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Building a Personalized Diagnostics Package

 

Building a personalized diagnostics study package requires dedication -- not to mention a lot of knowledge and a lot of work.

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Index of Page Topics

The Package

Simulation and Training

Visual Basic

Tasks

Development Software

Programming

The Context

Authoring Software

Simulation Studies

Programming

Hypermedia

ActionScript

Modeling

Scripting Languages

Java

Simulation

Computer Graphics

Computer Video

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The Package 

The diagnostics package is a system that provides diagnostics study and omputer-assisted, group-based training of skills: It involves:

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The Context

This site draws on the powerful hunting model to build its games and training programs. Tracking is involved. And of course so are targets to be tracked and intercepted, and then dealt with in some fashion. The obvious example is the use of guns and bullets and animal or human targets. Tennis is a little less but still obvious case in point, the ball itself being the target and struck with a racket. So are other sports. And don't ignore the stock market -- you track prices and perhaps make a purchase. The price at the ultimate trade is even called the strike price. All of this target shooting occurs in one or another environment, which I call the context.

To understand what I mean by the skills context, consider the context of tennis. First, the tennis court alone is not tennis. An empty court is just a slab of concrete (or some other such material) with a net of a specific kind strung across its midsection. And if there were no people around, it wouldn't even be that much (a "court" is a human percept, so without perception there is no tennis).

The context of tennis is established by the objective nature of the court as well as by our presence in it, together with our perception of it, which determines its subjective nature for us individually. The context identifies what is or isn’t possible for us to do, tennis wise. Both physical and personal characteristics bear on what can happen. Both factors combine to make certain actions possible, and both put strict limits on the possibilities. The possibilities themselves show up as the set of all trajectories that fit the court. So we have to look closely at both characteristics to learn what information they generate. It is only by means of this information that we can know them. Similar defining statements can be made for trajectories (motions, movements, skills) in other contexts. In each setting, too, both objective and subjective factors guide and control what can occur.

To have tennis you need players (the perceivers), and you need tennis rackets and a tennis ball. Not just any racket is acceptable and not just any ball will do. You wouldn’t think of playing tennis with a squash racket, for instance, or with a baseball bat. And certainly not with a kitchen spoon -- even a large one. The squash racket is too light to hit a tennis ball properly over the net. A bat is entirely inappropriate. And a kitchen spoon is ridiculous. Nor would a baseball be a proper substitute for the tennis ball. And the peaches I just pulled off the tree, as hard as they are, would be no better than the baseball. (I gave the peaches to the local baseball team, but they sent them back after breaking two of their bats.) Less appropriate still would be to try to play the game with no racket at all, as in handball.

The point is, the components of the context have to fit together and have to match the interpretation of the situation and the behavior it implies. In tennis you need people using the rackets to hit the ball back and forth across the net in accordance with the written and unwritten rules of the game. The tennis context is the social entity that includes the court and the equipment and the rules and the players. It is an arrangement (like many others) created by us to engage in a specific form of recreation and competition. The context of tennis means nothing to your neighborhood cat or dog. It means nothing even to the cat lying asleep in the middle of the service zone. It matters only to those of us, humans alike, who wish to participate in this form of recreation and "friendly" competition.

Because of its inherent nature (as specified by humans), the tennis context, like any other (formal or informal) arrangement, imposes various conditions on its participants – self-imposed, culturally acceptable conditions. The setting allows for a variety of tennis possibilities and also imposes constraints on what is allowed to occur. The size of the court, its shape and surface texture, and the size and shape of the net strung across its middle admit to only a certain kind of action. The size, shape, structure, and weight of the rackets and the ball contribute to the possibilities and constraints. And so too do the height, reach, and speed of each of the players, as well as the player’s physiological structure (which cats or dogs don’t share).

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Tasks to Be Performed

Building the package calls for a number of tasks to be performed. Among them are:

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