Information Literacy

The Chronicle of Higher Education has an article reporting that a recent study of high school and college students indicates that this group may not be as adept at interpreting information found on the Internet with the same degree of proficiency as they are at using the Internet. Old people are often amazed with the ease of which students operate technology. What we may not be noticing is that the tools for understanding the information on the Internet is not always picked up along the way.

Information from the Internet requires all the same critical thinking processes as does any other source of information, but it also brings a few new twists. For example, it is difficult to pretend to be a major publisher in a bookstore, but it's very easy to do online. The ability to assess the authenticity of a source is more difficult online because there aren't the traditional gatekeepers. Of course, once you know that you should check, Google makes it fairly easy to uncover the true identify of a source.

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OPTE Internet Maps

The Internet is not always easy to describe. The OPTE Project has done a great job making maps of the Internet. The images are free to use as long as they are attributed.
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Google's SketchUp for 3D Modeling

SketchUp is one of Google's new online tools. This one is great for students wanting to do some sort of 3D modeling. This could be very useful for science, math and social studies classes. If your school has good Internet bandwidth, this is a program certainly worth checking out. Below is what Google has to say.

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"Google SketchUp (free) is an easy-to-learn 3D modeling program whose few simple tools enable you to create 3D models of houses, sheds, decks, home additions, woodworking projects – even space ships. You can add details, textures and glass to your models, design with dimensional accuracy, and place your finished models in Google Earth, share them with others by posting them to the 3D Warehouse, or print hard copies."

Role Playing in Video Games

A company located in Denmark, SeriousGames, will be releasing early next year a video game of life in Palestine. While this location may seem to be a wonderful opportunity for a shoot-them-up game, SeriousGames is being a lot more serious about the issues. This game puts the player into the area as a reporter. Through encounters with local people, the player learns about the situation in Palestine.

The potential for such game-quality instruction great. The major limitation is the cost. It would be great to have such games for all types of economic, political, and historical environments, but the cost of development will probably limit these games to major global issues.

A reported from Wired has seen the game and provided a review.

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Croquet: Building Virtual Worlds

Yesterday we explored Squeak. Croquet is a new system built using Squeak. To say it is mind-blowing would be an understatement. It allows for communication and interaction that few other systems come close to providing. The creators of Croquet had as a mission the goal of creating a truly modern operating system. They would see all the current operating systems has improvements on old models. Croquet is based on the idea that interaction and collaboration are the two new realities around which an operation system should be designed.

Here is what they have to say:

In its simplest form, Croquet is a complete development and delivery platform that enables people to carry out highly collaborative work. It is a highly scalable architecture that can be used to develop powerful simulations, and multi-user online spaces. Through Croquet-derived 3D environments, users can enjoy shared telepresence, shared authorship of complex spaces and their contents, and shared access to a wide range of network-deliverable information resources.

Better yet, visit the Croquet web site.

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