primer

Wolfire Games reports that WebGL is now being adopted by Safari, Mozilla and other browsers. WebGL provides Javascript binding To OpenGL ES 2.0, the same graphics library used by iPhone games. This could conceivably lead to Primer development tools like Unity being able to compile games directly to the browser's WebGL without using plugins.

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We've begun our first sprint of the Primer project.

We're using Basecamp as a team collaboration tool with Agile Scrum methods.

It seems very nimble and well-suited to helping an adaptable team like ours get things done. I like it enough that I'd recommend it to others. If you want to try basecamp yourself, you can help fund Spacepnk and the Primer by giving Basecamp our affiliate code: ALEXPEAKE.

StraighterLine's $100 per month all-you-can-eat college courses edge us one step closer to the Primer ideal of computerization plus on-demand online mentorship. The online school is featured and explained in Kevin Carey's excellent piece in Washington Monthly:

She went online looking for something that fit her wallet and her time horizon, and an ad caught her eye: a company called StraighterLine was offering online courses in subjects like accounting, statistics, and math. This was hardly unusual—hundreds of institutions are online hawking degrees. But one thing about StraighterLine stood out: it offered as many courses as she wanted for a flat rate of $99 a month. “It sounds like a scam,” Solvig thought—she’d run into a lot of shady companies and hard-sell tactics on the Internet. But for $99, why not take a risk?

Solvig threw herself into the work, studying up to eighteen hours a day. And contrary to expectations, the courses turned out to be just what she was looking for. Every morning she would sit down at her kitchen table and log on to a Web site where she could access course materials, read text, watch videos, listen to podcasts, work through problem sets, and take exams. Online study groups were available where she could collaborate with other students via listserv and instant messaging. StraighterLine courses were designed and overseen by professors with PhDs, and she was assigned a course adviser who was available by e-mail. And if Solvig got stuck and needed help, real live tutors were available at any time, day or night, just a mouse click away.

Crucially for Solvig—who needed to get back into the workforce as soon as possible—StraighterLine let students move through courses as quickly or slowly as they chose. Once a course was finished, Solvig could move on to the next one, without paying more. In less than two months, she had finished four complete courses, for less than $200 total. The same courses would have cost her over $2,700 at Northeastern Illinois, $4,200 at Kaplan University, $6,300 at the University of Phoenix, and roughly the gross domestic product of a small Central American nation at an elite private university. They also would have taken two or three times as long to complete.

The Polymath's Primer is a learning game that makes self-actualization addictively fun. It is an evolving educational experience platform that establishes a lifelong relationship between the learner and mentors inside of an extensible virtual world. You can think of this as the "wikipedia" of online games.

In order to create the primer initially, as well as help it gain critical mass, we will require an army of coders. Enter codecorps.

Codecorps Development Army

Codecorps' prime objective is to help develop the Primer.

NASA is working on an MMO and they're doing it using Unreal 3 according to a recent interview in which they say Unreal 3 will allow players to submit content created using U3 modding tools.

The goal of using a widely available engine, Heneghan said, is to allow users to add on to the world.

"We want anybody that can go pick up a copy of Unreal Tournament III for probably $19 at the store now to be able to get content that could be submitted for inclusion in the game," Heneghan told Big Download.

Alex Peake spoke with the NASA MMO developers at GDC SF 2009 and asked them the most important yes or no question: Have you played Alpha Centauri? They have, and they get it, and they're even open to trekonomic social innovations along with the expected space technology stuff.

Why is NASA interested in launching a Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMO)?

Persistent immersive synthetic environments in the form of massive multiplayer online gaming and social virtual world, initially popularized as gaming and social settings, are now finding growing interest as education and training venues. There is increasing recognition that these synthetic environments can serve as powerful "hands‾on" tools for teaching a range of complex subjects. Virtual worlds with scientifically accurate simulations could permit learners to tinker with chemical reactions in living cells, practice operating and repairing expensive equipment, and experience microgravity – making it easier to grasp complex concepts and transfer this understanding quickly to practical problems. MMOs help players develop and exercise a skill set closely matching the thinking, planning, learning, and technical skills increasingly in demand by employers. These skills include strategic thinking, interpretative analysis, problem solving, plan formulation and execution, team‾building and collaboration, and adaptation to rapid change.