Teaching Computer Science with Augmented Reality

There's this guy named Jack Cough (can't say whether it's his real name). He writes about software on his blog, Jack Cough on Software.

One day, Jack Cough wrote about teaching his young child about functional programming. Jack Cough's post made it to Reddit, where I, and many others, found it, read it, and thoroughly enjoyed it. After that, I (and maybe those many others) completely forgot about it.

Until now.

After watching the video about the augmented reality zombies game, I was thinking to myself, "What kind of cool stuff can I make for my PhD?" I know I really want to work on augmented reality (whether it's for the main dissertation or smaller research projects). I'm also rather interested in the role video games can play in education (either as entertainment designed to teach new skills, or as a motivation for learning computer science). Combining all these things together only seems natural.

It's amazing how little time it took for me to remember Jack's post after I started this wondering. I can definitely imagine an augmented reality game that has kids build Dr. Seuss's Star Belly Sneetch machines using concepts of functional programming (without even knowing it! A head fake as Randy Pausch would say...). More mature analogies could make the concept useful for college students struggling to figure out programming for the first time. Even Siftables - smart, intercommunicative little tiles with LCD screens - might prove ideal for such a project, either in addition to or instead of augmented reality solutions.

Now, I don't want to steal Jack Cough's ideas and build a game completely based on his concept. That's just not fair. But it does give a bit of inspiration to look around and see what others might have done, and to start exploring various ways to teach young children about programming. Stay tuned in case I come up with anything really cool! I might just share it here...

Zombies!

This zombie shooter game is a little out of the ordinary...



I really like this concept - I feel there is so much potential. A lot of the AR games I've seen come out of university research efforts have felt so incomplete and rough around the edges. (Ok, I'll admit it - they generally just plain didn't seem fun!)

But this one has nice graphics and a concept that actually makes a lot of sense. I mean, flying in a helicopter - what a great way to give the real position of the mobile device meaning in the game! Using it as a spotlight is also pretty smart. Then there's the skittles. Genius.

Becoming Viral with The Sims 3

I don't know how I missed this until now, but I just stumbled upon some of the best video game-related writing I have seen online. Written in blog form, Alice and Kev by game design student Robin Burkinshaw is, on the surface, nothing more than a record of what is happening to two characters she created in EA's recently released The Sims 3. But start reading from the beginning, and you'll soon find you can't stop!

The concept is something that was apparently done in previous versions of the game:

This is an experiment in playing a homeless family in The Sims 3. I created two Sims, moved them in to a place made to look like an abandoned park, removed all of their remaining money, and then attempted to help them survive without taking any job promotions or easy cash routes. It’s based on the old ‘poverty challenge’ idea from The Sims 2, but it turned out to be a lot more interesting with The Sims 3’s living neighborhood features.

I am totally flabbergasted at the story that unfolds from there. I haven't played the game yet, so I can't say whether it's some kind of coincidence that the characters have evolved the way they have, or if the artificial intelligence is really that realistic. (I'd love to get into the guts of that AI engine.) Of course, most of the credit goes to Robin, who really brings the characters to life with her words and carefully selected game screen shots.

I don't want to give the plot away so far, so you'll have to go read it. But I do want to comment on the concept. Some comments on the blog entries wondered whether this is actually a viral marketing campaign on behalf of EA. Although I doubt that was the intention, this is certainly having a similar effect. I know I sure want the game now!

Beyond that, this is turning out to be a viral marketing campaign for Robin herself. This is exactly the kind of publicity anyone with aspirations in technology usually only dreams about. If there aren't a dozen game design companies, big or small, that are now wondering when Robin graduates, I will be surprised. Kudos!

Learning Drupal

I've been having fun being creative with my Nikon D90 and snapping a bajillion photos (many of which I still have to look at, going all the way back to March Break!). Recently, a new photography club just got started in my area, and I volunteered to make a website. I figured it would be a great opportunity to pick up some new skills, since I'd never really had a reason to put together a dynamic site before.

The site would have to house the usual information - upcoming meetings, news and announcements, club rules, etc - but I thought it would also be fun to have a blog that all members could contribute to, as well as a showcase of winning photos from the quarterly contests we planned to hold. I also wanted to make it possible to (eventually) have the club's executive make updates themselves. Some kind of content management system was clearly needed.

Way back in the days of being President of our undergrad computer science society, we rebuilt our website from scratch. It had been done in Drupal before, but it wasn't really kept up to date or well used. The web guy at the time decided to use Joomla! as it would probably be a little easier to get running and to maintain. No complaints from me - I knew I wouldn't have time to help administer the site's back end, so anything that gave me a nice template and lots of options for content made me happy.

So when it came time to choose the back end for the photography club's website, I was a little sceptical about my husband's suggestion of using Drupal. It seemed that Joomla! really was easier. But he offered to get it going, so I figured - why not?

While Joomla! would have been fine (and maybe even better in some ways?) I can't say I regret the choice.

Finding and installing new themes and modules is dead simple - you literally just upload the files to your server to the appropriate folder. The administrator's menu seems to include everything you need in a relatively easy-to-navigate layout. The Views module is a little confusing at first, but getting what you want (if what you want isn't too complicated) doesn't take long. The Content Construction Kit allowed me to make custom stories - one each for blog posts, news items, and events. This way, I can give registered members access to post only certain kinds of items on the website (typically, just the blog). It also makes it easier for them, because they can't accidentally mess it up! I also love that you can have all your content get put into a single RSS feed.

It's not all unicorns and rainbows, though. One of the most frustrating things is figuring out how to style your views. In fact, I haven't even figured this out at all yet - I'm just using the default styles, but I'm not 100% happy with the way things look. Some of the spacing is weird, for example, and the view items don't even seem to use the same styles as the rest of the site! I don't even want to know how hard it would be to customize the overall theme...

It's hard to compare exactly to Joomla! since I didn't do the actual setup of that, but I definitely do get the impression that Drupal has a much steeper learning curve. However, once you get a handle on the basics, it's pretty obvious that it is really quite powerful. I'd recommend it for anyone with some decent computer knowledge and lots of patience.

Here's the website I made: North Grenville Photography Club.

Pros, Not Prudes

My attention was brought another article about male presenters being rather unprofessional at a technology conference. I passed up on writing about the previous Rails CouchDB fiasco since it was pretty well covered already. But the fact that someone has raised the bar even further is rather troubling and warrants a post here.

The article is called Prude or Professional? and really hit the nail on the head for me:

Don't get us wrong, we are not women who can't handle off-color humor, or provocative messages, or even erotic digital art. But each of these has it's place. Paying for a professional conference and being subjected to this kind of content is infuriating.

Jokes amongst my closer friends could definitely be construed as sexist or inappropriate. I remember hanging out in the undergrad lounge with some of the guys (including a faculty member, if I recall correctly), and someone brought up the fact that some person was considering a "Women of Computer Science" calendar. The joke was that I'd be the only one in it (and I think it went on from there - it was a while ago). Though this is a mild example, I'm sure there are many others not so mild. These guys would not talk this way if they didn't know for a fact that I'd be ok with it.

But there is a big difference between joking with friends and infusing a talk given at a conference with very sexual content. Hoss Gifford spoke at Flashbelt about his latest Flash endeavours.

And then, to top it off, a self-made flash movie of an animated woman's face, positioned as if she's having sex with you, who gradually orgasms based on the speed of your mouse movement on the page.

Forget women being uncomfortable with this - any professional person would be!

I'm not sure why it's only the world of technology that seems to be able to get away with this. I imagine you don't see this sort of thing on teachers' P.D. days or at medical research conferences. Is it because tech really is still too much of an 'old boys club'?

I figure if there's as much controversy created as there has been for the CouchDB talk and now this one, they'll eventually learn.