With the work in Bromsim for my level 3 students completed, I have been spending some time during this end of term marking the project. The images that I have posted along with this entry are in fact some examples from the finished work. The activity that took place in-world was certainly encouraging for me and had some interesting and I must say unexpected surprises from time to time. In particular there was the case of one avatar, who shall remain nameless, who seemed to decide that rather than just spend the necessary time to orientate, would simply ask everyone and anyone else that happened to be in-world at the time for solutions. Clearly this became just too much for one group, with the result that one of its members, who shall also retain anonymity, created a large empty cylinder with linked top plate and placed the structure over their inquisitive companion. Finding themselves encapsulated in a rather small confined space, from which there seemed to be no immediate means of escape, did result in some frantic calls to the Estate Manager at the time, me. I guess at best this has been our first example here at Bromsim of what could be described as virtual world social exclusion, fascinating how quickly and imaginatively these new world skills come to be applied!
Next for me will be the new unit starting in the summer term, Designing Computer Games. In the last academic year I made use of Second Life for the project, which if you are interested has details including the results of a student feedback survey posted on my Shimmer Island blog
http://shimmer-island.blogspot.com/
When I suggested that we could continue with a similar scenario for this year there was enthusiastic agreement, “as long as we get to use guns”, someone said, yet more agreement. So it appears that the legend of the Illumni will enter yet another chapter. In fact staying with Bromsim for this could be a very useful outcome for engagement as one group had already started work on a large space station, just because they can, placed at high altitude above the sim, and I think this would form a realistic development area for them.
On return to the college in the new term, I shall be handing out a questionnaire as a means of gathering feedback from the students on their views of using Bromsim, and will be posting the results of that on this blog, so you may like to stay in touch for this as well as seeing how we progress with games design.
Next for me will be the new unit starting in the summer term, Designing Computer Games. In the last academic year I made use of Second Life for the project, which if you are interested has details including the results of a student feedback survey posted on my Shimmer Island blog
http://shimmer-island.blogspot.com/
When I suggested that we could continue with a similar scenario for this year there was enthusiastic agreement, “as long as we get to use guns”, someone said, yet more agreement. So it appears that the legend of the Illumni will enter yet another chapter. In fact staying with Bromsim for this could be a very useful outcome for engagement as one group had already started work on a large space station, just because they can, placed at high altitude above the sim, and I think this would form a realistic development area for them.
On return to the college in the new term, I shall be handing out a questionnaire as a means of gathering feedback from the students on their views of using Bromsim, and will be posting the results of that on this blog, so you may like to stay in touch for this as well as seeing how we progress with games design.
Bye for now, Vega
