[Opensim-users] Some questions about recreating history in OpenSim

Mon Aug 20 05:00:52 UTC 2012

Hi Chris,

Thanks for that! I'm pretty sure we already know each other, years ago 
at the FTI during the CADSAGAP course? Am I thinking of the right 
person? I was hoping I would run into some local people as I did my 
research on this! Yes, I definitely want to talk to people at UWA, I 
need some input from teachers and/or academics in this area. It helps 
that my father is both a science teacher and a computer programmer, so 
he's helping me out, but someone who has done more work on using virtual 
worlds in education would be very, very helpful for my application :)

I'm definitely thinking of cross media, because I think focussing on 3D 
worldbuilding could become a bit of a distraction from actually 
learning, once you get past a certain point of complexity. I just want 
the virtual space to be a meeting place, and to help give context, kind 
of like a museum exhibition or a diorama representing a story from 
history. The rest of the story, and discussion about different 
historical sources, would be in more traditional text format, along with 
videos, photos, etc. I kind of imagine that each story within the 
virtual world would be accompanied by a discussion page the same way 
articles in Wikipedia are, where students can argue their case for why 
they believe the event happened in one particular way rather than 
another. There would of course be differences of opinion, maybe multiple 
accounts of the same event. But that's what history really is - the 
competition between different accounts and interpretations, not just a 
series of facts.

So it sounds like Moodle would be a great addition to this project! 
Thanks for suggesting it. I'm looking out for people I can add to my 
team, at least for the purposes of the application (you have to list 
your team members and have a two page CV for each one), so if you're 
available for that it could be a great help. If we then get funding you 
can see how much time you could put into consulting work for us.

Cheers,

Lisa

On 08/20/2012 12:47 PM, chris wrote:
> Hi Lisa,
>
> nice idea. There was a similar UWA educational research proposal for 
> teaching ancient greek using opensim/SL. The idea was to immerse 
> students in the culture of the time as well as communicate/learn in 
> ancient greek. That one did not get funded but it may be a good idea 
> to join forces with such educators and not only go for the ABC grant 
> but also an ARC - industry linkage grant.  I can put you in contact 
> with those ppl if interested.
>
> Another link suggestion if you wish to meet educators is on the 
> jokaydiagrid - a relatively inexpensive grid if you want to meet 
> educators and learn at the same time- see:
> http://jokaydia.wikispaces.com/Edusquarelandmarks
>
> Another thing to consider is sloodle: an integration of the open 
> source Moodle educational course tools with SL sims. It has its 
> limitations but does provide a good way to develop Web based courses 
> with a sim. I suggest cross media is the best way to go - not just 
> relying on opensim but do Web/sim/film/machinima - which it seems you 
> are already thinking - am I right?
>
> My main experience in this area is in SL and Moodle (both deparately 
> and combined) but I am doing a little edu project in opensim too atm. 
> Over the next year I plan to move stuff from SL to opensim so maybe I 
> will meet you on a grid sometime :)
>
> cheers,
>
> chris
>
> On 20 August 2012 01:18, Lisa Evans <lisa.p.evans at gmail.com 
> <mailto:lisa.p.evans at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     Hi all,
>
>     I'm very new to OpenSim and just signed up to this list to ask a
>     few questions. Sorry if I come across as a bit of a newbie,
>     although I've been studying OS for a few days and I have my own
>     standalone grid up and running at home.
>
>     I'm putting together a proposal for this educational portal run by
>     the ABC here in Australia:
>
>     http://www.abc.net.au/learn/proposals.htm
>
>     My project is all about teaching history, the idea being that
>     students and history classes could put together simple sims
>     telling stories about the history of their own local area, linking
>     them up with videos, photos, essays, etc (which you could
>     hopefully launch from within the sim). Their sims would all be
>     linked up in a hypergrid, so students from all over Australia
>     (later maybe the world) could get into a virtual time machine and
>     visit different places at different times, to see what was
>     happening. Students would be able to chat with each other and show
>     each other around their creations. Hopefully the act of
>     collaborative world building would engage them in learning about
>     history, but I would want them focussed on just telling small
>     stories, involving a small number of characters (which would be
>     created as NPCs if that's possible, with simple, looping
>     animations if not more complex behaviour) and buildings, objects,
>     etc. (I have ideas about how to source lots of 3D content, which I
>     need to explore more).
>
>     I'm sure none of this is an original idea, but it seems like a
>     good opportunity to put an idea like this forward. I just was
>     wondering if anyone could tell me whether it would work in OpenSim
>     or if there are some big barriers to creating something like this.
>
>     My main issue right now is trying to work out how you create sims
>     that represent not only a region in space but also a period in
>     time. I've been thinking that I would have a grid that contains
>     regions in which only stories from, say, 1950 to 2000 were
>     created. Then another grid would represent the same real world
>     area, but contain stories from 1900-1950. The further you go back
>     in time, the longer the time intervals would get, along an
>     approximately logarithmic scale, so if you were telling stories
>     about the dinosaurs one grid would represent the entire Jurassic
>     era, for example.
>
>     Would this be the right way to go? I've been reading about regions
>     and grids and hypergrids but I'm pretty sure there's a lot I don't
>     understand.
>
>     My own background is that I've been working in 3D animation for
>     film, TV and games for the past decade, as a 3D all rounder and a
>     technical artist. I've worked on one big MMO for three years that
>     was never released. So I know about 3D modeling, animation,
>     worldbuilding, etc. but I've never spent much time around Second
>     Life or OpenSim, so a lot of this is new to me.
>
>     Thanks for any help!
>
>     Cheers,
>
>     Lisa Evans
>
>     _______________________________________________
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>
>
>
>
> -- 
>
> Dr Chris Thorne
>
>
> http://www.vrshed.com <http://www.vrshed.com/>
> http://www.floatingorigin.com <http://www.floatingorigin.com/>
>
>
>
>
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