Transformers and Learning

Most of you must have watched the movie ‘Transformers’. A few days back I went to Chennai and saw the second part. I was extremely sleepy and on top of that the storyline seemed to be extremely convoluted. There were also three of us occupying the same bed.

I came back to my current city of dwelling and to my surprise found the first part of ‘Transformers’ in my Ipod touch…thanks to friends. So there I was watching the movie for the first time and wondering what’s all the noise about Megan Fox?

I was however in awe looking at the giant robots. So as soon as the movie ended I started googling and found some information about the creation of these robots. The humanoid shaped robots can change forms. I was thinking about the concepts that went into creation of the robots on screen. The details of the transformations are also captured and there lies the beauty. The structures of these robots must have been created in metal and in miniature forms and there must have been scores of sketches for each. This brings us to the field of multimedia.

Can stuff like these be used to impart learning or training? Whether it’s classroom based or online it’ll be great if there is a robot instructor who can transform into a car while teaching a student about cars. While thinking about robots or mechanical puppets, I came upon a blog maintained by the company called emantra. They have written about stop motion puppet armature or skeletons of puppets which very much look like robotic skeletons. It made me feel good that such type of work and service is offered in India.

Do check out the post:

http://emantras.com/blinkingbulbs/

Alternate Reality Gaming (ARG)

A few days ago while in a discussion with peers from the eLearning industry, I came upon Alternate Reality Gaming (ARG).

I will share some of my views on this. Before I do that, let me borrow a line from Wikipedia which explains what ARG is about:

“An alternate reality game (ARG), is an interactive narrative that uses the real world as a platform, often involving multiple media and game elements, to tell a story that may be affected by participants' ideas or actions.”

As you can see from the explanation, ARG can be used to impart learning but how effective it will be? The story in ARG moves forward based on the decisions of a participant. Isn’t this similar to real life? Our future is based on the decisions we take today. What distinguishes ARG from all other gaming is that the game itself did not acknowledge that it was a game. There was no existence of an acknowledged rule set for players. The participants determine their own rules by trial and error method. The narrative in an ARG will present a fully-realized world. In this world any contact information that is provided is authentic like phone numbers or email addresses, websites. The game takes place in real-time and cannot be reset or replayable.

There can be a sort of puppet master who controls the characters in the game. These characters function like real people and respond authentically. Some events can involve meetings or live phone calls between participants and characters. No artificial intelligence(AI) controls the characters.

Some important reference sites:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate_reality_game

http://www.seanstewart.org/interactive/args/