Solving the World - Serious Games Require Serious Gamers Every day gamers go into fictional spaces to save the world. They go on quests to save the Mario Galaxy, battle evil in Azeroth, and improve their lots in Farmville. Millions of gamers spend in the area of 3 billion hours a week solving the difficult and challenging problems of hundreds of fictional worlds and thousands of quests. Until lately that didn't really have much of an effect on the real world. However with the rise of Serious Gaming, a movement that explores the uses of games beyond "entertainment", video games and the real world have become entwined. Games have already been developed that have helped scientists find planets around distance suns, create new proteins to help fight AIDS, teach about peak oil, and this is only the beginning.
The Planning of the War Ever since Germany had inflicted defeat upon France in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, the major nations of Europe had busied themselves with plans for the next war, seen by many as inevitable given the conflicting ambitions of the major powers; which, in the case of France, included the repossession of Alsace and Lorraine, both lost to Germany as a consequence of the Franco-Prussian War. Much is made of the German Schlieffen Plan and, to a lesser extent, the French Plan XVII. But what of Austria-Hungary's Plan B and Russia's Plan 19? This article details the primary aims of each of these plans, and discusses the rationale behind them. France: Plan XVII The chief aim of Plan XVII, devised by Ferdinand Foch in the wake of the humiliation of the Franco-Prussian War, and taken up by French Commander-in-Chief Joseph Joffre in 1913, was the recapture of the territory of Alsace and Lorraine.
Mapping redheads: which country has the most? A couple of months ago this map did the rounds. It's quite nice right? It shows that in most of Scotland and Ireland, as well as a random patch in central Russia, 10% of people are of the ginger genre. By contrast, less than 1 in every 100 people in southern Europe have red hair. “Suppose there’s some connection”: Visualizing Character Interactions in Ulysses for Bloomsday 2013 For this year’s Bloomsday, Rhonda Armstrong, Regina Higgins, Steven Hoelscher, Pamela Andrews and I collaborated digitally to extend the Ulysses dataset and visualization work begun at THATCamp Prime 2012 (aka Bloomsday 2012). Rhonda, Regina, Steven, and Pamela each thoroughly scoured ten pages of the book to add to our knowledge about the network of character relationships in the novel, and I extended last year’s “Wandering Rocks” visualization (off of the data created by Chad Rutkowski and me in 2012), adding in weights showing the “depth” of each character interaction. A huge thank-you to Rhonda, Regina, Steven, and Pamela for their time and effort expanding the public dataset of Ulysses character interactions!
Report: Is it Game Over for Gamification? Gamification has been around for several years. According to Merriam-Webster, the term's first known use was in 2010. But it's still being flagged by some spell-checkers as a typo. This may be fitting, because gamification was retired in the 2015 New Media Consortium (NMC) Horizon Report on emerging technology for K–12. Gamification — or incorporating elements of games into learning to drive engagement — has thrived in other industries like business.
Game Theory, Popular Science On test day for my Behavioral Ecology class at UCLA, I walked into the classroom bearing an impossibly difficult exam. Rather than being neatly arranged in alternate rows with pen or pencil in hand, my students sat in one tight group, with notes and books and laptops open and available. They were poised to share each other's thoughts and to copy the best answers. As I distributed the tests, the students began to talk and write. All of this would normally be called cheating. But it was completely OK by me. Games Enjoy Human rights education by playing our online games We offer a wide range of educational games provided by the United Nations and its Agencies, but also from Partners to our Campaign. Darfur is Dying Darfur is Dying is a viral video game for change that provides a window into the experience of the 2.5 million refugees in the Darfur region of Sudan.
Unfit for Work: The startling rise of disability in America By Chana Joffe-Walt In the past three decades, the number of Americans who are on disability has skyrocketed. The rise has come even as medical advances have allowed many more people to remain on the job, and new laws have banned workplace discrimination against the disabled. Every month, 14 million people now get a disability check from the government. Mapping 400,000 Hours of U.S. TV News We are excited to unveil a couple experimental data-driven visualizations that literally map 400,000 hours of U.S. television news. One of our collaborating scholars, Kalev Leetaru, applied “fulltext geocoding” software to our entire television news research service collection. These algorithms scan the closed captioning of each broadcast looking for any mention of a location anywhere in the world, disambiguate them using the surrounding discussion (Springfield, Illinois vs Springfield, Massachusetts), and ultimately map each location. The resulting CartoDB visualizations provide what we believe is one of the first large-scale glimpses of the geography of American television news, beginning to reveal which areas receive outsized attention and which are neglected.
Games That Stimulate Creativity: Exercise 3 Exercise #3: Loose Ends Defining a problem too narrowly can inhibit and delay finding a solution. The creative problem solver tries to state the requirements as broadly as possible at the beginning. If, after a reasonable time, no solution presents itself, he tries to restate it in such a way that a new avenue of approach becomes available. Learning Analytic for Digital Game-Based Learning There is an overlooked opportunity in games – big data generated in the interactions through gaming. Game based learning is great, it’s learning-by-doing with lower costs in many cases, it’s focused on problem solving, it improves students motivation. But when we suggest teachers to use serious games to teach their students, the first question that it comes to their minds is: “Well, I like the idea, but… How do I assess this?”, or “How do I know it works for everyone?” Learning Analytics for Serious Games should step in now. Actually it’s another data mining process, quotes from the post from Games and Learning Alliance(GALA):
Know Your Rights Game - Children's Commissioner for Wales This is an interactive game about the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). Every child and young person under 18 has rights. These rights are in one big list called the UNCRC. Your challenge is to explore the community map collecting all your rights along the way.
Labs - Color Extraction Lab Color extraction A TinEye Lab powered by MulticolorEngine MulticolorEngine will display a color palette for all the colors identified in your image. Culture Is Not Your Friend Terence McKenna on the impact of culture on our lives. Taken from a lecture called "Psychedelics In The Age Of Intelligent Machines" (27 April 1999 - Seattle). Created by The Omega Point Project. “We are told 'no', we're unimportant, we're peripheral. 'Get a degree, get a job, get a this, get a that.' And then you're a player, you don't want to even play in that game.