of Games for Learning [ draft ]

As I near the end of my first dabbling into the field of games and learning, I am begining to identify a few areas where further research, products, or some kind of implementation is required. Most of the ideas are questions or problems faced by people whom I am talking to, that I have been unable to comment upon.

A study I did into modelling of a simulation as a Adventure/RPG on the lines of the old LucasArts game with some components of D&D, led to a question of how to implement story trees in flash, people are doing this, but the process is extremely time consuming and mostly each condition is taken one at a time creating a gigantic pile of crosslinked swf files.

Flash based API or even a development structure to aid such development can be of great help. I have not been able to isolate an existing engine or the requisite flash technology to implement such a system, but i think this is a great opportunity.

Secondly a study into what the rural areas in India can contribute to the game development process could have amazing fallouts on learning games that are developed in India. Looking at the kind of techinical and multimedia skills that are popularized by so called 'computer training' institutes can provide cheaper means of production, more localized content and new-age employment 'IN' the rural areas.

I am currently working to create learning-version of the game development cycle primarily from the book 'Game Architecture and Design' by Andrew Rollings with inputs from processes of the eLearning industry. I think this is essential and after refinement the model could provide a structured and professional way to develop games for learning in India, and also identify people skills and resources required at various stages.

A system on the lines of an LMS, that supports game delivery is also an interesting idea, but more than that to create either technical or operational structures for such content in flash with support of next generation tools such as Breeze from macromedia (an Open system would be any day better) can help set up an easy distribution and deployment network.

the drug.

he wanted life, hope, love and all the other things people told him brought happiness. Did he belong to that. Was he ever to understand, the meaning of joy, true life. He had hoped for it all, had hoped for ever, but change never touched him. He looked for things, inside, and in others. Time for a search was over, materials was all he could trust, that he could see, touch. it was the final path. Path to glory, to destruction, but all was already lost. In his loss he found a pleasure, a assurance that there was nothing below. To loose all hope, was freedom, to take words from the others...intellect, to fake nirvana, True enlightenment. it was the end, at the end of all things

two tabs, escape, feel, repeat.

Mocha!

Archives of the joblessSuicideBomber II

this is not megalomania.not even my 15 lines of self lenient fame.nope.i dont recall any starlit saturday night starin into the dissolutions of my urban audience.nothin about the skeletons unaccounted for.a cliched bare all session with my pshycic alter ego.nothin more than a muffled plea at freedom.i was irredeemably human once.the fishin around on an empty pocket for a marasmic blind child cradled by a teenage mother\to be.starin in cinema scope at run down centres for the mass production of human pity.utopian dreams of a tiny universe of goodness and chocolate shakes for everyone.i was a child too.like evrybody once was.the politics of radium stickers and automated tiffin carriers.and lost crayons and flouroscent sketches.the gawks at anything with wings.interludes of ivan the terrible and sojourns into little pockets of perennial water guns and the phantasms of kissin the fairy goodbye.i was untiringly hopeful.couldn't be cynical even if i tried to.what's wrong?.wrong?.there was god.and a few favourites. pals of macabre loyalty.and promised goodies of imaginary overtones.i was loved.hated?i don't know.it was never important.it was schools let off and sudden paradise.desponent pleas for adventures afetr sunset.attempts at pre teen masterpieces at art and literature.grades and the remote controlled car.without the wire.god made children.old people died of not cancer and blocked arteries but because the bearded fella was fallin short of good company.con jobs at scalin the high walls of trouser pockets for salted mango slices and the rented cycles.modulated tales of fierce heroics and inflated accounts of parental wealth.brag bags of foreign uncles and metaphysical artefacts of imaginary lands.

The big Great Successful megalomaniac ME

no life, no ideas, no original opinions, no interesting conversations, not even arguable small talk. I am that who should best be kept from the world, lest i waste others minds filling them with useless information trying to hide, the real uninteresting, fool in me, no understanding of life, responsibilities, of friends, family. I am one that has impartially betrayed all.

Hope is lost, but desperation is yet to sink in, do not mistake me for a modest man, the enormous, but hollow ego will snap back. I understand that I mean nothing, that failure has already set in - for life. But also that control is lost, the mouth speaks, barks rather, without permission, without consent.

Why I type this, because that inner ego irks me to tell the world of my misery. I am not an orphan, an underprivileged, have no mental or physical handicap. A mind and body within all limits of normalcy, of mediocrity. Still I am capable of falling below all expectations. Whatever, wherever lies the 'me' in the body, the mind or the soul, i believe is the loser, the one, capable of taking everything and producing nothing. But still it demands respect, wants to reach out, do nothing , but attain great heights, the one you would love to hate, the one capable of mediocre statements like these, and still having the nerve to let them out.

original

I HAVE NO ORIGINAL THOUGHT IN MY HEAD.

I can give the world no new words, no images, no thoughts, no ideas.

I am that who to irritate, to impress blurts out facts or words from the novel yesterday, the theory by Vyogotsky or the report in a newspaper today. Only at peace until someone finds out.

I cannot stop, not even after someone states he is not interested in knowing, in my useless vomit of words from what others have said, written or done.

I SEARCHED FOR THIS ON THE INTERNET.

I fear that the only things in my life would be plagiarized quotes i quoted.

AM I STILL DREAMING BIG.
tyler had warned me against this

Archives of the joblessSuicideBomber

I, Not Me

I am born .

I don't cause myself to be born .

So right there , in the brief big bang which inaugurates my life with a whimper , you have it . My life's control taken away from me .

I am not even writing this .

Think about it . Right now , I am not writing about myself .

I am not me .

How fucked up is that?

My life was thrust down my throat and I am living it right now .It was a trap all along and I can't get out .

Or that's what I try to think . I mean , if you think something is impossible , it is , right ?

So I live it , one day at a time , not thinking of my future , or again , imagining the future is never gonna happen . To the crappy socially interactive group I call my friends and fellow residents , I try to present this air of nonchalance and indifference to everything , good or bad , shitty or not . Good for you , they say . Socially , technically and politically correct in this age , they declare. Politically correct ? ,I argue . I don't conform to political correctness , I say . To me , everything's equal . Everything's relative , so there's no need to define anything , I claim as my philosophy of things . But all the time , I as well as all other assholes living around me realize bitterly that we are all born shitty and it was just tough luck we couldn't do anything we wanted with our lives , and nothing we say or not conform to is going to change anything .

I spend my time arguing all the above with them .

Good for you , they say . Way to go .

Bullshit , I reply .

I know I am good in many things in which other people aren't . I can develop them if I might , but instead I try to argue with people why I think that's a bad idea .

Ok , I don't argue ; I reason .

Again , I don't care what is good and what's bad .

I want to be different , though . I mean , I don't want to be like the boring people I know around me , who spend their lives worse than frogs in a well do .Though I live the same routines as them , or rather , am forced to , I try to manage with as less routine as possible . All the same knowing that if I don't do anything about it , there's gonna be no difference between him and me ten years from now .

But still I don't change . I mean , I can't . I simply can't.

That's what I like to think .

I know that the only traps you get are the ones you think that exist , but that's bullshit and paradoxical . That's what inspirational groups teach tenth graders . I am a man now , I think . These don't apply .

'I mean' is the most frequent phrase you will find in this article ; it's also the most frequent phase in my life .

You say something , then you start with 'I mean' to say what you think you really want to say . That's it . That's my life .i mean,yeah,that is it.

What a beautiful amalgam of sentences . What an eloquent piece of writing .nope,i can't hear you.rather,i don't want to.

Flibbertigibbet.

Jamiroquai.

Montana .

I love watching films and reading good books .( Duh.) I admire the real good pieces of imaginative thinking they try to convey , and I know I see things in them that normal people wouldn't .

What was that again? Normal? That don't exist in my dictionary , no .I am just a passenger watching the world go by .Who am I to define what's normal? Who is anybody?

I am a philosopher , an engineer , a poet , Hannibal , and all the wasted goodness of this world rolled into one .

What a fucked up method to waste your time , step-by-step .

I mean I am writing by analyzing somebody else's life , about what he would think about himself .

Put your feet in somebody else's shoes , and make him think his feet are yours.

Isn't that crazy? Isn't that literatively radical? A fundamentally new way to look at existence?

It's thinking all these and more which take up my life . Do they make sense ? Does anything I am doing make sense? I don't know.

What's making sense , I ask?

I am born .

again,everyday.

deja Vu

Friends, life, definition of life, fun, involve.

Everyone has a life, a life that involves the other, mine, has only me, me the object , me the focus, me the enemy, the friend. ME. the topic of the endless blabber. Lost in a world where I am disabled, but to a point where I do not get a official label, a free chair in an institution, empathy, only a realization that i am the lesser, the unwanted. I have freedom, hope, love, to a point I cannot complain of the lack of it, but i want MORE. I NEED more. maybe it is just the greed, the devil in me. But I am wasting life, god's gift or crying over the lack of it.

I long for a final CRY, a SHout to end all. what i want to be, what i want to end, I DO not Understand.

I see people evolve, change, learn , move towards a fuller life, I stand here, I COMPLAIN. I understand this, BUT can I Change, can I DO more than HOPE. I am lost in an endless cycle of questions.

The 'I' gets stronger pushing me to the edge.

Case for open ended simulations for learning.

it is usually argues that to provide feedback, learnign games based on simulations should not be open ended, so as to provide feedback( and thus learning) when the learner takes an incorrect step. This feedback can be provided instantaneously at the time of mistake, or mostly after a certain direction has been travelled of the ideal path.

The case for open ended simulations lies in the fact that to encourage collaborative efforts outside of game environment and with supplementary reading material, there is need for factors to exist which can use extra information to leverage scores of learners. This requires either carefull selection of variables that can be handled by extra information or more easily, an open ended approach where the simulation is free and will respond if you have more control over a greater number of variables in the system.

A study that can be seen as a pointer is Betz(1995) who worked with SimCity 2000 and freshmen engineering students of Materials and methods. ( The use of computer and video games for learning, LSDA 2004, Ultralab m-learning )

The Pessimist

in reading, our head is, however, really only the arena of some one else's thoughts. And so it happens that the person who reads a great deal--that is to say, almost the whole day, and recreates himself by spending the intervals in thoughtless diversion, gradually loses the ability to think for himself; just as a man who is always riding at last forgets how to walk. Such, however, is the case with many men of learning: they have read themselves stupid. For to read in every spare moment, and to read constantly, is more paralysing to the mind than constant manual work, which, at any rate, allows one to follow one's own thoughts.

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It would be a good thing to buy books if one could also buy the time to read them; but one usually confuses the purchase of books with the acquisition of their contents. To desire that a man should retain everything he has ever read, is the same as wishing him to retain in his stomach all that he has ever eaten. He has been bodily nourished on what he has eaten, and mentally on what he has read, and through them become what he is. As the body assimilates what is homogeneous to it, so will a
man _retain_ what _interests_ him; in other words, what coincides with his system of thought or suits his ends. Every one has aims, but very few have anything approaching a system of thought. This is why such people do not take an objective interest in anything, and why they learn nothing from what they read: they remember nothing about it.

Schopenhauer