some sneak previews on this expansion really make me want to try out the popular computer game. I know it's gonna be addictive and time consuming but the idea of living through the college life one more time is just exciting, only this time I am aimed to have more fun.

Campus life involves studying, partying, and going to class. The Sim character will actually "study hard" to make the grade. According to the previews I have read, the character in the game will just "disappear" from the screen while "attending classes", but a real time clock is running to keep a track of the hours being spent in the classes. I am just wondering what if Maxis incorporates some real University course wares into the game? Name it "SIM Real College Expansion - Art History (or choose your own major)". Players can actually jump into real knowledge learning environment from the game and hop back into the game after 30 mins of class time. The score is no long based on a simple computational calculation of how many hours of class time the character "disappeared for class", but some actual marks from the knowledge tests in the game.

This may sounds really crazy, and Maxis will never get into this simply because the amount of extra costs to make the game and lack of interest from the games... Anyway, just some crazy thoughts to end the day...