Advance apologies - this post sort of fell apart as I went. Internet access at the conference has been spotty at best, it seems like DNS lookups are failing or being blocked upstream. Very frustrating. If I get a chance I’ll clean it up in a bit, but for now I want to keep the “liveblogging” thing going so it’s time to hit post!
Dick van Dijk spoke about the Waag Society’s prototype of an interactive educational cellphone-based game. Frequency 1550 sets players on an adventure across Amsterdam to gather information and learn about historical aspects of the city. My favorite bit from the site: “Teams can boobytrap each other by placing bombs on the medieval streets: With a click on their gamephone the players can drop a virtual bomb at their current location that will go off in the face of a passing opponent, temporarily killing communication facilities with HQ.” Awesome.
- Also spoke about Operation Sigismund, an experiential learning environment. Seems like they’re doing really cool work with game-based learning, it will be interesting to watch where this all goes.
- Social interaction via PDA. How to do it without isolating people by locking them into their device instead of interacting? They’ve built a framework called ARCHIE that allows them to quickly prototype games. Includes VOIP so all players can be in touch even remotely — they can’t “win” without working together as a team. They concluded the project was a success - the kids were excited about the PDA and it encouraged interaction while learning about museum objects.
- Richard Urban: Second Life - started with some history: MUDs, MOOs, MMOGs. Now a full 3d immersive experience: Second Life — but it’s Not A Game. :-) Proprietary software at this point, but some pieces are being opened up. What’s on SL? NASA CoLab - public space to talk about space projects. Sploland - online component of the Exploratorium. Star Trek Science Museum. Second Louvre Museum. Nothing very interactive yet, just paintings on walls, etc.
- What’s the difference between a museum and a gallery? Blurred online.
- Artsplace - public domain artworks from Library of Congress.
- Sci-Fi museums.
- Second Life Historical Museum
- Search is opt-in and it charges to be included!
- Museums in Second Life - google groups
- Overall some exciting information, but it seems like people are still trying to figure out how to leverage SL and how museums fit in.
