OUseful Info

Digital Worlds Week 1, Round-Up

Earlier this week, I started an experiment: blogging a course, (sort of!) (Why *shouldn't* I have the nerve to do this online...? Err...).

Here's a catch-up list of the first week's posts:

• This is where it all begins...


• In the beginning...


• ~Planning Ahead?


• Time To Make a Start - Welcome to Interactive Media and Game Design


• So What is a Game?


• An Aside - Checking Book References Online


• Thoughts on the Understanding Games Tutorial, Episode 1


• Getting Started with Game Maker


• Friday Fun #1


• Customising 'Catch a Clown'


• Editing a Sprite

Everything seems to be hanging together, so far, although I have been able to draw on some drafted materials for some of the posts, which which I won't necessarily be able to do for later weeks, (although I have started drafting possible future poss, and collecting ideas for them, to try to give myself some sort of a fighting chance in getting a daily post out!)

Using a hosted Wordpress installation has felt rather more constraining than I thought it would, though. I opted for the hosted version:

a) because it's available to anyone; and
b) it strips out Javascript and the majority of embed codes - as do many VLEs (though I think the OU's Moodle VLE is opening up a little?) This means I can't do anything too crazy... ;-)

Whilst I can embed Youtube movies, and Splashcast players, I can't embed Grazr widgets or flickr slideshows in a post, which is a shame...

There are a few sidebar widgets I may be able to go with, and I've just added Box.net to see whether that will provide a way of supporting filesahring across readers of the blog.

The decision to go with using Game Maker as the environment for hands-on game building has hit the obstacle I thought it might: it's Windows only, and at least one of the people reading so far has a Mac. The reason I opted for Game Maker is that it offers a very structured environment, and is well suited to the construction of recognisable arcade style games. The structure of the interface also maps neatly on to the different component types used in creating Game Maker games - rooms, objects, sprites and so on - which I'm hoping will provide a neat way in to discussing some of the software issues relating to game creation.

The alternative package I'd considered was MIT's Scratch, which is arguably more open-ended ion terms of interactive media design. I hope to get on to that in a few week's time...

The format of the blogged uncourse is loosely based on the structure of the OU Relevant Knowledge short course programme courses, which deliver approximatley 20-30 one to three scroll pages of content per week. The content I've posted so far is probably a little down on this - but then, any possible readers out there probably don't want to give up a nominal 10 hours per week following hte blog (which is the time commitment required on an RK short course).

I've tried to close each post with a question, which has inspired some commenting. I've tried to weave some of the comments into following posts, and I'm going to try to be sensitive to letting comments guide - or at least influence - some of the content that I post.

Writing the blog outside the OU has freed up the way I link to resources, and embed movies (no need for rights clearance!).

In the post on checking book references online (an aside to the main theme of the course, excpet insofar as it referes to interactive, online book readers!) I discussed several ways of linking out to book content on Google books, Live booksearch and Amazon Search Inside.

A comment to one of the posts actually referenced a table in a particular book that I was able to direct people to: viewing books via Live booksearch.

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Tags: digitalworlds, uncourse

Posted by ajh59 at March 9, 2008 11:14 AM