Week 14 reflections
From CTIN482
2 notes: 1.) I'm not entirely sure this is the correct week 2.) I had to make my own page. Way to drop the ball, Steve.
I'd like to state here that the machinima idea seems like a step backwards in terms of our end goal.
In my opinion, a good lesson is a lesson that teaches "How" or "Why". whether that means "How" to do a quadratic equation or "Why" the death of Franz Ferdinand was the fuse that lit the powder keg that was Europe pre-WWI, learning should never be about the "What." "What" is boring. "What" is a rote fact. "What" is useless without understanding the "How" and/or the "Why." The "What" is always easily derived from a sufficiently explained "How," and understood by a satisfactory "Why." Why teach the "What" when we can teach the "How" and the "Why"?
A machinima would explain "What" our project does, and might even demonstrate "How," but why should we show the audience when we can let them learn it for themselves? Didn't this class set out to prove that learning by doing (even in a virtual space) is more effective than the more traditional methods of learning?
Take the Censorship project (just to pull a name out of the hat...). A machinima would have to spoon-feed our audience the same information we're trying to let them learn on their own. Doesn't that defeat the whole point of making something interactive? I'd rather give the audience a tiny piece of the "How" in-game, and in the process of learning the rest of the "How," have them figure out the "Why." Have them learn.
If we're going to just hand them that information, we might as well be writing a paper.
-Erik
We started working on a griefer’s paradise for the IML Island. The ideal is a space where people can blow each other into their component prims without adversely affecting the other ‘serious’ stuff going on elsewhere on the Island. To that end, we decided to stick our gladiatorial arena somewhere that removed from the greater part of the Island, but still immediately accessible – underwater. A long time ago (it seems), it blew my mind when I realized that our virtual island was actually floating in virtual water. Our using the underwater area of the island is the perfect way for us to maintain the outward appearance of gentility while maintaining our stone-cold PKer street-cred on the inside. So far we’ve constructed a sort of enclosed underwater labyrinth with a bunch of corridors and stuff. It actually looks like a level from one of those early FPS games, if you squint just right. Ben and I shot each other up in there a few times, and it was fun; hopefully adding more things like traps and stuff (USC-themed, of course) will take it to the next level. It’s likely we won’t finish everything we have planned before the semester ends, but it’s certainly fun (and probably somehow educational) to experiment with level design using the diabolical constraints of Second Life. -Akshai
