A Croquet Cyberinfrastructure?

Within the National Science Foundation-funded report entitled Cyberinfrastructure for Education and Learning for the Future, there is what I believe to be a relevant section for those seeking NSF support for developing Croquet-based gaming, simulation, and modeling environments. The report was the result of a workshop on Modeling, Simulation and Gaming Technologies Applied to Education that took place from September 27-29, 2004.

Check it out this excerpt from the report:

"Gaming, simulation, and modeling. Games clearly motivate users in ways that much conventional instruction, including online non-routine challenge problems, does not. Some have observed that game players learn implicitly in the context of playing games, and are motivated to continue learning outside of the game in order to improve their game play. Game players are motivated to continue playing out of a sense of fun and enjoyment, characteristics that are often lost in formal instruction.

Simulations and models help provide (but do not guarantee) insights into scientific concepts and phenomena. Difficult abstract concepts and large data sets can be accessed in ways that are more visual, interactive, and concrete. As such, simulations and models, and the games that incorporate them, have much to offer throughout a student’s learning experience. Just as simulations and computational models play an increasing role in scientific and engineering practice, they can and should play a prominent role in learning. The challenge is to lay the scientific and technical groundwork to ensure that games and simulations have a positive influence on learning, not one that is negative or distracting.

To achieve these goals, a number of Cyberinfrastructure and research challenges must be addressed, including:

• Virtual learning environments need engines, authoring tools, and other modeling tools that make it easy for students, educators and other practitioners to create interactive services, games and simulations—quickly and at low cost. The current commercial game industry is characterized by proprietary platforms and licensing restrictions that create barriers for their educational applications. NSF and other government agencies can play a role in promoting interoperability standards, and in promulgating tools, platforms, and protocols for creating and modifying games.

• An infrastructure for data collection and analysis needs to be built into virtual learning environment engines to inform the development of Lifelong Learning Chronicles (LLCs; see chapter 3). Instrumentation is lacking from commercial game engines, yet is critical for the Cyberinfrastructure in general. This infrastructure must support distributed data collection, both at home and in school, yet be secure, sensitive to privacy concerns, and tolerant of network connectivity problems in real-life educational settings."

It seems to me that Croquet would provide a powerful and extensible technology environment for addressing these goals. Hopefully, the formation of a Croquet Consortium will assist researchers from multiple institutions to come together to seek NSF funding in order to address these challenges in a coordinated way. Unfortunately NSF does not have a good record in backing technologies that have any real impact in this area (that has been the domain of military-related funding - remember that thing called the Internet?). It should be interesting to see how things play out...

The complete NSF report in .pdf format may be accessed here.

The Devil Made Me, DoIT!

I am pleased to announce that I have resigned my position as Assistant Director with UW-Madison's Division of Information Technology (DoIT) in order to accept the position of Assistant Vice President for Academic Services and Technology Support wth Duke University's Office of Information Technology. The Office of Information Technology (OIT) is the primary central infrastructure and service provider of information technologies for Duke University. The organization provides a broad range of services, spanning the areas of networking, telecommunications, central computing facilities, enterprise systems, education and research support, general computing support, and security. In this new position, I have broad responsibilities for Duke's academic and research computing development and support efforts as well as all customer service functions of Duke's Office of Information Technology. I will also be working with others on the Duke Digital Initiative (DDI), a major instructional technology program focused on experimentation, development, and implementation of digital technology in academic environments and will be seeking to build Duke University's capability to develop, deploy, and support Croquet-based solutions for higher education in partnership with the newly forming Croquet Consortium. I am jazzed about the possibilities!