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

Mon Aug 20 06:07:07 UTC 2012

Access challenges very much varies from State to State, and I can happily
report things are getting a little easier as edu departments begin to
finally embrace virtual worlds and games a little more eg. tafe projects
like Virtual Enterprise @ jokaydiaGRID and the PLANE project - a NSW PD
program for teachers which includes some opensim. However it is still
probably the big risk factor to consider. The other is hardware..there are
alot of year 9 laptops out there that WILL NOT run opensim. ;(

Having said that, things are much easier in VIC than NSW or QLD, but still
a bit of a challenge. Solving port issues via viewer dev would indeed be a
huge win, but a big challenge considering how wedded to port 80 and
powerpoint alot edu IT departments are! ;) I also suspect that options for
running it on SOAS or a local school server would also be very valuable.

regards,
jokay

On Mon, Aug 20, 2012 at 4:00 PM, Lisa Evans <lisa.p.evans at gmail.com> wrote:

>  Thanks, that helps me a lot to see that it's possible, and to be able to
> point the ABC at it too. If we used part of the budget, as Maria suggested
> to me, to develop an open source web viewer for OpenSim, would that help
> you too? That would get around the ports issue, wouldn't it? Since this
> would all be run via the ABC's online education portal, you would think
> they would be able to arrange things with schools to get around the
> firewall of doom. That must be part of their plan already, otherwise they
> won't get very far!
>
> Cheers,
>
> Lisa
>
>
> On 08/20/2012 01:29 PM, jokay Wollongong wrote:
>
> 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
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Opensim-users mailing list
>>> Opensim-users at lists.berlios.de
>>> https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/opensim-users
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>>  --
>>
>> 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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-- 
-- 
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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