Good Night Mr.Snoozleberg is one game that I really enjoyed playing during my college days. I accidently discovered this game on the web and I was so crazy about this game that I played all the episodes. I played every episode till I was successful. This game is all about Mr Snoozleberg who is a diplomat and a chronic sleepwalker. The objective of the game is to protect Snoozleberg from falling off when he sleepwalks. There are 4 episodes and each episode has a storyline. For example in the first episode, Mr Snoozleberg has to preside an inaugration ceremony the next day and he is sleepwalking the previous night. You need to make sure that Mr Snoozleberg is safe and sound to attend the ceremony. The game interface has lots of hotsopts. You need to identify each hotspots and click on it to prevent Mr.Snoozleberg from falling. For example in the image below Mr. Snoozleberg has started sleepwalking. Notice the spot highlighted using red circle. Snoozleberg  will fall after this spot, if you do not identify where to click so that he has a path to go ahead. The challenge is very high so you get lots of chances to play an episode. What I liked about the game The graphics The storyline Mr. Snoozleberg Simple interactivity model In short I am amazed at how people weave stories and create interesting games. Play the game now!

by ruparajgo | Create your own Cartoon at www.toondoo.com I started a discussion in the Linkedin group of the Instructional Designers Community of India and the response has been very good so far. Here is what I think on the topic of discussion: Today Instructional Designers need to have good knowledge about technology to do well in their jobs. Instructional Designing is not just about applying methodologies and designing strategies. For example take the following scenarios: Scenario 1: An Instructional Designer is working on mobile learning. Now isn’t it important for the Instructional Designer to understand the mobile phone interface design before he/she creates any kind of learning material for a mobile phone? Scenario 2: An Instructional Designer is creating training material for an ERP application. Isn’t it mandatory for the Instructional Designer to understand what is ERP and how it works? Scenario 3: An Instructional Designer is working on a game based e-learning course. Isn’t it crucial that the Instructional Designer understands what kind of game functionalities will work and can be implemented and what is not possible? Without being tech savvy, without having a flair for technology it is difficult for Instructional Designers to execute such projects. What do you think? Participate in the discussion now!

Um vídeo curto (8 minutos) de James Paul Gee, um dos nomes importantes na área da aprendizagem com jogos (Game-Based Learning). Neste vídeo, Gee refere a importância dos jogos sociais, dando como exemplo o War of Warcraft que exige a cooperação entre equipas de jogadores que deverão, individualmente, possuir competências diferentes. Outro jogo mencionado é o Portal, onde Gee realça a suas mecânicas específicas, com leis físicas próprias. Este jogo é referido a propósito do que Gee designa por espaços de afinidade com o jogo, ou seja, espaços de discussão (p.e. wikis) onde os jogadores discutem aspetos relacionados com jogo. Sobre estes espaços de afinidade é também de acrescentar  que o War of Warcraft tem um wiki que compete com a Wikipedia ao nível da informação produzida pelos utilizadores. Usando o que se passa com os videojogos, Gee realça a importância da experiência prática e do envolvimento real com uma atividade face a uma abordagem teórica (ler sobre essa atividade ou experiência). A este propósito refere a inutilidade, muitas vezes sentida, ao ler o manual de um jogo sem antes o ter jogado. Antes de jogar, a manual contém apenas palavras com pouco ou nenhum significado para o jogador. Depois de jogar, essas palavras transformam-se em imagens relacionadas com as experiências já vividas. É necessário ter estado ativo no "mundo" do jogo para que as palavras encontrem uma relação com as imagens que guardamos na nossa mente sobre as experiências vividas nesse "mundo". Gee conclui esta apresentação referindo que o problema com as escolas de hoje reside no facto de se fornecerem aos alunos os manuais sem o jogo. Para os alunos, não terem vivido as experiências, as atividades e os problemas reais, as palavras dos livros de estudo não passam disso mesmo, palavras.

by ruparajgo | Create your own Cartoon at www.toondoo.com Hello all, The Instructional Designers Community of India is organizing a meetup on May 23, 2009. If you have not registered please do it now. You can also come for the meetup without registeration What’s in store for you An opportunity to connect with learning professionals A quick introduction to the Instructional Designers Community of India by Ram A session on migration from traditional e-learning to rapid e-learning by Shameer Ayyapan, Product Manager ,Adobe Captivate About the Session on Migration from Traditional E-learning to Rapid E-learning In his session Shameer will give us some information on the shift from traditional e-learning tools to rapid e-learning tools and how or why this shift has happened. He will also present some scenarios showcasing what industry or kind of people use rapid e-learning. Shameer’s session is actually going to be the ice breaker to help us discuss about traditional e-learning and rapid e-learning. So here is what you can do: Share your experience or thoughts on rapid e-learning Initiate and participate in  the discussion The success of this meetup depends not just on the speaker of the session, but us, the participants. So let us COLLABORATE and make the best use of the meetup. Details of the Meetup Time: 10:00 am Venue: Adobe India Pvt. Ltd Salarpuria Infinity, 3rd Floor #5, Bannerghatta Road Bangalore, Karnataka 560029 India Access the full agenda here: Agenda for the ID Meetup May 23, 2009

Apesar de me ter chegado como um exemplo de aplicação de gamification na educação e formação julgo que é mais um exemplo de um serious game. Trata-se de VIM Adventures, um jogo cujo objetivo é fornecer aos seus utilizadores as competências necessárias para usar o editor de texto VIM.  O VIM é uma versão melhorada do conhecido (pelo menos, para alguns) editor vi (de visual editor, criado em 1976) dos sistemas Unix. Estes editores têm a particularidade de funcionarem essencialmente em linha de comando tendo sido desenvolvidos num tempo em que as interfaces gráficas dos sistemas operativos eram inexistentes. Assim, o teclado serve para inserir os caracteres do texto em edição e para fornecer comandos ao sistema. Por exemplo, a tecla "x" tanto serve para inserir o carácter "x" como para ativar o comando que permite apagar um carácter na posição onde estiver o cursor. O vi tinha assim dois modos de funcionamento: modo de edição e modo de comando. Passava-se do primeiro para o segundo premindo a tecla ESC. Entrava-se em modo de edição, por exemplo, com o comando "i" (insert). Uma das dificuldades na utilização do vi era a movimentação do cursor. As teclas com as setas do cursor (esquerda, direita, para cima e para baixo) não funcionavam sendo o movimento conseguido com as teclas "h", "j", "k" e "l" (em modo comando). Quem teve de ensinar alguém, habituado a usar sistemas com interface gráfica, a usar o vi, sabe as dificuldades e as resistências iniciais perante as suas particularidades. O jogo destina-se portanto a ensinar o uso dos comandos do VIM começando pelo movimento do cursor. Para tal, o jogador tem de percorrer um labirinto usando as teclas "h", "j", "k" e "l". À medida que o jogador progride no labirinto vai conhecendo outros comandos e apenas consegue passar para o nível seguinte depois de dominar uma determinada competência. Qual a razão deste tipo de editores ainda existir? Porque estão presentes em todos os sistemas Unix/Linux. Com a prática, acabam por ser ferramentas bastante úteis para editar scripts e outros ficheiros de texto de configuração dos sistemas operativos.

Draw It is a multiplayer game from Post It. This is online version of the game called Pictionary. In this online version , you need to login and either choose to join one of the rooms available or create your own room. Once you enter a room, you wait till one round gets over and start playing. When the round begins, one player is shown a word and he/she has to visually represent the word on the white board and others need to figure out what it is. You also get a clue on the number of letters in the word. The player who guesses the word first scores the maximum points. At the end of each game the top 3 winners are announced. You need to use your mouse to draw and this can be really dificult. The challenge is in drawing using the mouse. You really get funny outcomes Since this game is openly available to everyone, there is also lot of adult content that comes up. So what you can do is create your own room and invite all your friends to join. If the room is full, strangers cannot join. Why I like this game I like this game because it helps you exercise on your visual skills. Within a limited span of time, you are forced to give a visual representation of a word. The challenge is really high and how you tackle it depends on how creative you are. For example: What would you draw to represent the word: Sink When you see the word: sink your mind starts creating images to indicate the action. This is what visualization is all about. I seriously think this is really a good game for all Instructional Designers. Please let me know what you think about this game. Play the game now!

 The second Instructional Designers meetup organized by the Instructional Designers Community of India happened on May 23, 2009 in Adobe office. Here is a brief sum up of the meetup. Participants   Rupa, SAP, Bangalore Ram, Cisco, Bangalore Shameer, Adobe, Bangalore Abhinava, Astutix, Bangalore David, ValueMomentum, Hyderabad Shaji, META-i Technologies Pvt., Bangalore Nikhil Joseph, InVidya,  Bangalore Mayank, Siemens, Bangalore Raymond, Invidya, Bangalore Akshay, Adobe, Bangalore Dr. Pooja, J P Morgan, Bangaglore Malini, Educomp, Bangalore Sahana, Zensar Technologies, Pune Indu, Symphony Services, Bangalore Hareesh, Convergys, Hyderabad Reaching the venue All of us reached the venue by 10:00 am. The adobe office was really good. I forgot to click some snaps of the office premises. I promise to do it next time It was great to connect with learning professionals who had taken some time to come on a saturday morning.  We had people travelling all the way from Pune and Hyderabad to attend the session. Kudos to their enthusiasm. All of us chit chatted over a coffee and the session kicked off at 10: 30 am. Welcome and Ice Breaker Activity I did a brief welcoming and moderated the ice breaker activity. Each of us introduced ourselves, spoke about the kind of work we do and about our interests and hobby. The ice breaker activity was fun. Each of us took turns to pick up three chits from a bowl of chits and we had to answer the questions written in the chits. Thanks to Indu for framing nice questions and we really had witty and smart answers from the participants. When asked what would he grab and dash out if his house was on fire, one participant said " His wife and then added that "only because he is newly wed" and the others interpreted lots of meaning to it When asked to tell a lie, one other participant, he very spontaneously said" I am a man" and you can imagine what happened after that. The ice breaker activity was fun and got all of us comfortable with each other. Introduction to the Instructional Designers Community of India After the introductory round was over, Ram took over and introduced us to the community and its objectives. He briefed us on the registration process and suggestions to grow the community. He did a really good job in keeping the presentation brief and telling us only what was really important for us to know.  His powerpoint presentation is very well created. Please access the presentation here : IDCI Session on Shift from Traditional E-learning to Rapid E-learning After brief break of 5 mins, Shameer (Product Manager, Adobe Captivate) took over and started off with his talk about rapid e-learning. Shameer’s session was awesome. He spoke about the typical scenarios where rapid e-learning is applicable, a comparison of traditional e-learning and rapid e-learning, and a glimpse into some of the rapid e-learning tools. He began by defining traditional e-learning and rapid e-learning. This led to a very useful discussion about  concept of rapid e-learning vs use of rapid e-learning tools. Participants agreed that rapid e-learning could be information in pdf format or even a blog post.  Rapid e-learning as a concept could be good information in any format and not necessarily with the instructional design principles applied. Shameer continued to give a lot of information about the changing trends in the e-learning market and how people in the US have shifted to rapid e-learning tools during these recession times, with lot of cuts in the training budget. He also said that most companies these days want information out to the employees, without paying much attention to the presentation of the content or format of the content. Somewhere between the session we also had a brief discussion on the Push and Pull approaches and we all agreed that the pull approach is more relevant. Shameer did an excellent job and gave away lot of useful information. He also gave a demo of interactive  e-learning content created using Captivate. Please access Shameer’s presentation here : Trends in E-learning Closing and Feedback Indu did the closing bit and Shameer gave away evaluation version of the Adobe E-learning Suite to the participants. Then the participants took time to write their feedback on the session. The participants conveyed that they found the meetup really useful and asked for longer sessions. This is a big boost for the community to conduct many more such sessions. Updates Shameer was kind enough to offer Adobe office as the location for forthcoming meetups. The Instructional Designers Community of India is thankful to Shameer. For June meetup, we will try to get the other members of the community to join the meeting online. The next meetup is happening on June 27, 2009 in Adobe office. Watch out for more news on this! Looking forward to your active participation

Meta-learning is being defined as "learning about learning". It implies manging your own learning. Learning does not happen intermittently these days.Learning is part and parcel of every day life. You are compelled to manage your own learning especially now when corporate houses are hesitating to invest any money in  training. I came across another definition of meta-learning which goes like "learn how to learn in the new media". I like this definition because it is precise and very relevant. How do people learn these days? All learning happens on the web through various learning tools. With so many learning tools available and with so much information all over it gets really tricky when you think how do you use the available resources to manage your learning effectively. I do the following to manage my learning: I use Bloglines where I have added quite a number of blogs and I make it a point to spend some time everyday to read new posts I keep checking Twitter for interesting information related to new trends, ideas and thoughts about Instructional Designing I use my blog to share my knowledge and experiences with others I use Youtube to watch videos about things I like and am passionate about I joined social networks in ning  and I use Facebook to interact and keep in touch with people If you want to start off managing your learning, my top 2 recommendations for you to begin with are: A feed reader - This will help you organize information you read on the web and readily access information from at a single location A social networking site - You learn a lot when you interact with people. Joining a social networking site will get you in touch with like minded people and will create a platform for you to share and discuss your ideas. What’s your take on this? What do you use to manage your learning? What would you recommend that freshers do to ensure that they effectively manage their learning? Please share your ideas and experiences. Some interesting articles about meta-learning: Towards Meta-learning Metalearning: eLearning Technology Become a Chief Meta-Learning Officer What’s Meta-Learning

  Um vídeo interessante (20m28s) com uma apresentação de John Hunter (TED Talk, março 2011). A apresentação descreve a experiência de Hunter, de vários anos (desde 1978), com o uso de um jogo - The World Peace Game - que idealizou para o apoio a atividades letivas (ensino básico). No vídeo são relatadas várias experiências vividas pelo autor que demonstram a importância do uso deste tipo de materiais. O jogo não tem qualquer suporte digital nem recorre a quaisquer tecnologias de informação e comunicação (embora o seu autor admita o desenvolvimento de uma versão digital).  É, portanto, um jogo totalmente "analógico" com componentes físicos montados numa estrutura tridimensional. Na verdade, o jogo é uma simulação onde os alunos são colocados num cenário fictício onde existem vários países que interagem entre si.  The World Peace Bame é provavelmente um bom exemplo da importância da aprendizagem baseada em jogos, e neste caso concreto, do uso de simulações para ajudar a perceber como o mundo de facto funciona. A propósito deste tipo de jogos e simulações, ver também Wargaming Connection.

Hello All! Please let us know how you want to attend the ID meetup that is going to happen on June 27th in Bangalore. Depending on responses, appropriate arrangements will be made. Agenda for the meetup will be released soon. Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll. If you have something else in mind, please feel free to write in the comments section.