Museum changes

After working on various features of my sim here at Coders Central Star Beach over the summer, I decided to take a look the museum of computing facility and get down to incorporating some more content. As you enter the museum you will a stand dedicated to Sinclair computers and its here that I have just uploaded new resources to the ZX81 display. The presentation and animation includes three slides of content plus a rezzing motherboard. More additions are in the pipeline, so please feel free to teleport over anytime. I hope you find this latest addition interesting and useful and pleased feel free to comment.

Skipper

Life on Mars Report

The overview and feedback from a 32 question student survey of the Life on Mars project is now available in the small hall of the main building here at Star Beach Shimmer Island. The project itself was the result of work carried out by a group of level 5 Foundation Degree students here at Bromley College currently enrolled on the Network Computing course. The project was established in order to provide students with a virtual world field trip to the planet Mars. The project itself was in support of a final year assignment to produce a desktop simulation for a solar powered lighting and heating control system written in Java. In order to give student avatars a realistic experience of the planet Mars the following was carried out: - the terrain was terra-formed and suitably textured. For effect, the sound of wind was introduced, as was the arrival of random particle dust storms. Each student was allocated a unique combination of building components, which they formed into a connected accommodation unit. A small weather station was placed on the surface that relayed temperatures and wind speeds throughout the Martian day that was reasonably consistent with those found on the planet. Finally, each avatar came ready installed with spacesuit, boots, gloves, helmet and backpack life support. Please feel free to download the pdf and comment to this posting.

regards Skipper

Collaborate on mobile development

With so many students arriving at College with their own mobuile devices and developers working on scalable apps, its good to find a website where you can test your pages across a whole range of platforms thanks to the Mobile Moxie emulators. Even better if you would like to collaborate in real time with app testing, then teleport over to Shimmer Island here in Second Life. Thanks to the benefits of Shared Media you can now get together and access this web resource using our emulator panel at the landing point. Please come along and give it a try and feel free to comment.

Skipper

First of the Shared Media Displays

If you recall from an earlier posting where I had installed a new building at my landing site for this sim, I intended using the space in part for displaying some interactive shared media content for educators. Well here is the first one, took a while I know. If you have use for a diagramming tool and not come across Creately yet, then I think it is well worth paying a visit to the site. There are a number of pricing models available, including a free version that has plenty of features. The models available cover Business Diagrams, User Interface Design, Software, System, Network Diagrams and more. It was the inclusion of software design particularly UML (Unified Modeling Language) diagrams and Database design diagrams that particularly took my attention. You will find that in creating a new document the examples list will provide sets of templates, some of which seem to be partially complete, these would be particularly useful for teaching. As well as the many diagrams available, the user interface also includes a standard set of drawing tools, basic shapes, arrows, call outs, you can add notes, comments and share your diagrams thought the free version limits you to five of these. Upon completion diagrams can be exported in either png, jpeg or Creately format. As a unique virtual trial I decided to create a shared media block at my landing point here in Second life, so feel free to get a couple of avatar friends together a try it out, and let me know your impressions.

regards Skipper

Coding in the sky

The new academic year is about to start for my Foundation Degree students in software Development and I have been thinking of ways that I could incorporate Second Life into the delivery. Thinking about where to hold these sessions, I must say that I was impressed by some of the low cost Holodecks that are around for purchase in SL Marketplace at the moment and was tempted to buy one in, but I do like to apply myself to a little building now and then and decided instead to create a sky platform for the purpose.

I have introduced a little background ambience into the feature by including a visual running water effect, running water sounds and some random bird songs. My plan is to run regular evening, probably once a week, after class programming and design tutorials. I am using the Firestorm viewer at the moment, principally because it supports shared media on a prim, without all the compatible SL mesh issues that seem to have defeated my own PC for now. This means that I can make use of web resources such as an online C compiler, there is a nice compiler available here, and a screen shot of myself running a simple C program.

Another board that features our College vle, so that we can make use of portfolio exercises and also we can post directly toForums, a third and final media board displays a web based poster of student avatar images and names.

Not sure yet whether we shall be using voice or text chat for the conversation, but I will take the popular vote on that. If we do use text chat, then I shall install a logger so that we can review the sessions.

Back soon with some more news, bye for now Skipper

New Landing Point

It was one of those moments when a couple of things that you have been thinking about for a while suddenly come together. Looking around my Shimmer Island Sim, I have begun to consider dropping-in new or updating existing builds particularly my landing point. At the same time I have also been considering what to do about making use of all those superb interactive web facilities that now become available with Browser 2. At the present time my displays and tutorials are firmly established with Browser 1, which by the way I am still using on one of my desktop PC's at home. The answer, create a new landing point and use it as a feature for browser2 facilities. During this academic year I have in fact been running some trials with my students using SL Browser 2 as part of a Level 3 Maths course, and the Sim features online calculators, a YouTube video board and even an on-line C compiler, similar to the one here but on the surface of a prim as opposed to a pop-up web page. The project has been really useful not only as resource for my students, but also for myself in testing out the viability of the features. Basically then, when you arrive at the landing point in the near future, as long as you are running Browser 2, you will be able to step inside and try out some interactive media. If anyone would like me to install a particular web media facility for you to try, then please drop me a post.

refards Skipper

Matrix Arithmetic Poster

The steady stream of visitors to my Seascape Island sim has been encouraging and the feature of having a simple vendor to distribute course materials such as the C code has proven a good decision. I decided cash in on the approach and provide a poster board that explained the basic operations of Matrix Arithmetic, which will I am sure be of use when my students are here discussing and trying out examples. Of course providing a notecard for is not really feasible given the special characters required by way of very large brackets. The answer I decided was to create a texture and have the poster board serve the jpeg to the avatars Inventory texture folder when touched, hence the invite just below the red title. If you are wondering how I can gauge the usage of the latest resources, well I have installed a script that will write the avatars name, name of the resources plus date and time to a MySql database that is running on one of our web servers, neat little facility this, and indispensible really if you are keen to get some user metrics. Bye for now Skipper

C Matrix examples in-world

Seascape Island seems to be getting a fare amount of attention from my students, which geven the fact its end of term break is very encouraging in itself. I am finding that different images are showing on prim faces when I return to the sim, this must mean that the Second Life Viewer 2 features of Shared Media on a prim are proving to be popular. One of those shared media takes the form of a web based real time C compiler, and to compliment this particular tool, I have added an freebie crate of C source code examples for matrices. I am hoping for some early feedback on these, which should not take to long as I have just posted the news my course Facebook page. regards Skipper

Adding some ambience

Having started to get some materials together for my new Seascape island venture with level 3 mathematics, I decided it would be nice to include some ambient effects and features as well. A while ago I was looking for some sea shore decorations for my own sim over at Shimmer Island Star Beach and came across Real Waves, anyway I purchased some Real Wave effects, which I must say are superb and decided to include the sim in my SL profile picks. Why am I telling you all this, well because as a result, Real Waves sent me some freebies and one of them was the NEW OFFSIM - all only 3 prims Created by Antreas Alter that features Wild Oceanic Waves Splashing on the Rocks and Calm Beach Waves washing the shore! Anyway I installed just offshore, and the effect is a definate improvment over the previous somewhat empty horizon.

Virtual Learning at SeaScape Island

For the summer term I have picked up the unit Mathematics for IT Practitioners, and the learning outcomes for the unit I am pleased to see are in fact very closely linked to our Software Development pathway. Looking at the requirements and thinking about ways to get some much needed student engagement with the subject, I thought this would be a good opportunity to explore the possibilities of trying out the facilities available with the Second Life viewer 2. I have a strip of virtual land on the Greenwich University sim and set about creating a build. The result of my efforts shown here in the screen shot, is as you can see a four floor modular design, the idea here is of having each floor service a specific Learning Outcome; listed below: 1 Be able to apply matrix methods 2 Be able to apply sequences and series, probability and recursion 3 Be able to apply number systems 4 Be able to interpret data. We have only just started the unit and so I have begun the process of installing resources such as video screens linked to YouTube tutorials an on-line matrix calculator and because I really want to link this unit as closely as I can to the programming activities, a real time C compiler. During the maths class today I switched our network connection over to by-pass the college proxy and gave the group a demo. Will my student group take advantage of the collaborative and enriching features of a virtual world emersive work environment, time will tell. Right now I just need to get them in and trying out the resources. By way of getting some kind of basic metric with regard to usage I have installed a visitor counter in the landing point flag. Please stay in touch for further postings. Regards Skipper

New Free Edu Tools Board

I was pleased to come across another collection of free tools for educators the other day, this time from Mattchew Bulloch. The board as you would expect is linked to the SL Marketplace page so feel free to teleport over and take a closer look.

Free Education Materials

Just recently I have been taking a look at the resourecs I have here on Shimmer Island, not only their appearence, but also popularity and generally speaking I feel there is no reason that make any changes, so thats really rewarding for me. Looking on SL Marketplace the other day I began to see some really nice free collections of resources for educators and so I thought why not start an in-world collection. The first in the new suite is a poster board of tools made by Salahzar Stenvaag.

These are all Copy/Mod/Trans and include an eBook maker, 3D wiki, Meeting space and Chalkboard. You can either use the hyperlink here to see these on the marketplace, or the next time that you are inworld visit Shimmer Island and touch on the board that is on the first floor of the main tutorial hall.

regards Skipper

Virtual World Discussions

I have been using Second Life now for over four years and keeping in touch with developments that surround the general theme of education and training is an aspect of my virtual and real world activity that I always find interesting and often surprising. So I was pleased to stumble across the Virtual Worlds Education Roundtable site the other day. The name probably tells you all that you need to know about the purpose of the site and I can recommend a visit.

Project reports July 2010

The virtual world student feedback reports for the projects that I ran for my Level 3 BTEC National students completing their final year in the Software Development course are now available in-world at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Star%20Beach%20Island/209/222/23.

One difference for me with these latest two trials is that they were conducted on our Open Sim platform, which when you consider is still in Alpha release, all considered did perfom extremely well.

Common Currency in a virtual world

It does not take long in SL, before you realise that the whole experience can be improved if you have some money or Linden Dollars to purchase stuff and there is some excellent material around, or even better making money by selling stuff. Just recently I have been taking some excursions into the metaverse according to Open Simulator. In fact I now even have a sim running on my desktop, a very singular experience after the comings and goings that you get in place like SL. One of the things that struck me about OpenSim and there is increasingly a lot of it about it seems, is that there does not seem to be too much by way of resources. I began to ponder this and it came to me that maybe this is because of the complete absence of money, maybe, possibly. Lets face it OpenSim or SL almost by any other name and I am still to reconcile all this, does not have an equivalent of Linden Dollars, even though they are mentioned on some of the panels, stranger still. Then the other day, and probably a while after many others discovered it, I found out about the Open Metaverse Currency (OMC) and the number of virtual worlds that are using it; it seems there is an exchange rate with SL, terminals available and a link to PayPal. . There is a good web article here with some nice videos that explain the whole thing. If you have any thoughts or experience with OMC then please feel free to comment on this post.

Kind regards Skipper

Just how emmersive will it get?

That is the question that I was asking myself the other evening as I was standing on a small hill looking through the palm trees to the sight and sound of the waves rolling in, the gulls calling as they flew over head and in the near distance the faint cracking of a camp fire. I know that the on the near horizon there is talk of SL HD and that will improve the visual for sure, great.

So I began to look around the net for some insights and the first that I came across was from Digicents blog: -

Smell reaches out into a new, visceral dimension, transporting viewers, gamers, and music fans into the realm of the senses. Atmosphere, mood, emotion and characters can all be enhanced with scent.
The Power of Scent…
o makes content extremely immersive and compelling
o creates mood, such as foreshadowing or ambiance
o intensifies emotions, such as fear or love
o establishes place and season
o helps develop characters
o gives a heightened sense of reality

How will this work, well according to Wikipedia: -

The prototype connected to a personal computer via USB or serial port and was designed to emit a smell when a user visited a web site or opened an email. The device contained a cartridge with 128 "primary odors," which could be mixed to replicate natural and man-made odors. DigiScents had indexed thousands of common odors, which could be coded, digitized, and embedded into web pages or email

So in the near furure in SL one evening soon, I may be standing on a small hill looking through the palm trees to the sight and sound of the waves rolling in, gulls calling as they fly over head, and in the near distance hearing the faint cracking of a camp fire, while at the same time taking in the smells of the ocean, cant wait.

Then the other day I saw something that blew me away, Touchable Holography, what is that, follow this link to core77, and a CNN demonstration, now lets start getting getting ready for the real holodeck!!!!

Comments welcome, Skipper

New web virtual world search facility

I have just been uploading my SIM images and comments to a new site at http://www.threadmap.com. Once you sign up to the service, you can upload screen captures via email direct from the SL viewer, nice one. You can Teleport in-world from images each of which can be annotated with text and or tags to aid searching, and you can even include video content. One word of caution here though is that you need to take care at the point of account creation as some details cannot be changed once set, and there does not seem to be a way of deleting. I have been browsing and searching the site and find that its about as easy as it gets to use. If enough sign up to this then it could become a really powerful search tool. Recommended, Skipper

Virtual World Project Reviews

As part of my regular house keeping work here at Shimmer Island, I recently decided to take a look at the resources available in the main hall area of the facility. I am really pleased to say that the main tutorials continue to be popular with visitors and so they have remained as they are. Looking over at the smaller hall, I decided to remove the usual video display of project work and replace it with a new feature. If you teleport over now you will find some new books have appeared. These are project overviews with student feedback statistics of trials that I have carried out in the virtual world. Touching on each resource will produce a pdf file. I have more in the pipeline so you may like to teleport over now and then. Please feel free to take a copy and if you find the survey results useful, then they are free to use, I will only request that you site the original source. if you have any further questions about use or the projects themselves, then please feel free to IM me, Skipper Abel here at Shimmer Island.

regards Skipper

Tranceformational Learning

I came across a really interesting site the other day, which I think you will find is well worth a visit. The site is called ImagiLearning, by the way its not their actual logo that I have used here in the post. The key thrust of the group who run the site centers of what they call Tanceformational Learning or TL. What is TL, well here's a paragraph from one of their pages:-

Tranceformational Learning blends the elements of learner centered instruction, concepts of game design, current brain research, and virtual world technologies to create experiences that engage the full mind of the learner in learning that goes beyond the traditional. Since the brain does not always clearly distinguish between "real" and "virtual" experiences, if we can create activities that trigger emotional, visceral responses leading to increased synaptic connections...learning is enhanced. Rather than simply connecting the new content to 'normal' patterns in the brain, Tranceformational Learning leads the brain to make wider and 'altered' patterns of synaptic connections with the new learning. We believe the result is increased learning.

They have a presence in Second life which naturally gets my interest and I suspect the interest of many who are wondeing where these new web 2.0 and 3.0 tools are likely to take us.

please comment with your views, regrads Skipper

Solar Cell Project Feedback

The latest virtual world project, which involved my project BTEC level 3 students building solar panels in OpenSim has now come to an end. As you can see from the accompanying screenshot there has been a good amount of activity taking place.

The feedback report from my students is available from this link. Please feel free to take a look, If you have any comments, then by all means drop a reply to this posting.

For more details of the project, you may like to visit my OpnSim blog at http://bcopensim.blogspot.com

Kind regards Skipper