IMMERSIVE EDUCATION: THE FUTURE OF BUSINESS AND LEADERSHIP

Every year businesses are dishing out millions of dollars to figure out what the future will have in store for their perspective company.  Some aspects are predictable for example having faster paced enterprises, and becoming more fiercely competitive, also bridging the gap of communication by making more of the work virtual.

Some would argue that leaders are born and not made. In the past that idea could’ve held more weight. But there are some people who can lead when given the right tools. In terms of online gaming, the players who can organize, develop skills, and become versatile within the game have an upper hand in the business world. Those skills are transferable because in a business most people work with a team in order to tackle a project. Often there are a few members of that team who have the ability to lead and more likely than not the one person which the strongest personality will take the forefront. But when it comes to certain aspects will have to take a backseat and let somebody else lead. In online games people have the capability to learn how to take the forefront and the backseat because they will encounter a task in which another member will be better at.

“Corporate leaders must both coordinate and motivate individuals who are separated by time zones and cultures”. IBM has noticed that online gaming has plenty of similarities to the leadership model. Online gaming helps eliminate a step for companies. Instead of having training on how to better utilize different resources in different time zones, companies can utilize the ever growing online gaming model. About 40 million people, based on 2010, already play online games and most likely will have already acquired these skills of collaborating with people from all over the world. On their own dime; so companies can save some more money because they have the ability to hire employees with these skills and they don’t necessarily need to know it.

Based on a study that IBM did in Relevance of leadership behavior they found that most of the criteria that they asked for landed at about 92% relevant for corporate and about 70% for online gaming. Having those numbers showed that “corporate behaviors are vital to leadership success within MMORPGs and will be increasingly so within corporate environments.” Being in a virtual environment means that there is no face-to-face interactions. With that being said gamers have to build personal relationships with other gamers in order to be successful in those environments. Depending on one of the aspects that IBM looked at, was correlated to how they each played a role in games and in corporations. For example evaluating and executing are both an important skill for both games and corporate leaders.

This semester I played a few different games online in my immersive education class. To learn more about what immersive education is visit immersiveeducation.org this link will provide you with more in-depth information about what immersive education is and what it is all about. Now here are some pictures of me exploring and playing some video games online:

Machinima: Immersive Library

I have tried to get the video of my Immersive Library to work and each time I have uploaded it only a black screen appears. But when I in Camtasia 2 for my mac the video is there. As you can see:

 

Meshinima: WOW

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZPeiscaIYA

Immersive Education at Boston College.

These are my assignments from the Immersive Education course that I am taking at Boston College. The course is called Video Games and Virtual Reality. To learn more visit the Immersive Education BC portal at http://ImmersiveEducation.org/@/bc

I worked on a number of these assignments with my fellow classmates. This semester I took this course with:

Diana Cheung	http://dcmt358.blogspot.com/
Andrew Langone	http://langonemt35801.blogspot.com/
Suzanne Veiga	http://svmt35801.blogspot.com/
Jeff Andrade	http://immersiveeducationjeff.blogspot.com/
Noah Benjamin-Pollak	http://anonymousinsider.blogspot.com/
AJ Prince	ajprince15.blogspot.com
Gregory Dunn	http://virtualgregd.blogspot.com/
Matthew Blinstrub	http://mstrub.blogspot.com
Michael Rodriguez	http://michaellrodriguez.blogspot.com
Sam Bellar	http://617music.blogspot.com/
Ryan O'Hara	http://chroniclero.blogspot.com/
Amanda Yerke	http://virtual35801.blogspot.com/

Machinima

As early as 1980 game engines were developing to create complex intros. The whole idea was to make 3-D demos in real time with the least amount of code possible. As things progressed so did the development of game engines. If you a gamer imagine staging, recording then playing back stunts. That is way to much work and time. So as game engines developed some more they became able to cut down on the process by actually making a real time event.

Machinima was first truly introduced in 1996 when The Rangers used a demo function in Quake to record a film. Machinima has been used a lot today. World of Warcraft uses it a lot. In 2006 the tv show South Park used machinima and that episode won an Emmy. Even Madden 07 used Machinima.

This technology is seen as "a strangely hybrid form, looking forwards and backwards, cutting edge and conservative at the same time” said by Berkeley. In 2007 Microsoft issued a license that was intended to address the legal status of machinima. Halo, a game series by Microsoft, was intended to be a ruled with a flexible hand. Some of the machinima artists wanted to protest this act because Halo was very similar to what machinima had been doing for awhile.

For recently Machinima came out with a series remaking Mortal Kombat and they are now in there second season.

A shot taken from the Emmy award winning episode from South Park.

As I stated earlier Madden 07 used Machinima to publicize the game.

World of Warcraft

Trying to get my experience up in World of Warcraft.

Noah and I killed a moth and reached level 3

Due to the fact that we have the starter edition Noah and I couldn't be apart of a group.

Noah and I are skyping each other

WOW

Still haven't been able to get the screenshot to work while I'm playing in WOW

FINAL PROJECT: TESTING MY FELLOW CLASSMATES' IMMERSIVE LIBRARIES.

While I was testing one of my classmates libraries firefox and Meshmoon stopped working and forced my computer to restart. So i was only able to get 2 screenshots.

Amanda's world

Ryan's world

FINAL PROJECT: ADDING 10 NEW CONTENT

The 10 new content in my world which includes 5 videos and 5 pdf files

FINAL PROJECT: ADDING 5 PDF PAPERS TO MY IMMERSIVE LIBRARY.

The 5 PDF files in my world

World of warcraft

As you can see when taking a screenshot of me playing WOW (World of Warcraft) all that shows up is my desktop. I switched lands and started over at level one now I am at level 4.

Building my immersive library

To this day Meshmoon will not fully load on my laptop. I've signed for an account, I have closed down the program completely and I have restarted my laptop but it just will not work.

IMMERSIVE LIBRARIES AND MUSEUMS

Immersive libraries and museums are becoming more and more popular as immersive education continues to grow. Scholars no longer have to make a trip to a library or museum to gather information from hard copies. They can cut back on that old book smell that gets all up in your nose. People can now log onto their computers and retrieve that information that would desire. Multimedia makes it even easier to obtain information. Being able to look at pictures, animated or non-animated, videos, listening to sounds and so on and so on, but the best part of this is that students learn to collaborate on different projects and actually get to see what is being put into the whole thing. Without having to leave the comfort of their bedrooms.

Now for librarians they are left to struggle with all the information constantly updating. Before immersive libraries were so popular librarians could wait for the next edition of a book to come up and then update files that way. But having the ability to instantly update information makes it a little more time consuming which also keeps the librarians on top of everything.

Museum education gives more visual experience than libraries do.  Immersive libraries also provide that same visual experience because the internet can provide three dimensional imaging. So that similar experience is being enhanced by having technology, take the guiding hand.

The information that can be found in libraries and museums no longer is bounded by physical boundaries due to immersive libraries. The amount of information that can be gathered and sent out has exponentially grown. With all of the technology at our fingertips gathering information is endless. Collaborating with people has become easier, even big corporations use all of these advancing technologies to stay on the cutting edge.

http://JiED.org.

Summary of interview

       To begin the Article Lamont introduces Professor Walsh. He states that Walsh has two courses at Boston College in which are mostly in a Virtual Reality Word. Walsh informs Lamont that he was misinformed and that he teaches three courses. But he affirms Lamont that two out of his three courses are mostly in a Virtual World. “Why not Second life?” was a question that was asked relatively early in the conversation and Walsh answers that question by stating “Second Life is a candidate for the new Immersive Education platform that we're defining today, but it wasn't a viable option for the previous generation which we selected in 2003.”

       Next Walsh was asked about some challenges and advantages there were. Walsh talked about how it was hard at first because not every computer was up to par when it comes to the graphic cards. So the classes could not have been mostly in the VR; also the connection was a problem that arouse. But once most of the students were either living in residence halls, which has high speed internet connection, or at home, which has DSL connection, it became easier to do. “Other advantages include the time saved in traveling to and from class, which can be significant for students who live off campus. I've had some non-traditional students live over an hour away from Boston College, meaning they waste more than two hours traveling ever time we have class in person (on campus).”

     

To end the article Lamont asks if every institution could staff and fund immersive education programs. Walsh exclaims that most can’t so that is why they are trying to make it virtually in expensive. As in they want to make it well documented and free. Even though that is the goal, it is still very hard to achieve.

·         http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2007/05/teaching_in_vr_.html

Current video game addiction

 The first 3 videos were no longer on youtube.

Class 10, Assignment 4: Making a Virtual Human

The site did not allow me to download the program. And when I was on Poser I couldn't find the free trial and paying 129.99 for the program is a little to expensive for me.

Class 10, Assignment 3: Entering the Uncanny Valley