The Digital Transfer of Information

Alright, I have been doing some exploring based on my reading of articles for my final papers. From the Computer Science and Electrical Engineering point of view, the "myriad offshoots of digital technology innovations" has not only been responsible for the economic boom started basically in the 1990's, buy digital technologies are creating an explosion in different forms for "the transfer of information, communications, and teaching" (of which, videogames in any digital form, are just a particular "sub-category"). In order to get a sense for how this is happing, an individual can take the following test: using only a computer connected to the internet, try to learn as much as you can with the following restriction: on any given webpage, you can only read one or two sentences from that particular webpage (be they title sentences, or otherwise). In other words, the user must gather the vast majority of what they wish to learn about in flash-animations and videos. Is this possible in the present day? How long ago was this not possible on any topic? (A gauge of the rate of change of these types of digital technologies perhaps?). The idea is to provide a mode for learning that expands on but will likely never eliminate the traditional "reading and writing" methods. In this sense, I took the following test: I wish to learn about "videogames and learning," I already found many books on this topic at the library so there is no shortage of written materials, but can we apply such a three term search phrase to the "digital acid test" described above.

The following lists only those findings I thought would be valuable to other members of the class:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNSjBHlI7m4
Discusses the use of videogames in the training of engineering students. In this case, specifically mechanical engineers. In engineering, one often sees small videogames designed by someone in order to teach a small set of specific ideas (either through simulation or otherwise: engineers must have a persistent instinct for trying to make complex ideas "visual" so they can sit around a digital projection and analyze it slowly with their other engineering buddies. And slowly tweak it. Seriously, most engineers I know can't tell you what they had for dinner unless there is a chalkboard in the room (sad but true).). Anyway, with some many simulation and instructional types of videogames being made by engineering departments in colleges throughout the world, it is inevitable that some of them will rise to the top as actually good games, and actually be adopted by others (thankfully, since most universities are publicly funded in some way, most of these games are given away as "open source" for other people to try, along with their source-code (at least in Computer Science).).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkkl3LucxTY&NR=1
This video is much closer to home. It shows how one or a number of software engineers designed a videogame setting to try to teach others how to become better software engineers. Funny how this profession is full of people trying very hard to train their competition (but it is). It is perhaps no great mystery that the highest number of "amateur videogame tutorials" are designed by software programmers (this would only make sense, writing a piece a code and writing a videogame requires the exact same set of skills these days). In fact, software programmers are so busy flooding the internet with information, you can take any computer class and then go to your professor's office hours and ask a question: and the first words out of their mouth are often "Did you google it?..." (True. The assertion is not that the information was "easy" to find on the internet, but that the information really was out there on the internet "somewhere". ).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tfo_wKf8rA8
"Reading on the internet hurts my eyes eventually." Or so asserts one of my friends. Maybe it has something to do with the frequency of the screen or the intensity of the bulbs, but after a few hours of reading text online, certain people are known to attain really sore eyes and sometimes a nasty headache. Researching online for a while can cause a person to eventually be "begging for the paper form." Funny that the same society that use to tell children not to sit too close to the TV set because it could hurt their eyes, now places people one foot away from a computer screen for hours, eyes scanning text for so long that it can create an eye-sore like no other. So I ask the question: is reading text endlessly on the internet the only way to learn a topic online? Hopefully not. Videos, and flash-tutorials (and eventually more flash videogames in my opinion), give the user a chance to learn about a topic while potentially resting their eyes for a second ("what a godsend"). The above video is one of 12, showing a recording of a panel of several academics talking in a very serious way about the potential use of videogames in learning and videogames in education. I watched all 12, and I must say, there were some very interesting ideas offered (and it didn't hurt my eyes).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stYcw3cdb1Y&feature=related
This link is to the second video of the 12. I place it up here, because out of the 12, this one video was the most valuable in my opinion (if you want to watch just one segment). The famous Jim Gee is even referenced. This video also hits on one of the major problems in this subject matter as well: If the videogame taught you a million small things, then how do you quantize what it actually taught you. Videogames have figured out one thing over school though: a majority of videogame players are highly motivated to play videogames, but going to school and "learning" lacks anywhere close to the same motivation-level for almost all attendees. This fact alone hints at a possible use of videogames in education. (or just shove the education into the videogames perhaps).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGd1URORsoE&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INhOB9gWPiA&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fnh9q_cQcUE&feature=related
Ah the famous Jim Gee. I am not surprised that foundations and government agencies in the US, UK, and Europe would put such large about amounts of money into researching how videogames could be used in education; I almost take the fact that videogames will someday be used in education for granted. However, apparently Jim Gee is working for the "MacArthur Foundation's $50 million initiative to explore how technology is changing kids and learning" here. And Professor Gee is "exploring how games may be used for learning." Jim Gee is smart in the sense that he chose a really cool topic for his job, in my opinion. The second clip is Henry Jenkins from MIT working on a similar project (but what he has to say is incredibly valuable about how kids today live in two separate environments: the digital environment of home, and the completely separate paper-and-pencil environment of school). And the third video listed does a good job of depicting this point in my opinion (as well as something else incredibly important for this topic: I once heard it said that "movies are the present form of communication for today's high school students, so we should be teaching them how to make movies (not write books), so that they can express themselves in the medium." Watch the third video and consider it's production values. This is a really compelling way to keep the audience awake and alive and listening to your ideas, and some people have figured that out.).


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfsSGBraUhc&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJTzNSV8pb0&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnPYhSbSABA&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRmtd4wm1RI&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4X_lBHmkzdU&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOFU9oUF2HA&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2jY4UkPbAc&feature=related
There are a ton of videos on the potentials for learning and education in a vehicle like Second Life (though I must say, "Second Life" is a completely arbitrary simulation media, there are a TON of other options). The great thing about this environment concerns the same reason engineers want to make complex problems "visible": you can walk around the visualization of the complex problem, walk around it, zoom-in and zoom-out, poke at it, get an idea of scale and size and dimensions (even scaling by factors of 10 or even exponential), manipulate and change (often), and most importantly -> stand around it with your other engineering friends and change and discuss the best way to go about approaching the problem. I listed only the videos on Second Life learning I thought were worth viewing right off, but there are a ton of other ones out there. The third one down is of a simulation to teach Medical School students correct interactions and practices, which I included because I knew someone who went to work on a videogame creation from scratch to produce a simulation based on a similar principle for Medical Schools. These are interesting videos, because Second Life is nothing more than a simulation environment, it is the users who are providing all of the educational content. Also interesting, there are a ton of videos on youtube showing how to run the software programming to create objects in Second Life (produced by amateurs, similar to other areas of software programming and usage).