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.

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!

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!

News reached me this week that Ryan (Games Degree Graduate) has got his dream job! Ryan worked with the Real Projects on a e-learning project in August. his input and new ideas were a huge help and everyone at RP is really pleased for him.

Ryan produced a great model of the forum using the Unreal engine for his final year project. A stunning piece of work.

Everyone wishes Ryan good luck as he starts his career in the games industry.

phew…after what seems like months of writing, designing and coding we have managed to upload our new website. We’ve added a lot more content about what we do and improved the layout of the pages. 

This is the third version of the site and we’d welcome any comments about the site.

I’d forgot how tricky it is to get everything together for a new site!