SLOODLE Presenter
Posted by Peter | Filed under Education, Second Life, Sloodle, Software
I’ve just created and uploaded a new SLOODLE video, and this one is a kind of preview tutorial about the new SLOODLE Presenter tool which will be released in SLOODLE 0.4:
The purpose of the tool is to let you put together a presentation in Moodle, consisting of a series of images, webpages, and videos. Your students can then view the presentation in Moodle, or in Second Life. This is achieved by storing a list of URLs in the Moodle database, and then providing those to a script in Second Life. The object then fiddles with the parcel media settings to display the appropriate resource… so this requires that you either own the land, or that you can deed the object to the land-owning group.
This was originally suggested one afternoon at SLCC08… and being the crazy geek that I am, I skipped the parties that night (as I usually do anyway), and had the first prototype ready to demo over breakfast the next morning! 
Between research and other things, it has taken a while to get it to a releasable state… but it is nearly ready now!
There are a few caveats to mention:
- All resources must be hosted on the Internet (i.e. they have to be accessible by URL)
- Resources cannot be password protected (e.g. you can’t upload them into your Moodle course)
- Second Life only supports QuickTime and simple Flash videos
- Webpages in Second Life are non-interactive
We plan to release the first alpha version of SLOODLE 0.4 around the end of January 2009. Final release date is to be confirmed.
Sandbox Blox
Posted by Peter | Filed under Second Life, Software
Kudos to Jesse Barnett (SL name) for creating this fun variant on my Stackable Graph Cubes. You can download the scripts for Sandbox Blox from Jesse’s wiki page, and checkout the forum discussion on Scripting Tips.
The idea is that you start with a basic rezzer block, and click it to begin. It will rez a white block for you, which you can move off wherever you want it. Another white block will appear over the rezzer — click it, and then click any face of the other cube, and it will jump straight to it. When you use a cube, another appears for you. You can use it to build up shapes by joining cubes together in various arrangements. I was never much of an artist, but I reckon I can do immersive cubism with this!
There’s lots of potential variations on the idea. I would probably choose to make it work by ‘growing’ your cubic construction from the root prim — you click a side, and it rezzes the next cube in the appropriate location. That’s less flexible though, since it’s more difficult to move existing cubes then.
Virtual Happenings
Posted by Peter | Filed under Second Life, Software, Technology, Virtual Worlds
Lebanese business and tourism
Some interesting things happening lately in the realm of virtual stuff, be it worlds or otherwise. One article which particularly caught my eye was the Bab-ilu portal, which is designed to help foster international business and tourist interest in Lebanon. (I did some brief mission work in Lebanon in 1999, while they were at war with Israel. One thing which struck me wonderfully was the kindness and generosity of many people; despite being in a warzone, and despite the fact that we were outsiders from another religion, they treated us with utmost respect. Parts of it were also absolutely beautiful… if I can find and scan some of my old photos, I’ll post them.)
Virtual conferencing
In other news, a company called Altadyn has released “Online Meeting”, which is designed to support business meetings, based on their 3DXplorer platform, encouraging more participation than you typically get in video-based tele-conferencing. It’s good to see some competition opening up in this area, since Second Life seems to have been the virtual platform of choice for many business happenings of this nature, seeing lots of support from IBM in particular. I have nothing against SL being used for that purpose, but competition is healthy for the market and it’s healthy for innovation.
Music world
Similarly, there is talk of a music-centred virtual world, designed with “live” online concerts in mind. Once again, Second Life has been used for this quite a lot, but having something developed which is dedicated to the particular feature is great. (My experience of “live” music in SL is rather less-than-wonderful, usually due to technology issues.)
Ignorance ain’t bliss!
Let’s balance all the hope of good things with a shot of negativity. Teresa Hunter, writing for Scotland on Sunday, took a hefty, and downright ignorant swipe at Second Life, calling it a “virtual world for sad losers”. I am glad to say my good friend Gia dutifully reprimanded the shocking excuse for an article! (Woo! Go Gia…)
Slide Toggler 1.2 — now with reset timer
Posted by Peter | Filed under Projects, Second Life, Software
If you mosey on over to the Projects page, you can grab version 1.2 of the Slide Toggler script. It has a very minor addition which was requested, and that is an auto-reset timer: in addition to clicking slides to toggle them between foreground and background, it lets you optionally also specify a time after which foreground slides will automatically revert to the background. This is probably more useful for public displays, where other users can toggle the slides, than for presentations… but feel free to use it however you like! Open source, as always.
Many thanks to SL resident Maihem Randt for suggesting the feature, and to Void Singer and Hewee Zetkin for their input on the SL Scripting Tips forum.
Clash of the Titans
Posted by Peter | Filed under Second Life, Technology
(Warning: a slight moan ahead… you’ve been warned…!)
Call me a doomsayer, but I think we could be about to see a trademark war. Thus far, Linden Lab’s legal team have reared their ugly (I mean lovely and in no way defamatory) heads at anybody and everybody who even hints at the name or logo of Second Life, even if the usage falls under “fair use” and does nothing but promote the platform. They have seemingly destroyed communities which support the virtual world, all in the name of defending their oh-so-precious trademark, which was never in any real jeopardy anyway.
It will be interesting to see how these bullies stand up to the biggest legal bully of all, now that Microsoft has (either foolishly or heroically) announced their SecondLight technology. Admittedly, it’s not a virtual world… rather, it provides a degree of depth for an otherwise flat display technology. Still, I reckon its close enough to give Linden Lab the shivers.
You can bet that if I alone started a website or service called “SecondLight”, even if it had nothing to do with Second Life, then Linden Lab would be on my case in a flash. So come on Linden legal dudes… bare your teeth at the monster. If you don’t, we’ll all know you’re cowards after all… you squish the little guys, but hide in the corner when somebody bigger comes along.
SL Slide Toggler
Posted by Peter | Filed under Projects, Second Life, Software
In preparation for a virtual seminar presentation I was giving about SLOODLE last week, I decided to make a novel little way to present my slides. I only had a few, so I made them all visible in the background, and scripted each one to toggle to the foreground on demand. This has the advantage that all your textures are pre-loaded, plus it makes for a slightly more interesting display-mechanism than simply changing textures.
I’ve released the script as open source (GPL), and you can check it out on my projects page.
SL Word Processor
Posted by Peter | Filed under Second Life, Technology
I am very pleased to see that the new “http-in” functions for LSL (in Second Life) are available for beta testing now. Basically, these functions let you setup any prim as an HTTP server, which can be accessed from outside via URL, for sending data into SL, and/or requesting it back out.
In a word: awesome! It will be great to avoid so many HTTP polls or whatever.
But here is my cunning new idea… create an object which sets itself up as an HTTP server, and puts its own URL as the parcel’s media URL. It then listens for text coming in via chat, and outputs that text in response to incoming HTTP requests. Voila! Mini-word processor for Second Life!
I have no idea if this will work… I guess I’ll need to wait until the functions go officially ‘live’ before I find out. It’ll be really cool if it does though!
INSILICO - amazing SL sim
Posted by Peter | Filed under Second Life
Quick note about this incredible Second Life ® sim I saw today: INSILICO. It’s very much the futuristic, sci-fi kind of theme… imagine movies like The Matrix, The Fifth Element, Judge Dredd, and so on… totally awesome:
Screenshot from INSILICO
Screenshot from INSILICO
(Most of it is real geometry… no pre-rendered backdrops or anything… absolutely astoundingly good!)
Virtual Theatre Studies
Posted by Peter | Filed under Education, Second Life, University
OK, so it’s not really a course in virtual theatre studies… but it’s pretty close: students at Kent State University are putting on a virtual play (in Second Life ®) as part of their final exam.
I know from my own experience in music and theatre that creativity often flourishes when your options are constrained. For example, one of my favourite exercises when I studied drama in high school was taking a short section of script, and acting it out in 2 or 3 different ways — we had to utilise techniques other than dialogue to convey differences of meaning. I should imagine that something similar is true of acting in Second Life — one must learn to focus on what is possible, and squeeze every drop of dramatic potential out of it.
In this case, there is great flexibility with costume, since you can make them look pretty much however you like. However, programming animations must be quite a laborious task, requiring careful thought and planning (you’d need to be very careful to keep everything in sequence!). The article doesn’t mention whether the dialogue is delivered by text or voice.
I love to see this kind of thing happening… it’s a genuine challenge for the students, and promotes great innovation. It also benefits the SL community as a whole.
Putting educational technology where it belongs
Posted by Peter | Filed under Education, Second Life, Sloodle, Software, University
The Deccan Herald carries a positive article about the use of technology in education. It is sometimes surprising to think, as can be read in the article, that the concept is comparatively young (at least in relation to widespread usage across the curriculum). Despite many well-intentioned failures of innovation, there is still a drive to further use the technological advancements of the modern day to improve education.
It is easy to make broad-based generalisations and expectant assumptions which turn out to be wrong. Certainly the ubiquity of computing these days demands that solid literacy skills are taught — I have often heard it noted by University lecturers that the seemingly most ‘literate’ computer users can turn out to be the least competent at common tasks, such as using styles and document outlines when preparing a report in MS Word. However, using technology in education ‘just because we can’ is likely to be a doomed course from the outset.
If I had lots of money, I wouldn’t go out and buy the fastest car just because I could afford it; I would obviously look for aesthetic quality, but (being a programmer) I value functionality higher. The same should be done with technology in education: just because we can financially afford the flashiest looking new bit of software that comes out doesn’t necessarily mean it will benefit the process.
A prime example is the educators I see from time to time who jump into Second Life, without really considering their goal in using it. As a wholehearted contributor to the Sloodle project, I definitely believe in the potential of the platform for education… but potential does not equal results. Educators and institutions can spend large amounts of time, effort and money, investing into it, and get pretty much nothing out but a deserted sim and a handful of lukewarm students who wouldn’t use SL outside class time even if you pay them (as many educators do… in L$!).
As Sarah Robbins discussed in her keynote session at SLCC08, you need to deliver what you promise, so you need to promise realistically! Doing ‘real life’ stuff in Second Life is effectively a waste of time, which is probably why early concepts for the Sloodle project were abandoned (such as re-creating a Moodle course page exactly 3d). We need innovative thinking and radical change… but we need to do it gently sometimes too.
Going back to the original Deccan Herald article above, I was very pleased to see the mentions of “networking” and “collaboration”. These are what it’s all about, just as with the schome project (”not school not home”) running on TeenSL, which brings teenage students together to function and operate effectively as peers with those who would (in any conventional setting) be the ‘teachers’.
Undoubtedly, formal education and qualification still needs a great degree of guidance and support, so I do not forsee the student-teacher relationship ever going away completely. However, among the greatest strengths I see in these collaborative, social, “constructivist” approaches are these: learning how to learn, and learning how to enjoy it!
