I live in DC and the Eastern Corridore Amtrak lines are really awesome. By car it takes 5-8 hours to get to NYC depending on traffic. Amtrak takes 3.5 hours. This is the busiest route on Amtrak as far as I know, and it would be great if it had a dedicated high speed track.
I think the reason for the pricing at ~$2.00 GB is that it makes the bandwidth price for a Netflix or other streaming movie about equal with your standard cable On-Demand movie. If the ISP, which also is a cable company, owns the On-Demand rights to content also available to streaming, it seems very likely that they would want to find a way to keep people watching their $4-$8 movies when they are "free" with an $8 Netflix subscription.
I'm surprised at the knee jerk reaction to technology in education. Technology is just a tool that is only as good as the teacher who uses it. Laptops, whiteboards, etc have been great tools in the project based learning area, and study after study shows that project based learning is better than rote learning. http://edutopia.org/project-based-learning-research
In my opinion, we need much better training for educators in how to properly use these tools. Putting devices into a classroom that uses the same teaching techniques as the 19th century will get the results we are currently getting in most schools, nothing.
Netflix requires a disk on PS3 and Wii because of the Xbox deal. Once that agreement is up they should let users of those platforms have apps to launch from.
Disappointed in the attitude....
on
Learning By Playing
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
toward the medium of games as an educational tool. I'm in the field, and many people who are taken seriously talk about games used properly as a tool by educators and caregivers. This is a relatively new medium that needs to be researched and experimented with so we can establish how it is most effective for different subjects and in different situations.
Here are some of the challenges in this field as I see it:
- Most educational games are made in silos. Games made by publishers are mostly reused engines or game designs with an educational goal slapped on (many edu games for young kids on Nintendo DS are like this). Games made by researchers and educators are generally some sort of mix of whatever subject they're interested in and whatever game that is big at the time. The truly effective and fun educational games are often made when good game designers, researchers and educators collaborate from the beginning of a project.
- Due to the fact that people are working in silos, researchers working the edu game field are often working to figure out game design issues that the non-edu game field covered long ago.
- My work is in the preschool - grade school edu game field and I work with top publishers and content owners. Most of the people I work with, especially decision makers and content people, do not and have not ever played games. I think this will even out over time as younger people who are more likely to play games come into the field, but it will take decades.
- Games are just a tool. We need the pedagogy established to help teachers understand how to use the medium. Until we have this available to all educators, game use will be all over the place.
- We need an established body of good examples in different subject areas and for different ages for future game makers to refer to when making edu games. This will take decades to create in my opinion.
To reiterate my main point, games are just a tool like books, video, hands on activities, etc. They are only as good as the educator or caregiver who is working with the student makes them.
There are some points that were brought up in the meeting that I thought were pretty important. Someone correct me if I'm mistaken on any points, IANAL or too politically savvy. Many of the people who had seen pieces of the draft kept coming back to several points:
- Some speculated that this has more to do with future trade agreements with countries NOT involved in ACTA talks than those in it.The idea was that this would be used to strong arm developing countries into agreeing to the terms to enter into future trade agreements with any ACTA countries in the future.
- Patents are also in ACTA, and could potentially impact international trade of pharmaceuticals. Many public health organizations such as Doctors Without Borders are worried about the impact on getting generic drugs to 3rd world countries.
- While this supposedly won't change any US laws, it will impact future court decisions on infringement cases, which will in effect change the law by setting precedence.
True, it is not surprising. The point I should have made better is that most of the features they are touting have been available in Flash for quite a while, yet from the summary:
"Silverlight's video capabilities have always been impressive when compared to Flash, and the new version boasts some new features that should keep the competition with Flash hot."
How has it been impressive compared to Flash if they are adding features that have been in Flash for a while? I'm not advocating for or against either, I just get tired of marketing speak in articles and summaries.
The list of new features looks very familiar to the new Flash player that came out a while back:
Hardware Acceleration, 3D Capabilities, Dynamic Streaming (Variable Bitrate), Etc.. http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/features/
Slashdot Mirror
I live in DC and the Eastern Corridore Amtrak lines are really awesome. By car it takes 5-8 hours to get to NYC depending on traffic. Amtrak takes 3.5 hours. This is the busiest route on Amtrak as far as I know, and it would be great if it had a dedicated high speed track.
I think the reason for the pricing at ~$2.00 GB is that it makes the bandwidth price for a Netflix or other streaming movie about equal with your standard cable On-Demand movie. If the ISP, which also is a cable company, owns the On-Demand rights to content also available to streaming, it seems very likely that they would want to find a way to keep people watching their $4-$8 movies when they are "free" with an $8 Netflix subscription.
I'm surprised at the knee jerk reaction to technology in education. Technology is just a tool that is only as good as the teacher who uses it. Laptops, whiteboards, etc have been great tools in the project based learning area, and study after study shows that project based learning is better than rote learning. http://edutopia.org/project-based-learning-research
In my opinion, we need much better training for educators in how to properly use these tools. Putting devices into a classroom that uses the same teaching techniques as the 19th century will get the results we are currently getting in most schools, nothing.
Netflix requires a disk on PS3 and Wii because of the Xbox deal. Once that agreement is up they should let users of those platforms have apps to launch from.
toward the medium of games as an educational tool. I'm in the field, and many people who are taken seriously talk about games used properly as a tool by educators and caregivers. This is a relatively new medium that needs to be researched and experimented with so we can establish how it is most effective for different subjects and in different situations.
Here are some of the challenges in this field as I see it:
- Most educational games are made in silos. Games made by publishers are mostly reused engines or game designs with an educational goal slapped on (many edu games for young kids on Nintendo DS are like this). Games made by researchers and educators are generally some sort of mix of whatever subject they're interested in and whatever game that is big at the time. The truly effective and fun educational games are often made when good game designers, researchers and educators collaborate from the beginning of a project.
- Due to the fact that people are working in silos, researchers working the edu game field are often working to figure out game design issues that the non-edu game field covered long ago.
- My work is in the preschool - grade school edu game field and I work with top publishers and content owners. Most of the people I work with, especially decision makers and content people, do not and have not ever played games. I think this will even out over time as younger people who are more likely to play games come into the field, but it will take decades.
- Games are just a tool. We need the pedagogy established to help teachers understand how to use the medium. Until we have this available to all educators, game use will be all over the place.
- We need an established body of good examples in different subject areas and for different ages for future game makers to refer to when making edu games. This will take decades to create in my opinion.
To reiterate my main point, games are just a tool like books, video, hands on activities, etc. They are only as good as the educator or caregiver who is working with the student makes them.
There are some points that were brought up in the meeting that I thought were pretty important. Someone correct me if I'm mistaken on any points, IANAL or too politically savvy. Many of the people who had seen pieces of the draft kept coming back to several points:
- Some speculated that this has more to do with future trade agreements with countries NOT involved in ACTA talks than those in it.The idea was that this would be used to strong arm developing countries into agreeing to the terms to enter into future trade agreements with any ACTA countries in the future.
- Patents are also in ACTA, and could potentially impact international trade of pharmaceuticals. Many public health organizations such as Doctors Without Borders are worried about the impact on getting generic drugs to 3rd world countries.
- While this supposedly won't change any US laws, it will impact future court decisions on infringement cases, which will in effect change the law by setting precedence.
I work on an entertainment site with over 25 Million visits per month. Here's the last 30 days per Google Analytics: Google 68% Yahoo14% Bing 12%
I wonder if they'll "upgrade" it like the PSP so you can get to repurchase your older games through DLC?
True, it is not surprising. The point I should have made better is that most of the features they are touting have been available in Flash for quite a while, yet from the summary:
"Silverlight's video capabilities have always been impressive when compared to Flash, and the new version boasts some new features that should keep the competition with Flash hot."
How has it been impressive compared to Flash if they are adding features that have been in Flash for a while? I'm not advocating for or against either, I just get tired of marketing speak in articles and summaries.
The list of new features looks very familiar to the new Flash player that came out a while back: Hardware Acceleration, 3D Capabilities, Dynamic Streaming (Variable Bitrate), Etc.. http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/features/