Games in Education

Games in Education: Information

2008 Resources:

1st Playable Productions

Schenectady Museum & Suits-Bueche Planetarium

WMHT Educational Telecommunications

Bill MacKenty

Second Life

Global Kids

Peggy Sheehy/ MetaVersed Ltd

Marianne Malstrom/ Knowclue Kidd

Brock Dubbels

Gamestar Mechanic

Mentor Interactive

Lauer Learning

Dennis Charksy

Rick Kelsey/ McKinley Technology High School

2007 Resources:

The Education Arcade

Muzzy Lane

SciCentr.org

The River City Project

U.C. Berkeley plans open source software for lecture distribution

U.C. Berkeley plans open source software for lecture distribution - San Francisco Business Times:
Tuesday, July 28, 2009, 11:35am PDT | Modified: Tuesday, July 28, 2009, 11:40am
San Francisco Business Times - by Steven E.F. Brown

The University of California, Berkeley, plans to set up an open source software project for widespread distribution of automatically made video and audio recordings of lectures and other events on campus.

Cal was the first university to put full-length videos of its lectures on YouTube in 2007. Audio podcasts of many of the school's lectures, like Marian Diamond's hugely popular introduction to human anatomy, have been available online for years.

The university has already spent $220,000 this year on this project, named "Opencast Matterhorn." Now grants totaling $1.5 million from the Andrew W. Mellon and William and Flora Hewlett foundations will cover that expense and pay for further development of the system.

Cal will work with ETH Zürich in Switzerland, the University of Osnabrück in Germany, Cambridge University in the United Kingdom and Canada's University of Saskatchewan on the project.

Money from these grants will pay for open source software that automates the recording and posting of academic content, cutting the cost of recording and uploading material. Cal says until now universities have been "stymied by high technical barriers and costs" even when they have wanted to distribute such content.

The software will be aimed at popular services like YouTube (based in San Bruno and owned by giant Google Inc.) and Apple Inc.'s online store, iTunes.

Adam Hochman is U.C. Berkeley's project manager for the program.

An open source system is in keeping with the university's traditions and its sense of its place as a public school, paid for by the public and doing research and teaching in the public interest. Many Cal researchers welcome questions from people who aren't students at the school, and reach out to them as part of their academic mission.

The university counts the open source Unix operating system, with its roots in Cal's 1970s research, as one of its achievements.

What the Microsoft-Yahoo-Bing Deal Means for You

What the Microsoft-Yahoo-Bing Deal Means for You - PC World

Todd R. Weiss
Jul 29, 2009 7:21 am

So what's it mean for computer users now that Microsoft and Yahoo today finally are announcing their long-anticipated marriage of Microsoft's Bing search engine and Yahoo's premium search advertising tools? Will this change our lives?

Actually, I think this partnership will mean far more for Microsoft and Yahoo and their corporate balance sheets than it will for those of us who are technology consumers, and here's why.

1) Will search get better due to the deal between the two companies? Now I don't have a crystal ball, but I tried Bing, I played with Bing, I experienced Bing, but Bing, you're no Google search. Yes, it has some cool features, like bringing up found items in new and useful lists that are highly targeted for users, but there's this little problem that no amount of money and advertising can change -- people's habits. And my habit, like the habit of tens of millions of computer users around me, is to call up Google whenever and wherever I have to search, every time. It's like a mother's love -- it's there forever.

2) Will Yahoo go to the dogs now that it's linked itself in a partnership deal with the slow, hard-to-steer, behemoth known as Microsoft? I do think there are more risks for Yahoo here than there are for Microsoft. Remember when the huge cable TV conglomerate Time Warner Inc. merged with the original America Online (AOL) Internet provider back in 2000, thinking it was the wave of the future and all of humanity would follow in a sea of dollar signs and goodwill? And do you know where they are now? Time Warner is spinning off AOL, which has been struggling for years, as it continues to try to figure out just what to do with it. Before teaming with Time Warner, AOL was the king of the Internet, as we all clamored to have slow, software-laden Internet access at $2.99 an hour like the good consumer lemmings we were in those days. But then cheaper, faster access arrived with DSL, cable and all-you-can-use plans, but AOL and stodgy Time Warner couldn't react quickly enough. There's a lesson here. Bigger isn't always better. I read that in a fortune cookie. I could have saved Time Warner and AOL a lot of money if I'd have told them that. Hey, Microsoft and Yahoo, are you listening?

3) Are there privacy concerns I should be worried about from this deal? That depends on the fine print, and that we'll have to have to check carefully to be sure what Microsoft and Yahoo want to do with all the consumer data they'll be able to collect from our searches. This is already an issue with Google and other search engines as we continue to make our way through this still relatively new global Internet adventure. When we use "free" services like search on the Internet, whether through Google or Yahoo or Bing or whatever, there really is no "free." Someone somewhere is using the spoils of the search - our preferences about what we are looking for - for marketing, for potential revenue enhancement and to help them in their businesses. It's an acceptable risk to us as consumers only when we know what the rules are. Somehow, though, we usually don't ask what those rules are ahead of time. Maybe we should get that information up front this time.

4) Will this Microsoft-Yahoo partnership be enough to knock Google from its perch as the king of search for savvy consumers? I doubt it, and here's why - I just don't see Microsoft and Yahoo, even with the new Bing search engine as its mascot, coming anywhere near Google with the kinds of innovations that make us all excited and Googly. There's Google Earth. Could Microsoft or Yahoo have thought of that? And there's Google Voice. OK, it's still a fledgling effort, but it is interesting and innovative, and users are lining up early to try to get a Google invite to test it out and take it for a ride. What always amazes me is how the Google tech folks are always introducing fascinating new technologies that they can bring to users in ways that no one has else has yet imagined. OK, they haven't found an answer for world peace or the vaccine for swine flu yet, but you never know. I'm just not sure that Microsoft still has any of that kind of turn-on-a-dime mentality anymore. And that's why this partnership may not help search-loving consumers or Yahoo as much as the new partners believe it will.

(Todd R. Weiss is a freelance technology journalist who formerly wrote for Computerworld.com . Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/TechManTalking )

Start Building Your Perfect Desktop with Samurize

Samurize.com - News

Samurize is an advanced system monitoring and desktop enhancement engine for Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista. IT professionals, overclockers, gamers and desktop modders alike use Samurize for system information, weather reports, news headlines and much much more. And best of all, Samurize is 100% free!

Samurize's rich feature set includes:

• an unrivalled set of built-in meters (Disk utilization, CPU usage, network traffic, system temperatures...)
• ultimate customizing and skinning possibilities with no programming knowledge required
• monitoring your own computer or others over a network
• tiny memory footprint and CPU usage
• the first system monitoring tool with a true WYSIWYG editor
• full extensibility via scripts and plugins with a powerful plugin SDK/API
• minimal software requirements (no .NET or Service Packs necessary)
• multimonitor support
• many usage options (desktop, taskbar and clock clients, server outputting to XML or image formats, screensaver)

Samurize: The Only Limit Is Your Imagination.

Download Samurize v1.64.3 Final