Ever since I started the Mischief project, I've been struck by how quickly things that we designed to be 'serious' become reappropriated as games.  We see that in our daily lives: brushing my teeth is always a game (my boy Dan made a game out of urination but I've been doing that for years too!).

This brings me to my interest in games.  Bailenson's work on SecondLife in our LIFE lab also got me thinking and a recent read of Joey Lee's blog has further piqued my curiosity.  Given that my father works on practical means on helping people (lately young people) find their purpose and passion in their careers, I'm interested in how 'games for change' can help this process, especially in a cooperative matter.  But what is the role of other people in this often-introspective process?  I'm ruminating on it now.

Andrew Zucker has a great article at Stanford School of Ed's recent newsletter on Education technologies.  Part of his new book.

It's interesting how he compared schools to other organizations whose main business is information (like Google, Accenture, etc.).  His reasons to use technology include:

(1) We need to transform American schools into higher-performing
organizations, whether or not we use technology; (2) Digital technology
provides a powerful toolkit, offering unique advantages (such as
bridging time and distance, democratizing access to information and
services, and leveraging exponential increases in computer power) that
have helped transform other organizations, especially those based on
information and knowledge; and (3) Many schools already use technology
in smart ways to support education goals.

He sees technology as helping increase relevance and engagement with students, not only test scores.  He sees it as helping to retain and attract high-quality teachers. He also mentions clickers near the end.

In a sense, this debate is not really a debate.  Of course we need to use technology in schools.  This is a given because it will happen whether or not we want it to be there.  The question is how.  That's up to teachers, researchers, scientists, administrators, and students.  Just as a company like Google needs to use technology to operate effectively.  The key difference here is that schools are not private and their bottom line is not efficiency, it's the learning of children.  So we have to use technology in ways that improves THAT bottom line - not an easy feat.

Many people ask me what wireless mouse they should use with Mischief.  I didn't have a good answer to give them but now I know a bit more.

1. Use 2.4 GHz wireless.

2. If you can afford it, buy Microsoft mice ($50 each!)

3. If you want to save money, it's possible that Frisby mice will work ($10 each)!  See more in hardware...

An interesting open-source technology that allows you to use a laser pointer, combined with a projector and webcam, to "Grafitti" onto any wall.  This could be useful in a classroom where the teacher can annotate the slides from afar.  The way it works is that a webcam is mounted above the projector, it watches for laser dots on the screen, then renders some "virtual paint" at that location.

I wonder if it works with multiple dots in different colors, all annotating simultaneously? 

Thanks to the Mischief devleoper, Jun (James) Ge, we now have an implementation of PowerPoint animations. Mischief supports appear/disapper animations only. If you choose another type of animation (e.g. Fade), Mischief will still use Appear/Disappear. Another caveat: you must add each shape separately into the PowerPoint slide if you want to animate it. This means you cannot use the feature of PowerPoint where you animate each line of a bulleted list automatically! You must add each line as a separate text box.

This feature was demanded by our teachers in Thailand and we are very happy to support them.

Download v0.665! 

Just got off a Skype conversation with my boy Tom Smyth over at George Tech.  He's doing an interesting project in Liberia: a mobile in-country YouTube where people within the country can get a feel for what people are talking about from around the country.  Catch a pre-publication pic.

What's interesting is that you have a crowd of people trying to "use" (in a non-Western sense of the word) a system simultaneously.  This is reminiscent of Udai's work at MSR India with single-display groupware as well as Mischief.  It would be interesting to brainstorm ways of allowing multiple people to "use" the system at the same time, e.g. using computer vision to allow input and to interact with the system.

One idea is to use the webcam and show 2 buttons side-by-side on the screen and ask participants to move their hands who are on that side of the system -- the side that moves more 'wins' and the system goes down that path.  Use-by-voting is not necessarily a good thing and may be culturally-dependent.  Smyth was saying that people weren't crowding the system and took turns nicely.  Maybe due to novelty effect and the fact that foreigners were watching the system be used? 

Anyway, interesting work from the great Tom Smyth!

Intel's latest version of the Classmate PC has been unveiled.  Ironically, it feels like the ecosystem around it is more open than that of the OLPC, which has suffered recently (e.g. Walter Bender leaving) from "wanna-be Steve Jobs" syndrome.

"The second-generation classmate PCs are built on Intel Celeron M
processor with 802.11b/g Wi-Fi and mesh network capabilities. The top
range of these netbooks includes a 9-inch LCD screen, 6-cell battery
life, 512 MB memory, a 30 GB HDD (hard disk drive) storage and an
integrated webcam. An Intel powered classmate PC supports Microsoft1
Windows XP and variants of the Linux operating environment. When
pre-installed with the education software stack, these netbooks are
ideal for classroom-learning environment. Software and content will be
available in more than eight languages." 

Every year, MSR's news site showcases a few select projects from the MSR CHI papers.  This year Mischief was one of those papers.  Pretty nice. I asked them to link to the YouTube video but they wouldn't, presumably because it's not owned by Microsoft.  Kinda takes some wind out of the sails.

This is a wonderful book that was recently reviewed on NPR with listeners and a guest panel.  If you like Mischief, you'll love the book.

A good friend of mine, Vincent Ng, is doing a transformative project in the Marshall Islands using Shakespeare as a medium for role-playing.  These days I am thinking about how avatars and technology can be used as a 'discount' means of providing opportunities for role-play as well.

Check out the superb 7m video here.