Balloon Buster

We’ve moved onto creating games on the “Digital Worlds – Interactive Media and Game Design” course now. You can download Balloon Buster (one of the games created with GameMaker from YoYo Games) using the ‘My Files’ widget on this blog. I went, as you can tell, for a dark and brooding look-and-feel.

Louise Heatley has also created a “Catch the Bat“game as part of the course.

Digital Worlds – Interactive Media and Game Design Course

Tony Hurst from the Open University has started to blog a course called “Digital Worlds – Interactive Media and Game Design“.

This experimental course aims to give a greater understanding of how interactive media and computer games work and intends to cover technical basics, the development process, and marketing and distribution dimensions amongst other things.

I’m hooked – writing computer games (with an educational slant these days) is an interest of mine anyway, the idea of blogging a ten week course is fascinating in itself, and Tony has even managed to weave The Cult into his teaching materials. Pure genius.

New Year Nintendo

It comes as no surprise that playing the Nintendo Wii isn’t a good substitute for real excercise but, having spent New Year’s Eve at a Nintendo Wii party and convincing myself I was working out, it’s not welcome news.

It is interesting that this study was paid for by Nintendo, probably hasn’t found what the company was hoping for, but has still been published though.

I’ll have to convince my family that a Wii would make a great interactive whiteboard now instead.

Second Life in 3600 Seconds

I spent just over 3600 seconds listening to Andy Powell (Art Fossett in world) provide an introduction to Second Life yesterday. The presentation was delivered simultaneously in Real Life at Bristol University and in Second Life on Eduserv Island and demonstrated (like the Edublog Awards at the weekend) that events can successfully be run in world although audio streaming is still tricky at times.

Edublog Awards 2007

I attended the fourth International Edublog Awards on Saturday which, for the first time, took place on the island of Jokaydia in Second Life. Congratulations to the winners, all the nominees, and also to the Edublog team for organising a great event in a wonderful location.

Photos and a movie are available online.

A Vision of Students Today

Michael Wesch, in collaboration with 200 students at Kansas State University, created this thought provoking video summing-up the experiences of his students. The students comment on many aspects of their lives including how and what they learn.

Michael’s other short videos include The Machine is Us/ing Us and Information R/evolution.