richardsebastian.com

I turned 40 years old on Friday and Elaine and I celebrated the beginning of my long decline with pie, duckpin bowling and lots of friends.

Elaine reserved a few lanes at Plaza Bowl and invited about 30 or so friends (and their children). Plaza Bowl is located about a mile from our house and is one of the few duckpin alleys left in USA. The place is endearingly shabby. Everything is a bit dingy, damaged and/or warped. The place has never been automated, or even upgraded. There are separate buttons, like little doorbells set into the wooden ball return rails, that clear and reset the duckpins, and there is always the possibility that at some point during your game the pins will get hung up and bring the game to a halt. Then you shout over to the owner, Russell, who walks to the back, fiddles with something, and suddenly, several balls shoot down the return and your pins are once again reset. The place has closed several times, but always seems to find a way to re-open. I fear it is only a matter of time.

Some notable gifts I received: a container of Clubman Talc (there must be some mysterious 40+ use of this I have yet to figure out–chafing? golfing?); epsom salts (a joke, I know, but they have already come in handy); George Michael’s greatest hits (in the spirit of making lemonade from lemons, it does have Father Figure, Freedom, I Want Your Sex and Faith, songs I can now admit to liking now that I am old and uncool); and a few copies of Found magazine.

I just read how 60 is the “new 40.” So does that make 40 the new 20?

One of the reasons I created this blog was to establish a place to warehouse my thoughts on my research, namely educational alternate reality games (ARGs), virtual learning environments (such as Second Life), and participatory media and its possibilities for learning. During the day my concerns mostly involve the political, financial and technical minutiae of setting up a web-based learning program for adults, and I get little time to think about other things. Don’t get me wrong: while adult basic education can be very different from K12 and post-secondary learning, in many ways I think it could benefit from being included in the conversation on using such novel approaches as games and virtual worlds in the classroom. But the field of adult education is, I am sorry to say, a technological backwater. There are reasons for this: adult ed is typically the red-headed stepchild of K12 programs, and there aren’t enough full-time teaching or administrative positions to make it an attractive career option for younger (and more innovative) teachers. Typically, adult ed teachers work as K12 teachers during the day, or are retired K12 teachers. Also there isn’t much money to invest in technology. So, there are so many more basic, proven technological innovations that need to be incorporated into adult ed that considering something like Second Life or an ARG would just be too much of a jump forward.

Perhaps I am wrong about this. But when I suggest looking more closely at these new tools during meetings with my colleagues, who, compared to much of the field, are pretty forward-thinking, technologically, I get a pretty tepid response.

Well, I will have time to devote some more thought to my research when I formally begin working part-time next week. In preparation for this, I have been making contact with many of the people active in the ARG community about my interest in studying the use of ARGs for pedagogical purposes. Everyone has been very encouraging, and very enthusiastic about this topic. Especially helpful was the release of the ARG Sig Whitepaper on ARGs. There was an entire section of ARGs in academia, both as a topic of study and a tool being used to teach. But I can’t seem to find anyone currently using (or planning to use) an ARG in this way. I have also been making connections with folks on the campus where I work (VCU) to propose creating an independent study ARG design class to create an educational ARG. There has been nominal interest, but not enough for any signatures to be applied to the necessary forms to make it happen in the next year.

As I am able to spend more time tracking possible research subjects, perhaps I will have more luck finding someone (anyone) producing an ARG with some kind of pedagogical goal.

Hillary Clinton and Joe “Emperor Palpatine” Lieberman distract from the real first person shooter going on in Iraq to wage war against simulated violence in video games. From Game Politics, a blog about the intersection of video games and the political world:

There will be major news on Capitol Hill tomorrow as two long time critics of the video game industry partner with the ESRB for a public service announcement campaign designed to promote ratings awareness.

In a press conference scheduled for 3:00 P.M., Senators Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) will appear with ESA president Doug Lowenstein and ESRB president Patricia Vance to announce the launch of a nationwide television campaign to promote awareness of video game ratings.

Tip of the hat to my friend Jill, who sent me a link to the Seeds of Tolerance documentary video contest. Unfortunately, online voting has ended for this, but you can tune in to the site to see which video wins. One of the videos is about the sad, sad history of Virginia’s Native American tribes called Ghost Tribes. Another is an independent video by Richmond resident Lucas Krost called One Nation Under Guard about the swelling population of inmates in America’s prison system

There are some interesting connections here, having nothing to do with this contest. Jill is Native American and replaced me as the ABE/GED teacher at a local jail. Coincidentally, I have a bit of history with Lucas Krost, too. For some reason I remember signing him up for a membership at the independent video store in Richmond where I worked, geez, 12 years ago. I like to believe this made a significant impact on his filmmaking career.

With the recent news of yet another e-coli outbreak, probably the safest way to chow down on a Taco Bell De-luxe Chicken Ranch Fajita Wrap Chalupa Meal is online, in Fourth Meal, Taco Bell’s greasy, urban, heavily-promotional virtual world. It’s like a slick, stoned, horny version of Second Life where, instead of creating things for people to buy, things are made for you to buy. Burrito shaped things. Turbo-guacamole infused things.
Some of the really fun things you can do in Fourth Meal are watch Taco Bell commercials (!), wander around with other “hottie” avatars, and play games like rock, paper scissors. (Seriously, though, with obesity reaching near epidemic proportions in the US, is it really responsible of Taco Bell to promote an additional meal-the one between dinner & breakfast-especially the cheese-drenched and greasy kind you receive in a bag at a TB drive-thru window?)

Burger King gets on the gamer wagon, too, with the release of four original X-Box video games featuring their creepy BK mascot, The King.

Next: a Kenny Roger’s Roaster’s MMORPG with a Coward of the County theme, perhaps.

Although as of this writing the news has not been posted to Curry’s website, the Richmond Times-Dispatch today reports that Black Entertainment Television founder Sheila Johnson has written a $5 million check to UVA’s Curry School of Education, where I am (still) a graduate student. This is on top of a massive gazillion dollar donation 2 years ago which is being used to construct a new building for the school (and demolish and salt the earth a la Cathage of Ruffner, a windowless, brick atrocity plunked down among UVA’s neo-classical buildings that currently houses Curry). According to the T-D:

Sheila C. Johnson, a philanthropist and businesswoman, will donate $5 million to the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia, sources confirmed today.

A member of the school’s foundation, Johnson, who lives in Northern Virginia, will target the contribution primarily to finance clinics to help children with psychological disorders that impede their learning.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine and Johnson, the biggest contributor to the governor’s successful campaign, will announce the establishment of the new U.Va. center at a press conference tomorrow in Capitol Square in Richmond.

Jaman is a new site/service that has plans to deliver HD-quality films to subscribers. Ho hum, right? Like, even my mom is planning to offer high-quality movie downloads to subscribers. Jaman, though, is going for an interesting niche market: world cinema. We know what that means: Bollywood!

According to Jaman’s website

Jaman is a global online community for people passionate about world cinema - a place to discover, enjoy and connect with cinephiles. We provide a secure way for filmmakers to distribute films with unmatched cinematic fidelity over broadband.

Unmatched cinematic fidelity, huh? Just what is missing from those syrupy, tragicomic Bollywood movies.

Here is a video I found on the Serious Games site. The video was produced by the Orange County Department of Education and includes interviews with Clarke Aldrich, James Paul Gee and Henry Jenkins who were all keynote speakers at the SGS 06 conference. Damn, wish I had been there.

BTW, the video contains 20 minutes of blisteringly fine academic geekiness. Consider yourself warned.
[kml_flashembed movie=”http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=6117726917684965691&hl=en” width=”400″ height=”326″/]

This game (www.gamedesign.jp/flash/worldmap/worldmap.html) still seems a bit klugey–it is hard to easily zoom in and out while you are playing the timed game–but it is a fun way to bone up on geography. I have been fascinated by maps since I was young, plastering my bedroom walls with the maps that came with National Geographic magazine. So I thought I would be pretty good at this game right off the bat. That is until I was stumped by countries like the Kyrgyz Republic and Eritrea. Only 25% correct? Ouch.

My scores have improved significantly after a few tries. If you want to practice, just click around on the map without clicking Start. The names of the countries you select will appear at the bottom of the screen.

Film & video

7 Second Delay (2004, digital video, 2.2 min)
Final project for a digital video class in UVA’s School of Architecture. To my credit, I shot this (almost) completely by myself in the television studio at the Curry School of Education. It was a pain in the ass. Tapdancing courtesy of Ryan Looney. Skinny arm courtesy of Tom Rose. Music by the grrrls in Le Tigre.

The Airplane (2005, 16mm & DV, B&W, 2 min.)
Part of the Addendum project for Brooklyn-based band, One Ring Zero. The band made their songs available to the general public and asked anyone to select a song and make music videos for it. I chose The Airplane a) because I like that particular song and b) it was one of their shortest. I was grad school and didn’t have too much free time to spare. Much of the footage I used was from the Prelinger Archives. I shot footage of ORZ at Mojo’s in Richmond, VA. Many of the resulting 20 or so videos are incredibly well-done. All of the videos are available on the DVD Addendum, which you can purchase at the One Ring Zero website.

Signal (2004, DV, 1.4 min)
Shot at night in the winter at the busy intersection outside of my apartment in Charlottesville. I found when I waved the camera around, the video image blurred and bled in an interesting way. The image here is of a traffic light. Music is from Godspeed! You Black Emperor (or is it Godspeed You! Black Emperor, or is it…).

The Twin (2005, DV, 3 min)
This video emerged out of an earlier failed idea I had. The original idea was to shoot a steamy bathroom mirror and overlay the “steaminess” on my face throughout the video. Instead, I began shooting a conversation with myself in the bathroom, which developed into The Twin.

Curse (2005, digital video, 3 min)
I set-up a little backdrop on the Downtown Mall in Charlottesville and, like some kind of circus busker, invited people over to be interviewed about their favorite “curse” word. Not surprisingly, I was turned down by quite a few folks, maybe because it was Easter Sunday and folks were feeling pious. One of the interviewees, I found out later, was a Lutheren pastor.

Photobooth (2002, Super 8 to DV, 3. 3 min)
Shot on Super-8 for “Attack of the 50-foot Reels”, a yearly event put on by Flicker, Richmond’s independent film outfit. You get a cartridge of Super-8, shoot it (editing it in camera) and see it for the first time during the show. I played a manipulated King Kong song, “Old Man on the Bridge,” to accompany the movie when it was shown. Features friends George, Lee, Dave, Alex, Elaine, Tim, Petra, John, Sarah and my old dog Soup.

Bigfoot vs. The Indian vs. ZZ Top (2000, Super 8, 15 min.)
Coming soon…

Websites

Ekoji Buddhist Sangha
http://www.ekojirichmond.org

This was my first web site. At the time I built it, all I knew was a bit of HTML I learned in a class at a local community college. It is in need of updating, which I will get around to one day.
EDLF 546: Software Applications
http://richardsebastian.com/546/

This website–and the others I used for my Curry classes– is based on a design by Dr. Steve Whitaker, who was a doctoral student at Curry and had previously taught several of the technology classes I took over, including Teaching with Technology and Digital Media Development. The php coding was all his, although I did know enough to “borrow and repurpose” for my own database. Anyway, credit where credit is due: thanks, Steve.

EDLF 703: Educational Game Design
http://richardsebastian.com/703/

This site supported the Educational Games class I co-taught with Dr. Mable Kinzie in the fall of 2005. I added a security page that allowed only enrolled students to access the class files.
EDLF 707: Digital Media Development
http://richardsebastian.com/707/

This site supported the summer class I taught in 2004 and 2005.
Curry School of Education
http://curry.edschool.virginia.edu

I was part of a 4-5 person web management team in the Educational Technology office that helped maintain and update the Curry site.

Elaine & Richard’s Wedding site (2006)
http://richardsebastian.com/wedding

I built this site for my 2006 wedding.

Photographs

Barcelona, Spain (2004)
Spain & Portugal (2004)
London & Barcelona (2005)
Flickr

Flash & PHP

Soup the Dog Puzzle
Striptease Banana
What’s your favorite song?