5th WORLD & DR. KANE'S SPEED OF LIGHT GENERATION by Jim Brazell
Wednesday, November 16, 2011 at 06:31PM What new forces are driving language, science, health, warfare, media, migration, politics, entertainment, agriculture, populations, energy, ecology, economies, social or ethnic developments, education, work, and technology? What metaphors are apt to describe our common situation? What new analogies can be drawn? (Basic McLuhan 1911-2011)
To ponder Marshall McLuhan's questions let's turn to the edge of consumer media. Below is a "machinima" production of "Secret Agent Man" called "The Rescue Mission" by Cyber Kai on YOU TUBE. According to Wikipedia Machinima is: Machinima (
/məˈʃiːnɨmə/ or /məˈʃɪnɨmə/) is the use of real-time 3D computer graphics rendering engines to create a cinematic production. Most often, video games are used to generate the computer animation. Machinima-based artists, sometimes called machinimists or machinimators, are often fan laborers, by virtue of their re-use of copyrighted materials (see below). (Wikipedia last accessed December 2, 2011)
"The Rescue Mission" with "Secret Agent Man" - A Halo 3 Music Video
Another example is this US ARMY eCybermission video made by students: Uploaded by xxxAmachaOnedaraxxx on Feb 16, 2010: "Yeah. I used maplestory animation for school. :D This is for a school math, science, and technology project called eCybermission. This was my very first animation, so please enjoy it!" (eCybermission Video)
Video for US ARMY STEM Program by xxxAmachaOnedaraxxx on You Tube
Below is a film made in 1922 depicting a mobile phone and what do the two travelers do with their land line friend? They play a record and have a party line with music while one party is standing on the road and the other party is at home--connected across space and time into a new place.
World's First Mobile Phone Part of Early Film Noir (1922) Reported in the Daily Telegraph, May 2010. (Source).
What is manifest in mediated experience in the 21st century; however, is a reality flip-flop as fundamental as the pictogram, the alphabet, the book, radio, TV and the computer. The web page and the video game have have leapt from the little flickering boxes in our homes and in our pockets into the world. If you have experienced the X-Box Kinect or an augmented reality app on your I-Phone or Android, you know what I am talking about. Below are videos of National Geographic's Augmented Reality public art installation and the X-Box Kinect--one of the hottest toys for Christmas 2011.
X-Box Kinect
Today, we play in this space with our X-box Kinect, Nintendo Wii, Sony Playstation, and even our digital phones and tablets. Today, we play with robots in this space. The photo below is the X-BOX Kinect illustrating the situation of the player (the body) in the space between cyberspace and everything else. Cyberspace has leaped from the screen into the world and vice versa. This is the 5th World--not Cyberspace but the space between cyberspace and everything else.
Emergence of the 5th World - National Geographic Augmented Reality
The network communications form of the 21st century, the Internet, is characterized not as media (as content, text, audio, video, software, etc) but medium--able to send, receive and store a message. With broadband, high performance computing, high definition display and stereo sound, the medium has literally become an extension of the landscape--reconstituting reality, time, space and culture--and soon economy--as simulation.
Marshall McLuhan's poetic expression of analogy has become reality: media "remodeling the environment," situating culture within a mediascape of simulation and this media becoming a prostetic extension of man. According to Duke Kane, the Father of the Global Positioning System, we are the speed of light generation—living, thinking, communicating, creating at the speed of light—not just the children of today—all of us. Space operations, according to Duke, are everyday operations in the home and while we are mobile as long as we have GPS in our pockets he says, "humankind has a smile on our face."
This 5th World is not cyberspace. The 5th World is the space between cyberspace and everything else. The 5th World transforms our geography of the mind and our reach across air, land, sea, space mediated by cyberspace. The video camera and global positioning system on digital phones, web cams on personal computers, and video cameras on video games make this capability available to everyone through existing hardware and telecommunications channels—all you need is the software.
With GPS overlaying the physical, virtual, social, and cognitive worlds, the concept of cyberspace is transformed from web pages, bookmarks, and 3D virtual worlds into a one world--cyber and physical. The 5th World links cyberspace air, land, sea, and outer space though the Global Positioning System (GPS).
GPS & Mixed Reality for Navigation & Location-based Entertainment
5th World —The Space Between Cyberspace and Everything Else
The Emerging 5th World - Not Cyberspace but the space between cyberspace and everything else
The 5th World facilitates an existential shift in human experience and perception—a new place of Being in the world—neither here nor there—but between spaces and realities. After all, What is a cyber attack? What is a cyberbully? What is cyber citizenship? Respectively, attack, bully and citizen. Reality is reality, there is no distinction in virtual reality and reality, cyberspace and physical space, and cyber terror and terror. According to Duke Kane, "We are living at the speed of light and thought."[6]
5th WORLD APPLICATIONS
Many 5th World applications are emerging including education, entertainment, business, and warfare. In the video game, Star Wars Arcade: Falcon Gunner, the skyline of your local metropolis is the scene of TIE star fighting to save your planet using real-time GPS mapped onto video and motion control for pan and tilt action. You can watch a YouTube video of the TIE fighter game here.
Star Wars Flacon Gunner - Mixed Reality
XBOX Ninect Hack - Doom A/R
BMW Augmented Reality Service Repair Tech
Below is a picture of Adidas’ mixed reality store using a webcam and a “glyph.”[4]A “glyph” is a symbol, like a bar code, that allows you to interact with your mobile phone, tablet, or PC, and the physical and virtual worlds through the video camera on your device—cyberspace has leaped off of the screen into the world.
Adidas’ Shoe Controller—enabling interaction with a virtual store, product demos, and games.
(Addidas)
You can obtain a glyph on a magazine, a piece of mail, a toy box, or your can print your own on the Internet and interact with your computer by manipulating the glyph on the paper in front of your video camera—creating an experience you view on your screen as an interaction of cartoon-like animations between you and the space you are in (some applications involve groups). This technology is part of a class of systems that includes mixed reality, augmented reality, and virtual reality.
The 5th World, or "Augmented reality toys," are described in the final Master’s thesis of a French Designer, Frantz Lasorne. Merging the basic characteristics of video games and real-life toys, Lasorne's mediated experiences enable virtual parameters commonly used in video games (power, life, magic, experience, attack, weapons, etc.) to be attributed to tangible toys linking cyber and phsyicalworlds. With Lasorne'sapproach, it is possible to create video game mixed with the real world. For example, a child's bedroom could become a detailed environment for play straddling the cyber and phsical worlds--making them one.[7] Lasorne's design and many applications of transmedia, augmented reality and mixed reality today demonstrate Marshall McLuhan's idea: "The mediascape is an extension of the landscape."
Frantz Lasorne’s Augmented Reality Toys.v3 Watch A Video on Vimeo
One of the first “cyborgs,” Steve Mann, a engineering professor at the University of Toronto, formerly at MIT, has worn a web of wires, computers, and electronic sensors that are designed to augment his memory, enhance his vision, and keep tabs on his vital signs for the past thirty years. Mann’s experience of reality exists at the intersection of physical reality, virtual reality, cognitive reality, and social reality. This new world—the 5th World—is not cyberspace. It is a space between cyberspace and everything else—between all things and ideas of things. Now this technology is available on your digital phone.
Steven Man the Original MIT Cyborg
Advancing many of Mann's concept forward today, we find applications such as LEGO's augmented reality kiosk for retail store product sales. Legohas created a glyph to enable you to see what is in a toy box fully assembled by simply holding the box in front of a video camera on a kiosk. The kiosk has a high definition TV, and it shows you holding the box with a virtual representation of what is in the box fully assembled and animated.
DRAFT--> ARLINGTON, VA, Nov. 14, 2011 – PBS KIDS today announced its first augmented reality app for iPhone and iPod touch, FETCH! Lunch Rush, which is now available on the App Store. Available for free, the app uses the camera on iPhone or iPod touch to overlay computer-generated graphics on top of the physical, real-world environment. The goal of the app is to teach kids ages six to eight math skills, like addition and subtraction by blending the virtual and real world into a truly engaging experience.
FETCH SCREEN SHOT
“The FETCH! Lunch Rush App is designed as a 3-D game, which helps kids visualize the math problems they are trying to solve,” added Lesli Rotenberg, Senior Vice President, Children’s Media, PBS. “At PBS KIDS our goal is to use media to nurture kids’ natural curiosity and inspire them to explore the world around them; we can’t wait to see what this new app will mean for furthering that exploration.”
This Batman game screen capture illustrates what fully immersive A/R looks like in the gameworld today:
The 5th World and cyber physical systems are characterized by widening of network spaces (cascading networks).
Transformation of the Media Landscape[5]
(Adapted from Metcalfe in TSTC 2004)
STEM+ARTS INNOVATION & WORK IN COPYRIGHT INDUSTRIES
According to attorney Eric H. Smith of the International Intellectual Property Alliance, “The latest data show that the ‘core’ U.S. copyright industries accounted for an estimated $889.1 billion or 6.44% of the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) in 2007…..These ‘core’ industries were responsible for 22.74% of the real economic growth achieved by the U.S. economy in 2006-2007….Estimated 2007 foreign sales and exports of the core copyright industries increased to at least $126 billion, leading other major industry sectors [which] include: chemicals and related products (not including medicinal and pharmaceutical products); motor vehicles, parts and accessories; aircraft and associated equipment; food and live animals; and medicinal and pharmaceutical products.” The 2003 - 2007 Report is posted on the IIPA website at www.iipa.com.
New business models, media, channels, transactions, tools, environments, and realties are emerging from the interplay of cultural arts industries (copyright dependent industries) and Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM+ARTS).
For example, the video game industry’s technologies, distribution methods, and methods of profiling and authenticating users are transforming the markets, technologies, and capital of copyright dependent industries. In other cases, market boundary spanners are straddling the game industry and industries such as energy, health, aerospace, and defense to create a new generation of cyberspace applications and experiences that transcend games to form a new kind of computer-mediated experience—another part of the 5th World.
Game Industry Convergence[1]
(TSTC 2004)
Outside of major game publishers and console manufacturers, the game industry is not typically characterized as research-intensive. R&D is usually addressed through game development projects that interact in real time with the brand community (prospects, consumers, and brand loyalists) forming a closed-loop innovation system. Innovation networks are formed to incubate new ideas, create intellectual property, and to form a wellspring of future workers, cross-industry partners and new start-up companies. Innovation networks exhibit characteristics of swarming (like bees), including self-organization, self- synchronization, autonomous control, and organizations of networks-of-networks.
R&D trend analysis indicates that beyond their own production-level R&D, game companies innovate mostly based on consumer (gamer) behavior. Groups of hobbyists and other actors (public and private) form “self-organized innovation networks” and collectively contribute game content by modifying games. This activity is giving birth to new forms of computer mediated communication and learning (such as serious games).
Game Industry Value System and the Role of Production R&D[2]
(TSTC 2004)
The game industry value system is composed of game creators, agents, game platform providers (GPP), game infrastructure and tool providers (GITP), network service providers, innovation networks (IN), and gamers (consumers). The value system is a linear model; however, the actual relationships are networks that link various members in collaborating and competing business ecologies.
Gamer-based innovation networks are fundamental to the industry ecosystem. The consumers are the innovation engine of the industry and trends are more and more to consumer generated stories, content, games and algorithms. Innovation networks bring significant numbers of new entrants into the workforce, representing a critical feedback loop and a wellspring for startups. Self organizing innovation networks in gaming are indicative of movements in open source software, social media, and STEM innovation in schools.
Self Organizing Innovation Networks for Gaming R&D (Birthing New Concepts such as Health Games, Meditation Games, Learning Games, and More Based on the Massive Multi-User Online Game (MMOG) and Role Playing Game (RPG) Architectures[3]
Self Organizing Innovation Networks for Gaming R&D (Birthing New Concepts such as Health Games, Meditation Games, Learning Games, and More Based on the Massive Multi-User Online Game (MMOG) and Role Playing Game (RPG) Architectures[1]
Innovation networks are responsible for the opening of the video game industry, its technologies, and its human talent to applications of video games in energy, health, and education (among others). In this case, self-organizing innovation networks operating across military, education, industry, civil society, and game consumers (and hackers) opened the world of gaming to the movement called “Serious Games.” Serious games are games created for purposes other than entertainment (including health, social, political, environmental, educational, and physiological games and a new generation of simulation-based media applications).
Self Organizing Innovation Networks for Gaming R&D (Birthing New Concepts such as Health Games, Meditation Games, Learning Games, and More Based on the Massive Multi-User Online Game (MMOG) and Role Playing Game (RPG) Architectures[3]. Examples inlcude:
Evolution of the Technologies of Learning[1]
(TSTC 2004)
Serious games include: language and culture immersion games such as Tactical Pashto, Dari, French and Iraqi, health games such as ReMISSION, recruiting and training games such as America’s Army, documentary games such as Paris Riots, social justice games such as Global Conflicts Palestine and Global Conflicts Latin America, math games from Dimension M, STEM games from NASA/Virtual Heroes, and the new Quest to Learn, game-based school, in New York.
USC Marshall partners with IBM's "serious gaming" academic initiative to teach business process management (BPM) to students. USC Marshall students and teachers talk about the IBM-created "INNOV8," a videogame-like simulator program that challenges students to streamline and rationalize a company's operations after a merger.
INNOV8
Fête de l'Internet à la Bibliothèque Francophone
Moonbase Alpha, a NASA space exploration-themed gamedeveloped by The Army Game Studio and ARA’s Virtual Heroes. In Moonbase Alpha, the player assumes the role of an astronaut at a lunar base who witnesses a meteorite impact that cripples the life support capability of the settlement. Players must repair and replace equipment to restore oxygen production to the settlement.
Moonbase Alpha
CityOne is a FREE game created by IBM to show how industry solutions and their enabling technology infrastructures can help optimize municipalities.
Typically called STEAM, a grassroots movement has emerged in US and global education circles connecting the arts and STEM for innovation, creativitya and workforce programs across the P-20 system. In South Korea, the Ministry of Education recently announced that its innovation agenda will be buttressed by investments in STEAM—STEM and the ARTS—not just STEM. In the U.S., the National Science Teachers Association and the Arts Education partnership both have STEM and arts integration on their professional development agendas 2010-2012. Career and Technical Education (CTE) initiatives in Ohio, Texas, Florida, Maryland, and California are pursuing similar STEAM initiatives to deliver students to higher education and workers to industries ranging from the defense department to Disney.
What is the role of the arts in innovation? What is the role of the arts in wealth creation? What is the role of the arts in creating jobs? What is the role of the arts in national security? What is the role of the arts in defining who we are as Americans? What is the role of the arts in STEM transformation? When Winston Churchill was asked to cut arts funding for the war effort, he asked: “Then what are we fighting for?”
Today, the human component of the arts are recognized but the funding has not followed in education. What the arts community is missing is not only is it time for us to talk about the arts workforce but it is also time to understand that the arts are fundamental to high technology innovation. As the complexity of technology increases, the need for people from across all disciplines to have a well rounded arts educaion is more important than ever. At the same time STEM is gaining momentum in the public mind and dollars are scare. The real opportunity is in the intersection of STEM and Arts as we found in our research at the Innovation, Creativity and Capital Institute in 2005 (See Technoply).
STEM+ARTS HACKER/MOD/MAKER CULTURE
Hacking and modifying computers and software to play games on computers is part of the culture that defines the origins of computer science. Hacking and game play have always existed in game practice and early “computer science.” The original hack of the DEC PDP-1 by Stephen “Slug” Russell and MIT friends resulted in the first video game—Space War.
1972 SPACEWAR – The First Video Game – A Hack of MIT’s PDP 11
Gamers who hack, “mod” (modify), or “skin” (add artistic layers to) games are bound by a shared sense of purpose—solving complex problems related to creating or modifying virtual worlds. Those involved are simultaneously teachers and learners. For these communities of practice, work, learning, and play are one.
Game companies and consumer innovation networks are dependent on online production and teaming. Much project work flows by email and in various online collaborative frameworks including Twitter, video conferencing, digital telephone applications such as Skype, Simple Messaging Services (SMS), blogs, and Wikis as well as within formal tools for project management and digital asset management. Generally, successful game companies have these characteristics:
- Highly networked form of production, communication, and logistics.
- Creative energy and iterative approach similar to Disney’s “Imagineering” techniques.
- Distributed team and systems approach to work.
- Effective management of intellectual property assets.
- Effective project management across internal teams and external service providers.
- Effective management of digital assets within the production process.
- High variety of organizational approaches and structures, development methods, and operational processes.
- Integration of human factors and formal quality assurance techniques.
- Ability to attract, retain, and manage complex teams (artistic, technical, and business).
Game creators are at once generalists and specialists. The functional domains of commercial game production include informatics, business, art, and design/production. The industry uses this language, with the exception of referring to the informatics domain as “technology.” Because technology is a general term, we use informatics to indicate that digital game development encompasses traditional computer science, cybernetics, and simulation in the context of virtual worlds and social interaction.
Functional Domains of Commercial Game Production[1]
The practice of “fusing” art, technology (STEM+ARTS), and business, so important to gaming, is not new. Disney, Pixar, Industrial Light and Magic, and other major entertainment firms have successfully executed projects and formed a unique production culture to create intellectual property. The dot com creator-type companies that emerged between 1995-2000 also used this concept. Characteristics of the game industry include:
- STEM+ARTS R&D Culture—Real-time learning, adaptation, and innovation within the context of production that involves external customers and actors in the creation of intellectual capital and intellectual property. Also, “Production R&D.”
- STEM+ARTS Organization and Process—Highly adaptive and autonomous development teams exhibiting the formation of new languages, technologies, tools, environments, and creative management techniques that unify play, learning, and work (See Disney’s Imagineering, Burt Rutan, and Dallas Snell’s Happy Cooperative).
- STEM+ARTS Work—High variety of academic disciplines and experiences of employees—especially multiskill employees who marry artistic, scientific, engineering, and business systems theory, knowledge, and skill. Emergence of a distinct community of professional practice that is at its core a culture of play that unifies work, learning, and innovation (See Dallas Snell’s Happy Cooperative).
Game production and mod teams transcend traditional boundaries of time and geography. Teams work 24x7x365 in distributed networks. Teams from all over the world collaborate to build, test, modify, and maintain games. Work, play, and learning are bound together as a form of “flow” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990).
STEM+ARTS WORKFORCE
The U.S. creative industries—business software, entertainment software, film, television and home video entertainment, music, and book and journal publishing—are important drivers of the U.S. economy, contributing substantially to domestic growth and employment, including over $126 billion annually in revenue from foreign trade. The copyright industries employed 5.6 million workers in 2007 (4.05% of U.S. workers). The estimated average annual compensation for a worker in the core copyright industries: $73,554, which represents a 30% premium over the compensation paid the average U.S. worker.
The products of copyright industries represent 6.4% of the United States economy and over $126 billion annually[1] in revenue from foreign trade. In workforce terms, there are two million arts jobs in the U.S., many of which require technology fluency: 10% are architects; 11% are fine artists, art directors and animators; 7% are producers and directors; and 7% are photographers.[2]
Traditionally in the United States economic development practice, STEM-based industries such as energy, aerospace, defense, telecommunications, and information technology include incentives and workforce programs that connect education and workforce development to spur innovation and human capital development. Arts programs and industries do not garner the same type of investment or approach to stimulation.
The jobs associated with arts and copyright industries are not typically part of education, workforce, economic development, and R&D budgets or management practice in most State Film Commissions. When Film Commission executives or industry players surface the need for similar investment and practice to state and national leaders, there is often a backlash.
Arts industries, therefore, deserve special status in terms of how we define STEM workforce and educational practice—and thus concomitant funding. Labor market categories are decades behind our ability to accurately model what jobs exist today, how jobs are changing, and what percentage of jobs are Network and Information Technology (NIT), STEM, or art/design-based.
While there exists great opportunity at the intersection of STEM and the arts, the communities of practice are highly stratified between two independent operating bodies, the National Academies of Science and the National Endowment for the Arts. The National Science Foundation has funded a small initiative to listen to opportunities in STEM+ARTS research and development, cultural opportunities to use the arts to bridge communication and learning in STEM, and to investigate the opportunities of the STEM+ARTS workforce.
According to Harvey Sefieter, the Principal Investigator of the NSF Art of Science Learning, his initiative represents the first concerted national effort to overcome the "arts/science" stratification, in the following ways:
- through the formation and support of an interdisciplinary community of interest and practice,
- by creating a knowledge base as an open and growing community resource of educational practices,
- by developing a coherent research agenda to more fully understand and clarify the impacts and outcomes of integrating arts-based learning into STEM education, and
- by assessing in concrete terms the steps in terms of public policy and private investment that will be required to drive the STEM+Arts agenda. (Email interview, May 14, 2011.)
According to the Learning Worlds Institute organizers, The Art of Science Learning: Shaping the 21st-Century Workforce responds to the increasing demand for a workforce that is skilled in creative, interdisciplinary, and collaborative approaches to innovation, as well as one that is scientifically and mathematically literate. The following quotes from their website illustrate their foci:
In recent years, a large number of business leaders have identified a significant “innovation gap” around workforce preparedness in the realms of creativity, collaboration, and communication, areas they consider critical to their own companies’ competitiveness.[3]
Renewed attention is focused on the nature of creativity and the conditions under which it can flourish. The lesson of current investigations is that creativity is not the special talent of a few, but a quality that can be nourished and encouraged in us all.
Increasingly it is understood that one learns through the hand as well as through the mind and that hands-on experience is an essential element in developing the creative imagination.
Recognizing the profound implications for the future of America’s performance in the global economy, leaders are increasingly looking for solutions in domains that lie beyond the boundaries that traditionally defined the business world. A growing number of companies—including more than four hundred of the current Fortune 500—have turned to arts-based learning, successfully using artistic skills, processes, and experiences as organizational resources to strengthen innovation processes and foster creative thinking.[4]
Empirical investigations into how arts-based learning can promote leadership skills are being undertaken. Jen Katz-Buonincontro, for example, has examined how executive leadership programs have been successfully using the arts, from improvisational theatre to ceramics, in enhancing creative leadership skills.[5]
Companies are discovering how to use artistic resources as learning tools to enhance employee skills in critical areas such as collaboration, change management, and intercultural communication. At the same time, growing numbers of science centers, museums, and innovative educators across the country have successfully integrated the arts into informal science education programs as teaching tools, and the value of arts-based approaches to the promotion of scientific literacy has gained broad acceptance.
The current project builds on these successful bodies of experience, and is designed to promote the use of arts-based learning in informal science education by catalyzing a community of professional interest and practice, and creating new tools and resources to strengthen the capacity of science educators to integrate arts-based approaches.
The thoughtful integration of such a creative, experientially-based, interdisciplinary approach into science education has the potential to make the study of science more attractive and inspiring to students, enhance the scientific literacy of the American people, and ensure a higher level of creativity and innovation across the 21st-Century American workforce. (Learning Worlds Institute, “The Art of Science Learning: Shaping the 21st-Century Workforce.”)
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR STEM+ARTS PROGRAMS FOR P-20 SCHOOL SYSTEMS
To attract this highly creative market, colleges and high schools should follow the example of DigiPEN and Full Sail, which offer R&D-related production as part of their curricula. Other colleges might differentiate themselves from these programs by focusing on network gaming and fusing informatics(especially general systems theory) with electronic arts. Maryland and Florida are two states that offer high school CTE “Career Pathways and Programs of Study” for modeling simulation, and gaming programming and visual arts/animation and game design. View Maryland’s Sherwood High School Gaming program of study.
College and high school gaming curricula and practicum should mirror the self organizing (swarming) practices of learning through social construction, collaboration in digital environments found in gaming culture, and specifically the mod/hacker culture. Theoretical underpinnings should be taught through applied learning environments, since experimentation drives inquiry and innovation. Classical art theory, humanities and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) are all part of game design. Game design can be a Renaissance activity used to draw students and faculty together from across the disciplines similar to projects pioneered by Dr. Randy Pausch and associates at Carnegie Mellon. Game labs are the new Internet labs of academia pulling the disciplines together and pushing disciplines to new designs, knowledge and tools for the future at the boundaries of science, arts, engineering and the liberal arts.
While some may think of digital game studies as an easy program of “fun and games,” the truth is that it is a demanding study that synthesizes artistic, mathematical, and critical thinking skills in real-world production applications with unknown answers. A balanced, rigorous curriculum of arts and sciences and team-based project production can prepare graduates for employment in this highly-skilled, dynamic, and competitive field. The game industry ranks people with previous experience as preferred new hires; therefore, proven work portfolios are critical to the success of college programs.
Educational programs should aspire to a distributed partnership with all constituents—faculty, students, and industry. Colleges should consider the experience of the MOVES (Modeling, Virtual Environments, and Simulation) Institute and other related game programs:
“…[P]eoplesought [for game design, programming, and modeling] are not just engineers and computer scientists. They are programmers and content developers with cross-disciplinary skills. Such skills enhance the quality of virtual world development and the implementation of such cutting-edge technologies... Computer Science alone was not sufficient to build our future modeling and simulation systems.” (Zyda in TSTC Game Forecast)
A gaming curriculum framework should emulate the game industry’s production organization. Game programs should have leads and industry mentors (mirrors) from each of the game-industry work domains outlined below, supported by collaborators for the subordinate functions:
- Academic Game Producer Motion Capture Lead
- Designers
- Animators
- Informatics Lead
- Database Administrator
- AI Programmer
- IT Security Engineer
- Video Lead
- Post Production Engineer
- Cinematic Designer
- Audio Lead
- Software Engineer
- Music Composer
- Electronic Arts Lead
- Sound Engineer
- 2-D or 3D Designer
- Illustrators
- Texture Artists
Faculty should transcend instructive pedagogy in favor of open-ended-inquiry and problem-based learning. Colleges should depend on game industry veterans to teach, design curricula, and mentor faculty. The ideal learning environment would mix lab, lecture, and classroom. Programs should permit high interaction among students, faculty, and industry.
High school, college, and universities already offer many courses required for a digital games program including classical art theory, computer programming, mobile device programming, networking, videography, special effects, and graphical design. When establishing a new program focused on games, a game degree should include industry collaboration, existing coursework, specialized game-related classes, and production R&D.
Though existing classes may offer some required study, their integration into a program framework that balances theory and practice will be challenging. The coordination of faculty and labs from multiple departments, cross-listing of courses, and organization of student cohorts represent opportunities in both formal and informal learning.
Modding is a creative process based on adaptation where gamers learn by doing. The process of modifying a game is in effect a social construction of knowledge and technology. People involved in these activities are a good model to consider when designing a digital game program for K-12 schools, colleges, and universities.
TOOLS FOR SCHOOL - ALICE: A LEGACY OF DR RANDY PAUSCH & THE LAST LECTURE
Aliceis an innovative 3D programming environment that makes it easy to create an animation for telling a story, playing an interactive game, or creating a video to share on the web. “On September 18, 2007, computer science professor Randy Pausch stepped in front of an audience of 400 people at Carnegie Mellon University to deliver a last lecture called ‘Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.’
Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams, Dr. Randy Pausch (October 23, 1960 – July 25, 2008)
“With slides of his CT scans beaming out to the audience, Randy told the group about the cancer that was devouring his pancreas and that would claim his life in a matter of months. On the stage that day, he seemed invincible. But this was a brief moment, as he himself acknowledged.” http://www.thelastlecture.com/ Randy passed away the following year, and he left the children of the world a free gift—his legacy—Alice, along with The Last Lecture.
Alice is a learning tool enabling student experience with ideas and processes related to computational thinking, design thinking, object-oriented analysis, design and, programming (OOD, OOP, OOAD) (Pattern Frame)—what may be thought of holistically as pattern languages. (Alexander, 1977).
STEM+ARTS PROGRAMS FOR YOUR SCHOOL
THE NATIONAL STEM VIDEO GAME BUILDER CHALLENGE FROM THE COONEY CENTER
Inspired by the "Educate to Innovate" campaign, President Obama's initiative to promote a renewed focus on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) education, the National STEM Video Game Challenge aims to motivate interest in STEM learning among America's youth by tapping into students' natural passions for playing and making video games. The first annual competition is being held by the Joan Ganz CooneyCenter at Sesame Workshop and E-Line Media in partnership with sponsors AMD Foundation, Entertainment Software Association, and Microsoft. Founding outreach partners include the American Association of School Librarians, American Library Association, Boys & Girls Clubs of America, BrainPOP, and the International Game Developers Association.
The first year of the National STEM Video Game Challenge features two complementary competitions; a Youth Prize and a Developer Prize:
The Developer Prize challenges emerging and experienced game developers to design mobile games, including games for the mobile Web, for young children (grades pre-K through 4) that teach key STEM concepts, and foster an interest in STEM subject areas.
The Youth Prize engages middle school students (grades 5 through 8) in STEM learning by challenging them to design original video games. The YouthPrize design challenge will be open to middle school students from any U.S. school, with a special emphasis on reaching students in underserved urban and rural communities. The website provides an overview of the Developer Prize. Click here for more information on the Youth Prize.
The Science goals for entries should be focused around at least one of three themes taken from The National Science Education Standards (National Research Council, 1996):
- Unifying concepts and processes in science (e.g., systems thinking, evolution, evidence, and measurement)
- Science as inquiry (e.g., nature of science, skills necessary for inquiry), or
- Science in personal and social perspectives (e.g., personal health, characteristics in populations, types of resources, environments).
- Submissions may take place in any area of science. For examples of content areas, entrants are encouraged to refer to the National Science Education Standards (National Research Council, 1996).
- Alternatively, Math entries should address the Common Core Standards for grades K-4, currently adopted by at least 35 states.
Each of the submissions should emphasize the effective use of technology and/or engineering skills to promote content learning and inquiry that is age appropriate. Two good resources describing how video games can be used to promote learning are: Game Changer: Investing in Digital Play to Advance Children's Learning and Health by Ann My Thai, David Lowenstein, Dixie Ching, and David Rejeski and Moving Learning Games Forwardby Eric Klopfer, Scot Osterweil, and Katie Salen.
<<DRAFT END NOTES>>
[1]Brazell, 2009 adapted from Dr. David Thornburg http://www.tcse-k12.org/pages/stem.pdf
[2]Brazell, Jim. “Innovation Praxis: The Rise of Transdisciplinary Places and Practice in the 21stCentury Technopolis”, International Conference of Technology Policy and Innovation, Solutions to the Financial Crisis, July 13-14, 2009
[1] M I L E S T O N E S OF THE INTERNATIONAL INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY ALLIANCE 25 YEARS OF ACTIVITIES TO SUPPORT THE U.S. COPYRIGHT-BASED INDUSTRIES (1984-2009), last accessed online May 6, 2011.
[2] Artists in the workforce: 1990 to 2005., (Research report; #48).Produced by Tom Bradshaw, Office of Research & Analysis, National Endowment for the Arts; prepared for the Office of Research & Analysis, National Endowment for the Arts by Deirdre Gaquin. “May 2008”--T.p. verso. Last accessed May 6, 2011. Don’t know how to make this stick. Without my note here, it looks as if the footnote on the previous page ends with (Research report; #48).
[3] See Jill Casner-Lotto and Linda Barrington. Are They Really Ready To Work? Employers’ Perspectives on the Basic Knowledge and Applied Skills of New Entrants to the 21st Century Workforce,The Conference Board (2006) in In The Arts Can Help Bridge the Innovation Gap.
[4]See Harvey Seifter, “Artists Help Empower Corporate America.” Arts & Business Quarterly, (Spring 2004) in The Arts Can Help Bridge the Innovation Gap.
[5]J. Katz-Buonincontro, “Using the Arts to Promote Creativity in Leaders.” Journal of Research on Leadership Education Volume 3, Issue 1 (May, 2008) in The Arts Can Help Bridge the Innovation Gap.
[1]Brazell, 2009 adapted from Dr. David Thornburg http://www.tcse-k12.org/pages/stem.pdf
[2] Now ubiquitous, in current usage the term "cyberspace" stands for the global network of interdependent information technology infrastructures, telecommunications networks, and computer processing systems. As a social experience, individuals can interact, exchange ideas, share information, provide social support, conduct business, direct actions, create artistic media, play games, engage in political discussion, and so on, using this global network. The term has become a conventional means to describe anything associated with the Internet and the diverse Internet culture. Wikipedia “cyberspace,” last accessed May 16, 2011.
[3]http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1278/800624043_97e9414a5e_o.jpg
[4]Traditionally, a glyph is an individual mark on a written medium that contributes to the meaning of what is written. In mixed reality and augmented reality applications, glyphs are marks that act as primary identifiers, references, keys, or control mechanisms between the machine’s vision and the physical world.
[5]IC² Institute, adapted from Bell in Denning, Metcalfe, 1997 in Brazell, et. al., GAMING.
[6] Comment of Francis X. Kane, “Duke” on May 15, 2011.
[2]Brazell, 2009, PCAST Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics and Science (TEAMS) Strategy, May 1, 2009 (Final). http://www.flickr.com/photos/96522041@N00/sets/72157617454521107/
[1]Brazell, Jim, Nicholaus Kim, Honoria Starbuck, Eliza Evans, and Michael Bettersworth. Gaming: A Technology Forecast, Implications for Texas Community and Technical Colleges Austin, Texas: Texas State Technical College System and IC2 Institute, University of Texas Austin, February 2004.
[2] Op. cit. Page 33. (Ibid. if 102 is from page 33.)
[3] Ibid. or Op. cit. page XX.
[1] An indicator species is an organism whose presence, absence, or abundance reflects a specific environmental condition. Indicator species can signal a change in the biological condition of a particular ecosystem, and thus may be used as a proxy to diagnose the health of an ecosystem (Encyclopedia of Earth, last accesses May 6, 2011).
[1] adapted from Tapscott, 1998 in Gaming, TSTC.
[2]HopeLabs in Brazell, 2009. Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics and Science (TEAMS) Strategy, May 1, 2009.
[3]Tactical Language Training in Brazell, 2009. Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics and Science (TEAMS) Strategy, May 1, 2009 (Final).
₪
shift