Bill MacKenty

Technology strengthens, deepens, and broadens our learning...

Getting to Z: part 5

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Things are going slowly.  We meet every Thursday morning for about an hour - lately, though, there have been a barrage of field trips, assemblies, vacations and other engagements.  I suppose this is just the nature of public education, but I find it slightly frustrating. *sigh*

For those unfamiliar with text-based gaming, MUSHes, and 3D space, I invite you to check out the following videos.  I asked a fellow player on the mush we are playing on to simulate a space battle.  The following videos move through activating ship systems, very basic moving, allocating power to different systems, and of course, an engagement.

Multiplayer text-based gaming part 1- starting our ship, activating systems (4 MB Quicktime movie)
Multiplayer text-based gaming part 2 - allocating power (1.4 MB Quicktime movie)
Multiplayer text-based gaming part 3 - scanning, damage status, and detecting (3.9 MB Quicktime movie)
Multiplayer text-based gaming part 4 - ending the encounter! (10.6 MB Quicktime Movie)

I tried to keep the files reasonably small - I reduced screen size by 30% so some of the text might be a little bit difficult to read.

As you are watching these movies, I encourage you to think about 13 and 14 year old kids accessing the complexity and sophistication of this milieu!