Virtual Worlds in Education Forum, 13th July 2010
From RSCWMWiki
Uiversity of Warwick, Tuesday, 13 July 2010
Contents |
Welcome
Dave Wood, from the Maths Institute, University of Warwick, welcomed the group to the University.
Hannah Hodgson, Teaching Grid Coordinator, explained what facilities were available in the "dynamic, flexible learning environment". The Experimental Teaching Grid is an amazing room that has as much or as little technology as you need, curtains that divide the room up and double up as projection walls, plenty of projectors and different kinds of seating - to name just a few things! For more information please visit their website: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/library/teachinggrid/experimental/
The Programme
Due to sickness, Chris Stephens was unable to attend the forum. There were also a few technical hitches which impacted on the running order.
Morning Guest Speaker
Dave Wood
- Dave talked about Warwick University's Maths Island which has been funded for another year. He has been using the Second Life environment for self-study and as a visualisation tool, as 3D objects can easily be created. The Island has an active sandbox with 6000 visitors since January. Some of the issues that he has found with using Second Life are:
- Time constraints
- Staff interest – younger ones are more open
- Student interest (open to idea), see it as a game
He has been using Second Life in the lecture theatre, enabling students to understand difficult mathematical concepts through the use of the interactive objects he has created.
Dave also has Fourmile Castle which he has used to teach castle geometry to gifted and talented children (NAGTY.)
He is hoping to do an undergraduate module – Virtual Maths, in the new academic year, exploring wikis, blogs, the web, Moodle and Second Life.
Dave then took the group on a tour of Maths Island.
After the morning break
Ian Upton very kindly stepped in to tell the group about some of the projects he has been involved in in Second Life and other virtual worlds. Ian regards himself as both an artist and a technician. He is a full time virtual worlds consultant, based at the Serious Games Institute. He showed us a video called "The Loneliness of Being" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ao2lhK3al8 which was created using a sphere of words from live RSS feeds used in Second Life. The 'Loneliness of Being Engine' has been updated and uses live twitter feeds http://slurl.com/secondlife/Pahute/146/117/21
Ian has worked with:
- Daden
- Ambient Performance
- Birmingham University and Daden on the Millennium Point project (lead build Pup Witherspoon) http://slurl.com/secondlife/BCU%20LiVE1/191/31/28
- Birmingham City Council, giving people access to Council Chambers (full build) http://slurl.com/secondlife/Birmingham%20Island/235/237/1001
- University of Southampton (full island build):http://slurl.com/secondlife/University%20of%20Southampton/190/45/32
- a memorial site for Apollo 11 (Lanarkshire Apollo) (environment and hud) http://slurl.com/secondlife/NORTH%20LANARKSHIRE/116/234/21
- Theatrebase and Birmingham Royal Ballet (a touring company) on a scenery moving project (full island build) :http://slurl.com/secondlife/TheatreBase/130/105/1031
- a traffic management project, a digitised version of Junction 6 of the M42 using Forterra’s On-Line Interactive Virtual Environment (OLIVE™) By using this virtual world, no one's life was put at risk.
- In-world exhibition 'A Passing Moment' (previously at Vivid in real life in Birmingham): http://slurl.com/secondlife/Elucian%20Islands/32/24/981
For more information on Ian's work, visit his website http://www.ian-upton.com
Continuing the youtube theme, we watched the Robbie Dingo video, Watch the World http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vV1YbWBSXS8 which is a machinima of a Second Life build of the painting Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh.
Lunch Break
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Afternoon Guest Speaker
Greg Withnail, Eygus Ltd. Virtual Worlds Consultant and Project Manager on the Open University (OU) Second Life Project
Greg manages the in-world presence of the OU, day to day. He is currently working on the SLOODLE project – SLOODLE is the association between your avatar and Moodle; it is a free and open source project which integrates the multi-user virtual environment of Second Life with the Moodle learning-management system. For further information about SLOODLE, please see http://www.sloodle.org/moodle/
The SLOODLE project has taken some time to be agreed upon and for it to be widely tested with the OU systems.
Although Greg was unable to access SLOODLE on the day, he gave an illustrated description of how it works. The SLOODLE HUD gives you:
- classroom gestures
- avi lister (senses avatars and checks who they are on Moodle)
- a blog tool
Other SLOODLE tools:
- quiz chair – links to Moodle quiz
- Pile On quiz tool
- Distributor (controlled from Web)
- Prim Drop box
- SLOODLE Choice – gives a visualisation
- Access Checker
- Meta Gloss – a glossary tool
SLOODLE allows anyone to access chats in world, whether they can access Second Life or not by using the chat box. It links the Second Life chat with the Moodle chat. This was a problem for them to start with as Moodle chat was not installed.
The OU is hoping that this will be good for mainstream OU students. The OU Course My Digital Life (TU100) will have 3,500 students twice per year which will certainly test how robust SLOODLE is!
For further information about Greg's work, please see his website: http://www.eygus.co.uk/
For more information about OU courses, http://www.open.ac.uk/
Open floor
Jerry Foss, Birmingham City University, is involved in many projects and was also part of the Millennium Point project.
- Media Brokerage … for personalized product placement (see the brief attached)
- Jerry is presenting at the Media Education Summit at Birmingham City University in September) – see the abstract attached
- Automatic updating virtual worlds – ie if we have a virtual world which represents a real space (like our virtual Millennium Point), we need to update the virtual world as things appear in the real world. For example, if a poster (or logo on a sign) changes, we need to update the virtual space
- Metadata – partly for the increasing complexity of virtual worlds – how we define objects and their usage for use in virtual worlds? For example, for the auto-update described above; if a chair appears in the virtual world, how do we recognize it (image recognition) so we can then describe it in an agreed ontology for a metadata description to obtain the virtual equivalent of the chair? For example, the scenario where interactive (object based video) TV converges with virtual worlds – metadata to define objects interchanged between the two platforms. In TV and video the emerging standard is MPEG-7; for VWs, possibly MPEG-V; how do we reconcile these in this scenario, what are the processes and tools required for this convergence, especially on commercial platforms?
- Also looking at virtual worlds as a virtual media lab for his media technology students to demonstrate electric circuits, signal sampling and aliases, etc
- virtual worlds as a front end for teaching logistics and supply chain management.
Jerry is also looking at
- how courses are written and accredited ie the administration and management of mixed world universities, in readiness for expanding student base from all over the world.
- haptic technology in health and dentistry.
- use of blue screen studios and virtual worlds in the construction industry eg energy efficiency of buildings.
- spatial awareness – using space to communicate – how we are doing it.
Tim Johnson University of Worcester Tim started a text-based project, creating a virtual environment on how nurses interact with patients. The idea was that staff would learn about the patient, as nurses etc, learn how to take into consideration people’s backgrounds and home lives. Tim was asked if it would be like the The Sims™. The nurse teachers wanted it to be more lifelike. Then came Second Life!
Rowland Gallup supported Tim with this project and developed an island in Second Life. Tim has enhanced this with interactive exercises eg an egg hunt, where you gather colours in the notecard then send them back to Bluesky (her avatar.) She gives money to those who complete the hunt and then they go shopping. She has found that this helps with orientation. She aids them to find places.
The virtual space has a hospital, including a reception, a birthing centre, an ante-natal are and birthing pool. She used Bots and mannequins.
Their students met overseas students and they discussed health care systems etc. This also enabled them to shine the light on their own practices. Time differences were a problem though.
Jerry asked for volunteers to attend a virtual fire drill in Second Life on Friday, 10 September – Birmingham City University live.
John Kirriemuir Reminded us of his Snapshot reports, current and future: http://virtualworldwatch.net/snapshots/. He also reported that Bex Ferriday, from Cornwall College will not be continuing with their project after February 2011 partly due to funding issues but also due to it being seldom used for educational purposes.
A reminder that the RSC West Midlands will be putting on Introduction to Second Life and Next Steps Workshops; they have an island in Second Life for Learning Providers to experiment on (contact Jane for further information) and the annual national virtual worlds event will take place at Coventry University on 4 November 2010 Big Issues in Immersive Virtual Worlds.
Acknowledgements
Facilitator's Contact Details
- Jane Edwards p.jane.edwards@rsc-wm.ac.uk Tel: 01902 518983
