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April 2012

April 12, 2012

The University of Edinburgh Moodle Virtual Learning Environment is now available at https://www.moodle.is.ed.ac.uk

A playground for experimentation with Moodle for the School of Informatics distance education initiatives is now available with course name "Playground Informatics" (pginformatics).  The UoE Moodle is currently only available for such distance education courses as the service is built up.

People who would like to participate as a course teacher or student should initially contact Austin Tate and provide their EASE UUN, as all users are currrently being added manually.

Note that we also have our own experimental Moodle setup, running in Appleton Tower on an AIAI server... for testing use only as its on one of our manually managed windows desktop servers at http://virtual2.aiai.ed.ac.uk/moodle/

Keywords: Informatics, Moodle, Playground, VLE

Posted by Austin Tate | 0 comment(s)

April 17, 2012

J.K. Rowling has created an on-line experience for fans of the Harry Potter series of books... to accompany a site which is the only on-line source of Harry Potter e-Books... a potentially vast market.  The pottermore.com site has been in beta test for some months with over a million beta registrations, but has just now become available with open registrations.

The experience itself runs through in a chapter by chapter format for each of the books.  Myst style graphical elements are overlaid and respond to mouse clicks and interactions as the various features and artifacts are gradually exposed. Items can be collected into a "trunk".  After you discover Diagon Alley, and open an account at Gringotts Bank with an initial 500 "galleons", further gold galleons can be found in various places and saved in your account to purchase necessary supplies. Then you must explore Diagon Alley to get all the required items for your first year at Hogwarts.

Your wand will choose you at Ollivanders - makers of fine wands since 382 B.C. - via a set of questions and choices.

   

The its off via Platform 9 and three-quarters to Howarts.  And term starts.  Points can be earned for you and your "house" as you go along. The Great Hall shows the progress of all four school houses, your Common Room shows the progress for your own house, and your own profile area maintains all the information about your progress, skills acquired and artifacts collected.  You can also make friends and pass around gifts.

The currency used in the experience is all provided and does not require real money to play.  The e-books do cost real money. 

Keywords: IDGBL, Potter, Pottermore, Rowling

Posted by Austin Tate | 0 comment(s)

April 24, 2012

Having been an enthusiastic user of Flight Simulator for the PC  since the mid 1990s, its been nearly 10 years since I last used Flight Simulator 2002... I skipped FS2004 (a.k.a "A Century of Flight" or FS9), and did not get FSX when it came out in 2006. But I returned recently as the Microsoft ESP (Environment Simulator Platform) is now being licensed and extended for serious simulations from underwater, to land, to air and near space by Lockheed Martin as Prepar3D. I had also previously created a number of science fiction vehicles based on the TV shows of Gerry Anderson, and especially Supercar for Flight Simulator, so I wanted to test if they were still operational and performing well. As the MSc in e-Learning Game-Based Learning course come to an end, and a new PC with much improved Nvidia GTX580 graphics card was acquired, it was timely to look back at Flight Simulator and see how it has progressed.

With a new copy of Flight Simulator X, now relatively cheap compared to its original release pricing, and the two service packs installed (SP1 and SP2) which were necessary to correct black parts on some add-on craft (including Supercar), I was ready to fire things up. And things look good with high frame rates at ultra settings for the displays. Its nice to see 3D models that improve over time in new releases of Flight Simulator without change to the basic visual model.

I have always liked the Lockheed Martin SR-71 "Blackbird" and North American X-15 rocket plane and am amazed that these craft designed and built in the 1950s could achieve such performance.  I take every opportunity to see the real craft at museums in the USA. An X-15 is in the Smithsonian in the Mall, and an SR-71 can be found in the Smithsonian at Dulles Airport and at the Intrepid Museum in New York for example.

Reasonably good free add-on craft are available for the SR-71 and X-15... but the improved visuals prompted me to try a paid for add on X-15 which is reported to be one of the best Flight Simulator add-ons.. and it really does look very good indeed...

   

Keywords: Flight Simulator, FSX, IDGBL

Posted by Austin Tate | 0 comment(s)