Catch Up Post: Virtual Worlds Saving Lives, Experience Design and an RFI for an MMO for NASA (acronym attack!)

NewsGator RSS products now free: No really. In case you missed this in the past like 2 weeks and you happen to be looking to try out a suite of great aggregator products read this story or visit this site.

Is Pedagogy Getting in the Way of Learning? Read it and then read the comments.

Experience-Enabling Design: An approach to elearning design: From a 2004 post from elearning post. I need to read this one carefully, but I like this quote; "Every     time we use a product or a service, we essentially consume the experience     it enables. The product is not a thing. The service is not an act. They are     vehicles for the experience that their designer intends to bring about."

Review of Ted Castranova's latest book: Exodus to the Virtual World

NMC gives away free copies of Virtual Reality Room for Second Life.

Staying on the SL trip, try AR Second Life (that's augmented reality). This story from New World Notes lays out the attraction here nicely (also shown in a couple of YouTube videos); "it's a technology that lets you export and merge SL video with real world video in such a way that the image appears in proper perspective, and proportion-- in other words, to make Second Life elements convincingly look like they're part of the real world."

...'cuz it's only been reported 10,000 times; "Boy Saves Sister from Moose Attack with Skills Learned in Warcraft Video Game" and its corollary "Man Imitates America's Army, Saves Lives"

Some 20,000 soldiers a year may be trained with Sandia-enhanced simulation video game: "ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. —Some 20,000 soldiers a year may soon be trained in interpersonal skill building and cross-cultural awareness using a videogame recently developed by researchers from Sandia and BBN Technologies. Funded through Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the nine-month project resulted in the instantiation of Sandia’s adaptive thinking training methodology that prepares warfighters for difficult situations in places such as Afghanistan and Iraq, says project lead and scientist Elaine Raybourn."

(RFI) DEVELOPMENT OF A NASA-BASED MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER ONLINE LEARNING GAME: "A NASA-based MMO built on a game engine that includes powerful physics capabilities could support accurate in-game experimentation and research. It should simulate real NASA engineering and science missions in a medium that is comfortable and familiar to the majority of students in the United States today. A NASA-based MMO could provide opportunities for students to investigate STEM career paths while participating in engaging game-play. Through a NASA-based MMO, students will gain insight into a wide range of exciting career opportunities and be encouraged to make educational choices that lead them into STEM fields of study and eventually the STEM careers needed to fulfill NASA’s Vision for Space Exploration. Learning Technologies is seeking input on how to accomplish those goals."