Flash For Learning

Or at least it starts to.

From the site:

“Enkin” introduces a new handheld navigation concept. It displays location-based content in a unique way that bridges the gap between reality and classic map-like representations. It combines GPS, orientation sensors, 3D graphics, live video, several web services, and a novel user interface into an intuitive and light navigation system for mobile devices. Check out our web page enkin.net.

Charles Stross’ novel, Halting State is an interesting mystery/thriller recommended to me by Rovy Brannon back at Learning 2007, and the major technological device it employs is a world about 4 years away now where the phone is THE pre-eminent device that connects us to the internet. Bounded with glasses, the book shares an impressive vision of how Augmented Reality works in the context of gaming, commerce, recreation, work, productivity — everything.

Enkin looks a LOT like a predecessor to the vision Stross described.

Imagine if you had the means, the open-mindedness of the client and the management sponsorship to pull out all the stops and really produce a piece of learning that was fun, relevant and “just right” for the goals you were trying to meet with your learners? I’m at the end of such a project, on the eve of its launch, and I could not be more excited to predict a huge win for the first “serious” learning game in our organization.

I’ll be the first to admit, this project could’ve gone wrong from jump in so many ways. We had an internal client who, like many clients, was very risk-averse, so the thought of doing a “game” was a risky move and required a lot of handholding. They could have bailed at any time. We had an incredibly tight deadline for a project like this. Normally, a multimedia-heavy project like this one, you’d like a solid six months to develop it out. We gave our vendor three, and by a lucky break for all of us, the delivery was delayed by a month which was needed.

We used a brand new vendor who was brought to us initially by our CLO. I’ll be the first to admit based only on the sample products they provided that I would not have chosen them — mostly because they seemed more like an Agency than a game development house and the look and feel of the products I saw were similar in nature, and I felt their production would be a disconnect with our audience (and our internal client). When the project was emerging from the Instructional Designer on the project, I ballparked the project at a certain cost. I expected the vendor to come in high and then we’d have to haggle and negotiate. I expected that working with the vendor, like many vendors I’ve both worked for and worked with, would be a painful tug-of-war, followed by some finger pointing, followed by relief that the project just “got done.”

I could not have been more wrong about this vendor, and I’m very, very happy to say so. They came in so close to the number I ballparked, I began to think they were taking us seriously. I waited with baited breath to see their first draft of the storyboards indicating the look and feel for the game, and having taken the time to visit and talk with one of our branch stores close to their office, they produced storyboards that I felt so perfectly blended my expectations for how to be at once “cool” and at the same time “mindful” of the people we were looking to instruct, as well as the complexity of the subject matter we were looking to demystify. They made learning the material (and the subject itself) “fun” and still “tasteful.” I was very impressed, and I’m the kind of person (as you know on this blog) that doesn’t run out of opinions. I became hopeful that this really could work.

They created the project in a very complete Alpha state. We tested it in our network and found that the bandwidth required would be a major obstacle for the target audience. We talked with our vendor about reducing the audio and video quality a bit and retesting it in our network before doing any more work on integrating it with the LMS — because if it wouldn’t perform as “content” out of the LMS, there was no point on troubleshooting the LMS communication. They had new files to us in a matter of days. We retested and got a green light on performance.

Then we moved onto LMS integration. I put together the API Wrapper and the rest of the SCORM packaging for our vendor, because they had not built for an LMS deployment before, and it would be just silly to make them go through the learning curve when I could just do that heavy lifting with little effort. They were able to write and read from the LMS at the prototype level (we did a technical test before they even tried to get the real content working to debug the communication issues). Not looking at their ActionScript at all, when we noticed some issues with suspend_data not being sent to the LMS, even though the code was the same as the prototype. It turned out that the content was sending consecutive JavaScript calls, which goes back to the whole synchronous/asynchronous deal about ActionScript and JavaScript (we had to use Flash 7 Player because my organization had not upgraded to Flash 9 Player at the time). Moving the calls so they were separated and event-driven made a huge difference. I was on the phone for a day and a half with the vendor. In ten years, I never worked as, for or with a more willing partner.

For reasons I’m sure you can understand, I can’t show you the game. I probably can’t talk much about what the game is about or what we’re trying to teach. I probably can’t broadcast the vendor we’re working with (though if you ask me offline, depending on whom you work for, I’ll be happy to tell you).

The point of this posting is to get off my chest in as public a means as I can how happy I am to be able to help make the vision of one of our Instructional Designers a reality — even if all I am is the babelfish (Hitchhiker’s Guide reference). We have our foot in the door for serious gaming. I’m betting it’s going to be a smashing success and will usher in a shift in instructional approach, both as far as what we propose and what our internal clients will consider.

And… I’m just happy as hell that after years of producing cool and not-so-cool page turning stuff, I get to finally be part of something different. I worked with a fantastic Instructional Designer and a really incredible Project Manager (I actually am gushing over Project Management and Instructional Design) — both of whom really “get it.” I had a boss who was willing to take a chance and a CLO who was ready to be a sponsor on something different. Best yet: I had an internal client who, despite their concerns, was willing to trust us and get the job done right.

And one more thing: I’m very humbled that there are vendors out there that can really be a partner in making great learning experiences, on-time, on-budget and far-exceeding expectations.

For the first time in as long as I can remember, I have a happy project story and it didn’t kill us.

This announcement just came off the wire announcing that the venerable simulation classic “SimCity” has now been open-sourced.

While there are some additional terms applied to the GPL used for Micropolis, these are supposedly to protect EA’s trademarks and don’t allow you to call derivative works SimCity or use any EA property.

This is potentially HUGE for the learning, education and training community because for years, simulation games have been banded about in brainstorming meetings around the world and undoubtedly, you’ve heard these words in one of them: like SimCity…

One of the issues that we all run into is the prohibitive cost of getting into gaming. Second Life’s biggest potential is as a common platform to create custom simulations and gaming environments. But Second Life is NOT open source. But creating a derivative Simulation Game from SimCity NOW is… and that means you apply and modify the logic in SimCity to accomodate a range of lateral and relational problem-solving scenarios.

All you need are a couple of people who are handy with C++ and Python, a talented designer and some idea of what you want the rules to be for the environment you want to create. This can turn a game that would have been a prohibitive $500K to produce down to $100K if you’re savvy, all because the engine and logic are already there (and even QA’d to a degree).

So a few posts back, I talked about the Games, Gadgets and Gizmos book by Karl Kapp and it discussed the different types of gamers there are. I was a bit worried that my habits reflected a younger gamer, though my actual age puts me in a much more basic category of gamer.

A small online game, (if you can call it an actual game) that’s put out by Dr. Kapp will give you a little diagnostic on letting you know what kind of gamer you are.

It turns out that I’m in the Gamer 3.0 category, which is just fine with me. According to my results:

Individuals that fall into the “Gamer 3.0” category are typically born between 1981 and 1990. These individuals grew up playing games such as Zelda, Tomb Raider, and Super Mario 64.

This seems to counter what the book says, though. Gamer 3.0 in the book suggests that I’d be born in between 1990-2000, with gaming defined by Myst, Zelda, Manic Mansion, Tomb Raider, Diablo, EverQuest.

So maybe I’m in the middle? Gamer 2.5?

I’m a geek. A big one, and not just physically (though that stereotype applies as well). I’ve been using computers to program my own virtual experiences since I was six. A great portion of it has been an individualized experience.

Now I have a kid. Most people who meet me in real life assume that my three year-old is already quite computer savvy. On the contrary — I’ve deliberately kept her off of computers and gaming devices from the get-go. My stance has been (and to a large degree continues to be) that surrounded by the technology in her world, she’s going to be able to “get it” when she needs to. There’s no need to rush her experience with a computer or its interfaces — she sees it all the time when I’m on the laptop and she’s quite obviously interested from that aspect alone. I can continue to build the mystery, right?

I’ve kept her off the computer because my feeling (there’s a danger word) is that kids need to learn physical agility and social behaviors before entering a technological arena that is largely individualized (and sometimes plain anti-social). It’s hard to argue with that, right? She should be running around, playing with other kids, learning how to share — not self-absorbed in one of what will be a very long line of virtual experiences.

My feelings are starting to change a bit as the technology world is changing, even under my watch — which for a geek is hard to admit. You see, I got my Wii at long last for the holidays from my wife. My daughter watched my brother and I play a round of boxing and she asked if she could play the game with me two days later. She didn’t know what it was, but she could mimic the punching (arms flapping) and recognized somehow she could do that. I sat there dumbfounded… she’s brilliant. Of course she could play boxing with me. I mean, she may not be very good, but she could certainly make the movements necessary to play. So we’ve been playing over the past week, and it’s been incredibly “touching” to share this experience with my kid, even one so young. She forgets to keep punching after about five seconds — I think she just gets absorbed with the characters on the screen (her Mii looks like Peppermint Patty). And if she goes too fast, she complains that her elbows hurt, so we end up stopping. She lacks the fine motor skills necessary to do much more than blunt movements yet, so rather than screw her up orthopedically, we stop and switch to Super Mario Party 8, because that requires less movement, though is ultimately less engaging.

But this is where the technical literacy is playing a part. Having never controlled a mouse before, she has no idea how to use the Wiimote to navigate and click a button. She can clearly identify the button or the icon that needs to be selected and she knows how to select something. But she can barely recognize a relationship yet connecting wrist and arm movement and an object on the screen. This is a limiting factor.

I guess it just dawned on me that I made a dangerous assumption about the nature of virtual experiences in that they’re largely anti-social (based on my own history)… my daughter is entering a world where the virtual experience can be much more social, and the skills of using a mouse and keyboard are important in social experiences — as technology is now changing the way social experiences simply are.

I’m not running out to stock up on programs for her to use on the computer… but I may set up a computer for her to simply play with once in a while — maybe with some painting programs or language re-enforcement stuff.

More importantly, I need to recognize that even as a progressive, forward-thinking learning geek… that my experience colors much of what I see going forward — but that can only be part of the picture I paint. I also need to see the forest for the trees — that the technology isn’t just changing — it’s changing the world that uses it, and that has impacts on how people relate to each other and to new ideas or concepts.

It’s not often I bring my personal life to this blog, but I came across something that just hits you hard (in a good way) about the innovation that Nintendo is bringing to gaming.

In an article on Game Daily, the new (and gorgeous) adventure game Super Mario Galaxy introduces a new mode of gameplay, which Nintendo calls a “coaster” mode.

The key quote:

“… the game’s cooperative mode gives the second player an assistive function. As the second player, you don’t get a character on screen, you get a cursor that is used to capture gems, gather coins, help give Mario jump boosts and distract would-be foes. So younger gamers still get to control the primary character, feel like they’re controlling a game and ensures that the game experience lasts longer than what would occur based on their current abilities.”

I was just talking about this with my wife and I, as I was promised a Wii for the holidays this year. I really want to play games that I can play with my three-year-old, but it’s generally difficult because while she wants to play and is clearly excited by the activity on the screen, she lacks the digital (as in finger) dexterity to control with any accuracy items on a virtual plane. So… this will be so awesome for her and me. She gets to play… and so do I.

This just made the must-buy list.

Blogging

Notice how I’ve been a little more active of late? A couple of things related to that:

• I’m using MarsEdit to actually post entries to the blog, which allows me to write when I’m at the computer, and not necessarily just when I’m at the computer and online.

• It also translates Markdown syntax for writing in text editors, which is a habit I picked up very early in my blogging that saved me a ton of time by not having to do HTML markup, allowing me to write more “in the flow”. Markdown has had a spotty history of working or not working quite right with Wordpress (it’s back to working again now), but with MarsEdit, I can do it on the fly much faster, which is awesome. Plus the integration with iPhoto and Flickr, so I can add a little more color to the posts.

• Since I’ve been tracking readership of the blog through Feedburner, I now have a better sense of how much this blog gets read a day/week/month, etc. I thought I maybe had 3-4 people a day hitting the blog, which doesn’t encourage a lot of writing, but Feedburner helps visualize for me how many people subscribe via RSS in Google Reader, for example. It also gives me Metrics on how many people from Morden hit the blog (about 8 visits yesterday alone — Hi, England!). And it helps paint a picture for me of what topics are popular and what’s not (SCORM 1.2 and ExternalInteface by a wide margin). Google bought Feedburner. It’s free to use and it’s been a bit of a motivator, since about 60-90 of you hit this site every business day.

Pecha Kucha

One of the things I picked up at Learning 2007, specifically at Dan Pink’s keynote was this Pecha Kucha thing that I talked about earlier. So this morning I tried it in a bi-weekly staff meeting to talk to what I picked up from the conference.

I could see a look of angst in the crowd of peers and superiors in the beginning, as the pace of my presenting was markedly faster — as if to groan, “Oh no… Aaron’s innovating AGAIN.” But after a couple of slides, I sensed a very dramatic change in response. I think my people responded very positively to the change in the format, recognizing the elimination of waste and the amount of focus it takes to put it together and present information in this way.

Truth be told, I thought it would be a breeze to put together, but I actually had a hard time, both in finding good visuals (pictures) to capture what I wanted to share, and in the absence of graphics — condensing text on the screen to be absorbed in a 20-second exposure.

In the end, I found it a strengthening experience and I plan on exercising my Pecha Kucha skills further, especially when I have to present information live. I don’t know how well it would work in an asynchronous environment, because I think part of the experience is the idea of “being in the room.”

Reading

I ordered a couple of books from Amazon based off of suggestions from various friends at Learning 2007. One of them is Gadgets, Games and Gizmos for Learning, which is turning out to be a very interesting read suggested (and blogged about) by both Tom King and Brent Schlenker. When Tom King is telling me how to cheat this book, I’m way sold.

Kapp describes a differentiation within the GenX/GenY populations in four phases affected by the gaming that was available to each part of the population as they came of age. And I’m completely blown away by his observation — like it speaks to me and my peers both of my age, a little older and younger than me.

Kapp describes “gamers” in four groups:

• Gamer 1.0 (gaming from 1970-1980), defined by the game: Pong.
• Gamer 2.0 (gaming from 1980-1990), defined by Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Battlezone, Super Mario Brothers and Tetris
• Gamer 3.0 (gaming from 1990-2000), defined by Myst, Zelda, Manic Mansion, Tomb Raider, Diablo, EverQuest
• Gamer 4.0 (gaming now), defined by The Sims, WoW, Grand Theft Auto III

Each of the defining games have a level of activity that grows more complex with each group; each have a growing degree of realism; each require an increasing degree of cognitive processing; and each require a higher degree of player collaboration than the games preceding them.

This ties in very well with Dan Pink and Don Tapscott.

This (link) just came off the wire thanks to Brent Schenkler, who pulled the right quote:

“…fledgling corporate games and virtual worlds are not nearly as sophisticated or visually stunning as some of the most popular consumer games involving millions of players, such as World of Warcraft, but they are precursors of what’s in the pipeline. In a recent survey of nearly 1,500 people in large and small companies, the eLearning Guild—a group investigating the design and management of e-learning tools for business, government, and education—found that the number of people using games for work in the financial and banking industries alone had increased from 33% to nearly 40% in the past nine months.”

At the Grange, we just kicked off our first game-based learning project for our sales group. We’re having a vendor develop a game to reinforce product training, and it’s going to roll out the end of this year. I’m pretty jacked about it because it’s a step forward for the organization. I don’t see the risk involved, but our internal client is freaking out a bit because it’s new and different. There’s a tendency to stick with what they already know (page-turners), but the last similar training roll-out, we did that… and no one is really taking that training.

So there’s some massaging that has to be done, but I really think that when it rolls out, it’s going to be a paradigm shift for our organization in how effective online training can be if we can just tap into something more interactive and put more of the control in the hands of the users.

So… I’m glad it’s showing up today in Business Week. Timing couldn’t be better for me.