Life & Technology

An interesting little story to come out of Canberra caught my eye this morning. Australian academics are going to co-ordinate a research project involving Finland, Singapore, Britain and Portugal that involves having interactive computer simulations instead of pen and paper exams.

Titled the Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills, the project aims to bring the terror of many a child’s end of year into the 21st century.
A couple of interesting issues to come out of this. The head of the project, University of Melbourne’s Professor Barry McGaw says they will not only be changing the medium by which you sit an exam, but they are also looking at custom content for individuals. For example, a question might be asked of an individual, and depending on how they answer it will depend on the next question. So if you answer a simple question, the computer will then give you an harder one.

Now, I assume that it will give an equally measurable performance of each student, so that the kid who answers more harder questions, gets the kudos that goes with that aspect of the exam. The professor believes current exams are too rigid to properly define individual ability. This might be true, but surely universities and employers need some sort of yard stick to measure the capabilities of an intellect.

Also, this could possibly do away with cheating (as long as mini palms and mobiles are left at the door). There’ll be no more trying to find the exam in the teacher’s desk, because those taking the exam will have no idea what the questions will be due to the next question being decided by your previous answer.

Sounds like an interesting way of sitting exams. It will take the best part of three years to complete the study, so we’ll be hanging out for a while to get the results.

Strange happenings occurring in Europe this week with the The Pirate Party winning a seat in the European parliament. These guys, who are based in Sweden, support The Pirate Bay people who were sentenced to jail for having a website that hosted illegal content for download.

At the outset, I will go on record as saying I don’t agree with copyright infringement. Some people think they have a God-given right to get stuff for free. Because a copyright is not as tangible as a car, house, food or any other commodity that you have to pay for, people think no harm, no foul. To be fair, some of these monolithic record and film companies garner little sympathy with their multi-milliion deals. However, there are a huge number of bands and independent film makers who eke out a living in the industry, let alone those on the periphery like the crews etc, who have little or no job security.

Now, aside from the issue of stealing content, voting somebody into a governing body based on this pretext does seem to send out the wrong signal. Here, you will have somebody in parliament who votes on legislation whose only reason for being there seems to be to make file sharing legal.

What sort of precedent doe that set? What if some other very important vote comes before the parliament and their vote is needed? It’s not the first time somebody has been voted into office based on a cause celebre, but what happens when you expand their mandate to include all the other mundane, and not-so mundane pieces of legislation that go through?

While the download folk seem happy with the outcome, the wider implications are little more unsettling. It will be interesting to see how this unfolds and what sort of effect this parliamentarian has on the inner mechanisms of Europe’s top legislative body.

Last night I went to the launch of Sims 3, the third installment of the Sims franchise brought out by EA. EA launched Sims in 2000 and since then has become the best-selling PC game in history with more than 100 million copies of the original game, its sequel Sims 2, and expansion packs shipped so far.

And I got to thinking, why has it been so successful? I think there are a myriad of reasons – it’s easy to play, family friendly and can offer hours of entertainment. But one of the key things they have got right, is the game hooks into the female market, something most games don’t do and haven’t done for as long as the Sims. Sure, there are women out there who love their gaming, but this past time is dominated by males aged between 19 and 39 to this day and the arrival of the Wii has been the scale tipper in the female and family direction.

This current rendition of the Sims looks certain to be just as popular as its predecessor with more add ons and interaction for gamers. Right now, the game is only available for the Mac, PC and mobile platforms – it looks awesome, and not just for the girls!