NMC Campus Observer

Challenges & Solutions to Teaching in SL: Drawing Math and Groupness

CDB Barkley (aka Alan Levine) : Jan 10, 2008 03:37pm

Yesterday was part two of our series on Challenges & Solutions to Teaching in Second Life featuring students who had taken Lisa Dawley’s course last semester at Boise State University. Getting started was a challenge in itself as the Second Life Grid was down until 12:30PM PST, so we had a late start. But wow, as soon as the grid was open, people logged in quickly.

We got to see two excellent presentations and demos. First up, Leslie Beaumont, a mathematician, described the problems in “Freehand Drawing for Math Instruction in SL.” There is no built in ability to draw shapes that are not predetermines, e.g. math functions; one needs to be able to generate as needed, freehand drawings to explain certain math concepts.

There is no problem at all with math illustrations and diagrams in SL. I could give a professional level lecture in SL with confidence with any diagram i needed. The problem comes at the Q and A session and its really important in teaching– one needs to be able to draw impromptu to teach math well in response to questions. This is a specifically SL issue — SL does not support inworld drawing

She first shared how she tried Cubist Scarborough’s Whiteboard. I recall trying this about a year ago and is quite clever. It requires the drawer(s) to use a web-based Shockwave application to do the freehand drawing, and the images are reads into SecondLife by some httprequest scripting. As is there is some delay in drawing in the web and seeing in SL.

Leslie shared how this lead her to learn LSL scripting to create a new tool- Leslie’s Chalk.

This tool allows one to free draw almost any shape. The chalk can be lifted and put down to create separate curves, and colors can be applied.

The chalk contains a mark — it rezzes the mark at intervals depending on whether it has moved, and the mark then stretches itself in the direction of motion. This was quite tricky to implement both on level of quaternions and vector calculus and on level of object oriented programming… You draw by clicking and dragging the chalk. Originally it was sidewalk chalk, but physics creates problems with that so it is now nonphysical and draws on air in plane of vision

It is a really impressive tool! One can see that Leslie has learned how to really make it generate what is needed, so it might take others some practice to get the technique. One downside is that it creates a lot of prims! But there is a simple command to erase.

Leslie’s Chalk is available for L$200 (I bought one!) – IM Leslie Beaumont for info.

In the next segment, MsMauri Collins, MissAnnie Ducatillon, and Menody Collas shared what they learned in class about what they called “Groupness”- the dynamics it took to work together though being remotely separated and some of the activities they undertook in Second Life to address this dynamic.

We have a copy of the content on their shared notecard: groupness.txt

Both of these sessions are also archived from the largely un-edited chatlog:
challenges-solutions2.txt

We greatly appreciate the effort and enthusiasm from all of the people who shared their Challenges and Solutions

Story filed under: Teaching and Learning

See all stories by CDB Barkley (aka Alan Levine)