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

Mon Aug 20 05:29:42 UTC 2012

HI Lisa and all,

Just sharing, as I thought it might be of interest...  we (at
jokaydiaGRID)  actually developed a historical build with the History
Teachers Association of Victoria last year! You can find out more about it
here -  http://virtualhistorycentre.com/ . Essentially the project focussed
on making a virtual replica of the Point Nepean Quarantine Station in
Victoria and additionally a museum which provides virtual worlds access to
a range of research materials and resources for students to explore. There
are also a number of quests built into the environment to encourage
students to explore, reflect and recreate content to add to the build. You
can view additional pictures of the here -
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jokay/sets/72157631154100902/

Unfortunatey its had limited use so far because of the ongoing challenges
of opening ports in educational environments in Australia (shake fist at
firewall of doom), but it has had some limited use by students in Victoria
and we're currently working on various Sim on a stick options et al.
Additionally, we're hoping it will be open to the public via jokaydiaGRID
very soon... will keep you posted! ;)

Kind regards,
jokay
Director, jokadiaGRID / Co-Founder Massively Minecraft

On Mon, Aug 20, 2012 at 3:00 PM, Lisa Evans <lisa.p.evans at gmail.com> wrote:

>  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> 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.floatingorigin.com
>
>
>
>
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-- 
-- 
Jo Kay
________________________________
Freelance Design, Virtual  Worlds and Facilitation
jokaydiaGRID: http://jokaydiagrid.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/jokay
Email: jokay at jokaydia.com / joannamkay at gmail.com
Tel: 0405179622
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