My Games Design

Technically, I guess H809 is in week three, but it seems to make sense to post about the previous works activities (some of which are carrying on) rather than on trying to provide some sort of 'this just happened' account. I thought it would also be worth sharing some wikipedia links that came up in the forums for anyone who was having trouble with the stats reported in last weeks paper - the first concerns F-ratios , and the second ANOVAs . It might also be useful to look at the course wiki (sign in required) to see how some of the students have used it to integrate their different accounts of how technology has been used in education over the years. This activity will help prove useful further on in the course as we start to consider how to contextualise educational research. A link that might be useful for finding relevant articles was also posted in the cafe for Journals in the field of technology enhanced learning . Week two's reading was ‘Using computer-based text a...

Well it's been just over a week and things have definitely got going with H809. Students have been busy introducing themselves, and it seems there is quite a range of people on the course, with a variety of backgrounds and expertise ( as was last year's group ). There's also been a certain amount of becoming familiar with the VLE , I know I'm still getting used to the forums but I am starting to feel less confused about where everything is, and less overwhelmed by the number of posts! There are even a few blogs popping up - I've listed the public ones under H809 on the left hand side of this page, though there are also a couple that are just open to OU users. Not much is happening on these just yet but there have been a few posts e.g. Juliette Culver introducing her research background and her thoughts on educational research, and Mike Protts reflecting on the first course reading. Hopefully, we'll see a few more starting up and some further discussion as the...

I had a couple of friends come round last weekend so we could have a go on a some games I'd been wanting to try out. The first one was World of Goo , which I already knew I was going to love as I'd already played the PC demo. At first we were looking for some sort of multi-player mode, but then realised that all you had to do was point another wiimote at the screen to join in the puzzle solving. World of Goo is seriously easy to pick up, and we enjoyed it pretty much from the start. It follows the usual approach of starting you off with relatively easy tasks which get grow more and more difficult the further you progress - achieving a nice balance between your developing skills and the challenges you have to face. I also really like how you gradually start to become more and more curious about the goo and what exactly is going on in the game world . Who is the mysterious Sign Painter who leaves cryptic clues around the place? What are goo balls used for? What's with the r...