Group items tagged

Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory

A necessary development...

Hard science on the importance of play for human development. How are games and play different? What are the categories of play? Can video games give us the same result as play? Should we have a category of "video toys" separate from "video games"? If we move toward video game education we need to make sure play is a portion of that education.

An Argo, in an article we read, is a boat that was completely replaced: "Argo is an object with no other cause than its name, with no other identity than its form." I have been told that the human body is an Argo, that it replaces all its cells every 7 years, we are only structure, pattern. Current evidence says this is not true, some matter remains: "About the only pieces of the body that last a lifetime, on present evidence, seem to be the neurons of the cerebral cortex, the inner lens cells of the eye and perhaps the muscle cells of the heart."

check this out--data visualization as 3-D environments

I just read about this recently, really fascinating. It turns out the same group Foldit, is working in a similar format to develop better methods of teaching math and science in schools. And because these digital solutions are available in a virtual world, they are able to use tools like the internet to bring together gamers all over the world and really "hive mind" solutions to these scientific problems. In the article I read, the scientists talk about the flexibility the gamers have in working with 3D puzzles, and how it doesn't take long at all to solve these visual puzzles because it's just a game, and with a little bit of guidance it doesn't take long at all to catch the gamers up to speed with how proteins and enzymes 'should' fit together. Obviously there are some flexible rules, otherwise the computer would have figured it out earlier. So I just thought this application was really fantastic, especially when networked to include potentially more of the public sphere. Makes me scientifically endlessly optimistic!