Dec
The Best of 2007
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I decided to publish a readers “best-of-2007″ list for my final post of the year based on a Google Analytics site report. Here are a dozen plus two of the best stories on this blog in 2007 (click on the title to go to that post) ranked by number of visits:
A handful of US and European developers have been working in stealth mode on game engines and frameworks with low barriers of entry: inexpensive or free, browser based, pre-built components and code. Now that these products are beginning to come into view it’s notable that most are using social media as an integral part of their business model and banking on users to build a good deal of the content.
You may have liked my original post but boy was I all wet on this one! I seized on a news story and wrote, “Bringing new meaning to the phrase global warming Sony is in talks to acquire Club Penguin, the virtual world for kids from British Columbia. Sale price is rumored to be in the range of $450m, a 7.5 multiple of Club Penguin’s reported $60m sales… a healthy increment and further evidence of the rapidly growing interest in mmogs and virtual worlds appealing to young kids, a market that includes the educational and social Whyville, purely social worlds like Habbo Hotel and Nicktropolis among others.” As we know now it was Disney and not Sony that ate the Penquin. Still, according to Lane Merrifield who I met at Dust or Magic, it’s all going down quite smoothly.
It’s no secret that IBM has been experimenting with Second Life and other virtual world platforms for some time. More recently the “desire to have a more secure intranet environment where we can meet and explore the potential technology and social implications” has prompted the addition of Garage Games’ low-cost Torque engine to their arsenal, according to the eightbar blog this week.
Games, Learning & SocietyIn his opening keynote at the Game, Learning & Society 3.0 conference in Madison, WI last week, Professor James Gee set the stage for the year’s most substantive conference on learning games and simulations. Among other points made in his opening remarks, Gee observed that:
> The game business has managed to profit from selling products that present extremely challenging learning experiences which players willingly master — the stuff that’s extremely difficult to get kids to do in school.
> Games encourage performance before competency, the opposite of the dominant pedagogy in today’s schools that stress the ability to recite facts in order to pass the test before actually demonstrating competence in a particular domain.
> Games are problem-solving spaces that cultivate a culture of learning, and learning complexity is an altogether legal drug that humans can’t get enough of. The gamers attitude to failure is “fail early, fail often” if it is in the service of learning something critical to success.
> Gamers learn to look past the eye candy to solve the underlying puzzle of the quest or mission that they’re on — just the kind of discriminatory abilities that are core 21 Century skills.
> Games, particularly MMOGs, are highly social systems where players are driven by a common passion or agenda, just as they must be on the cross-functional teams that are cornerstones of today’s globalized businesses.
Serious games and educational simulations are an unique product category with functional requirements that are different from platform and casual games, MMOGs, and drill-n-skill learning games. The gameplay itself is only the tip of the iceberg: hidden out of sight is an engine the player doesn’t see. As an emerging market, however, little has been written about the best engines for building serious games. This lack of transparency makes it difficult for publishers to choose development partners, and for developers to scope new projects. My article “Serious Game Engine Shootout: a comparative analysis of technology for serious game development” and panel discussion on March 6th at the Serious Games Summit is intended to help address this deficiency. For more on the topic visit my new Resources page.
Web 2.0 Deconstructed [kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/6gmP4nk0EOE" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
I’ve championed user centered design for years and in part that’s behind the argument for using educational games and simulations for teaching: meeting and engaging students on their own terms. Now I’m seeing a gamer-centered design aesthetic begin to emerge in some surprising places, like business software, where you might least expect games to have an influence.
This is an amazing illumination of the Web 2.0 space that’s worth downloading (8920kb) and spending some time with. One caveat: there are links out to many of the influences he mentions so exploring this could keep you busy for a while.
If you combine the open source Moodle.org learning management system with lesson plans that use Linden Lab’s Second Life you get something like Sloodle.com, a vision of how to use virtual worlds in the classroom. Besides, talking about Moodles and Sloodles turns heads so it’s a great conversation starter 
Investing in Education
Part one of three reports on the SIIA’s Ed Tech Business Forum, the leading business and finance conference for the K-12 and postsecondary education technology market that wrapped up a few days ago in New York. This annual event attracts senior management from education software companies, platform technology firms, solution providers, publishers, private equity firms and venture capitalists.
The keynote speaker for this years conference was John Martinson, Managing Partner of the Edison Venture Fund. With 31 years of venture capital experience, including 8 investments for Edison from $3-10M and 12 investments from $250K-12M as an individual, Martinson has significant experience and a unique perspective on investing in the educational technology market.
Krista Marks has a bold vision to change the way kids interact with the computer and learn about creativity, and her new site Kerpoof is a giant leap forward in that direction. A unique blend of Web 2.0 goodness, user-generated content and social media savvy combined with brilliant design and some of the best Flash programming around, Krista and her team have created a place where fun is not separate from learning but integral to it, where kids can create art, write their own stories, create their own movies, and share them. True to her educational intentions the site offers teacher resources and lesson plans as well. Krista shared her vision in this videotaped presentation at Dust or Magic. For more, visit Kerpoof’s website and see for yourself, or read what TechCrunch and Colorado Startups had to say.
Scratch is a new programming language developed at the MIT Media Lab that’s aimed at kids from 8-up. According to the BBC story and video out earlier this week Scratch “does not require prior knowledge of complex computer languages. Instead, it uses a simple graphical interface that allows programs to be assembled like building blocks.”
Ben Sawyer’s presentation of a serious games taxonomy at the Annenberg Workshop on Learning Games was picked up on by the Serious Games Blog and 360 Kid’s Scott Traylor, who writes in his post, “Ben began the presentation with a very fitting poem by John Godfrey Saxe about six blind men who went to see an elephant. Each blind man found a part of the elephant — its sturdy side by one, a tusk by another, an ear by yet another, and so on. Each blind man thought they had come to understand the true meaning of what an elephant is. Each person was partially right about what they thought was an elephant, yet all of them were wrong in their understanding.” Though the finished version won’t be published until mid-year Ben will present the latest working draft at the 2008 Serious Games Summit this winter.
Children’s Technology Trends in 2008
Robin has been translating technology into consumer friendly terms for more than 25 years. Today, as a writer, new media consultant, and speaker she spends a great deal of her time focusing on family life in a digital world. Currently she’s featured as a columnist on Yahoo! Tech. She’s been the Editor in Chief of FamilyPC, editor of PC Magazine, and columnist for USA Today Online and the Gannett News Service, winning numerous prizes for her coverage of technology. Robin has authored 6 books about parenting in the digital age for publishers including Random House, Simon and Schuster and Hyperion. Visit Robin’s website to learn more.
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