Bucky Barkley

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Housed on Otis Island (128, 128, 0), each project challenged its creators to develop an idea, establish a production line, and translate the idea into (virtual) reality in a short period of time and with a limited budget. The students had 3 hours of in-class time and 10 hours of in-world time to complete the environments they designed. None had any prior experience in Second Life.

Each of the three classes was alotted 3100 prims for their project. The themes chosen were “Pirates and Atlantis,” “Heaven and Hell,” and “Lost World and Mythology.” Each detailed environment is a visual feast, including elements like swimming fish, molten lava flows, and soothing fountains.

According to Wright, the students found that working in the 3D environment was challenging and stimulating, if occasionally frustrating. Students cited the team-building aspect of working together on a project like this as one of the high points of the experience. Problems they encountered were related mostly to hardware and bandwidth issues.

If you missed the Buzz and would like to see the projects, visit Otis Island (128, 128, 0) to take a look around. Hurry, though: the space will be entirely cleared in about a week, and the objects returned to their owners, to make room for the next group of new worlds.

For more information, see the report of Michael Wright’s Virtual World Project in Second Life.

Plain Text Transcript | Rich Text Transcript | Photos

Mags Writer is hosting the next NMC Campus Teachers Buzz- a trip to Otis Island

As he describes it:

Otis College of Art and Design associate professor Michael Wright took three Classes of Otis digital sophomore students into the virtual world of Second Life where they developed and created content based on a class-developed theme.

The project, which was created on the Otis Island in Second Life, required team building, out of the box creative thinking, introducing students to working with 3d & 2d virtual tools, working with a budget (3000 lindens per class), and working with a limited amount of building blocks (3100 primitives per class). Each team/class developed a production pipeline and a theme for there area. Three hours of in-class time and 10 hours of outside of class time were devoted to this project. None of the 55 students had second life experience.

They were required to learn proprietary software to engage in the process. The process required students to create and design their own personal avatar. After creating the avatar each had to manage to get to Otis Island at an assigned time. At the island they were given brief introduction to movement, flying and building. The production pipeline began with brainstorming sessions. Once the themes were established the teams went to work creating content for their individual areas. The themes developed were “Heaven and Hell”, “Pirates and Atlantis” and “Lost World and Mythology”.

When: Monday, February 18, 2007 9:00am PST (check for local time)
Where: Otis Island (128, 128, 0)

Your NMC host and contact for this Buzz session is Ninmah Ash.

To give you a taste of what Mags has done, we met up with him last week for an NMC Campus Studio One interview where he shared a bit about the unique programs at Otis College of Art & Design, how he got into Second Life, and how this first project with students fared (and their reaction to the project). In summary, he took his students through
a project design and production process, working as teams on the themes outlined above.

Interview with Mags Writer (20.4 Mb MP3, 22:15)

See a comprehensive summary of Michael Wright’ work on the Otis web site which includes evaluation from the students as well as their comments.

Otis Gallery in Second Life, modeled after a real building on campus that was built originally for IBM (note the punch card motif). Inside, the SL version, you will find ongoing exhibitions of student work

In this session, we will assemble at Otis Island so Mags can tell us a bit more about what is available to see here, then you will go and explore the student projects, and return for some followup discussion.

Willow Shenlin got us off to a great start by sharing her bilingual dictionary modified from an SL Glossary. This is keyword searchable by typing in to chat and it also provides a link to an mp3 file so you can hear the word being spoken! The one she demoed was Lakhota/English but other bilingual dictionaries can be made! You can get a notecard of all the instructions for using this simply by typing “glossary help” (minus the quotation marks) when you are close to the dictionary. Go get your copy now from NMC Labs where this and other gadgets will be available for the next few days. Let’s hope some of our SL language teacher community will start providing these bilingual dictionaries for other languages. Their production would make for great student projects, becoming fantastic in-world resources, expecially when combined with SL’s Babbler! Also check out the Lakhota Language booth in International Plaza on Info Island International. Great work Willow!

Sendao Goodman was next with a number of gadgets including a teleport tool called Solar TP, which can be used for tours, or moving around to different student project presentations near the end of a course in SL. He also gifted us, and our students, with a texture organizer and a trivia tool. Finally, he shared a slide viewer he scripted from Lyr Lobo’s work, which pre-loads the slides (textures) in the background, resulting in almost zero delay for the image to resolve when moving on to the following slide! His bag of goodies also contains a holodeck but he didn’t have time to demo this, so a great set of gadgets to go and pick up. Thanks Sendao!

We then moved on to 3D mindmapping with Butch Dae. Based on ones created in 2D software, this 3D version starts off with a sphere, which,when clicked, rezzes an ‘hourglass’ for each topic. The owner can control whether the tool can be for private or public access. There can be up to eight levels of topics (nodes) within the mind map and you can drill down into each topic and back up again. Information about a particular topic can be obtained from typing a command in chat (Open Detail). Once no more additional hourglasses appear, you’ve drilled down as far as you can go for that mindmap. Like the other gadgets, this one seems to have great potential for collaborative student group work. Full instructions are on a notecard, which along with the the VIT mindmapping tool itself, can be picked up from the south west corner of the central area of the NMC Labs sim. Our thanks Butch!

Next came NMC’s CDB Barkley who shared a couple of gadgets. One was a random avatar prize giver, with scripting work by Sendao Goodman. A list of avatar names are placed on a notecard inside the Prize Giver and chosen at random from this list … hmm random formation dance teams anyone? The other gadget he showcased was an image annotator he created based on script work by Ann Enigma. This allows people to add comments, via chat, to an image in a slideviewer. These comments are cumulatively displayed as floating text above the corresponding image/slide. This gadget will be really useful for a number of purposes; not just for learning activities but perhaps also as a way of gathering feedback on learning activities in a session or sessions in a course. Many thanks CDB! (and Sendao and Ann!)

We then shot over to look at some great gadgets from long time SL educationalist, Eloise Pasteur. These included an evaluation tool and a 3D display of stock prices … for all those budding finance students!! Eloise unfortunately wasn’t able to make it as this Buzz session took place in the early hours in the UK, but do check these out on the NMC Labs sim or at any other number of Eloise’s store locations in the picks in her profile.

Giving as always, Lyr Lobo treated us to some great seating and setting arrangements for teaching and learning and also explained the slideviewer in some more detail. Go and check out Lyr’s gazebo, lounge seating and pillows (and her slideviewer) to be found inside a brown, rope-tied bag of gifts in the southern central area of NMC Labs. And don’t forget other free educational tools that Lyr has gifted to the SL educational community at previous events, which are available on the nearby NMC Conference Center sim. We followed Lyr’s settings and tools with a quick trip skywards for a tour of Stephane Zugwang’s Virtual Reality Room with CDB!

Finally, Ann Enigma showcased some of her latest tools from her and her students including the People Sorter (great for getting students into groups on the fly), Inspiro-Sphere (providing an inspiration for the day!), a tool that interfaces with the web to give the current weather for any location around the globe, and another web interface tool for searching Yahoo! News stories! Ann also put up a web link to her web-based LL script auto-production tool, Script Me! - incredibly useful to students and teachers alike. She ended by creating anticipation for the soon to be released version 2 of her great Info-Fez tool - and if you don’t know about this, then go and visit Ann’s Casablanca sim and her students’ work with Virtual Morocco!

“Show us your Gadgets” was a really popular session and we didn’t have time to cover all of them including Graham Mills’ StoryMachine, which was a real pity. So with calls for having this as a Teachers Buzz regular, look out for a future installment …. soon!

Plain Text Transcript | Rich Text Transcript | Photos

When: When: Feb 4, 2007 4:00 PM PST (check for local time)
Where: NMC Labs (130, 114, 22)

Note: You will need to join NMC Guests or NMC Members group to visit this sim.

You can see a list of the stuff on the wiki that we set up for people to let us know what they can bring. So gar we have:

• StoryMachine (Graham Mills)- reads a script of commands from a notecard and displays a sequence of prims dynamically connected by particle streams, thereby telling a story. More info at http://tidalblog.blogspot.com/2008/01/dusting-off-storymachine.html
• Lucky Chair HUD - Do you want a fun way to teach students about the grid? Do you like free stuff? The Lucky Chair HUD is free, fun, and useful! Created by the Lucky Chair people, the Lucky Chair HUD indicates freebie chairs that begin with the first letter of an avatar’s name. Desideria Stockton will distribute and model the HUD.
• Lyr Lobo Goodies - Lyr emailed and said she would bring her big bag of goodies
• Butch Dae - 3D Mindmapping in SL - To make his Mindjet MindManager Pro 7 mindmaps more accessible, Butch asked builder Llanna Lane to help him bring his 2D Mindjet map into SL. She developed three representations of Butch’s mind map including an interesting 3D tubular display. The display lets avatars get the “big picture” and read node names in the static map using a 3D tube browsing tool. Avatars can actually fly around the information in the tubes.
• Simple Freeview - a simpler version of the Freeview screen made for showing only images (presentation mode or auto advance) — the video menu items have been hidden t make the interface easier to use for basic slideshows. Offered by CDB Barkley- a giver box is set up
• Picture Commenter - SL script and web site script/database structure (PHP, MySQL) for allowing avs to enter comments about an image. Comments are stored in web database and can be viewed in web as well. Last 3 comments are displayed as hover text. See web view. Offered by CDB Barkley
• Virtual Reality Room - Use and/or create your own photo-realistic VRR, can be used on any NMC or Info Island sim, created by Stephane Zugzwang. See http://sl.nmc.org/2008/01/15/vrr-demo/
• Random Avatar Picker - Device used by NMC for prize drawings- randomly displays avatar names from full list on notecard, draws one at random when owner activates selection. Created by Sendao Goodman for NMC
• English/Lakhota Dictionary - a modified SL Glossary. Instead of providing a definition for a word, the dictionary provides the Lakhota word for the English input. It is chat-driven and notecard-based. For example, in Chat, type ‘find cat’ and the glossary will answer ‘cat - igmu (hear it at [url is provided])’. The list of translated words can be found in the Glossary Help notecard (In chat, type ‘glossary help’ for the notecard to drop). To listen to the mp3 audio, click on ‘History’ of your chat. The link will be enabled then. Click on it and SL will open your browser directly to the audio file. The prim has full permission (scripts, notecards, background, etc) and is free to copy (’Take a Copy’). Modified by Willow Shenlin
• Web Browser: Culture URLs - a modified library monitor. Only a reminder how easy this notecard-based web browser can be modified for any disciplines. Change the URLs in the notecard, save; change the background picture; reset the script if needed. The web browser will now drop the menu with YOUR URLs. Full permission and free to copy (’Take a Copy’). Modified by Willow Shenlin
• Ann Enigma’s Goodies - Hilary Mason, aka Ann, is bringing some scripted goodies from her deep inventory
• Eloise Pasteur Educational Designs - Some goodies from Eloise Pasteur, some may be familiar, some are definitely new! (editor-it is very late for El’s time zone, so we do not expect her to be up in the wee hours!)

There may even be more stuff. Come and check it out

Wainbrave Bernal discusses the SaLamander Project

For those unable to make it today or looking for information from the meeting, see:

• Session chat log in plain text and rich text
• photos
• Wainbrave’s presentation slides (712k PDF)
• SaLamander Project wiki
• Our audio interview with Wainbrave Bernal (18.6 Mb MP3, 27:01)
• video overview of SaLamander Project (blip.tv)
• All locations tagged with SaLamander HUD

There was a lot of excitement moving through the audience, and we are eager to see more educators take part in this project, either by tagging content or by adding context to the entries in the wiki.

As described by Wainbrave,

The SaLamander Project is an open Second Life education community with a mission to develop a searchable peer-reviewed database of educational builds and tools in Second Life. Using inworld tools - such as the Salamander HUD and on-location surveys - the project hopes to assist SL Education to develop the common language and set of “best practices” in the emerging profession of 3D Virtual Education. By making well crafted virtual educational learning materials accessible to more educators and providing useful and timely feedback to builders and scripters, the SaLamander Project hopes to provide an ongoing service to the Second Life Education Community.

Presently in the beta stage, The SaLamander Project is now planning to anchor it’s activities and practices toward developing a showcase of exemplary Second Life Learning Materials to be presented at the next Second Life Community Conference in September 2008.

Join us for the Buzz on Monday…

When: January 21, at 9:00 am PST (check local time)
Where: Teaching 2 (135,124,22)

Wainbrave Bernal - his avatar may look scary, but he is quite nice

To help seed your interest and to better understand the project, we recently met up in world with Wainbrave to have him talk through a demo of how SaLamander works:

Interview with Wainbrave Bernal (18.6 Mb MP3, 27:01)

People who wish to contribute to the project can get and wear the SaLamander HUD. When they come to an interesting resource or place in Second Life, they click the pushpin. This HUD is actually a modification of the SLOOG HUD, a rather interesting tool in itself- SLOOG is a tagging tool for Second Life, allowing any SL user to mark locations with descriptive tags, which are saved on the SLOOG web site under the avatar’s name. Call it SL.del.icio.us.

For the SaLamnder project, the venerable Eloise Pasteur reprogrammed the general SLOOG HUD with a series of questions that get at some more education descriptors, which in fact are the same organizing questions used to catalog web based learning materials on MERLOT (that will connect in a minute).

So after clicking the pushpin button, the HUD prompts with several questions via chat messages, and you respond by selecting from choices in one of those blue dialog boxes, or sending open ended questions via chat:

When the process is done (it takes but a few minutes at most), the information is posted at the SLOOG site, with the information entered appearing as tags, including a special Salamnderproject tag that helps them locate all items tagged with this special HUD.

So for our little demo example for the audio interview, we tagged the NMC Orientation, which now is registered in SLOOG under my avatar http://www.sloog.org/users/CDB_Barkley.

And you can see by aggregation all of the places in SL tagged with salamander.

But wait, there’s more.

For the SaLamander project, they have some automated routines that “scrape” the data from SLOOG and put them as wiki pages in the project site– these become a “stub” entry such as for Renaissance House.

The next phase of the process is that educators who have visited, used one of these resources can edit the wiki to add additional information, pictures, descriptions, how the sim might be used, etc– see for example the more complete example of Bailey’s cafe and Brewster Place.

And the ultimate plan is that the most highly rated resources in SaLamnder would then become part of the MERLOT site, expanding its reach from the 2D web scope to virtual worlds.

For a complete explanation see the video “How the SL-Sloog-SalamanderWiki-Merlot system works”

But all of this is based on educators participating in the tagging, cataloging and rating. So come to the Teachers Buzz Monday, learn more about SaLamnder, get a HUD, and start tagging!

We meet at the sim’s landing point, halfway between the basic (5 minute quick) orientation, and the longer, more in-depth orientation in the area that looks like the mission district. I did a fast song and dance overview of our use of the RegistrationAPI to create our own account creation form for new accounts, that sends the brand new shiny avatars to this Orientation, rather than the rather wild and weird one among the General Population.

Then, for 30 minutes, we scattered the participants to the different parts of NMC Orientation to explore, and we met up for some closing comments at the Waterside Cafe.

Like always, we get some great ideas when we just open things up to conversation. We got a lot of suggestions to improve the Orientations, Fleep got some ideas how to deal with her “10 minute” Sl demo, and some of us learned how to levitate.

Much of this is captured in the comments of the chat log, available as plain text or rich text. Highlights include:

• From teachers who used this Orientation, they really like the look and feel of the San Francisco based design.
• Suggested increasing font size on signs and some displays as most new users dont have good use of camera control.
• Some of the objects on the Pier of Culture did not respond to mouse click.
• Reports of new users falling off of ramps, walkways, the street that leads to the Golden Gate Bridge- suggest railings it even invisible prims to keep people on a particular “path”.
• Some felt there were too many choices, paths…
• Probably the most emphatic response was when we suggested having people here as “docents” like ISTE and InfoIsland do, and.or create a mentor program to bring in people with some expertise to connect with those that need it.

Stay tuned for the next NMC Campus Teachers Buzz when we ride the SaLamander project!

Upcoming Buzz sessions include:

Jan 7 4:00pm PST: Orientation Experiences We’ll meet at NMC Orientation to discuss strategies, ideas for orienting new users and providing ongoing support for all SL users. NMC has set up a Second Life account registration site for creating new avatars- when they log in they end up at NMC Orientation rather than the wild and crazy Second Life Orientation Island.

We provide the “quick and easy” orientation basics, but also offer expanded ones designed as place one might return to for more learning. We certainly don’t think we have this completely perfect yet, so we’re looking for ideas. Explore the four different orientation paths we’ve put here, visit the educators resources, and then we’ll re-convene at the cafe for some discussion.

When Jan 7 4:00pm PST (check local time)
Where: NMC Orientation (68,107,32)

Jan 21 9:00am PST: Vetting Second Life Learning Materials: MERLOT’s SaLamander Project with Wainbrave Bernal (aka Jonathon Richter, University of Oregon). “The project mission is to enlist people to collaborate to find, index, and discuss aspects of the 3D Virtual World “Second Life” that has educational value and share in the research, development, and training opportunities associated with those factors.” learn more…

Location TBA.

Feb 4 4:00pm PST: Show Us Your Gadgets! Demo and share free tools developed for.by for educators. Location NMC Labs (sandbox)

Feb 21 9:00am PST: Virtual World Project @ Otis College of Art and Design Associate professor Mrags Writer (aka Michael Wright) took three Classes of Otis digital sophomore students in world where they developed and created content based on class-developed themes. The project, which was created on the Otis Island, required team building, out of the box creative thinking, introducing students to working with 3d & 2d virtual tools, working with a budget (3000 lindens per class), and working with a limited amount of building blocks (3100 primitives per class). Three hours of in-class time and 10 hours of outside of class time were devoted to this project. None of the 55 students had second life experience. The themes developed were “Heaven and Hell”, “Pirates and Atlantis” and “Lost World and Mythology”. The results of this project can be viewed in world, Second Life, at the Otis Island (128,128,0). Wright will lead a tour and answer questions.

If you have an idea or something you’d like to lead/share for a future Buzz session, just add it to our planning wiki.

Anyhow, we have bee excited to hear on the Second Life Educators Listserv (SLED) about NESIM OR, the virtual nursing sim currently being used by students at Tacoma Community College.

John Miller (JS Vavoom), a nursing instructor from Tacoma Community College, and Cathy Walker (padlurowncanoe Dibou), an educational technology director from St. Vincent de Paul, will present NESIM OR at tonight’s NMC Campus Teacher’s Buzz at 6pm PST (check local time).

NESIM OR is a 3-D simulator that uses the online virtual reality network of Second Life to practice diagnosing and treating patients in a simulated emergency department environment. It is currently being used to instruct nursing students at Tacoma Community College.

John and Cathy are two of the four members of the VESIM group - Virtual Educaton Simulations - that create interactive learning simulations for virtual worlds. The other members are David Bodily, Western Wyoming Community College, and Kim Winnington, CEO of Sand Castle Studios. They will also be available to answer your questions.

Tonight’s Teacher Buzz will be held at the NESIM location. A slurl will not take you there directly. Teleport to these coordinates - SW Islet, Cousins Pau (25, 22, 514) - or IM padlurowncanoe Dibou for a landmark or teleport.

We’ve arranged a tour for you tonight at 6:00 PM PT (check local time) to visit NESIM and hear from its creators.