Learning About Free August 1, 2009

I’ve been listening to Free: The Future of a Radical Price, by Chris Anderson. I downloaded it for free from the audiobooks section of the iTunes store. I had heard a couple interviews with the author in various podcasts, and while interesting, I still wasn’t motivated to go to the effort or cost of getting the book until I found it for free.

The topic has interested me from the first time I heard about open source, and further mystified me when I found out Google was actually a thriving business. It made sense to me that Google made money on ads, but how did open source programmers shelter and feed their children? I understood that getting involved in the open source developer community was a great way for a novice to get practical experience in the programming community. But if the open source stuff was free, how did established programmers make livings? What was that novice going to grow into that would put food on the table? My question always comes back to that–as awesome as the intrinsic rewards of solving intellectual problems are, our food isn’t free, our electricity isn’t free, our shelter isn’t free. And those are just the basic survival needs. Our degrees aren’t free either. (I wanted to say education isn’t free, but honestly, if you are willing and capable of being your own teacher, you can learn anything online–you just can’t legally get a respectable degree for it without money.) These questions stymy my thoughts of making a living as a programmer (along with a host of other hurdles–like finishing learning how to do it) and make me feel a tinge of guilt every time I recommend OpenOffice to my sister or another casual home user who needs something better than WordPad, but definitely doesn’t need all of the features of MS Office.

These are the questions with which I listened to Free. For the first 12 chapters, I kept wanting to interrupt, “But how do their children eat?” Then I gave up my pathetic struggling effort to change his stalwart advance of examples and facts, and submitted to his chosen course for the next five chapters. Finally in the last few sentences of the coda, he said, “Free is not enough, it also has to be matched with paid…. Free may be the best price, but it can’t be the only one.” I really wish he would have opened with that. My entire struggle was unnecessary. The meat of the book is the history of economics, how pricing differs between atoms and electrons, and loads of examples of how companies with free products put food on the table. I went into the book thinking he was going to illogically try to convince me that those companies could just offer free–that somehow they could put food on the table while never charging for anything. Now that I understand that he knows food will always need to be paid for, I think I need to listen to the whole book again.

Or perhaps there needs to be another book that focuses on how to offer free sustainably. What I got from this book is that it’s very likely that most companies will have to offer free in order to be sustainable in the current economy. The new economics is how to figure out what should be free and what you can charge for, and what the reasonable charge is. In some cases, it’s feature-driven. If you need the features the average user doesn’t even know exist (like me with MS Office), you pay. If you don’t need them (most home users), you go with the free version. In other cases, businesses make money off of people’s ignorance. And this is the model I don’t like, and which I don’t think is sustainable. People don’t stay ignorant. And when they find out they were made the fool when ignorant, they don’t exactly have warm feelings for that business. Some examples of the latter are made in Anderson’s book–airlines charging for checked bags being a notable example in my opinion. He gives them all the same weight, though. At least that’s how I perceived it. His focus, except in the appendix, was in proving that it was possible, and not on how to do it well. There is need for the former, but my interest is now in the latter.

And here my passion for the topic dies off as my stomach begins to growl and I must go put food on my table.

“Learning With the World” June 10, 2009

A few posts ago, I mentioned that I am trying to catch up on listening to podcasts. I’m still working on that, feverishly! Fortunately, a coworker loaded the new iPhone OS for me today, and it has 2x speed for podcasts!!! Yay!!!! I’ll catch up twice as fast! Now if only I could stop finding new ones to subscribe to, and allow myself to ignore back issues.

That aside, one of many podcasts I heard today is from way back in March: http://teachersteachingteachers.org/?p=204 (Technology Matters: Taking it Global with TIGed). One statement really resonated with me. One of the speakers quoted a student saying that the way they were learning was more powerful because he was “learning with the world instead of learning about the world.” That’s exactly how I’ve felt these past two weeks using Twitter. Instead of reading news and blogs about events after they’ve happened, I’m being invited to experience and discuss events as they are happening.

Today, an educator, Will Richardson of Weblogg-ed, tweeted an invite to a professional development workshop he was delivering (it’s on ustream). I got to listen while I worked, hearing what he was presenting and hearing the questions and reactions of the teachers he was working with. One main topic was “transparent learning.” That’s what I’m doing by making a blog–making my learning process transparent to everyone in the world who visits this page. That’s currently one person a day, and I think it’s me! My low readership has been slightly intentional. Listening to the workshop today challenged me to analyze why.

First, how have I kept it on the down-low? Well, I let a year go by without updating it. That made WordPress ignore it pretty well, I think. I never send out a notice that I’ve updated it. And I tend not to make it very searchable.

Why? At dinner tonight, my friend told me she started running again. She said she felt embarrassed that she was worn out after half a mile when before she could easily run six. Well, I used to be a great writer. Teachers used to say I should write reviews. Now I fumble with tired metaphors. I’m out of practice. My friend has to be out in public to practice her running, to get good at it again. I can quietly tap away here in virtual privacy.

Today I learned that by posting the name of a blog, my post will be found. So perhaps today I will have two readers.That’s another step in making my learning transparent.

I’m also taking another step, and that’s by removing the moderation on comments. Why was I moderating them? First, to avoid associating my name with something someone might post. For example, my Mobwars post was a big hit for people who wanted to advertise bots, cheats, and hacks for the game. I have no desire for my site to be a portal for that sort of information. While moderating them kept those posts from being published, it also kept one genuine comment from being posted during the time when I was ignoring the blog. I don’t want that to happen again. I hope not to ignore the blog again, too, but more importantly, I don’t want anyone to feel I’m censoring them because they are critical of my post (unless it’s just someone trolling, in which case I don’t take the bait). Not censoring comments makes the comments exist, and with my transparent learning, I have to figure out how to deal with them.

What do you think about handling comments? Is it possible to edit out links and publicly respond that I appreciate the interest in the topic, but I don’t feel comfortable advertising that kind of content? I’m curious how other people handle this.

Thanks again for reading!

Confessions of a Twitter Convert June 9, 2009

If you aren’t on Twitter already, I imagine your reaction to the title is something like, “Why do all these people keep saying how amazing Twitter is? I don’t want another thing to have to keep up with. I don’t want to know every little thing everyone is doing. It’s lame. Why hasn’t it gone away already?” Why do I know that’s your reaction? Of course, because it was also mine very recently.

Over a year ago, I set up my account and made a post “at work researching social networking sites”. Nothing happened. It wasn’t groundbreaking. No amazing explosion of insight and knowledge appeared before my very eyes  (what does ‘very eyes’ mean anyway?). So I said ‘whatever’ and moved on to other amazing things.

As unimpressed as I was, I kept hearing over and over, again and again, from people whom I respected and who inspired me with profound thoughts and actions, how amazing Twitter was. So finally after a year, I logged back in. And this time, I get it. Here’s why:
1. Mobility: Twitter works for me because I have access to it wherever I am. The first time I looked at Twitter, I didn’t have a mobile computing option. Now I have an iPhone. There are a couple free iPhone apps and several paid ones. I decided to go with ‘free’ since it was just an experiment at that time. The free app is still working fine for me. Based on reviews at the App Store, I picked TwitterFon. I would not check in with Twitter if it meant needing to go to yet one more page every time I got to a computer. With it on my phone, I fit Twittering into all the spare moments of my day–while I’m waiting for things to load on the computer even.

2. Following Inspiring Twitterers: Twitter works for me because I follow people who feed my inner geek. I keep going back because I want to know what new, cool thing they’re going to tell me about. How did I find them? Well, remember I said there were all those people who kept saying how great it was? I searched for them and subscribed to them. I searched the iTunes Store for topics I am interested in and subscribed to the podcasts. If I like a podcast, I go to its website and more often than not, the author has a twitter account posted there.

Those are the two important things for getting started. Then things happen.

The day after I got set up, someone Twittered a link to a chat to watch Microsoft’s E3 press release together. Without Twitter, I wouldn’t have known that was happening. I followed the link and there I was with 150 people around the world discussing Microsoft’s new stuff as it was being announced. It easily tripled the value of the press conference for me. Those chats have continued throughout the week for Nintendo, Sony, and Apple. I keep checking in to see if there’s something else to attend.

In addition to that, I’m subscribed to education experts who post interesting articles and I’m subscribed to people who post about local events that I’m interested in. I’m continually amazed by how much is going on in the world. I knew there was a ton going on before, but now I’m one Twitter away from people who are there. What’s going on is in my face right now. I don’t have to wait for someone else to consume, digest, and publish it. I now have opportunities to be a first-hand consumer. This is powerful stuff.

Teachers, it’s pretty simple to say this should be a great professional development tool for you. I want to push that a little farther and ask, “What about using it with students?” First, caution! These amazing and inspiring people are human beings. Tweets aren’t always profound and aren’t always G-rated. So while learning to deal with reality is a valuable skill, let’s avoid the lawsuits since they aren’t really necessary. You can set up a closed Twitter ring. Create accounts and check the box with the lock. That means that in order for anyone to follow the account, you will receive an email and have to approve it. So create accounts just for class and have the accounts follow each other, and no one else. Then what? Practice writing headlines. Find a topic in class that interests the students and let them tweet about it from home or class. Tweet with classes around the world.

Thanks again for reading!

Excellent Twitter resources here: http://mashable.com/category/twitter-lists/

My toons June 5, 2009

In my last post so long ago, I shared that I started playing World of Warcraft (WoW). I played for a year and am now taking a break. Taking a break is very difficult! Having spent so much time at it, and it being my first great foray into gaming, I feel I need to write about it here. However, I’m having a difficult time analyzing it in educational terms. I have a much more interesting time analyzing it psychologically and socially. My intent here is to explain what I find interesting about it to people who have never played the game.

NOTICE: If you have any tendencies toward addiction, do not start playing this game. Do not even read this post. I am able to take a break because I tend to only be addicted to air and water. Even so, it is difficult to stay quit.

One of the most interesting things to me are all of the differences between the characters, also called toons, that I created. When creating a toon, you choose what you want it to look like and what basic skills it will have. For instance, you could choose a hunter. Hunters use guns and bows to fight enemies from a distance, and also have a skill something like the beastmaster, where they can tame animals who will also fight enemies for them. You could also choose a rogue. Rogues are able to sneak around in the shadows and skilled at quickly taking down their enemies with poisons and calculated, close-quarter attacks. These characters fight very differently. It’s reasonable to think that the way they fight comes from their personalities. Yet, it is the player who is playing both. As a role-playing game, WoW is different from other games you may have heard of. It isn’t like Wolverine, for example, where you hear Wolverine and the character acts like Wolverine and you the player are making Wolverine do things. Instead, in WoW, it’s more that your toon is createdwith certain abilities, but the personality comes completely from the player, from you.

My toons, though, have completely different personalities. Perhaps they are all different facets of my own. Or perhaps they are all fiction straight from my mind. My first toon was a red-headed hunter named Greca. She tamed two animals and named them George and Gracie. I played her for quite a long time. She liked bows rather than guns. I don’t have red hair, but I chose it because I wanted her to have a fiery nature, not hot-headed, but intense, sincere, bold, and confident. George and Gracie were the same color as her hair. George was a raptor, like a little dinosaur, chosen at a friend’s recommendation. Gracie was a wind serpent, like a tiny dragon, who was a great honor to tame.  George’s name has two meanings, one of which you already know. The other is the classic Warner Bros “I will hug him and pet him and I will call him George.” So Greca was in the game to have fun and we did have fun for quite some time.

Then I wanted to try a different character. Lots of people play characters of a different gender, so I decided to try a male. I also wanted to try creating a paladin. Paladins are like knights. Their power comes from believing in something greater than themselves and they use it to fight to the death for what they believe is right. They are the great heroes and leaders of history. Think Joan of Arc. In the game, paladins have special abilities that allow them to be great warriors and great healers. They are completely different from hunters, so I wanted to see what that was like. So I started a paladin. Not just any character can be a paladin. To start a paladin, I had to play an elf. I named this male elf paladin Graebo. He turned out to be sort of a failed Napoleon. He had great dreams and conviction, but just couldn’t get over his culture. The elves in the game have an addiction to mana. All through their training, they’re warned to be careful of this addiction to mana. Many quests are to go kill mana-based creations that have malfunctioned. Yet he has to use mana in order to kill the things. And not only that, but everywhere he goes in his home country, there are planters floating and unmanned brooms sweeping–all mana-based creations. So there’s this conflicting message–”Don’t use mana! Mana is bad! Oh, watch you don’t bump your head on the floating planter while you go assist that elf with her brooms!” Male elves also posture pretentiously and speak to everyone in demeaning ways. Graebo didn’t like that at all, and it must be genetic because he wasn’t able to stop. Anyway, he’s completely messed up from his upbringing. I managed to get him to another city called Undercity. This is where things get interesting with him. Personally, I don’t like Undercity as a place to hang out. It’s an underground city of undead with green goo running through sewers. Graebo loves it there. I don’t like it. I play Graebo. Graebo loves it. There’s nothing more refreshing to him than a dive through the green goo. Weird! So Graebo hangs out in Undercity at the bank for me keeping spare things for my other characters.

Now contrast Graebo to my rogue, Grecannal. Rogues like shadows, so you would think she would like Undercity. She does not. She avoids the green goo anytime she has to be in Undercity. Keep in mind that it’s much easier to walk through the goo to get from point A to point B there. There are bridges, but it takes longer. She prefers the bridges. I played my rogue the most. She reached the highest level in the game before I stopped playing. Rogues are type-cast rather negatively in the game. It is said that people who like to play rogues like to take out the opposing faction the most. This isn’t why I love to play my rogue. I love that she can hide in the shadows. This means that she can walk right by enemies without them seeing her. She can go places in the game all by herself that would require a group of 5 or 10 to fight to get to. I like to explore and see everything. She’s the only character I can do that with. She picks flowers and likes to help people out. She made a lot of friends. As a rogue, she wears black so she can hide better.

I started another rogue on the opposing faction, called the Alliance. All the characters I listed above are in the Horde. The Horde and the Alliance are mortal enemies. The history books write the Alliance as the good guys and the Horde as animals and monsters at best. As any student of history can surmise, there are good acts and motivation among the horde, and there are great attrocities committed by the Alliance. My personal abhorrence for hypocrisy makes me much more comfortable among the Horde. But, my great love for playing a rogue drove me to create the type of rogue rumored to be the best in the game, a gnome rogue. Gnomes only exist as part of the Alliance, and thus blue-eyed and cheerful Minace came to be. I figured as a rogue she would be a lot like Grecannal, just smaller. But no. Grecannal is very serious, mature, and quiet. Minace is bubbly and loves pink. I don’t like pink. I think Minace would wear ruffles on her leather if they existed in WoW. She’s a lot like Kaylee from Firefly. I like playing her as much as Grecannal.

There are three types of priests in WoW, but I’m only going to write about two of them here since I have no experience with the third. Holy priests are healers. That means when they play with a group, the rest of the group fights the enemies and the holy priest hangs back to send them health in magical and mystical ways. Shadow priests can do some healing, but are best known for being able to do awesome amounts of damage to enemies. Later in my year of playing, I wanted to try a priest. On the Horde side, I created Grec. By that time, I was willing to try elves again, but not males. So Grec is a red-haired, graceful, self-assured elf. I wanted to try shadow, but she only wants to be holy. On the Alliance side, I wanted to create a healer because they are always in demand. So I created another female elf named Cobalia. Unfortunately, she only wants to be shadow. No healer for me! I like playing Grec a lot. Cobalia, not so much.

I have a smattering of other characters, like my shaman, Phreda (I love her name), my undead warlock, Perenna (get it? perennial, undead ), and my death knight, Lovelacea (you know, Ada–by the way, never name your character this unless you like for complete strangers to have every right to call you ‘Love’.) I just find it so interesting that they are all completely different personalities. I never really got into role playing (RP). RP is where you talk in the language your character would speak based on where the character is from. For instance, the troll characters talk like they are from the islands, saying ‘ey mon’ all the time. I’ve never felt that I had the writers sense to create dialog. But I wonder if all the personalities of my characters are sort of how a writer feels about characters when writing a book. They all have personalities and their own agendas. As much as the writer would like for a character to do a certain thing for the benefit of the plot, the character may just refuse.

It bears more thought, I think, but I’m tired and must go to bed. Thank you for reading about all these characters I got to hang out with for a year.

Education || Technology June 4, 2009

Yeah, that’s education on one side of a wall and technology on the other. My passion in life is a melding of the two, so when they are un-melded, it drives me nutty. Twice in the past two days I have been entirely wowed and entirely bored by technology, only to later be completely mystified by education being completely bored by the thing that wowed me and wowed by the thing that bored me. My wows and boredom are backed up by similar reactions in tons of technology reviews and twitters. What’s going on?

Did you watch the E3 press conferences? If not, take a look at Project Natal (that’s nuh-TALL, I don’t know why). It’s the new great thing coming from Microsoft for the XBox next year. If it works, it’ll be revolutionary to the gaming world. And its possible applications in the classroom just blow my mind. No need for an interactive whiteboard. No need for the teacher to be tied to a tablet or the board. No need to spend a ton of money on multi-touch boards. What if all the kids and the teacher could be recognized by Natal and control what’s on the board from anywhere in the classroom? Aren’t the possibilities amazing?

That was the biggie from Microsoft. Sony had a pretty cool new controller, too, that would have been the thing that blew me away if I hadn’t seen Natal first. Nintendo was the second presenter of this big-named trio, and that’s the most mention I would give them. They showed nothing ground-breaking. Read reviews yourself and see if you can find anything better than ‘cute’ or ‘fun’. And that’s the best they had to offer. One day after these press conferences, I turn to an ed tech blog with these ideas of XBoxes in classrooms in the back of my mind. I’m pleasantly surprised to see them asking people to think about having game consoles in the classroom, but absolutely flabbergasted that the console they are asking about is the Nintendo Wii! Gah! Huh? Why?

The second bit of technology is a bit more of a long-term thing. Netbooks. Yeah. Okay, yeah, cool, they look like computers and they’re cheap so we can get one in every kids’ hand more easily than a whole computer. But will any kid ever work at a business that has Netbooks? Are we really preparing them for the real world by giving them pseudo-computers? Given the choice of Netbook vs Smartphone for mobile computing needs, are there really a lot of non-education professionals who would choose the Netbook?

I’m just really confused by this disparity between the technology the tech community thinks is cool and transformative and the technology the education community wants to put in the classroom. I’m not saying the Wii sucks. In fact, it’s awesome if it’s being used in classrooms. I’m not saying Netbooks suck. Again, awesome to have technology in kids’ hands. I’m just saying I think there is other technology that deserves education’s passion. The day after Project Natal is announced, the ed tech community ought to be a-buzz about it. Why isn’t it?

Stuff to read on this:

http://www.globalnerdy.com/2009/05/26/fast-food-apple-pies-and-why-netbooks-suck/

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/live/projectnatal/

http://gizmodo.com/5277954

I can’t find my source on Wii in the classroom from today.  I’ll add it later if I find it. Thanks for reading.

Podcasting and Blogging November 8, 2008

I think I’ve found that I don’t make a very good blogger. Unless, perhaps, that it’s okay to have a very occasional blog. From time to time, there will be things I want to write about, and I’ll put them here, but otherwise, it won’t be updated.

I’ve been listening to a lot of podcasts–not enough, apparently since I have 199 new ones yet to listen to. I originally didn’t think I would like them. This is for several reasons. First, I can’t use my eyes or hands to take in the information. I am forced to take the information at the pace and in the order that the podcaster provided. With video or text, I can skim or fastforward, skipping what doesn’t interest me and spending more time on what does. I wanted to read a transcript instead of listening.

I still think podcasters should provide transcripts. I think there should be some effort made at providing chapters or an index. I had listened to a podcast while driving and heard a quote I thought was especially profound. But I was driving, so all I could do was make a mental note that the quote existed. Later, trying to find it, I listened to the beginnings of about 5 podcasts trying to find the one I thought contained the quote (this is because I was listening to podcast after podcast while driving), and then I had to listent o 43 minutes of the podcast before the quote was said. I could not fast forward because I might be skipping it. That’s frustrating.

So why do I keep listening to them? Provided it’s not information I want to focus on 100%, it’s really nice to be able to multitask. I can listen to podcasts in situations where I cannot intake information in any other way. I can listen to a podcast while I’m driving. Instead of listening to the radio, I can be working on the list of things I want to learn while I’m doing something else. I can start listening to a podcast as soon as I wake up in the morning, before I’m even ready to get out of bed. I can listen while I use the elliptical machine and lift weights. Some people can read while walking, but I can’t

While the drawbacks I thought I would find are there, the increased opportunities to learn make it completely worth it.

My New Life June 28, 2008

I’ve been gone for awhile. “Why?” you may wonder. “WoW,” I reply. I started playing World of Warcraft. Just finally decided to do it. And well, I confess my addiction. Partly I’ve been too busy playing to blog, and partly, I don’t have any complete thoughts to share about the game yet.

I brought up gender issues last time. So I’ll write about that a bit. But again, I’m a newbie to the whole thing, so my opinion will continue to change and develop almost every time I play. What I’ve found is that everybody plays different genders in the game. They role play different races, too. What you are in real life doesn’t matter at all when you make your character.

There are a few people I only know in the game that I play with all the time. They’re male and they know I’m female, but gender really doesn’t affect how we play. There is one group I run with that I know would be having a, er ah let’s say more lively, discussion were it just the boys. And there are the teenage boys who jump right into asking about gender and age and whether there’s an SO and can’t seem to get their conversation pointed in any other direction. But I don’t play with them. I have fun with the people I do play with because we enjoy the game and enjoy solving problems together. I hang out with these players because they show that they are good people in how they work with fellow players. And we have fun. Tons of fun.

When you start playing, you create your character by mixing and matching a bunch of characteristics. You start off in a pretty isolated part of the world that’s just for learning to play your character. You have quests that teach you how the game itself works and how your character’s skills work. They start off really easy, and gradually get harder. How seamlessly and perfectly this introduction to the world works is a testament to how much work the folks at Blizzard put into doing it well. Like any complicated thing done well, I think it would be easy to overlook how perfectly designed this part of the game is.

Once you finish the quests in the starting zone, you get a quest that makes you venture into a bigger part of the world. New quests continue to teach new skills and features and let you explore.

The world itself is beautifully designed and detailed. Last night I was completely distracted from the thing I was supposed to be killing because there was a butterfly flitting about on the screen. How cool is that. It has no purpose in the game. It also rains and snows, and there are full moons to watch and sunrises and sunsets. If senseless beauty doesn’t rock your boat, then watch for the parodies that are built in everywhere. The makers of this game recognize their responsibility to entertain me and they do a pretty fine job of it.

I have to go play now.

Empathy vs Reality March 22, 2008

I’ve been reading Dovearrow’s Weblog. I recommend it for a new perspective on what MMORPG gaming is capable of. I ended the last entry stating that good games allow players to interact with with the global community. The idea was that they could learn about the world and how to appreciate other cultures by interacting with them. Dove Arrow presents another amazing possibility. Empathizing is one thing. Actually experiencing life from another’s viewpoint is a learning opportunity that I think few other mediums can provide. In fact, I can’t think of a single one, except for the movie where that guy dyes his skin black to get a college scholarship. Aside from breaking the law and requiring intervention from Hollywood-types, I don’t think there’s a way to experience life with real human attitudes outside a MMORPG.

Dove Arrow is a female character in a MMORPG played by a guy. He started the character to prove to some female friends that women were not treated any differently in the game. He found out he was wrong. He actually got to experience the difference in how he was treated as a male character and as a female character. Now he writes a blog on women and gaming and spends his free time researching feminist issues.

What other possibilities are there? With the wide range of elves, trolls, and water creatures, would playing characters from various ethnicities actually elicit responses to the ethnicity from other players? I certainly don’t know since I still haven’t gotten past the “download free trial” ads at a couple MMORPGs.

Frankly, all the reading I’ve been doing so far has me somewhat discouraged about even trying. I am female and a newbie at a late age. (I read an article written by a 23-year-old touting how proud she was to be an older gamer!) So I have two strikes against me before I even walk in the door. And don’t take one of those strikes as me expecting to fail because I’m female — it’s others viewing me as a stereotypical female and perhaps not allowing me to experience the game for itself, if that makes any sense. (So you’re starting to get why I put “babble” in the blog title.)

Add to that, I don’t enjoy fighting and I’m terrible at shooting — both for lack of practice and using a touchpad instead of a mouse. However, I do enjoy strategy. I’m learning that from playing Mob Wars on Facebook. Other mobs keep attacking me, so I just make sure my money’s in the bank where they can’t steal it. I try to buy a lot of things for defense, but having a small mob is a deficit. It’s not ‘end of game’ though. If another mob manages to kill you in a fight, you lose a whopping 6 experience points (ha! I figured out what XP is!). Big whoop. Before dying, there’s the option of checking into the hospital and paying big bucks to heal. Frankly, if my money’s in the bank, what the other mobs steal is less than what it costs to be healed, so it’s cheaper to die (that’s funny to write). So I don’t try to fight the other mobs. They’re just little annoyances, like a few fruit flies that appear every now and then — not enough to worry about, but a tad annoying.

So I don’t like fighting. I’ll keep researching MMORPGs looking for any that focus more on strategy. I have high hopes for the Star Trek one if it ever comes to be. As for the gender issue, maybe I’ll be a Phylosian.

Quote of the Day March 21, 2008

“Where do kids connect and communicate and socialize? Online. Kids…They’re doing a lotta that stuff we did kinda in the park…they’re doing it online. And that’s why it’s so shocking to us.”

~pretty close quote from Will Richardson’s Keynote Presentation at ACTEM07, from Bit by Bit Podcast 52, about 24:50

I have to recommend listening to this presentation. There a lots of links to it in any Google search.

Kids dabble online doing the things we used to do in parks and in friends’ basements when we were growing up. Remember, “Shhh….quick….[ ]’s mom’s coming!” Kids experiment with the world, learning who they are, how to interact with peers, and what they can do in the world. It just wasn’t published before.

The transforming moment from childhood to adulthood is when an adult responds to your opinions or creations like you’re an adult. For me, this happened when I was working at my community’s arts center. The technical director rounded up an odd bunch of kids from area high schools and taught us to work together and create great theatrical presentations. We read about what we did in newspaper reviews. We were just a bunch of kids, but we were treated like professionals by paying audiences and critics. Before that, I never would have believed I could have any kind of positive impact in the world.

That moment can happen for kids online. They can interact with peers doing the things kids used to do in parks and basements, but they can also create YouTube videos, animations, blogs, podcasts, and whatever they dream of next and have those creations responded to by adults. Kids can contribute to the world’s body of knowledge on Wikipedia with their contributions having just as much value as some gray-haired professor’s (no offense, doc). They can hop on nabuur.com and do something that helps a community on the other side of world survive.

Richardson says teachers should be teaching kids how to use the Internet well, how to be discriminating, and how to be part of the world community. Just because some tool or space can be used distastefully or immaturely (like the basement or the park) doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be used, or cannot be used well.

So what does this all mean in an educational gaming blog? Good games let players interact with the world community.

Mob Wars on Facebook March 20, 2008

A coworker invited me to play Mob Wars on Facebook recently. This is my first foray into MMORPG. The best comparison I can come up with for it is that it is to MMORPGs what Solitaire is to other computer games. The scope of Solitaire is very limited. The rewards of Solitaire are very limited. The possibility of mastering Solitaire is very limited. Yet it’s a satisfying addiction. It meets a certain low-stress, low-effort escapist need, and does it very well. So does Mob Wars. Basically, you earn money by doing mob-related jobs and fighting other mobsters to steal their money. Then you use the money to buy things you need in order to do the mob-related jobs, attack, and defend. You also buy parts of the city for income. It takes very little time or effort to play. In fact, it does not allow you to play for extended periods of time since you run out of energy and have to wait for it to regenerate. I’m enjoying planning how to earn the money and what to buy first.

So I keep playing. I’m at level 16 and am about to buy my second restaurant, first apartment building, and first armored vehicle. The plan is for the restaurants and apartments to generate enough income to buy several armored vehicles so that when my mob is attacked, they can be shielded. This leads to the part that is disappointing in Mob Wars. The only interactions with other people are when you are initially invited to join, and then when other mobs fight your mob. You cannot team up or plan with other members — not even the members of your mob. You cannot interact with other mobs except to fight them. Even though the characters’ names I see are made and controlled by real people, but they could just as easily be characters made up and controlled by a computer. The best word I can think of to describe the interaction in the game is ‘flat.’

However, that seems to be inline with the level of interaction in Facebook in general. But I’ll write about Facebook in another entry another day.

Thinking about it as someone who wants to make games, I would not be satisfied developing something like this. From one perspective, it’s pretty cool since it can be a template. Just change the colors, words, and pictures, and it could be about day jobbers collecting tools to get work, or about frat houses getting stuff to do whatever they do, or about unions organizing, etc. It’s a cool thing as a template. It’s a cool thing in its ability to keep players interested. But I would want to develop something that incorporates the motivations, ideas, and personalities of the players.