Friday, October 21, 2011

Video Tutorial: Create a Game with Impact (HTML5)
Create a pong type game for the browser in a 15 minute tutorial? Create a more complex game that runs on any platform with HTML5?

OK, the games (example: BioLab Disaster) you can create with this seem to me dreadfully boring, though lots of people enjoy them. What's most interesting here is the platform and library nature of the tools.

A library like this allows mini-games to be embedded in larger learning apps. Which is what we aimed for all along. If your individual style of learning can be reached by the addition of such games, you should get it. HTML5 and Javascript are light and ubiquitous enough to make it effective.

Impact isn't the only such library, and you may want to check out others. Yet it seems off to a good start. Game developer Mag says "Impact is the first truly professional-grade JavaScript and HTML5 game engine to hit the market."

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Cloud Cannibalism: Is PaaS Killing SaaS?
Though I hadn't put it in these terms, this article exactly finishes up what we started yesterday.

The education/assessment space needs more than Software-As-A-Service. It needs highly customizable, open, transparent software.

Those requirements attracted us to Ruby in the first place. And TDD completes that process.

Monday, October 17, 2011

Why Test Driven Development Has Snatched Much of My Time And How It Will Pay Off

OK, that's a pretty big topic for a blog post. Yet I want to get something up about the sparseness lately of interactive history resources. Which after all is the core topic of this blog.

The cheesy answer is 'go read The RSPEC Book.' While not an unreasonable approach, said book (and everything else I read for months) left me hanging.

Cucumber seemed appealing on the surface and unattractive the first step in. Controller and model tests are good for working through details, but not what I needed to get things going.

And everything online about testing seemed to be just a bit too much yesterday and not quite enough today.