Sim-U investigates educational uses of virtual games
Posted on Saturday, September 8, 2007
The worlds of work and play crossed paths Friday on the University of Arkansas campus.
A mixture of video game makers, college students and faculty members turned out for the University of Arkansas’ Sim-U conference at the Donald W. Reynolds Center for Enterprise Development.
Conference committee member Melissa Blouin said one of the goals behind holding Sim-U was to explore ways virtual games might be used in education. Much of the conference focused on simulated games where players and participants create their own worlds using the simulated program.
“ The main goal of the conference is to start a dialogue between faculty and students and speakers about how it can be used to educate students, ” she said.
A possible use of a simulated program would be in architecture, Blouin noted. Students may not be able to build a real building, but they could use a program to create a building and examine if their design would work.
Other possibilities might include students and faculty meeting in a classroom within the game world.
Another example of a sim game was a program where the player would be an immigrant trying to go through the U. S. immigration pro- cess, conference committee member Fred Limp said.
One of the speakers, UA graduate student Jason Cerchie, spoke about his activities within the simulation game “ Second Life. ” Cerchie showed examples of buildings he and others had constructed within the game’s world.
“ You learn to move objects around, ” he said, adding, “ One of the cool things about the virtual world is you can teleport from one place to another. ”
One of the best things about “ Second Life” is if you make a mistake with a real estate investment, it costs much less than it might in real life, Cerchie said.
“ In games you can fail without the cost of realworld failure, ” he said.
Evan Billingsley, a UA journalism major, said the conference had been interesting and he was impressed with how players can make money in “ Second Life. ”
Billingsley said it was his interest in video games prompted him to attend the conference.
“ I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for my interest in video games, ” he said.
“ My take is this will change how people use the Internet, ” Cerchie said. “ There will be a 2-D Web and a 3-D Web. ”
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