Media Scapes

Wecome to the next generation of gaming - Media Scapes! The first generation of games involved sitting in your chair using a controller. The second generation like the Wii gets you out of your chair. The third generation of games gets you out of your house. Welcome to the MediaScape.Media Scape. Click here to watch a videoHP labs video

Media scapes can be informative, educational, or just pure fun. What do you think?

This is HP Labs own video about a game called Roku's Reward. Could be dangerous to play but it gives an idea of possible directions:



Here is a YouTube video about 1 person's opinion. Not too informative but worth a view



There is a lot of potential with Media Scapes. How do you think they could be used in your context?

Name	Comment	Date
Sarah	Nick, this is really interesting. Basically this is a simplified software development kit for devices that use Windows Mobile (eg the HP IPaq) which sets this up as a direct competitor to Apple's iPhone platform, and also to Nokia's Symbian platform (Nokia are also working on 'open source' development tools like this). A lot of early research in mobile learning focused on PDAs like the iPaq - recommended by HP as the Mediascape platform of choice (ttp://wiki.mscapers.com/bin/view/Main/SupportedDevices), naturally enough! These don't seem to be as popular now that large-format touchscreen devices like the iPhone and the HTC Touch have arrived. The Mediascapes site notes two HTC devices are 'recommended by Mediascape users' (presumably, over the iPaq) which may reflect what people are buying. I think Mediascapes would be very useful in large museum settings - perhaps the grounds of an historical building. There is an example in the Mediascapes Suite of this at St Fagan's Natural History Museum but I only have a Mac so I can't download it - I wonder what its like?. What the Roku video shows is a key issue raised in a lot of mobile learning research: the 'walking around head down’ syndrome. I kept wondering when Roku was going to get run over by the other players on bikes and skateboards! Researchers in this area have reported that museum staff are concerned that visitors with mobile devices will focus on the virtual space at the expense of the physical space. Maybe we need VR glasses to go with our handheld devices to make this a bit easier?!	6 Sept 09
Nick	Sarah, I agree completely with everything you say, especially the format wars. HP plumped for the Windows mobile platform, possibly because Microsoft is the world's biggest player out there. Obviously, they didn't foresee either the iPhone or Google launching Android. Even HTC who previously ran Windows Mobile are now embracing Android. See the HTC Touch HTC Hero, a gorgeous phone. Interesting you should mention large museum settings. Hp developed an activity based around the Tower of London, it's more of a game than something educational but I believe the kids do learn something and it is more memorable. Escape from the Tower of London.The heads down syndrome will obviously persist. Although I believe content is only triggered by getting to a specific location, users will keep their eyes glued to screen for directions and to see how close they are to something. VR glasses with a heads up display will solve this to some extent although I imagine it being like terminator with constantly changing data.	6 Sept
Cathleen	Nick, I am thinking about an assignment I am preparing at the moment for students in grades 10 and 11. It involves taking pictures that indicate globalization in their own hometowns. They have to put the pictures on a wiki page and share the significance. They are creating questions to create dialogue. I was thinking of how the mediascape could be used in my class. If students could create a game or a tour that others could then participate in. The problem would be the cost of using the technology. Our school has students all over Alberta so it would be interesting to see if we could create a game that could be played around the province.	Sept 8 '09
Sarah	Cathleen's idea gets to the heart of the problem with mobile learning generally - its hard to get a single activity to work on everyone's personal mobile, and its usually impossible to get everyone to buy the same format handset. I had a quick look at the Mediascape forums and there are a lot of people on there asking for support advice - questions range from 'is my device supported?' (and its interesting how many WinMobile devices still need workarounds to get them to function - probably a result of frequent hardware/software updates) to 'Will MediaScapes work on my iPhone/Nokia/Tom-Tom etc' (the answer: no/no/maybe!). Nick, not sure if you've seen the CreateaScape page set up by Futurelab http://www.createascape.org.uk/ - Cathleen if you're interested there's quite a good teacher page there. The research was done in 2007 and the findings can be discovered here: http://www.futurelab.org.uk/projects/create-a-scape/research	8 Sept 09
Sarah	Nick - I was curious to see how the MediaScape is actually created (I had a look on YouTube, this is probably the clearest 'creation' video I could find: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHMAnhGn6Gg). On the mScapers forum there is a post about using Mac desktop virtualisation (Parallels, VMWare etc - see http://forums.mscapers.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=557) so I guess that's one way to get it to work on a Mac (probably cheaper to use your work PC though!).	8 Sept 09
Nick	I have a Windows Mobile phone and believe it or not it won't play YouTube clips until I get a plug in that works. There is an alternative if you have an Android phone which is Layar. I can't see proprietry format programs lasting and I imagine that Java or Flash based standards will evolve in the future.	todaysDate
Sarah	Are Android phones taking off where you are? They don't seem to be getting much uptake or interest here. Business people are opting for Blackberrys or iPhones (the iPhone market is booming, I think more so in Australia than places like the US, because there are 4 telcos with very good deals). I note the Layar site indicates they will be developing for the iPhone next, and there are rumours that AR functionality will be built into the next iPhone OS. You might be interested in this article about the potential barriers to AR .	09 Sept 09
Nick	Last year, every student in my class had a Nokia, some had second phones of other makes but Nokias were the phone to have. Most had N95/N96 or E90 (Communicator). Now at least 1/3 have a Blackberry's but still no iPhones. Blackberries are so popular becuase email and chatting are so prevalent and they have a keyboard. Also the data package is the most competitive. If you want a 3g or 3.5g package for mobile internet it can be twice as expensive as the Blackberry option. Now I've heard that the new Nokia is using a Linux system.

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