{"id":863,"date":"2008-03-17T12:36:22","date_gmt":"2008-03-17T19:36:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.edtechpost.ca\/wordpress\/2008\/03\/17\/pmog-browser-based-learning-games\/"},"modified":"2008-03-17T12:36:22","modified_gmt":"2008-03-17T19:36:22","slug":"pmog-browser-based-learning-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scottleslie.ca\/edtechpost\/wordpress\/2008\/03\/17\/pmog-browser-based-learning-games\/","title":{"rendered":"I have seen the future of online education and it is PMOG"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Where to start this post?<\/p>\n<p>I could point you at my earlier presentation on &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.edtechpost.ca\/wordpress\/2007\/09\/27\/oer-client-tools\/\">Augmenting OER with Client-side Tools<\/a>&#8221; to orient you to the idea the browser itself offers one of the most powerful ways for users to both customize content on the fly and interact <em>with each other<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>I could tell you a story about seeing a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/gaming\/gamingreviews\/magazine\/16-03\/pl_games\">reference to a browser-based multiplayer game<\/a>, played (in my own words) &#8220;on top of and alongside of the web itself,&#8221; but then loosing that reference in my aggregator, only to have the niggle in the back of my brain eased when my query on twitter was <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/mxtw4l\/statuses\/771507397\">successfully answered<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I could explain how, until recently, the web browser\/web server model was kind of replicating earlier (boring) client-server models, treating web browsers often as dumb terminals. And how P2P challenged that in one (network) way. And how social software challenged that in another (that there were *people* at all those browsers). And how browser-based plugins are bringing both of those phenomena (albeit in a different way, technically) to the web experience.<\/p>\n<p>I could point you at <a href=\"http:\/\/it.coe.uga.edu\/itforum\/paper92\/paper92.html\">various<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.elearnspace.org\/Articles\/connectivism.htm\">pieces<\/a> on &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.downes.ca\/post\/31741\">networked<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/leighblackall\/sets\/1402220\/\">learning<\/a>&#8221; which I think are all pointing to a new way of learning where the &#8220;online&#8221; part, the &#8220;network&#8221; isn&#8217;t just an afterthought, whose existence radically challenges what &#8220;to learn&#8221; and indeed &#8220;knowledge&#8221; even mean.<\/p>\n<p>Or&#8230; you could just tell you to<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>install <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mozilla.com\/en-US\/firefox\/\">Firefox<\/a>. I mean really. Install Firefox (though v2.x). Seriously, give me one reason why you haven&#8217;t already.<\/li>\n<li>go to <a href=\"http:\/\/pmog.com\/\">pmog.com<\/a>. Get an account. Install the toolbar. And go on a mission.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Why? Because there you will see the (well not &#8220;THE&#8221; because hopefully there will always be many) future. In brief, once you&#8217;ve got that installed, you are in the game. Suddenly, you will notice small windows appearing when you look at web pages, windows urging you to &#8220;take this mission&#8221; or instead alerting you to dangers or treasures placed by other players. Where is the game taking place? Well, there is <a href=\"http:\/\/pmog.com\/\">a site<\/a>, and a <a href=\"http:\/\/pmog.com\/codex\">codex<\/a> (which is kind of essential reading to get the real flavour of the game). But the game takes place &#8220;on top of and alongside of the web itself,&#8221; as a PASSIVELY multiplayer online game, meaning it comes to you as part of your regular experience on the web.<\/p>\n<p>So immediately I can see people blanching at the idea of their students being called &#8220;shoats&#8221; or &#8220;bedouins&#8221; and coming up with all sorts of FUD on why PMOG.com can&#8217;t be used as a platform for education. I am not suggesting that PMOG.com itself is the platform to rush out and adopt (though indeed, why not? Take a mission yourself &#8211; can you see any potential for leading people through a learning path, placing obstacles in their way that they must overcome and building a rewards system into these goals? Sound familiar?)<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, the first (easily implementable) idea that popped into my head was to go back to <a href=\"http:\/\/trailfire.com\/\">Trailfire<\/a> and start constructing trails with pieces left out, so that to continue on the trail, you needed to answer a question or figure out a problem that would result in a URL where a new annotation would leave to the next site. But more on that later.<\/p>\n<p>The web has always had this potential &#8211; what are hyperlinks (and Google thinks this way) other than people providing context on whatever they are linking to, and through that, paths.What&#8217;s new is that all of this context (and all of the people) can be brought back <em>to the very thing being described<\/em>, in place, enriching the experience, and in the example of PMOG, tied together with a narrative thrust.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, if I was <em>really<\/em> good, this post wouldn&#8217;t be a post. It would be a PMOG mission. And maybe it will be&#8230; &#8211; <em>SWL<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Where to start this post? I could point you at my earlier presentation on &#8220;Augmenting OER with Client-side Tools&#8221; to orient you to the idea the browser itself offers one of the most powerful ways for users to both customize content on the fly and interact with each other. I could tell you a story &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/scottleslie.ca\/edtechpost\/wordpress\/2008\/03\/17\/pmog-browser-based-learning-games\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;I have seen the future of online education and it is PMOG&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[51,308,311,327,328,419,421],"class_list":["post-863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-rest","tag-browser-based","tag-passively-multiplayer-online-games","tag-paths","tag-plugins","tag-pmog","tag-toolbars","tag-trailfire"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottleslie.ca\/edtechpost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottleslie.ca\/edtechpost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottleslie.ca\/edtechpost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottleslie.ca\/edtechpost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottleslie.ca\/edtechpost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/scottleslie.ca\/edtechpost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottleslie.ca\/edtechpost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottleslie.ca\/edtechpost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottleslie.ca\/edtechpost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}