Imagining the World: The Case for Non-Rendered Virtuality - the Role Play Simulation Model

This paper, which I posted earlier, has a permanent home now. The presentation is not ready yet. Comment welcome.

Tags: rolePlaySimulation pedagogy

eLearning Magazine

The eLearning Magazine will be sent to the printer in about 2 weeks and should be available by the end of June. For those who like to subscribe, please visit the web site's subscription page http://www.elearningmagazine.com/corporate/subscription.php to take advantage of the pre-publication special rate. The payment is handled via Paypal. Please note the difference in rate for Australia and the rest of the world. This is due to the cost of postage.

For the advertisers, if you can support us, please take advantage of the current 30% discount off the rate. We desperately need your support. Please contact our sales representative, Sandy Warren. Her email address is sandy dot warren at elearningmagazine dot com. We shall scale down the distribution and the size of the volume for the first issue. The tentative table of content is at the end of the post.

We have adopted a modified license for all the articles. All articles will be available on the web under a restricted creative common license two months (or when the next issue is published whichever is earlier) after the publication. The online version will be supported by context sensitive advertisement or sponsorship.

Table of Content of the first issue of eLearning magazine

Editorial
What is the Future of e-learning?

Feature Articles
Web-based Search and Resource
Taxonomy or Folksonomy?
Access For All: Adaptability of Digital Resources and Services

Interview
CEO of HarvestRoad – an Australian Success Story

eLearning Business Review
Don't Waste your Talent, One Resignation at a Time

Standards Circle
Dummy Guide to Metadata
Who is doing what in Metadata?

In & Between
Edublogs are go!

Chalkface
What is Learning?

News and Conferences
Glossary Part 1 of 3
Freebies
eLearning Rant

Tags: eLearningMagazine printed magazine

Draft Craft Manifesto

by Ulla-Maaria Mutanen via BoingBoing

As noted, the author is interested "what is driving the increasing popularity of crafting" and listed her finding in the 12 points in the Manifesto.

I am yet to do something similar about why students find it interesting, engaging and absorbing to learn via role play simulation. I have been looking at "gameness" and try to find characteristics of games which may drive learning motivation and effectiveness. So far, my conclusion is still the "genuine ability to make choice and face the consequence of the choice made" [see earlier post] is the greatest factors for players in role play simulation.

Tags: rolePlaySimulation game motivation

What is Learning?

An upcoming article for the eLearning magazine. This is a draft only.

Data is individual statement. Data is the kind of thing we found using the search engines. Data is external to my being. Information is a network of coherent data. It may be stored externally (e.g. I can search for some information on the web) or memorized. Information may include procedural know-how or my favourite recipes. For example, September 13 is just a piece of data. I also know that my wife was born on September 13. These two pieces of data connected to become an information, “my wife’s birthday”. Again, “Albert’s wife was born on September 13” is also a piece of data, an irrelevant piece of data to most of you.

Let’s say we have agreed that “Albert’s wife was born on September 13” is an important knowledge that all readers of eLearning magazine needs to master. What does this mean?

There are several assumptions made. We have agreed, implicitly without further negotiations, that time is divided into intervals called “years” and there are 12 months in a year. One of the months is called September and 13 is the thirteenth day of that month. We also have a common understanding of “wife”. Somewhere, some time ago and somehow, we have come to a common understanding of the concept of “wife”, so without seeking explicit clarification, you may have correctly assumed that my wife is a female human being.

The key words in the last paragraph are “knowledge” and “understanding”. Knowledge is an understanding of a network of information. This understanding is community based. It may have been explicitly negotiated or implicitly “learnt”. Understanding is anchored on information and language. Without them, there is no common ground to build a community of practice who shares the understanding. Every single word is the result of some common understanding. Words may be ambiguous, but overall, any effective communication and building of common understanding depend on mutually agreed meanings to the words.

Understanding is part of our being. Understanding of a body of knowledge is coherent within a larger framework within each individual self.

Unlike information, knowledge and understanding cannot be externalized. When externalized, knowledge becomes information. Its utility depends on the understanding of the words making up the information. When meaning and sense can be made out of the information, the individual who makes such meaning and sense acquired the knowledge related to that information. In other words, when information is interpreted basing on all our previous knowledge and our language, the information becomes part of our knowledge.

What is “know-how”, e.g. the procedure to fill up the tank of our car? Is it knowledge or a piece of information? In a written form, it is information. But if I know what it means and can follow the procedure to achieve the objective of making my car move again after running a long distance, it become a knowledge, a knowledge to me alone.

So, what is my definition of learning? To me, learning is the process that builds understanding and coherent network of knowledge. This process occurs within me. You cannot stop me learn, nor make me learn. You can present me with information. You can introduce me to a community of practice. You can show me how to do thing. It is me who learns.

I had been helping people to learning. I was a Physics teacher for nearly 20 years. I presented information to my students. Some might be sitting closer to me, others not so. They could all hear me and see my writing on the board. But some obviously “picking” up the concepts much better than others. Why? If teaching is equal to presentation of information, all my students should have exactly the same performance! Teaching is obviously not just presenting information. Teaching is the act of helping others to learn. We can motivate the learners so that they are more ready to. We can present the information in some sequence so that the information can be integrated and understood more easily, at least to a broader group of learners.

Education is the business of providing learning. Training is a special case of education. The kind of learning that is occupationally oriented, with specific outcome which trainees would be able to demonstrate.

What is e-learning? E-learning is learning at which technology has played a role. At eLearning Magazine, we look at the technologies that purport to support learning. We reports on good practices that individuals, companies and communities learn and learn better. Future articles in this column will describe different “art forms” of teaching. We hope that you may pick up some tips. Other sections in this magazine cover important aspects of the business of providing learning (i.e. education and training. We also cover “informal” learning, how technology may help us develop ourselves.

Side Notes:
Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein argued against “private language”. Basically, there is not any language which is used by only one individual. Language is always negotiated to create a common understanding within a group which James Paul Gee called “Semiotic Domains”. Here we are using “community of practice” in a general and less vigorous way. See Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Macmillan, 1958) and James Paul Gee, What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy (Macmillan, 2003)

Tags: learning

ps Please also see a new post in Conversation With My Evil Twin on Apple's Colossal Disappointment

Multiple default homepage in FireFox

The link is in Chinese. If you can read it, go ahead.

Otherwise, read on.

To have Firefox opens multiple default home pages in different tabs, put multiple URLs into the Tools|Option|General|Home Page. Separate each URL using a pipe character "|".

Alternately, open your homepages in different tags. Go to Tools|Option|General|Home Page, just click [Use Current Page].

Tags: Firefox multipleHomepage

Netscape 8 bugs

Once the biggest name in web browser, Netscape released version 8, but according to TechWorld, over 40 bugs were discovered within hours of its release.

One of the most important bug which may affect my work is the rendering of xml. While it nice to be able to choose between Gecko or IE rendering engine using a little icon at the left of the status bar, it also makes IE's XML rendering returns a blank screen, not only within Netscape 8's own IE mode, but the IE itself. The current work around suggested is to uninstall Netscape 8 AND remove an entry in the registry. (see MSDN blog entry)

As noted earlier, Fablusi is heavily dependent on client-side processing. I have chosen to use a JSON-like protocol between the server and client. I would have chosen to use xml. If it were the case, Fablusi would have been broken under Netscape 8 and would have caused it to break when using IE after its installation.

I was composing this post using IE 6 (after verifying the bug reported above). However, just before I post, I right-clicked to do a spelling check. To my greatest horror, no spell checking was available.

I now realise how useful all the extensions in Firefox have been. This post is now copy and pasted into a firefox browser ... (I am happy ever after).

By the way, I have installed a GreaseMonkey "Technorati Tags for Bloggers" which allows me easily add the tags to this post.

Tags: browser bugs

Personal learning

Have come to appreciate the role, value and importance of social learning, situated learning, learning in community and culture. That more is learned on the playing fields and in discourse with peers than from the sage on the stage. Even in very structured training situations, it is the break time conversation, the second-hand explanation from a colleague that situates the new concept, validates its importance and sanctions its legitimacy.

The post itself is a good read. I won't be able to express any better than Denham Grey.

I just want to pick up one point of this wonderful post. I don't understand what Denham means by second-hand explanation and I failed to find further explanation.

I have written about different types of experiences. Briefly, first person experience is experience that one has lived through. I also include simulated experience as first person experience. Second person experience is the experience you gain as a vicarious observer of an event. Third person experience are the stories that we hear from a story teller telling another person's experience. (Here I use the word experience and story almost interchangeably). When we were young, we generally learn via first or second person experience. However, formal education mainly concentrates on providing third person experience. Even the so-called experiments in science classes were more like verification of the theory we have learnt in class than real discovery of the theory itself.

In structured training session, during break time, I seldom see people explaining what has been told again to another participant. (I.e. I don't see second-hand explanation happening). However, there were many ocassion that we exchange our previous first/second person experience to validate or question the material put before us during the training. Such validations ARE not second-hand explanation. This also happens a lot in face to face conferences.

I suppose "blogging" is a good way of taking that face to face validating story telling into an online situation. While I am writing this post, reflecting on the ideas, I AM LEARNING.

You, as my reader, may or may not learn anything. It depends on whether these words will cause you to link this concept to your previous experience, or cause discomfort. Both cognitive resonance and cognitive dissonance may trigger learning. However, whether you learn anything depends on whether you are willing to reflect on this, and "file" this concept somewhere you can access later when you need it.

Tags: experience learning taxonomy

p.s. see my other new posts: Alternate Business Plan needed for Higher Education and Corporate e-learning trend written today.

Digital Divide, an update

My first post about digital divide pointed out that I did not believe there would ever be a satisfactory solution to equality in terms of digital access to information and resources.

Although theoretically, digital information can be reproduced at marginally zero cost, the access to these bits and bytes still depends on physical equipment which must be produced at a cost with a finite production capacity. Hence my argument was that there will always be differences in different stages of availability at different communities.

Chasing the Dragon's Tale has a post asking what "If computers become inexpensive, really inexpensive..." and raises the issue of power even if computers are in the price range (about AUD400) of current mobile phones.

I did a bit of search on the average power consumption of PC and would happy to settle at 220W (150W for the desktop computer + 70W for the monitor). The cost of providing such power to remote area using alternate energy source (say solar panel) would be around AUD2000 (using 4 1000 x 4000 mm panel with an output of 60W each would cost around AUD500 in Australia). This is still far from within the range of most under-developed countries. Although solar panel have a service life of 20 years, it is still a significant investment. If such money were available, there would be other competing needs for the scarce electrical power resource in the remote areas.

Another important point about digital divide is the assumption of ubiquity of the communication network. Yes, once an optical fibre is laid, the cost of communication is almost next to nothing. Yet, the initial infra-structure investment is huge and demanding. Again, if any fund is available, there would be competing needs for the fund for other more urgent infra-structure expenses, e.g. fresh water supply (although there is an exciting Australian invention which may help solve this problem in remote villages) or medical services.

While I like to see more equality in terms of providing digital access to communities, I don't see any chance of getting any better in a long time.

Tags: digital divide

Two of my recent posts

Please see
Dissected lies of a Canadian recording industry shill

and

Setting limits on the number of posts by students in discussion forum

Imagining the World: The Case for Non-Rendered Virtuality - the Role Play Simulation Model

This is a paper that I am going to present in AusWeb05 (co-authored with Roni Linser). Comment welcome.

Both role-play simulations and Virtual Worlds as pedagogy have now been around for some time and are both considered to be highly effective in creating effective and memorable experiences for learners. But whereas the rendered gaming model of virtual worlds seems to have captured the imagination of trainers, educators and researchers, the role-play model seems to have languished somewhat. This paper explores some of the pedagogic and psychological issues for learning associated with the rendering or non-rendering of virtual worlds. We argue that while rendered environments can contribute to learning, they are often too shallow for purposes such as fostering strategic thinking and problem solving. In such cases, non-rendered virtual worlds may be better in using and fostering the required imaginative capacities of learners.

League of Worlds: The International Conference on Exploring Virtuality

League of Worlds: The International Conference on Exploring Virtuality

2nd Annual Conference on Online Simulations, Role-Playing, and Virtual Worlds
November 14 – 18, 2005
University of Melbourne
Melbourne, Australia
Call for Papers

ABOUT THE LEAGUE OF WORLDS

The League of Worlds annual conference brings together people engaged in the creation of virtual worlds and real-time simulations for educational, artistic and creative purposes. Our mission is
(1) to stimulate and disseminate research and analysis regarding the theoretical, technical and curricular developments in; and
(2) to contribute towards the development of coherent frameworks for the advancement, application and assessment of creative, educational, and social uses of role-playing, simulations and virtual worlds.

Our primary areas of interest include:
a. theoretical analysis
b. the development of practical applications
c. the documentation of framework projects and case studies

ABOUT THE CONFERENCE

The League of Worlds symposium is a paperless conference. Works and contributions will be distributed electronically and notices will be posted on a web-based conference discussion board. This year's theme is: "Playing and Learning in Virtual Environments." Presenters should challenge participants to take a fresh look at the questions that arise when people meet in virtual territories to play, to learn, and to share. Participation is purposely limited and there will be no concurrent sessions. Instead, participants are encouraged to attend each presentation and integrate their own perspectives and expertise into the conversation.

Presentation Categories
The League of Worlds conference is designed to support sharing and meaningful reflection. Presentations should allow participants the opportunity to share experiences, to demonstrate technologies, and to think critically. To facilitate these activities, the conference review committee is interested particularly in the following types of activities:
• Posters/Demonstrations
• Panels
• Roundtables
• Symposia
• Tutorials
• Workshops

All accepted papers and demonstration descriptions will be posted online by September 2005 so participants may read them before attending LoW2 (see below for deadlines). Presenters should plan for between 1-2 hours for their sessions.

Proceedings

Conference proceedings are peer-reviewed and will be published on the conference website. The proceedings will contain all accepted papers, a list of attendees, and the conference program. Papers should be between 2500-5000 words (4-8 pages). All others should be between 1250- 3500 words (2-5 pages).

Important Dates
Abstract June 1, 2005
Draft August 1, 2005
Final version September 1, 2005

Proposals
Please submit the following by June 1, 2005:
1. A title and an 80-100 word abstract/description
2. A presentation format (e.g., panel, demonstration, symposium, etc.).

Notification of acceptance will be made by JUNE 30, 2005. Accepted presentations will be required to submit the following by August 1, 2005:
1. A draft of the paper or a detailed description of the demonstration.
2. Pertinent information about the presenter(s) including:
a. Names of lead presenter and co-presenters, if applicable
b. Contact information for each
c. Affiliated institution(s)
d. Job Title(s)
e. Experience with virtual worlds, simulations, and/or role playing technology

To be included in the final program and conference proceedings, please submit the following by September 1, 2005:
1. The complete paper or demonstration description
2. Registration and full payment.
3. An indication of any special requirements related to diets, equipment, or other pertinent needs
Submit all proposals in Word, RTF, or HTML format to:
Dr. Stephen Bronack, Ph.D. at bronacksc _at_ appstate dot edu
FOR CONFERENCE INFORMATION, please contact:
Mr. Roni Linser
Director, 2005 LoW Conference
E-mail: roni _at_ leagueofworlds dot com OR simplay dot net _at gmail dot com
Website: http://www.leagueofworlds.com

Reuse, Standardisation and Calcification

As we embark on the development of something, anything in fact, we no doubt will find ourselves in situations where we are reusing part of previous work we have done. Programmer uses the technical term "function" to encapsulate a block of code which is used in several occasions (reuse). Later, of course, we have methodologies such as object-oriented development etc. This post is not about such technical details.

When we write our lesson plans (is there anyone still doing this?, ok, assume we do), we found ourselves repeating several patterns which we are comfortable with. May be it looks like "revision of previous lesson, introduction of new idea, details, examples, more details, more examples....". Again this is a re-use, a reuse of the pattern.

The conversation style I am using in Conversation With My Evil Twin has a template behind it. I always have a "background" section and a boilerplate passage "Once upon a time, on a sunny evening ...."

When a team starts to work collaboratively on a project, we begin to introduce guidelines, rules etc in order to make the reuse more efficient, ie minimise the re-invention of wheels. (Ok, the guidelines and rules are also introduced for other reasons too, but here we focus on those guidelines and rules which are related to re-use). When the team is small and close, these guidelines and rules are negotiated and formed informally. As the collaboration team grows, with more members from more diverse background joining the team, this process of articulating the guidelines and rules starts to have a life of its own. This is called the standardisation process. As long as this process is driven by the active users (members of the collaboration teams who actually use the guidelines and rules in their daily work), these guidelines and rules are fluid, changing as needs arise and continuously re-negotiated. However, when the process is taken over by "managers", this is then driven by a completely different set of motives and agenda. "Political" considerations become more and more important. These start to surface and enforced: "stability of standards", conformance and examples where organizations attempt to 'refocus' anyone who is perceived as doing any innovative work 'out of the box' because this is perceived as either 'non corporate', 'off message' or just plain inefficient (Derek Morrison, World's largest deployment of Moodle? (part 2)) James Gosling call this calcification in an 1990 online article (http://www.java.sun.com/people/jag/StandardsPhases/index.html) which is no longer available online.

Once certain "standards" are recognised as important and strategic by the upper management, the power of negotiating, modifying, extending etc of these standards are taken away from the actual users. Actual users are typically disconnected from the standard process (may be the users of standards are not interested in the political battles of setting standards, or they are deem as not representative enough from the organisation's point of view that their representation are replaced by more "senior" members who have no hand-on experience of the "product" they are trying to standardise.)

I will stop here and let you imagine what will happen next ...

Does this sound familiar to you? I hope not.

Postscript to "The Psychology of Games"

By Thomas Nocera, registration needed to read the article.

In an earlier post, I reported on the "gameness" and concluded that these "gameness" elements are equally applicable in the design of learning activities. Thomas further points to a number of theories that

astute game developers can benefit from mastering

What Thomas is referring is "interpersonal communication". As he puts it,

The theoretical knowledge of what keeps humans engaged in relationships is important. Relationships are fundamentally dyads - where 2 people are engaged in 2 way communications in an ongoing, satisfactory, even if not completely pleasurable way. Understanding the motivating reasons why we remain in communication with each other is an essential component of game developer knowledge.

Two theories are highlighted:

"the exchange theory". As it applies to interpersonal communications: people will stay in relationships (or, communicating with each other, or playing a game)as long as their individual perception is that they are getting more out of it (the relationship, or the game) than they are putting into it.

The other is his own called Nocera's Law: Everything communicates!

When I was theoretising the underlying design of Fablusi, the role play simulation platform, I stated that human interactions are communicative events. The whole Fablusi platform is about modelling different types of human communications and relationships. I called Fablusi as a glorified conferencing system. Instead of providing choices for players to choose (and response), Fablusi enables *real* human players to exchange free form text behind of masks of persona as designed by the simulation designers, hence enabling the players to step in the shoes of another stakeholder.

After reading the response to Postscript to "The Psychology of Games", I am now more convinced that a good learning activity should encourage learners to express freely and receive authentic response to the expressions. Isn't Laurillard's conversation theory based on the same premise? However, what about extending the conversation partner beyond a student-teacher dialogue to include peer conversation?

Two of my latest posts are out now

Chain Letters from the Boss - cont'd in Corporate E-Learning

Bill Gate's Solution to American High Schools being obsolete in Learning for 2020

Comments welcome.

Chain Letters from the Boss

I have written a post about a typical corporate scenario in my Corporate e-learning blog.

I am at a loss as to how to handle the onslaught of junk email that is routinely sent internally throughout my company by fellow employees including the executive staff and mostly the CFO, my boss.

This morning I received yet another "John 3:16, Jesus Loves You, forward this to ten people" chain letter email with the animated graphics and all that crap.

I think I have a better solution:

From a corporate learning point of view, is there a lesson that we can learn? If there is any HR people reading my post, you should think about the consequence this may have.

Any better solution? I think there is at least one. I will reveal that tomorrow.

Visit Corporate e-learning blog tomorrow to find out. Meanwhile, what do you think?

The Psychology Behind Games

by Anders Hejdenberg, free registration needed to read the article.

Citing from Roger Caillois's book Man, Play, and Games the following is

a useful system of classifying the different types of experiences that are present in games. A game can include just one or all of these different types of experiences.

1. Competition

Activities where players use their skill to overcome the challenge that their opponents offer. The pleasure lies in developing your skills to outmaneuver the opposition. Football and chess are examples of such activities.

2. Chance

Activities where elements of chance can have an impact on the outcome of the game. The pleasure lies in finding ways to minimize the impact of the element of chance, and the excitement of trying to guess the outcome. Games that are based on chance can also give players the illusion of being able to control or foresee the future. Slot machines and lotteries are examples of such activities.

3. Vertigo

Activities that alters the state of mind by disrupting the normal perception of the world, resulting in a pleasurable state of dizziness. Roller coaster rides and skydiving are examples of such activities. [Albert's addition: The preception of time also changes when you are engaged in pleasurable experience. "Time flies"!]

4. Make-Believe

Activities where we create alternate realities in which we are not bound by the constraints of the real world. The pleasure lies in assuming various characteristics and abilities that we do not possess in our normal life. In this state of make-believe we can feel as if we actually possessed the powers of what we have chosen to assimilate. Role-playing, theatre and reading books are examples of such activities.

I believe these are also important elements in designing experiential based learning activity.

The author continues to give us 8 characteristics of "gameness":

1. It's an activity that we feel that we can perform – a challenge that requires skill
2. We need to be able to concentrate on what we are doing
3. We need to have clear goals for our activity
4. We need to get constant feedback on our progress
5. We act with a deep involvement that frees us from our everyday worries
6. We need to exercise control over our environment
7. We become less self-absorbed
8. Our perception of time is altered

This list looks almost like a checklist we would use to evaluate whether a learning activity is good or not. The only exception may be number 6 in the list. I don't think many educators realise that the ability of giving learners control over their environment is critical to the engagement. Most learning activities are designed to give learners limited choices (e.g. multiple choice??? )

The following paragraph is the first paragraph of the summary of part one of the article, with my modifications to make it looks like a summary for an education paper. The original words are deleted and my words are inserted as shown.

Games Learning activities are activities that we have specifically designed to maximize the amount of pleasure and learning we get from them. Games Learning activities are our way of having fun and extending our ability, regardless of our current life situation. In games Learning activities, we do not have to abide to the restrictions of the ordinary world allowing us to make mistakes to test our understanding. We can create our own rules discover where our specific talents can be recognized and rewarded – talents that would perhaps otherwise go unnoticed.

The above paragraph may feel strange. For example, the reference to fun, and current life situation. However, replacing Learning activities with role play simulation as used in the Fablusi role play simulation platform, this would be an almost prefect paragraph to describe the potential learning outcome and benefits.

Does MSN Search Favor IIS-Hosted Sites?

A study by Ivor Hewitt initiated a discussion among the SEOs (Search Engine Optimisations) about whether MSN search results favour IIS-hosted sites. While the early methodology of Ivor's study is far from perfect, it does show a tendency of MSN search result returns a larger portion of IIS-hosted pages.

Should educators care about such discussion? Probably not as much as the SEOs. But if we are promoting our students to understand information search, resource discovery in particular, then it would be a good topic to monitor.

Principles of experiential education practice

Adopted from the outdoor experiential programs, the US Army War College's Strategic Experiential Education Group has put the theory into practice through the use of role play simulations.

The principles are:

Experiential learning occurs when carefully chosen experiences are supported by reflection, critical analysis, and synthesis.

Experiences are structured to require the learner to take initiative, make decisions, and be accountable for the results.

Throughout the experiential learningprocess, the learner is actively engaged in posing questions, investigating,experimenting, being curious, solving problems, assuming responsibility, being creative, and constructing meaning.

Learners are engaged intellectually, emotionally, socially, soulfully, and/or physically. This involvement produces a perception that the learning task is authentic.

The results of the learning are personaland form the basis for future experience and learning.

Relationships are developed and nurtured: learner to self, learner to others, and learner to the world at large.

The educator and learner may experience success, failure, adventure, risk-taking, and uncertainty, since the outcomes of experience cannot be totally predicted.

Opportunities are nurtured for learners and educators to explore and examine their own values.

The educator's primary roles include setting suitable experiences,posing problems, setting boundaries, supporting learners, insuring physical and emotional safety, and facilitating the learning process.

The educator recognizes and encourages spontaneous opportunities for learning.

Educators strive to be aware of their biases, judgments, and pre-conceptions and how they influence the learner

The design of the learning experience includes the possibility to learn from natural consequences, mistakes, and successes.

This is very much the same principles behind role play simulation.

Tagged as experiential learning good example role play simulation

GreaseMonkey + Flickr = Lickr

Lickr removes the need for Flash. It runs within the web browser Firefox, stripping the Flash before the user can even see it, and replacing it with an equivalent interface in pure HTML and Javascript.

Why? The webstie said

• you often use operating systems where Flash doesn't work, or doesn't work well.


• speeding up pageviews noticeably is important to you.


• you're a web developer and you are interested in this bleeding-edge Ajax stuff.


• using Flickr beta isn't extreme enough for you. You want to run some amateur code, triggered by a brand new framework, in an alternative browser, that tries to modify an often-changing beta interface.

In fact Lickr is the combination of three important concepts:
Flickr - a community for the photo addicts
Greasemonkey - a framework for intercepting the DOM of a website and modify accordingly
Ajax - an intermediate between the webserver and the user.

Instead of loading a webpage, at the start of the session, the browser loads an Ajax engine — written in JavaScript and usually tucked away in a hidden frame. This engine is responsible for both rendering the interface the user sees and communicating with the server on the user’s behalf. The Ajax engine allows the user’s interaction with the application to happen asynchronously — independent of communication with the server. So the user is never staring at a blank browser window and an hourglass icon, waiting around for the server to do something.

Tagged as GreaseMonkey tool

"Conversation With My Evil Twin" blog

Some people found my conversation format interesting. OK, if you like to converse with your evil twin in public, you are welcome to share this blog so that we have all the evil twins at one place. Just send me an email: [albert.ip.w.c _at_ gmail dot com] and I will add you as a contributor to the blog.

Tagged as Blogging

Is eLearning the $500 Toilet Seat of the Technology Industry?

Guess what Brendan Tompkins was talking about - shoveling model of e-learning examplied by Microsoft eLearning site. With a 50" Sony Plasma WEGA High Definition TV, it is the same.

The e in e-learning is NOT the electronic gadget that is being thrown in to help you motivated!

Tagged as elearning bad example

Blocking VoIP Calls: Foreboding Harbinger or Benign Fluke?

See my twisted response in "Conversation With My Evil Twin" blog.

Tagged as Blogging bad example

How Software Patents Actually Work

via Groklaw
It's an animated film by Gavin Hilltrying to explain the dangers of software patents.

Tagged as elearning Patent good example

Massive Multiplayer Online Gaming: A Research Framework for Military Training and Education

via OLDaily.

Like Stephen, I am drawn to the topic of this study because my involvement of online role play simulation. I also share Stephen's view that I don't find this report exciting to read.

Massive Multiplayer Online Gaming sounds good for training and education. First, it is massive multiplayer - implying a collaborative type of learning. Second, it is gaming which seems to solve the motivational factors in training and learning. Third, being a virtual environment, the instructional designer may create an environment conducive to learning.

I would say that these are superficial benefits. We need to look closer and deeper to really understand the critical factors in each of these claims.

Collaborative Learning is not the same as locking a group of learners in a room, throw them a question and magically, these learners will come up with a solution to the question. A massive multiplayer environment is akin to a room with a lot of people inside. Will learning happen automatically? OK, here is where the instructional designer can come in and create an environment conducive to learning. Learning what? How do we organise "massively" many learners to learn the same thing from ALL different prospective without making the environment as dull as drills of marching soldiers?

As noted in a previous post Learning to Play to Learn - Lessons in Educational Game Design, the "gameness" of a game is more than "fancy graphics, well-written stories, or point-based rewards". One of the important factor I have identified was the genuine ability to make choice and face the consequence of the choice made. To see the effect of the choice you made, you need to see changes in the behaviour of the other players (as in the role). When you are in a "massive" multiplayer environment, such effect will have a big rippling effect on the whole system. This will make experimentation much more difficult than in a smaller role play simulation environment.

Am I still interested in Massive Multiplayer Online Gaming as a teaching and learning environment? Yes, I am. But, I am yet to figure out how to use such an environment. Pleae enlighten me.

Knowing When to Log Off

via Stephen Downes' OLDaily.

Stephen correctly pointed out that switching off from the Internet is not a good strategy.

Seasoned Internet veterans know that this just makes information overload worse, because the information doesn't stop piling up just because you've logged off. The key (in my mind) is to stop treating information like a thing, stop treating it as though it were a pile of required reading, but to sample and filter and redirect, to taste and digest and manipulate as needed.

I envy Stephen's ability to filter through evidently huge amount of information daily to bring us the gems.

As I read the article myself, I feel that some of the people out there seem to want to dig their heads in the sand and assume that the world will stop and wait for them. I agree that we need quality time to reflect and reason. I also feel that creativity and innovation are stimulated when I see new ideas (or new application of ideas). If I always read the same person, I can basically predict what I am reading. If I read messages or articles in new domains, I may find application for my own area of interest. Then stop, reflect, try, experiment, further research, talk to peers and make incremental innovations.

Reflecting on my own past, my first significant "invention" is the local area network for Apple ][ computers using its game port. Several different "domains" of knowledge were pulled together. Earlier that year, I heard a presentation about the ISO layer network architecture. Being a Physics student and teacher, I had electronic and digital logic training. I played games on Apple ][ and had experience using the game port as an interface with school Physics experiments for my students (again, that was something I read about from the Scotland Physics projects). At that time, I was fascinated by the CPU designs, OS design, computer algorithms and so on. I also knew how to extend the Basic in Applesoft.

All these seemingly diverse interest pulled together and with the help of four of my brilliant students, we managed to create a local area network connecting those Apple ][ I had at my school laboratory using our own cable and connectors, network software and server software.

Yes, in the 80's, information overload was not as serious as today. Stephen's suggestion, together with a sense of knowing when to stop and encourage in serious thinking, will be a pre-requisite for survival in the new information era.

Fablusi New Website

Fablusi has just launched a new redesign of its website to mark the availability of Fablusi Enterprise Version 2.

It has taken me over 14 months to completely rewrite the software. There are a number significant differences between this new version and the previous version.

Some of the Feature Improvements

• Stages A new concept is introduced. From the initial role selection to the final debrief, a simulation author can define as many or as few stages as required. At the transition of stages, the author can control whether a role can advance to the next stage or not depending on whether there is any incomplete task. The right setting of the interaction space can also be overridden at debrief stage so that all the interactions previously unavailable to some roles will become available.


• Component-based tasks In the previous version, publishing task has its semantic components pre-defined. In the new version, the author can define different semantic components to reflect the structure of the required task. Later, version 2.1, the assessment assistant will be able to pick up the defined components and apply rubrics according to the assessment rules.


• Address book To model "knowing who" is important in some social situation, author can now assign address book to roles. When set, roles can only communicate with those in the address book. An associated function is "introduction" where a role can introduce two other roles to communicate.

Some of the Technical Improvements

• Client-side Processing A lot of jobs are not handled on the client browser rather than transferring the data back to the server for processing. This improves the response of the interaction as well as makes the server scale much better.


• CSS-based look and feel The delivery engine will only deliver the dynamic pages in generic format and an author defined CSS will transform the page into different look and feel depending on design.

Please come and have a look and give me some comment. Tell me whether you like the new interface or otherwise.

Teachers are in big trouble

Stephen Downes' OLDaily pointed to a Plugfest 9 presentation by David Wiley in the powerpoint format. However, if you watch the presentation itself (via the video link), you may pick up the clue from David that the days of teachers as a profession is doomed.

Wiley sets up a nice distinction between the "Centralized / Top-down Camp" (which favours intelligent tutoring systems, automated LO assembly systems, advanced visualization techniques and the like) and the "Decentralized / Bottom-up Camp" (which favours large scale self-organizing social systems, content creation, and more).

In the first camp, teachers are deliberately engineered out of the equation because if the design requires a teacher to students ratio, then the solution will not scale.

In the second camp, as David put it, the indigenous solutions in the online worlds do not have "teachers" as a profession.

If these two camps are the two ends of the scale, where are the teachers?

BTW, the summary provided by Stephen is the more accurate overview of David's presentation than mine here. I just point out one point here.

Cool tools

I reported about GreaseMonkey in my Asynchronous Collaborative Learning Activities blog on Monday. I am continuing to discover the wonderful cool tools that are developed around GreaseMonkey.

Persistent Searches to Gmail

Persistent searches (a.k.a. smart folders or saved searches) seem to be the feature du jour of email clients. Thunderbird has them, Evolution has them, and Mail.app soon will. On the other hand, Gmail is the web mail app to use. While one doesn't normally think of web apps as having such advanced power user features, it recently occurred to me that it should be possible to add persistent searches to Gmail

Scholar Monitor

lets you keep track of authors, research groups or topics [within Google Scholar]

Shared whiteboard in JavaScript

Draw and chat with your friends

Good things will certainly keep coming. You will need to install GreaseMonkey and use Firefox to have all the goodies.

Learning to Play to Learn - Lessons in Educational Game Design

[free registration is required to view]

As stated in the beginning of the article, "use of games in education" is a hot topic. The authors rightly pointed out that there is a huge gap between game designers and educators in the understanding of issues in "using games" in education.

Educators are energized by games' ability to engage with students, to capture their wayward attention and help them learn in rich and dynamic ways. Game designers and developers are increasingly drawn to create educational games as well - perhaps from a desire to make new kinds of games, to create work with a purpose beyond pure entertainment, or even just as an escape from the rigid confines of the mainstream game industry. Each of these camps - developers and educators - has its own agenda for taking on projects, its own set of particular dissatisfactions with the current crop of educational games, and - all too often - a complete lack of experience with the concerns of those working on the other side.

I will let you read the article yourself. However, I do want to emphasis one key point brought out by the authors. Embrace the "Gameness" of Games.

The excitement of games doesn't magically emerge from fancy graphics, well-written stories, or point-based rewards. Good games integrate a number of complex elements (moments of decision-making, challenging goals, rewarding feedback, etc.) to create a fun play experience.

Among all these elements, I believe the ability for the player to be genuinely creative to tackle the problem (presented by the game) is very important too. Like playing chess, you can make whatever move you like, but you also suffer the consequence of your choice. Stupid moves lead to losing the game! Many "educational games" provide limited choices, supported by the notion of scaffolding, is exactly the kind of thinking in educator's mind which kills the joy of game.

In Fablusi role play simulation, we want to activate player's imagination. We want the players to own the persona they are playing as well as own the actions taken. As noted in our guide to the moderator, when we notice that the player may be in difficulties, we only provide them with suggestions (always more than one) and guide them to take their own action.

From our many formative evaluations, we also notice how engaging Fablusi role play simulations have been to the students. We do not need to specify the minimum amount of interaction. Instead, we specify the maximum number of sim-mails that they can send per day. This engaging nature is the result of the "gameness" of the role play simulation. We don't have expensive graphics. Our story lines are simple (no story boards), just a few kick-start episodes and a scenario with a number of threads of potential of conflict and co-operation. We don't have explicit winner or loser. But each team playing a persona is asked to set up their own agenda and they judge their own winning or losing against their own achievement of the agenda.

Designing a "game" is expensive! Designing a Fablusi role play simulation is cheap and fast. Roni can do one in about 1 day. You may take longer. To start, download the design worksheet from Fablusi and good luck!

Role play simulation papers

For those interested in the academic work of role play simulation, I have added a few papers to the site.

Creating Learning Opportunities Using an RPS Authoring Tool
To play the role of someone else requires both reflection and self-reflection - "how do I do this?" and "how does it seem to me that someone else does it?" are the two immediate questions upon which playing a role is based. The interplay between "how I would act" (given my own beliefs, knowledge, values, orientations, modes of action etc.) and "how someone else would act" (given what I know about their beliefs, knowledge etc.) throws into relief the reflective process underlying a RPS - a collaborative process of engagement in reflexive reflection.
The key to creating learning opportunities for the players in a RPS is to create a dynamic scenario that supports on-going and reflexive reflection congruent with the learning objectives the author aims to achieve. It is the transformation of the material to be learned into a communicative environment of problems and interactive information with which participants must actively engage. In the process they can make mistakes or indeed find useful strategies to resolve such problems or test the limits of existing strategies, beliefs, values etc., and their applicability in different contexts.

Predictive Power of Role-play Simulations in Political Science: Experience of an e-Learning tool
The paper argues that role-play simulations, viewed as collaborative thought experiments, enable analysts to examine scenarios that may not seem realistic at the time but which later prove otherwise. It provides examples that seem to predict future events and situations from 9 simulations run between 2000 and 2002, it raises questions about these results and attempts to provide a tentative explanation for them. The paper concludes by suggesting that only when relinquishing the quest for realism in the analysis of the political that one begins to catch a glimpse of political reality.

Where is the Teacher? e-Learning Technology, Authority and Authorship in Teaching and Learning
While most students (78%) who responded to the questionnaire either agreed or strongly agreed that the technology was instrumental in enabling them to be more interactive with peers as we expected, the majority (51%) either disagreed or strongly disagreed that it helped them relate to the teachers in their own time...

Learning & Emotion

Larry Baum, in IdeaExplore wrote,

I was disappointed by the tremendous amount of news time devoted to just one person, Terri Schiavo, in the past few weeks, compared to the little time devoted to millions of people in wars in Congo or Darfur, or suffering preventable deaths from malaria or TB. Just one measure of this imbalance: a Google search for "Terri Schiavo" gave 10.4 million hits, but a Google search for "malaria" gave only 6.4 million hits. This made me realize that many people can't feel empathy for numbers. They need a face and a story on which to hang their emotions, even if the result is a very illogical imbalance in priorities. Stalin knew it; he said "A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic."

This is also true for learning.

Hundreds of experience pass through us daily. Why some stick and become memorable and some get forgotten?

By linking one's learning into some emotions, the learning stays. I suppose it is so for appeal. As Larry further suggested

To redress this, it may be necessary to purposefully play on emotions by picking one person to represent all those suffering from some problem.

To redress for teaching and learning
it may be necessary to purposefully play on emotions by picking one dramatic situation to represent all those similiar problem situations.

Exellence in Instruction Award

As an award to those of you who visit my blog - showing your exellence in recognising good blogging, you are hereby awarded the "Exellence in Instruction Award".


You may download the award and display this award, without modification, on the front page of your website provided that you agree to the following terms and condition.

• You recognised yourself as a true Exellence in Instruction, following strict scientific instructional principles in all your instructions.


• You accepted this award on 1st April 2005 and understand that it would expire in 43200s.

Brandon Hall Excellence in Learning Awards

Do you think I will enter DLS or Fablusi for the "Brandon Hall Excellence in Learning Awards"? Yes, you are right. I won't.

I got an email from Brandon Hall today inviting Digital Learning Systems to enter the awards.

I felt a bit strange. Unless you really know all the relationships of the companies that I am involved, no one would have suggested DLS instead of some others, e.g. the most visible Fablusi among the lot. AND I did not get an invitation for submitting Fablusi.

I followed the suggested link and ended on a page from Brandon Hall for entry. More strikingly, I also note that there is an entry fee of US$495.

If this is a true recognition of excellence for something, I don't think there should be a fee for entry. It looks more like a scam to me! I suspect anyone paying that US$495 would get the hope of being the winner when it is announced in

"Training Fall Conference and Expo Incorporating Online Learning in Long Beach, Calif. Winners will also be listed on our Web site.

It sounds like an local advertisement for Lotto!

OK, US$495 is a small advertisement fee for the business.

I have set down, in the editorial policy of the new e-Learning Magazine, something along this line: "product brochure is product brochure. It is better to be handled by our advertisement department. Do not send to the editors. It will go to the rubbish bin immediately!"

So you may understand why I write this post and make my decision not to enter for the award. However, Fablusi does deserve some recognition!

What can we learn from this? A request for participation

Background
Boing Boing has posted

an interesting tale of an enterprising web page developer, [Mr. Hank Mishkoff] who had set up a fan page for a local mall. The mall developer sued to shut him down, he registered a number of *sucks.com sites (including one directed at the developer's attorneys) and represented himself pro se in the litigation (he eventually had the assistance of counsel) and WON. [I recommend reading the condensed version...the full version is extremely detailed]

[quote taken from http://nip.blogs.com/patent/lawsuits/index.html]

The counsel assisting the Mishkoff is Paul Levy with the Public Citizen Litigation Group who was introduced to Mishkoff by Ronald J. Riley of www.InventorEd.org and also President of www.PIAUSA.org. Riley has an account of his story at a comment to false positve (the second comment).

Request for participation

This is an interesting story and I have spent 6 hours reading through the web pages.

Without legal training myself, I must have picked up a few legalese along the way. But it would be more interesting to note what I have learnt from this reading. The point here is that different people, with different background and interest will read the story and gathered different key points. I am using a technique I used before here. I shall write the lesson I learnt in the next few paragraphs and rendered them in white. If you want to read them, just high-light them. However before you do this, please do the following:

• do NOT read any comment to this blog until you have done the rest of these bullet points


• bookmark this page so that you can come back later


• go and read the story (mind you, it is a long read)


• come back here and post your lessson(s) learnt in the comment


• high light the white space below to read my lesson learnt

If sufficient people pick up my request and post their comments here too, you should be able to compare the differences of these different lessons learnt. Say after a week, I may ask you to come here again and post a background about yourself and explain why what you have learnt is relevent to you. I hope it will be a vivid demonstration of the importance of learner's background to learning to those who are still struggling in the instructivitic domains.

-- Start of my lessons learnt, read by high-lighting the following "white space" --

I have a web-site http://www.scormplayer.com [in order to prevent the links from appearing and instead of creating a different CSS class, all the links to websites are not linked here!]. SCORM is a registered trademark of ADLnet.org. Interestingly, http://www.scorm.com exists and is operated by Rustici Software, LLC. apparently not related to ADLnet. The use condition of ADLnet for its name and logo stipulated that
[quote]While ADL encourages organizations to describe their adoptions of SCORM in their product descriptions and literature, the use of SCORM in a product name is strictly prohibited.[/quote]
Hence, the product for SCORMplayer.com is called Course player and usually prefixed by SCORM Course player because this is a player specifically designed to deliver SCORM-compliant courses.

I read with interest this story, trying hard to verify from the legalese that my use of the reference to SCORM does not violate any trademark owned by ADLnet.

I learnt that, by selling course player's professional license (the course player itself is NOT open source, but is free to use), the fact that I am in Australia does not remove my potential of being sued by someone in a USA court in civil proceedings if anyone in USA has brought any one of my license.

Although Mishkoff eventual won the case, it is obvious that corporate with a huge legal war chest has a significant upper hand. Without the help of Levy, the result of the case would be very different.

Another case I remembered is Lindows vs Microsoft. See for example http://www.linspire.com/lindows_news_pressreleases_archives.php?id=2&all=1 and the series of press release about the ligitation between Lindows and Microsoft. Even with a first bag of gold from mp3.com, the founder of Lindows could not fight against Microsoft when MS started court proceedings in whatever countries that Lindows try to sell to. Although failing to apply an injunction in American proper, by initiating proceedings in various countries were defined a huge blow to resource of Lindows. Eventually, the case was settled (see their press release http://www.linspire.com/lindows_news_pressreleases_archives.php?id=69&all=1 on 29th September, 2003) and Lindows is now called Inspire.

Another interesting case to watch will be SCO against IBM.

When I first incorporate Fablusi P/L into a separate entity last year (before that, it was a business unit running under Digital Learning Systems P/L), the legal fees involved in the transfer of rights of the Fablusi software (i.e. move something I have from my left pocket to my right pocket - ok, there also involved different people who can put the hands in left pocket from the right pocket) was huge (relative to the resource we had at the time).

My unease feeling is whether that is all necessary? and if yes, to what cost? Can small independent people, like me, ever able to do anything?

The Mishkoff case, on the surface, is a positive note - but when I think slightly more, I think he was basically very luck that help was there when it was really critical. For me, being in Australia and with our government leaning towards USA so much, if anything happens to me, the result would be quite obvious. Filing chapter 11 or declaring bankruptcy is a very likely prospect.

Hence another lesson learnt is that I should avoid any ligitation at all cost. I may have chosen to settle the case when Mishkoff was offered the 1000 dollars compensation despire of the additional "after-the-fact" addition of conditions of the proposed settlement.

-- end of my lessons learnt --

Welcome 20,000th Visitor

Last Wednesday, I thought I would welcome my 20,000th visitor in a day or so. It happened today, a week later!

When I last checked, the counter is 20,005. So I went to the log and located my 20,000th visitor who did not leave me a message. However s/he has spent 68min 55sec on this blog, visiting 9 pages using Internet Explorer 6.0 running on a Windows XP.

My offer of a one year free subscription (6 issues) to "E-Learning Magazine" is still on the table. Please come forward to claim your lucky prize. If it was you, please identify yourself by telling me your entry page and your exit page in the 20,000th visit to my blog and leave a way for me to contact you.

Claiming my feed at Feedster

No Need to Click Here - I'm just claiming my feed at Feedster

Towards a Players' Education

In Fablusi, we refer to play in three ways: play as in "playing with fun", "play acting" and "play with possibilities".

We believe that we learn better when we are having fun learning.

From the post linked to this title (by Patrick Mark Kane), it touches on most of the aspects of the way we see play, not necessarily group the concept in the same way as we do. For example:

The role of play for the grand theorists of educational psychology – Piaget and Vygotsky – was to act as a 'practice venue'. Playtime was the zone where children could ready themselves for more organised kinds of representing and symbolising (reading, writing and arithmetic).

To us, this is the notion of "play acting" where the role play simulation acts as a backstage where a player (taking on the persona of a role in the simulation) practices the behaviour in preparation for real world tasks.

As long as the "game", or simulation in Fablusi's case, is engaging, the challenge and problems faced by the gamers/player are part of the challenge which the gamers pay to enjoy. This point brings out clear and sharp by Patrick.

game designers depend on millions of people being prepared to undertake the serious amount of learning needed to master a complex game. If their public failed to learn, they'd go out of business. Kids who talk about 'hard fun' don't mean it's fun in spite of being hard. It's fun because it's hard. Learning happens best when one is deeply engaged in hard and challenging activities.

[my emphasis]

Game designers risk a lot of money in designing games that are engaging. Educators may learn a lot from the game designers.

Yet, the key message from Patrick is that traditional educator should not fight against the game culture.

Australian educational thinkers Allan and Carmen Luke have proposed that the strong emphasis on print literacy in early years education, right across the northern and western world, is actually a kind of generational backlash. And it is directed against new forms of techno-literacy, mastered by children yet mostly baffling to their adult teachers.

and later Patrick continues:

Yet the wider societal context to this is important. This new techno-literacy – which kids are assembling by themselves in their own largely unregulated time and space – is an honest response to a fundamental shift in the structures of post-modern life: the life of flows and networks, the power of culture and ideas, summed up by the 'information age'. Almost entirely autonomously, children are using play to make themselves imaginatively capable for this new world.

Let me just summarise, using Patrick's words again:

The post-modern labour market isn't just constantly producing new and unexpected kinds of job; it also allows children to think about creating their own kind of productive life, one that blurs or morphs all existing categories. The potential life journeys of these young players, full of surprises and performances, should be inspiring for teachers – and especially for those new teachers who might also happily regard themselves as 'digital natives'. How can they develop children's capacities, energies and resilience to thrive in this much more open, risky world?

One further tradition of play, properly recognised and identified, could begin to dissolve those fetters. In the process, we could begin to comprehend the kinds of destructive (and self-destructive) alienation from education that growing numbers of young people exhibit. For the one value of play not yet mentioned is that of play as selfhood and freedom – the protean spark, as it were, that animates our embrace of and participation in all forms of play. Just as those who must play, cannot play, can we adapt this for education: those who must learn, cannot learn?

Learning using Portable device

Elliott Masie sent out a "xLearn Lab Video report" on Device Based Learning on SONY Portable Playstation.

Here is the specification of the Portable Playstation from a SONY press-release:

It has 16:9 widescreen TFT LCD (16.77 million colors) on a 480 x 272 pixel screen. The dimensions are 170mm x 74mm x 23mm with a weight of 260g. It also comes complete with the basic functions of a portable player such as built-in stereo speakers, exterior headphone connector, brightness control and sound mode selection.

PSP also comes equipped with diverse input/output connectors such as USB 2.0, and 802.11b (Wi-Fi) wireless LAN, providing connectivity to various devices in the home and to the wireless network outside.

PSP adopts a small but high-capacity optical medium UMD™ (Universal Media Disc), enabling game software, rich with full-motion video and other forms of digital entertainment content, to be stored. The UMD is 60mm in diameter but can store up to 1.8GB of digital data. There is a build-in copyright protection system has been developed which utilizes a combination of a unique disc ID, a 128 bit AES encryption keys for the media, and individual ID for each PSP hardware unit for content protection.

With that capability in an affortable price range (US250 according to the media), Sony Portable Playstation may be a good device for e-learning. However, how can be used and for what it can be used are still at a very early stage. Elliot suggested that it may be used as a new employee orientation device, or a sale's information/training as well as presentation tool.

He mentioned several times that SONY Portable Playstation can also communicate with nearby SONY Portable Playstations creating a possibility of collaboration, albeit in a small geographical range.

The immediate question I have is how available is the information needed to develop material on such a device and is there any "blank recordable" UMD and the associated writing device available for us to put our training material on it.

ps After doing a bit more research, here is the specification of the UMD:

UMD Specifications
Dimensions: Approx. 65 mm (W) x 64 mm (D) x 4.2 mm (H)
Weight: Approx. 10g
Disc Diameter: 60 mm
Maximum Capacity: 1.8GB (Single-sided, dual layer)
Laser wavelength: 660nm (Red laser)
Encryption: AES 128bit
Profile: PSP Game (full function)
UMD Audio (codec ATRAC3plus, PCM, (MPEG4 AVC))
UMD Video (codec MPEG4 AVC, ATRAC3plus, Caption PNG)

Look like we can burn UMD using a DVD writer if we can the media in that size and the appropriate software!