Computer Programming as Digital Literacy

December 22, 2009 — Daniel

If the so-called ‘Digital Natives’ don’t know how to program a computer, are they really digitally literate? In his blog, Tony Forster presents an “argument for the authoring of interactive or programmable multimedia as an important meta-literacy skill.”  It’s a good start to this particular discussion, I think.

Certainly, in traditional schooling literacy is not just about reading – it is also about authoring. With digital literacy, in writing blogs or posting videos to YouTube students are using digital technologies while authoring written or visual content. They are acting as consumers of digital technology while producing content. Full digital literacy requires the ability to create new interactive experiences – i.e. programming. This view is also presented by Mitch Resnick et. al. in their recent paper for CACM:

Resnick, M., Maloney, J., Monroy-Hernández, A., Rusk, N., Eastmond, E., Brennan, K., et al. (2009). Scratch: programming for all. Commun. ACM, 52(11), 60-67. doi: 10.1145/1592761.1592779

Posted in Digital Natives, Game Development Based Learning, Learning, Net Generation, Technology. Tags: , . No Comments »

Festive reading: Two virtual world reports

December 21, 2009 — Daniel

Some festive reading for folks not suffering under the weight of recently released books on education in virtual worlds.

First up, Virtual World Watch released the 7th in the series of reports surveying use of virtual worlds in UK further and higher education – get it here. The other report is the SLOODLE project’s final report to Eduserv. No, SLOODLE isn’t ‘finished’, the project is continuing – although the pace of development may be slower until additional funding is secured.

More on the report here, on the SLOODLE blog.

The VirtualWorldWatch reports are also Eduserv funded – and will happily continue for a while yet. John Kirriemuir has done a good job reading through a large number of responses, seeking out commanalities and identifying current issues. From the summary on the VWW blog of the latest instalment:

Overall, the picture is one of more virtual world activity in UK academia than in previous years.

…

While cases of virtual world use in academia have steadily risen, evaluations and evidence of their effectiveness has been fragmented and low-key. Though the same observation could be leveled at many other technologies – take a bow, Virtual Learning Environments – used in education.Many academics – possibly a significant majority – are still wary, sceptical or openly hostile to virtual world use in education. More visible proof of where it works may swing the more open-minded of them. With the mass of teaching and research activity currently under way in higher education, it’s only reasonable to hope for more (and better) evaluations, and clarity concerning where virtual worlds can be put to good use and where not. For proof, evidence, data and convincing arguments, 2009 to 2010 feels like the year of virtual world expectation.

Posted in Education, Second Life, Second Life Blogs, Sloodle, Teaching, Technology, Virtual Worlds. Tags: . No Comments »

The 3D web is getting closer…

December 11, 2009 — Daniel

I’m writing this post using the ‘nightly build’ version of Firefox, with a single (easily changed) setting altered. This allows me to view some of the early WebGL (the web version of the OpenGL graphics library for javascript) demos in all their glory. Well, the demos that work anyway!

The WebGL draft specification was only published yesterday, but intrepid folks have been building demos for a while now based on early implementations. Of the three mentioned here, I could only get the last one to work, but the animation was very smooth. The Mozilla Hacks blog also has a simple demo with a 3D creature exported from Spore.

WebGL enabled versions of Firefox, WebKit (which is used in Safari) and Chrome are all available – see browsers with support for WebGL. I’ve only tried Firefox, but it works pretty smoothly. Download and install the ‘nightly build’ version of Firefox – don’t worry, it won’t remove or replace your existing installation. On windows it installs into a different folder and with different shortcut names (the reassuring ‘Minefield’!).

The executable file itself is still called firefox.exe, which has the side effect (on Windows Vista at any rate) that you can only run one version at a time. Closing Firefox completely then choosing your existing Firefox shortcut or one of the new Minefield shortcuts will allow you to swap between them.

I’m *hoping* to find time to play around with writing some demo 3D code for WebGL (perhaps sneak it into one of my classes next semester?) – and am looking forward to seeing what great apps come down the pipeline in the next couple of years.

Posted in Game Development, Technology. Tags: . 4 Comments »
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