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. ;(<br>
<br>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.<div>
<br></div><div>regards,</div><div>jokay</div><div><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Aug 20, 2012 at 4:00 PM, Lisa Evans <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:lisa.p.evans@gmail.com" target="_blank">lisa.p.evans@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
<div>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!<br>
<br>
Cheers,<br>
<br>
Lisa<div><div class="h5"><br>
<br>
On 08/20/2012 01:29 PM, jokay Wollongong wrote:<br>
</div></div></div><div><div class="h5">
<blockquote type="cite">HI Lisa and all,
<div><br>
</div>
<div>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 -
<a href="http://virtualhistorycentre.com/" target="_blank">http://virtualhistorycentre.com/</a> .
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
- <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jokay/sets/72157631154100902/" target="_blank">http://www.flickr.com/photos/jokay/sets/72157631154100902/</a></div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>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! ;) </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Kind regards,</div>
<div>jokay</div>
<div>Director, jokadiaGRID / Co-Founder Massively Minecraft</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
<div class="gmail_quote">
On Mon, Aug 20, 2012 at 3:00 PM, Lisa Evans <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:lisa.p.evans@gmail.com" target="_blank">lisa.p.evans@gmail.com</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
<div>Hi Chris,<br>
<br>
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
:)<br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
Cheers,<br>
<br>
Lisa
<div>
<div><br>
<br>
On 08/20/2012 12:47 PM, chris wrote:<br>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<blockquote type="cite">Hi Lisa,
<div><br>
</div>
<div>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.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>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:</div>
<div><a href="http://jokaydia.wikispaces.com/Edusquarelandmarks" target="_blank">http://jokaydia.wikispaces.com/Edusquarelandmarks</a></div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>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?</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>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 :)</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>cheers,</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>chris<br>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On 20 August 2012 01:18,
Lisa Evans <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:lisa.p.evans@gmail.com" target="_blank">lisa.p.evans@gmail.com</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000"> Hi all,<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
I'm putting together a proposal for this
educational portal run by the ABC here in
Australia:<br>
<br>
<a href="http://www.abc.net.au/learn/proposals.htm" target="_blank">http://www.abc.net.au/learn/proposals.htm</a><br>
<br>
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). <br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
Thanks for any help!<br>
<br>
Cheers,<br>
<br>
Lisa Evans<br>
</div>
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-- <br>
<br>
Dr Chris Thorne<br>
<br>
<br>
<a href="http://www.vrshed.com/" target="_blank">http://www.vrshed.com</a><br>
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<div>-- </div>
<div>Jo Kay</div>
<div>________________________________</div>
<div>Freelance Design, Virtual Worlds and Facilitation</div>
<div>jokaydiaGRID: <a href="http://jokaydiagrid.com" target="_blank">http://jokaydiagrid.com</a></div>
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/ <a href="mailto:joannamkay@gmail.com" target="_blank">joannamkay@gmail.com</a></div>
<div>Tel: <a href="tel:0405179622" value="+61405179622" target="_blank">0405179622</a></div>
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<div>Jo Kay</div><div>________________________________</div><div>Freelance Design, Virtual Worlds and Facilitation</div><div>jokaydiaGRID: <a href="http://jokaydiagrid.com" target="_blank">http://jokaydiagrid.com</a></div>
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<div>Tel: 0405179622</div><br>
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