I’ve previously blogged about our interest in game based learning and games design. It is nearly a year since our trial with the NUCA games degree started and its proving to be a success. It has been a great experience for everyone involved from the Real Projects team to the NUCA students. I think it is fair to say that everyone who has been part of the programme has learnt a great deal and it has led to the scheme being shortlisted for judging by the EDP’s Business Awards. We are all hoping to make it to the final shortlist! Combining games design and instructional design has led to some great results, one of which is stressmeless.org - take a look!

We have been using a range of tools including the brilliant Thinking Worlds. I’ve read a few reviews about Thinking Worlds from e-learning designers who have been equally glowing their reviews but have mentioned the steep learning curve. Working with NUCA and also our game designers we’ve been able to develop learning objects in a matter of days. The interface is similar to game engines that George and Sam were already familar with. We are constantly developing learning objects and games using Thinking Worlds and the reaction from friends, colleagues and clients has been really great. In the short time that we have beenusing the tool it is clear that it offers a great range of possibilities for education and business. If you want to see some of the games that we have developed send me an email or call the office and we can set up a web-ex to show you.

On the game design front there is an excellent article in this month’s Edge magazine about the development of the new FIFA game, even if you are not interested in football the section on the development of the AI to enable more accuracy when kicking the ball is fascinating.

I thought that I would share with you my top ten tools for 2009. These are the tools that I find really useful, I might not use them every day but they really help out week by week! I’ve linked out to all the websites so you can go and find out more about them for yourself.

Thinking Worlds

A great piece of software for rapidly developing virtual environments, simulations and game based learning. Our games designers are building learning objects in days!

Twitterfon

You’ll need an iphone but this software lets you update your account when on the move as well as getting your own twitter feed. Get the Pro version to update multiple accounts.

Basecamp

We’ve been using Basecamp since it first came out and we still love it! Great for using with clients and it keeps things nice and easy.

Moodle

Open Source - used by many, lots of commercial support if you need it and a great user community.

Tickspot

Time tracking software, links with Basecamp and it has an iphone app. Easy to use and brilliant for time management on projects.

Wordpress

Can be used for a range of uses including blogs and websites. There is a wide range of plugins available to support your development work. It is also very easy to set up!

BBC Learning zone

A wide range of videos for download from the BBC on a range of subjects and topics.

Web-ex

Online meetings and much more. Very useful for working with clients, showing work and minimising travel. NCSL have made great use of web-ex over the past year.

wordle

A great web app where you can generate world clouds from the text that you provide. Paste in text, rss url or del.ico.us username.

TED: Ideas worth spreading

A whole host of brilliant lectures on a range of subjects, well supported by an iphone app. There are some inspirational lectures available for you to view.

We are going to be at the E2BN Conference on the 23rd and 24th June. We are going to be exhibiting and showing a range of our work. Also at the show will be Russell Prue who recently spoke at the Norfolk e-learning forum. Come along and find us!

It is always good to come across a new magazine or book that you really enjoy and know that a lot of your friends will also like. I recently came across a magazine called Make while I was in the USA. It is published quarterly and costs near $15 but it is well worth it. The magazine features loads of really cool inventions and projects that you can carry out at home. Some of them are US specific and do require a certain level of skill (that I don’t have ) but they are still really interesting to read. The current issue involves making soap from bacon fat, building a bike stand, making a forge to create nails, building a LD brick light and tweeting your electric usage.

If you like the Jonny Lee wii video then you’ll like the Make website, it has loads of really great articles and videos. One example is making a 24 hour time lapse video.

Enjoy

I recently read a post on Clive Shepherd’s blog about how he spends his time reading blogs, posting, using twitter etc…It was an interesting post and got me thinking about how we spend our time using web2.0 tools and utilities and whether there was an hierarchy to our use?

Twitter, Linkedin, Blogs, Wikis, Forums, Ning, Websites, News Feeds, RSS Burns - just a few of the tools that we are currently using in the office. We don’t really have an order of importance for them, but their use was somewhat influenced by our location, IT device and time restraints. We’ve found Twitter to be a great app when used on the iphone, we barely use a PC to update or ‘tweet’. Whilst we never really use the linkedin app on the iphone…..ah…but then we do use the yahoo app…..and skype……but not really the RSS feeds….but we can update wordpress via the phone…..then we only really update linkedin at the pc…and the blog gets updated when we are in the office…..website updates at the PC…..wordpress sites on the move and in the office….errr and we need to do some work.

I have some friends who restrict their time on these apps, which might be a good idea. We’ve got quite a good setup and routine for updating…although the blog hasn’t been updated much recently We only really tend to add when content when we come across something that we think is interesting and people might like to hear about….we hope!