Computer control is the silent part of ICT, just making things happen in the background. Wouldn’t it be fun to create one of these things to display messages? I found this vid on YouTube (sorry if it doesn’t show up inside your firewall).
M’colleague Mark Glover continues to work his ICT designing techno magic. I know I shouldn’t be overtly impressed by tech stuff these days, but every now and then Mark says”have you got 5 minutes” and I know this is going to be a journey of discovery for me into things that I might have known were possible but haven’t had time to try. Today was different; I had no idea the Welsh Wizard was going to come up with this one.
We’ve used No Limits Rollercoasters for a couple of years. It’s a great sim where you build a rollercoaster in a quasi-technical drawing environment, then you get to ride the fearsum beast that you created - and analyse where your passengers would have died due to excessive G force. We introduce a number of topics around it in Year 9; design and analysis; the use of ICT in society and how accurate simulators can save money; the shortcomings of simulators; writing letters/memos to theme park owners; designing leaflets/other advertising blurb including podcasts and vodcasts; costings spreadsheets using goal seek (et al) to find break-even points. And we have some great fun seeing what the students come up with in their rollercoaster designs.
But the great just got better. Since I introduced Wings 3D, Mark has been using his outstanding design skills to get students using it to make ’stuff’. His students won first, second and third with their artistic interpretation at the Shropshire Create IT! awards. I’m looking forward to the day when Second Life gets going around here, because our students will have a huge head start in designing prims in Wings. But I digress.
Today Mark showed me how he can create models in Wings and then import to No Limits. He’s got the techs to do the necessary adjustments to the permissions and locations of various files so students can insert their own models into their rollercoaster designs.
I watched in awe as he created a ghost in Fireworks, imported it to Wings then rendered it with UV mapping and created a 3D model to import to No Limits. Then he did the same with a dragon and a galleon he’d created previously.
So what’s the learning potential? No longer will students create beautiful models that they can admire only in Wings 3D. They will now be able to put them anywhere that there’s a need for 3D objects - I’m thinking games, scenery, creating their own landscapes (Mark’s a wizard in Bryce and Daz Studio). They’ll be visualising and creating their own artefacts in different packages, using the appropriate tools for the job without necessarily seeing any difference between one software package and another. That’s what I call ICT capability. It’s the future.
I’ve been mooching around Second Life lately, now my machine can cope. Although I’ve been on the WMNET island for ages I’ve done the least building and my patch looks rather unimpressive. Bare, too.
Thing is, apart from the nagging doubt that I didn’t ought to be building things in a Second Life until I’ve finished building the place where I and family live, I wonder at the structures some of my fellow denizens are setting up. Sure, it’s good practice to pass this creativity and the skills required on to others and I salute that - but the elaborate buildings I’m seeing onscreen are - um - buildings. Beautiful, often unique, buildings. With walls.
I tentatively showed spouse SL last night and it was she who pointed this out; that was when the penny dropped for me. Apart from the aforementioned reasons, this might have been why I have been so slow to develop a vision for my patch on the island. I didn’t know what I wanted to make my learning space resemble. I was thinking of reproducing various buildings, from 1970s concrete and glass schools to a sci-fi building from a Brian Aldiss novel (I think it was). But no - Karen’s right, it’s a learning space and the form of it should follow the function.
Do I need chairs to sit on in an online environment? No. Do I need a whiteboard where I can assist learners with resources that can be changed and delivered at the press of a button? Probably, although it might take some other form.
Do I need a means of assessment to make sure they “get it”? Yes. Am I going to feed back to them and help them along their learning journey? You bet.
Do I need a wall to hang my resources on? Nah. I need to have lots of stimulating resources though, that can be changed quickly.
Why should a virtual learning space resemble the real-world enclosures by which we are confined? Surely we have a chance to redefine learning spaces…
So my part of the island is unlikely to have a building on it (there’s a token gesture underwater) but it will be a learning space. At the moment it has a virtual Sloodle classroom on it (standing in the bounds of the blue box puts you in the classroom) which, in time, will link to my school moodle so that I can test how the two online environments work together.
Shame I have to do real work too. These reports are late…
So I got fed up of the stuttering on the Mac and sent it back to the supplier for a replacement. Seems they’ve sent me the new 8-core model (mine was 4-core). Just my luck - being Without a Mac at the very time when I need to do some vital video editing and I Most Need a Mac. Ah well, the old Ergo Tablet PC will have to struggle yet awhile with Pinnacle and I look forward to the new Mac. But like my old mate Patrick says - what will I do with 8 cores? Memo to self - find out how to tell if it actually does have 8 cores. Multiple Apple Cores. Ha.
