The Department of State’s Tech@State team will be hosting the 5^th edition of Tech@State events at the Jack Morton Auditorium in the Media and Public Affairs building of George Washington University on Friday May 27 and Saturday May 28. Over 200 attendees will “explore the mechanics of games, business and sustainability, design, education, international aspects, games for social change and much more.”

MetroStar Systems will be supporting the Tech@State team with our MyStanly twitter moderation/display application, and our CEO Ali Manouchehri is slated to speak on two separate panels on Day 1. He will first address the topic of “Games, Business and Sustainability” and then present with a panel about “Military and Government games”.  The event features an impressive collection of government, academic, non-profit, and industry experts/tech innovators who will be sharing their experiences and exploring many aspects of serious games. The agenda and complete schedule is now available at the Tech@State blog.

Here are some additional URL links that may be helpful if you are interested in attending or want more information:

• Tech@State website:  http://tech.state.gov/
• Tech@State: Serious Games event registration:  http://techatstate-srsgames.eventbrite.com/
• Event Agenda & Schedule:  http://tech.state.gov/profiles/blogs/serious-games-content-and
• Bios of speakers & panelists:  http://tech.state.gov/profiles/blogs/serious-games-speaker-bios

For those of you who cannot attend the event, you are in luck! This event will be live streamed on Tech@State’s UStream channel: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/tech-state.  You can also follow the conversation on twitter by searching the hashtag #TechAtState and following our live tweets @metrostarsystem.

*** Updated 5/31/2011 ***

The event was a great success with excellent panels, great presentations, and great ideas shared. Here is a video of the “Military and Government Games” panel that Ali moderated at the end of Day 1:

Video streaming by Ustream

Microsoft is really cranking on getting Project Natal this year with hopes of getting this onto the market by the end of 2010. Check out the following article, which talks about the science behind Project Natal and how other competitors are reacting:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=microsoft-project-natal

Will Natal have the same effect that the Wii had on us, for the past few years?�
The Wii Remotes slipped out of people hands onto their expensive flat screen TVs before, will my hand hit the TV this time? Will I be in shape to play any of their games?

So many questions, yet, I can’t wait to play. Which reminds me that I need to buy an Xbox 360!

Today, X-Life Games launches the “Who Am I?” Poetry Contest.  The contest encourages you to use poetry to describe yourself on a global level while sharing ideas of tolerance and respect for other cultures, societies, and environments around the world.

“X-Life Games has been such a fun and educational experience thus far for everybody involved, and we wanted to figure out a way to celebrate this success,” said Daniel Nguyen, Community Manager of X-Life Games. “By coordinating the Poetry Contest, we reward our fans with a challenge that yields fun and exciting prizes, as well as continues promoting cultural unification and understanding through the X-Life Games modules.”

Submissions for the contest will be accepted until midnight on Sunday October 4th.  The VIP Judging panel, featuring MetroStar Systems executives and two professors from Georgetown University, will select finalists.  Then there will be a public voting period beginning Tuesday, October 13 that will ultimately decide the winners.

Prizes:

• 1^st Prize:          Apple iTouch for 1^st place winner & $1,000.00 USD donated on behalf of the winner to a charity of the winner’s choice*

• 2^nd Prize:          Apple iPod Nano for 2^nd place winner & $500.00 USD donated on behalf of the winner to a charity of the winner’s choice*

• 3^rd Prize:          Apple iPod Shuffle for 3^rd place winner & $250.00 USD donated on behalf of the winner to a charity of the winner’s choice*

*MetroStar Systems will provide a list of acceptable charities that the winners can select from to have the respective prize donation donated on the winner’s behalf

The contest will use Wildfire App‘s Promotions application and will be hosted on the X-Life Games fanpage on Facebook.  Please visit http://www.facebook.com/xlifegames.community for complete details, rules, and to enter the contest.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=hE4Pyp2qaYc

X-Life went out to Washington D.C. to ask “What would you do with an X-tra Life?” People had some pretty creative and interesting answers!

Become Part of the X-Life Games Community and leave a comment or your thoughts on the Facebook fan page.

Follow @xlifegames on Twitter: http://twitter.com/xlifegames

Become a Fan of Xlife on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/xlifegames.community

You can also view the video here on YouTube: http://bit.ly/ysZwe

But to get back to the conference…I will be attending several sessions today and will keep you all posted.

In the meantime, you can find out more about the conference here:
Conference URL: http://www.elearndevcon.com/

Twitter handle: @elearningdevcon

Conference Sponsor: http://www.rapidintake.com/

Check back in as I will be summarizing sessions on:

• Instructional Design
• Mobile Learning
• Educational Gaming

First session:

“I See What You Mean!” Visual Design in eLearning

with Lee Bandy (@LBand)

This session was a quick but very useful crash course on using graphics in eLearning modules. Lee took us through some visual design concepts, and showed us some practical examples from her own work.

About Lee (bio from eLearningDevCon):

Lee Bandy is an Instructional Systems Designer at Magellan Health Services in Columbia, Howard County, Maryland. In addition to designing and developing e-learning products, Lee brings a creative design perspective to her role on the Corporate Learning & Performance Leadership Team. With eight years of experience and an M.A. in Instructional Systems Development, Lee’s technical and creative areas of expertise include instructional technology, interactive web-based e-learning, visual screen designs, blended training program designs, and competency-based instruction.

Selecting Graphics to illustrate and communicate ideas:

• Use metaphors that are readily apparent.
• To evoke provocative messages, use grayscale images. In grayscale, focus on balance.
• If you can’t find the right image, make your own, take a photograph, or modify already existing clip-art, auto-shapes, or stock images.
• Follow the “rule of thirds” to compose a picture
  • Divide layout into thirds (vertical and horizontal)
  • Primary focal point should be off-center on one of the vertical lines.
• Balance a photos foreground and background by reducing compression of background
• Another method for bringing in your own graphics: Screenshots.
  • Don’t use “Print Screen”! It doesn’t have fast editing features.
  • Use screen capture software like FastStone or Snag-It.
  • Adding effects (drop shadows, etc.) can strengthen and enhance screenshots.
  • To sample screenshots without blurring, use “Nearest Neighbor” sampling.
• Tip from the audience: Spend some hours to create vector-based templates that you can use to drop in screenshots when necessary. Could be graphic templates for images, or movie-clip templates for Flash animations.
• Don’t hesitate to crop images if/when necessary.
  • This can be very useful when dealing with limited screen size.
  • And the mind tends to ignore the missing portions of familiar images and mentaly “fill in” the rest.
  • Cropping can be great to keep the original resolution but fit only the necessary part of an image to a limited size.
• Of course, when you can’t find the right image, make a new one.
  • Combine elements from different images, stock photo, etc. to generate an image with impact:
  • 
  • Here, she used a picture of a laptop, and a software screenshot, tilted and overlayed on using layers in Fireworks..

Next session…

Flash Character Animation tips and tricks

with Ryan  Simmons

About Ryan (bio from eLearningDevCon):

Ryan Simmons has been working in animation for 13 years at studios such as Warner Bros. and Dreamworks on numerous feature films. His Flash animation skills have won many awards for his short films and TV commercials. Ryan is the co-owner and art director of Cartoon Solutions.

(You can find all kinds of tools, tips and tutorials at http://www.cartoonsolutions.com/)

In any animation, begin with observing yourself and other people.

While creating character animations, Ryan’s method is to use a tablet to draw straight into Flash. But in Flash, motion tweens used on symbols tend to skew images too much. His method to alleviate this: Use the motion tween on the first image until he has gotten it to the limit, just before it starts to skew. Then, he draws a new image from where the last motion tween’s movement left off. How many original drawn images are required depends on the frame rate. Lower frame rates require less images; at 24 f/s or greater, more are required.

Using bones tool in Flash CS4 is still a difficult process, as there are still bugs that need to be fixed.

Instead, for our example, Ryan manipulated motion tweens along the timeline (as well as two separate hand images) to animate a rather sinister-looking masked man to simply raise his arm. Class example:

In animating, make all movements to take place on arcs. This makes the flow look more natural.

He first set the motion tween in the movement of an arc. Then, used some simple strokes to make the motion flow smoothly:

And for lip-syncing, he made sure to make seven different mouth shapes to represent the different mouth positions:

• Closed (M, B, P)
• Open (Ahh)
• Consonants (C, K)
• Consonants (T, D)
• Consonants (Th and L)
• Consonants (F and V)
• O, U, or W

Examples:

On each frame, create a new key-frame, click on the symbol, and select which frame to use. Or, use a tool like Anim-slider pro from animonger.

This is why for lip-sync animation, you want to use graphic symbols . It’s way way way easier.

Also, if you’re changing facial expressions (such as eyebrows) repeat all seven mouth frames.

Next session…

Mobile eLearning: A Reality

with Robert Sanregret

About Robert (bio from eLearningDevCon):

Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board Bob Sanregret, a graduate of Loyola Marymount University in California, has over 20 years experience in learning, distance learning and knowledge development. Bob blends his senior executive experience at three of the largest learning companies in the world-Sylvan, Global Knowledge and Learning Tree International-with his education and training to bring you Mobile Technologies. Bob has worked with over 50 companies and government organizations to define and design mobile technology content solutions.

The Basics of M-Learning:

• Portable - Users have to be able to take their learning anywhere and everywhere
• Remote - Should be able to have it regardless of WiFi/Broadband connections
• Handheld Devices - not laptops
• Quick Access - Can I be up and running instantly?
• Urgent/Required Information - Mobile learning is not the resizing of standard eLearning modules

There are 4.1 Billion mobile phones out there today. There upwards of 47 million BlackBerry subscriptions, and 11 million iPhone subscriptions worldwide.

“[Mobile phones] have replaced keys as most the most important thing that people take with them before leaving their homes.”

So how do we leverage mobile tech for our organizations? What kinds of things can be done on mobile devices?

• Learning
  • Courses  (possible, but not the best medium)
  • Assessments (can be instant, and very effective)
• Marketing
  • Surveys
• Performance Support
  • Job aids
  • Check lists

Robert’s organization teamed up with the Kauffman Foundation to encourage youth interest in math and science, to help American educational competitiveness. In sports arenas nationwide, they implemented the Sports Bytes Challenge (powered by HotLava Mobile):

www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ygus7OG6fA

Robert gave a great example of a mobile survey you can take (on your mobile phone, or on a laptop/desktop) at jamwap.com. This survey took him 2 minutes to prepare using the HotLava software.

2 Key takeaways:

• Don’t mistaken mLearning for shrunken eLearning. You’re better off just sticking to eLearning.
• Make your applications universal. Target as large a portion of the 4.1 billion as you can. Don’t lock yourself into a single platform.

Next session…Lunch! I’ll be back in the afternoon (again, mountain time) to fill you in on more sessions. For now, leave any questions, comments, feedback, responses to anything covered so far. I’m in sponge mode right now, and I’d love to hear from you as well!

And, back to the sessions:

RISC: A New Model for Measuring eLearning Success

with Jacob Bunker

About Jacob (bio from eLearningDevCon):

Jake Bunker is the performance improvement specialist for FamilySearch —a worldwide non-profit genealogical services organization. He holds a Master’s in Business Administration (MBA) and has taught as an adjunct university professor in management and organizational behavior. Jake has many years of management experience including management in retail, training coordination, and volunteer coordination and training, and brings a business results approach to training and evaluation. He specializes in training, measurement, and performance improvement.

In a study done by Corporate University Xchange, 28% of companies accept solid anecdotal recap of eLearning assessment, along with conservative estimates as backup.

All that companies want from training boils down to two things: Efficiency, and Effectiveness.

Enter the RISC model:

Efficience	Effectiveness
Cost/Time	Reach
Impact	Satisfaction

Make evaluation metrics to fit these four categories.

Example:

As a Satisfaction metric, use the Net Promoters Score (NPS). NPS asks the key question: “How likely is it that you would recommend this course for colleagues?” Then, this needs to be tracked and calculated (click NPS link to see calculator).

Key takeaways:

• Establish a desired (measurable) result for your eLearning program with management.
• Using the RISC model, create and implement an eLearning evaluation program.

.

http://www.xlifegames.com

Happy Holidays!