Next Stop, GWAP May 15, 2008
Posted by Jeff Giddens in : Collaboration, Emerging Tech, Gaming, Innovation, Media, Science, Software, Teaching & Learning, Technology, Thinking, webtools , trackbackHere’s an interesting premise: have people all over the world play fun, web-based games in order to make computers more intelligent. It’s a win-win situation that’s well worth exploring. There are some pretty excited folks behind this innovative approach–scientists from Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science (people like Luis von Ahn of CAPTCHA fame, Mike Crawford, Mike Brotzman, Edison Tan, and graduate students Severin Hacker, Edith Law, and Bryant Lee). The group has dubbed their project GWAP (Games With A Purpose). The games at GWAP are designed to be fun for human users. While humans are playing the games at GWAP they are building computers’ capacity to do useful things like identify objects or pieces of music. The games are:
- ESP, which displays images to two players who each try to guess words that the other player would use to describe the image
- Tag a Tune, in which players describe songs so that computers can search for music other than by title
- Verbosity, a test of common-sense knowledge that will amass facts for use by artificial-intelligence programs
- Squigl, a game in which players trace the outlines of objects in photographs to help teach computers to more readily recognize objects and,
- Matchin, a game in which players judge which of two images is more appealing, is designed to eventually enable image searches to rank images based on which ones look the best
Consider how this strategy could be adapted for research and education. Making a game out of a normally tedious process or concept might just be a highly productive means of increasing involvement and understanding. For example, Fold-It is harnessing the power of this technique by inviting others to participate in collective protein folding.
With an ever-growing number of web 2.0 resources and other interactive tools popping up, educators should consider allowing pupils to use technology resources to explore content in similar ways.
Comments
[...] are quite intriguing. Out of all the places I’ve been reading about GWAP, the post from the SEGA Tech blog seems to be the most concise and informative, so I’d encourage you to read their [...]