Archive for April, 2008

Stupid Windows

Monday, April 28th, 2008

So I’m working away on Windows XP, and suddenly everything starts shutting down. Hitting “Cancel” on a save/don’t save/cancel dialog doesn’t cancel, but closes the application. Without any warning, I’m logged out. What the?..

It turns out that the other Dave in the office has mistakenly logged into my PC via remote desktop, rather than the department “Terminal Sever” – and Windows just kicked me out with no warning or explanation, and then locked me out!

I’m not happy – asides from losing the work from that save/don’t save/cancel dialog, it was so rude. It warned Dave that he was going to log me out, but didn’t give me the same courtesy…

In brighter news, the new Ubuntu release (Hardy Heron) apparently has some support for incorporating Ubuntu desktops as members of a Windows domain (i.e. logging in using Active Directory), using a program called Likewise. If I can get that working, I’ll definitely try using Ubuntu as my primary desktop.

TV is too passive.

Monday, April 28th, 2008

Nice article by Clay Shirky: Gin, Television, and Social Surplus discussing the similar social roles of gin and TV, and how we’re at the start of a big social change from passive to active:

In this same conversation with the TV producer I was talking about World of Warcraft guilds, and as I was talking, I could sort of see what she was thinking: “Losers. Grown men sitting in their basement pretending to be elves.”

At least they’re doing something.

Linux driver status

Tuesday, April 8th, 2008

Linux kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman has posted a status update on the Linux Driver Project, which is an effort to help hardware manufacturers support Linux – even write the drivers for them – hopefully alleviating the hardware support problems I mentioned in a previous post.

Greg states:

Linux supports more different types of devices than any other operating system ever has in the history of computing.

…which I believe. However, there are a few factors which I think are key to the perception of poor driver support:

  1. The kernels included in distributions naturally lag behind the current kernel release. The change to regular 2-3 month releases must have improved this, but it is still a problem compared to the competition. Most hardware for Windows and Mac comes with a disk of drivers you can install, so it doesn’t matter how old your OS is (within reason) – you can get your new hardware running on it. The Linux approach prefers drivers to be part of the kernel release, for reason
  2. Lagging support for highly visible hardware. Things like wireless network adapters and video capture devices are increasingly common and (it seems slightly redundant to say this) hard to do without if you particularly wanted them.
  3. Support for printers is not a kernel driver issue, Greg notes, but is often perceived as such, because on competing platforms it appears to be a driver issue. Users don’t typically care about this distinction, they just want it to work.

All in all I think that the situation looks good, with some significant improvements (e.g. in wireless) in recent kernels to be included in distributions soon…

Learning from the Games Designers

Monday, April 7th, 2008

The designers of Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) games face a significant educational challenge. They need to efficiently and subtly teach new players how to use their game. This involves teaching players about the environment and the interface whist keeping them motivated and drawing them into the challenges of the game itself. This is situated learning in which the games designer is the ‘master’ and the player is the ‘apprentice’.

This educational challenge is similar to the one faced by those intending to teach in Multi-User Virtual Environments (MUVE’s) such as Second Life. There are a significant amount of basic skills that need to be mastered before students can successfully engage in meaningful collaborative activity. The traditional ‘orientation’ process in Second Life is didactic and generic, teaching skills in an abstract technical manner. This has come about because unlike an MMO, Second Life has no shared goal, its possible uses are many and varied. However, a teacher who wishes to use Second Life should have a defined set of goals or learning outcomes they wish to achieve. They should be able to define task orientated activities which are relevant to the students motivations, for example, Art and Design students can be asked to compete to build the tallest monolith as a focus for learning building skills in Second Life rather than being given general instructions on how to create, scale and texture objects. In teaching terms this seems like an obvious approach but often when faced with a complex new platform teaching practitioners will often fall back on a basic instructivst style which may not align well with the approach generally taken at HE level for that discipline.

This is where we can learn from the MMO designers who are careful not to fall into this trap as it is likely to make a players initial engagement in a game seem like a chore. For subscription based MMOS such as World of Warcraft this would mean a high drop out rate and a massive loss of revenue, something that the HE sector can emphathise with.

The JISC funded Habitat project intends to learn from the game designers by capturing the processes in World of Warcraft in its initial stages and mapping the styles and types of task to the learning outcomes they fulfil. The data will be captured using pre and post activity questionnaires and video screen capture synchronised with video of the player at the computer. This data will then be used in the process of designing appropriate orientation sessions for pilots in Second Life with students from two disciplines: Art and Design & Philosophy. The Habitat project recognises that some of the most sophisticated collaborative learning spaces online at the moment are MMOs and that the design of these games can be a relevant model for the pedagogical structures that we put in place for the educational use of MUVEs such as Second Life.

Keep watching http://www.openhabitat.org to see how we get on.

The Beauty of Ad hoc Project Meetings

Thursday, April 3rd, 2008

On Tuesday evening the Habitat project had one of its most dynamic project meetings. It was ad hoc and spontaneous but what was said was very useful. It reminded me of those happy students days when I’d find myself in the pub with all my friends talking about ‘interesting things’ almost by accident. These days I need to plan 3 weeks ahead to get in to the pub with people I actually like who all have families and jobs (what can you do?).

Anyway, 5 of us happened to be in Second Life (yes, I left this fact late in the post deliberately) at the same time and a discussion took off. In fact it took off so well that I’m still having trouble (with my project managers’ hat on) working out what it all meant. In this way it is very like those student pub sessions 🙂

The Habitat team is based in  Leeds, Canada, London, Oxford, Essex and Brussels so we have more chance to get together online than face-to-face. The Second Life platform was great for us because we shared some visual designs during our discussion which were projected onto blocks that we could all stand around and muse over. Plus, we did all feel ‘together’ which is important for any team. When I logged out I personally felt like I had spent time with a bunch of people rather than a stream of text.

So, what of those in the team who didn’t happen to be in Second Life? Well I suppose I can mail round the transcript of our discussion. Also, how do I get the best value from this’ happening’ for the Habitat team and for JISC? Plus, let’s not forget the question: ‘What is the relevance for our users/students?”.

Linux Kernel Development – Who, what, how fast, and who’s paying.

Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008

Nice report from The Linux Foundation on Linux Kernel Development. A choice statistic:

…an impressive 3,621 lines added, 1,550 lines removed, and 1,425 lines changed every day for the past 2 1/2 years. That rate of change is larger than any other public software project of any size.