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 <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> 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 <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> 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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Jo Kay
________________________________
Freelance Design, Virtual Worlds and Facilitation
jokaydiaGRID: http://jokaydiagrid.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/jokay
Email: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> /
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
Tel: 0405179622
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