New Book Goes 'Beyond Fun'

Drew Davidson offered this press release for a new book on the Serious Games Listserv today:

Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) Press debuts the publication of “Beyond Fun: Serious Games and Media” this month. The book features the work of more than 15 international contributors examining how games and media can impact learning.

Topics include cheating and violence in video games, the use of games in classrooms, and how media tools such as simulations and blogs can foster learning and a new digital, procedural literacy. Instead of completely separate individual articles, the contributors to “Beyond Fun: Serious Games and Media” have orchestrated the articles together, reading and writing as a whole so that concepts across the articles resonate with each other.

“We’re excited to release ‘Beyond Fun’,” says Drew Davidson, ETC Press Editor and Director of ETC in Pittsburgh, “it has evocative articles written by leading practitioners in the fields of education, learning, games and media.”

“Beyond Fun” is the second book published by ETC Press, following the initial release of “stories in between: narratives & mediums @ play” which explores the interplay between stories and media. “Stories in between” focuses around the transmedia experience of “Myst” as it moves across media from games to books to comics and more.

The ETC Press is an academic and open-source publishing imprint that distributes its work in print, electronic and digital form. Inviting readers to contribute to and create versions of each publication, ETC Press fosters a community of collaborative authorship and dialogue across media. ETC Press represents an experiment and an evolution in publishing, bridging virtual and physical media to redefine the future of publication.

For more information, please visit: http://etc.cmu.edu/etcpress

The book looks very interesting. Here’s the write-up from the ETC Press site:

This book focuses on strategies for applying games, simulations and interactive experiences in learning contexts. The contributors orchestrated this collection together, reading and writing as a whole so that concepts resonate across articles. Throughout, the promises and problems of implementing games and media in learning experiences are explored. The articles have been authored by Clark Aldrich, Ian Bogost, Mia Consalvo, William Crosbie, Drew Davidson, Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen, Melinda Jackson, Donna Leishman, Michael Mateas, Marc Prensky, Scott Rettberg, Kurt Squire, David Thomas, Siobhan Thomas, Jill Walker Rettberg, and Jenny Weight.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 License

The articles in the book are from two special issues of On The Horizon, published in 2004 and 2005. The book is a free download through Lulu.com, and is freely distributable for non-commercial purposes, which means professors and teachers can host the electronic version on their own servers and let students use it for free. A printed version is available for $24.95.

Last Lecture Author & Alice Founder Pausch Dies at 47

Randy Pausch, a pioneer of educational videogaming, passed away this week from cancer at age 47. Pausch’s “Last Lecture,” videotaped at Carnegie Mellon where he taught, became an internet sensation last year. I linked to The Wall Street Journal article by Jeffrey Zaslow last September, and inadvertently misspelled Dr. Pausch’s last name. Google sent hundreds of visitors to this blog who made the same mistake.

Zaslow went on to co-author a book with Pausch, which has topped the best seller lists. Pausch is beloved by educational videogame enthusiasts because he was one of the founders of Alice, a popular software program for creating animation projects and teaching aspiring programmers how to code. Alice continues to be hosted by Carnegie Mellon. Dr. Pausch will be missed.

The Future of Interactive Technology for Peace Conference

The Entertainment Technology Center, Carnegie Mellon University presents:The Future of Interactive Technology for Peace

April 2-3, 2008
Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
University Center

The Future of Interactive Technology for Peace Conference (April 2&3, 2008) is a day and one-half day national conference providing a forum for discussing the impact and the potential that interactive technology holds for peace and peacemaking. Using the highly successful game “PeaceMaker” [http://impactgames.com] as a jumping-off point, the key aim of the conference is to explore new directions in the application of interactive technology for conflict resolution, diplomacy, and international affairs.

The conference is hosted by The Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) at Carnegie Mellon, located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Conference speakers and workshop presenters are leaders and researchers from academia, technology and the entertainment industry. Conference attendees to the conference will be a mix of professionals and students, interested in exploring new directions in the application of interactive technology for conflict resolution, diplomacy, and international affairs. The conference will encompass the ETC and the main Carnegie Mellon campus.

Complete details here.

Using the Wiimote as a Cheap Smart Board

Uber-blogger Will Richards notes that Johnny Chung Lee has devised a nifty hack to take an ordinary Wiimote and turn it into a Smart Board replication device, all for about a hundred bucks.

Although the links to Lee’s pages over at Carnegie Mellon were not working last I looked, the YouTube video where he shows how to do the trick is still up and working on Richards’ site. Some of Richards’ commenters discuss other ways to leverage inexpensive laser technology this way.

In the video, Lee connects the Wiimote to the computer that is being projected, then uses a laser pen to create an instant interactive white board. Besides walls, he demonstrates on a table and a common LCD screen.

Richards attests that educators watching the video get very excited about the possibilities for creating cheap interactive whiteboards on the fly. We’ve seen this appropriation of common videogame hardware for ulterior purposes before, mainly with the military using Xbox controllers to guide robots. These days, gaming hardware is off the shelf compatible with regular computers and software, using standards like USB, and can be repurposed for other things. It will be nice to see more educational uses in the future.

Influential Academic Gamers

Next Generation has an article entitled, “Gaming’s 30 Most Influential Outsiders.” Included in the list are six academics:

-          Tanya Byron: “Leading the UK government review on gaming violence.”

-          Janet Eke: “Project Coordinator ‘Preserving Virtual Worlds,’ University of Illinois”

-          James Paul Gee: “Professor of Learning Sciences, University of Wisconsin” (Didn’t he move to Arizona recently?)

-          Henry Jenkins: “Professor of Humanities, MIT”

-          Paul Levinson: “Professor of Media Studies, Fordham University”

-          Randy Pausch: “Professor of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon”

Readers Respond to Randy Pausch Column

Earlier, I blogged about the WSJ column on Randy Pausch’s last speech before a cheering crowd at Carnegie Mellon. Dr. Pausch was one of the founding fathers of Alice, an NSF-supported programming language that is popular with instructional video game enthusiasts.

Jeff Zaslow wrote the original column in The Wall Street Journal that generated the lion’s share of online interest. In it, he gave a synopsis of the speech; I provided a link for readers to watch the speech over at CMU in an update to my original post. In due course, the blogosphere and traditional media were abuzz with the speech and what it meant to varied individuals.

This week, Zaslow follows up his earlier column with another entry in which he describes the widespread reader reaction to his original story. Folks everywhere, Zaslow reports, have gotten a charge out of watching Dr. Pausch’s lecture. Dr. Pausch has asked Carnegie Mellon officials to keep the video of the lecture in the public domain so that it can remain widely accessible.

If you haven’t gotten a chance to watch the speech, now is the time. This is an inspiring final manifesto from academia’s finest.

References:
Zaslow, J. (2007, September 27). The professor’s manifesto: What it meant to readers. The Wall Street Journal, D2.

Alice Founder Delivers Last Speech

I’ve written about the educational programming language Alice in previous articles and posts, starting here. Jeff Zaslow, the “Moving On” columnist for the The Wall Street Journal reported this week on Randy Pauch over at Carnegie Mellon. Dr. Pauch is a founding father of Alice, and he recently delivered his “final speech.”

Dr. Pauch has pancreatic cancer, and is expected to live only a few months. The speech was recorded so that his sons, ages five, two, and one, can see and hear the speech when they grow older.

The significance of Dr. Pauch’s work with Alice was best summed up in this quote:

Considered one of the nation’s foremost teachers of videogame and virtual-reality technology, he helped develop “Alice,” a Carnegie Mellon software project that allows people to easily create 3-D animations. It had one million downloads in the past year, and usage is expected to soar.

Defying typical stereotypes, Dr. Pauch’s work in introducing the instructional side of video gaming was best summed up in this quote:

He talked of requiring his students to create videogames without sex and violence. “You’d be surprised how many 19-year-old boys run out of ideas when you take those possibilities away,” he said, but they all rose to the challenge.

This is a great article about a great professor.

References:
Zaslow, J. (2007, September 20). A beloved professor delivers the lecture of a lifetime. The Wall Street Journal, D1. [Online.] Available: http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB119024238402033039.html

Update:
Carnegie Mellon has the full video of Randy Pauch’s last speech online here.

Programming with Alice at Carnegie Mellon

In continuing our ongoing discussion of teaching kids programming skills by having them design their own computer games, Kathy Larason suggested I take a look at Alice over at Carnegie Mellon.

Alice is an introductory 3-D programming language that focuses on animation objects. The graphics are interactive, and could be constructed as games or animations. The main code and accompanying documentation are housed at alice.org.

Alice is a major endeavor. Four textbooks on programming with Alice were published in 2006; one in 2007; and at least one more is slated for 2008. Workshops are ongoing this summer, including sites at Carnegie Mellon, Roger Williams University, and Georgia Tech.

Alice has been widely adopted in schools and colleges. In a PowerPoint presentation led by Dennis Cosgrove, Caitlin Kelleher and others at ACM SIGCSE 2007 earlier this year, several statistics were given. The main site has had some 3.5 million page views, and almost half a million downloads of the program have occurred over the past year. About 250 colleges and universities are using Alice to teach programming.

Alice has a serious agenda. Computer Science majors continue to decline in numbers, and there are numerous ongoing efforts to interest girls and women in programming as well as math and the hard sciences. Researchers being as they are, several studies of Alice and its effect on this serious agenda are ongoing. One study of initial Computer Science class takers at Ithaca College and St. Joseph University showed a jump in grade averages (from C to B) and a large jump in willingness to take the second semester of Computer Science when participants were exposed to Alice prior to taking the class (see reference below).

Alice 3.0 is due out in 2008. Besides funding from the NSF, sponsors have included video game giant Electronic Arts, DARPA, Intel, Microsoft, the Office of Naval Research, and others. The Electronic Arts Foundation recently donated $300,000 to the effort, and EA has granted permission to use characters from The Sims 2 in Alice 3.0. The Sims line has long been the most popular computer video game series, and is appealing to both male and female players.

Alice is well worth watching as an introduction to computer programming. I’ll be interested in reading more about it as research studies continue to be published.

References

Moskal, M., Lurie, D., & Cooper, S. Evaluating the effectiveness of a new instructional approach. In Proceedings of 2004 SIGCSE Conference. Norfolk, VA.