Mud-Moo

Re: [ED5850-L:718] Re: Difs between MUD, MOO, IRC, etc.?
WandaChristensen (christen@ccinet.ab.ca)
Mon, 22 Mar 1999 22:41:59 +0100
Thanks for this info Jan....it will be useful for my final assignment. Cheers! Wanda --

>From: jgladish@chill.org (Janice Gladish)
>To: Multiple recipients of list <ed5850-l@scu.edu.au
> >Subject: [ED5850-L:718] Re: Difs between MUD, MOO, IRC, etc.?
>Date: Mon, Mar 22, 1999, 6:50 AM
> >TO A REQUEST (BY A MEMBER OF THE WWW.EDU LISTSERV) FOR
CLARIFICATION OF THE
>VARIOUS "CHATS" AVAILABLE,a subscriber RESPONDED WITH THE FOLLOWING
>EXPLANATION WHICH CLARIFIED FOR ME, WHAT MUD AND MOOS ARE...
HE GAVE ME
>PERMISSION TO FORWARD IT TO THE LISTSERV FOR 5850. I HOPE YOU FIND IT AS
>USEFUL AS I DID. I AM INTERESTED IN FINDING OUT MORE ABOUT HOW THIS ALL
>WORKS GIVEN HIS EXPLANATION.... (It's lengthy, but interesting).
> >JAN
> >>IRC -- acronym for Internet Relay Chat. Now a days, it is referred to
>>simply as chat. You type something in, and other people can read it
>>immediately. They type in responses, and you read them right away. It is
>>a way of carrying on real time conversations through the Internet, through
>>your keyboard.
>> >>MUD, MOO -- These have some of the same characteristics of IRC. You can
>>type in a message, and others can read it and respond to it. MUDs and MOOs
>>are different in that they carry with them an environment or context.
>> >>You may remember the original computer adventure games where you are
>>presented with some text describing the place.
>> >> "You are in a wood paneled room. There is a large
>> desk in front of you with a diary on the desk.
>> There is a door to the North and a door to the South."
>> >>Then you type in two or three word commands to "read book" or "go north" or
>>"go south." If you type "go south" the text is replace with...
>> >> "You pass through a large wooden door into a lush
>> garden that virtually surrounds you with green..."
>> >>Your task is to solve some mystery, defeat a dragon or vampire, or some
>>other quest. MUDs and MOOs are the same thing except that they are on the
>>Internet. You go to a MUD, and are presented with the description of a
>>place. You type two and three word commands to navigate and manipulate the
>>text-based virtual environment. One of the real treats of MUDs is that if
>>you enter a room and there is someone else logged into the room from
>>someplace else on the Internet, then that person becomes part of the
>>landscape and you can converse with them and even emot complex gestures.
>>If I type ":turns two backward flips" then anyone else in the room would read.
>> >> David turns two backward flips!
>> >>This is kind of exciting for a forty-something year old.
>> >>MUD -- "MultiUser Domain"
>>MOO -- "Multiuser domain Object Oriented" (a little more sophisticated than
>>MUDs >>MUSH -- "MultiUser Simulated Halucenation"
> > >>For education, the value of these things is getting students to create
>>their own environment. Rather than having students build a shoebox
>>diarama, help them create a text-based virtual rendering of a Native
>>American village, where the student can even become part of the place, a
>>member of the village who can take other students on a tour. The reality
>>of the environment that the students create depends on the richness of
>>their descriptions.
> >THIS WAS HIS SECOND RESPONSE TO MY REQUEST FOR PERMISSION TO
FORWARD HIS
>POSTING:
>I am happy for you to forward the explanation to your colleagues. I became
>fascinated by MUDs in 1992. This, as Art said, was before the Web. A
>project in Arizona (the project is now called Pueblo) put at-risk students
>in a MUD that was essentially flat asphalt. They were asked to create a
>city. These kids did just that by writing megabytes of richly descriptive
>text. These were kids who you couldn't get to write their names in
>traditional classrooms.
> >One of the truly amazing effect that the project had on these kids was
>therapeutic. They were able to create a character for themselves as they
>worked on their buildings and parks. The bullies became heros, the shy and
>bashful became boisterous, and they all learned that they could find other
>and better ways of interacting with each other than the unsuccessful
>mechanisms that they used in RL (real life).
> >A fairly long chapter of my book, "Raw Materials for the Mind: Teaching &
>Learning in Information & Technology Rich Schools," is also devoted to
>MUDs. I include an excerpt from an interview that I held with the teachers
>of the Pueblo project in my virtual (MUD) studio on a hard disk at MIT.
>The full text of the interview can be read at:
> > http://landmark-project.com/workshops/MariMUSE_Interview.html
> >I continue to be fascinated by these environments. My son who is 10 uses a
>MOO called MooseCrossing. It was created by Dr. Amy Bruckmon (sp). She
>worked on the concept and on MooseCross while a student under Pappert at
>the Media Lab at MIT. MOOs are more sophisticated. My son is creating
>objects that are interactive. These are text-based objects that behave in
>specific ways depending on their environment. He likes to create pets that
>do certain things when you pet them or say hello, or whatever.
> >The point is that he does this by writing fairly sophiticated programs
>using a programming language. What fascinates me is that he is learning
>this skill from other 10, 11, and 12 year olds who also frequent the MOO.
>Not from adults. I know nothing about this stuff. I wonder what these
>kids might do if they were developing these skills within some context
>created by a teacher. For instance, build a 15th century Danish castle as
>you are reading Hamlet...or was it MacBeth.

Muds-Moos