6 building mini-challenges for educators in Second Life

June 23rd, 2010 • MUVEs
Tags: MUVEnation, MUVEs, mvn08, Tutorials

During the MUVEnation programme, I often heard: ‘I’m an educator, I don’t need building skills! There are a lot of freebies out there!’ To this I always explained that even educators need to know how to interact with objects without frustration or fear to destroy everything. That when we use a classroom or display objects inworld, we need to be able to apply simple modifications, position and align comfortably objects in the space.

For this purpose, I have created, in April 2009, a series of mini-challenges aimed at developing basic skills, necessary for building (or better putting things together) in Second Life. I wanted to exploit the advantages of: a) micro-learning by creating activities that could be carried out in just a few minutes; b)    learning by doing and exploratory learning by designing activities that achieved through practice and which solutions had to be “found out” by the learners themselves; c) self-paced learning by giving total freedom to participants to carry out the activities in their preferred rhythm and order; and finally d) create a (sort of) playful learning experience.

The mini-challenges were structured as follows:

• One evocative and short title
• One image that shows what has to be achieved by the student: the image of the challenge.
• One simple instruction about a task to perform which evidence of performance can be shown by the students in a screenshot With eventually, a question.
• Finally, a set of resources that would help the student to solve the mini-challenge, if required

I published each mini-challenge in a dedicated forum, and asked the participants to reply with the visual evidence of their performance. I loved designing these mini-challenges and the participants enjoyed doing them. And I have received positive feedback about them:

• “Marga this is an excelent approach to get the teachers ready with the SL basis. I enjoyed it a lot! The exercises are easy and fun, the overhead comes when you have to take the picture, upload it to flicker, get the code for the medium size and create your record here! Nice idea!” Max Ugaz
• “Thak you very much for the opportunity Margarita. The tasks are very simple. At the beginning they look somehow challenging especially for a newbie like me. But I manage to master some skill by attending workshops given either by MUVEnation colleagues or other instructors in other regions inworld. I see these are the basics.” Hamid Mernaoui

I only wish I have realised how successful this approach was and have used it to design the activities of the introductory course!

Here my first 6 mini-challenges. I have been asked permission to re-use these mini-challenges in other teaching contextsAnd I have happily accepted. These challenges are released under Creative Commons, by attribution, non-commercial. If you build upon this work, remix or translate it or even build extra mini-challenges like these, please share! I am also happy to share the verctor files I used for the keyboard and mouse in the pictures.

01 – How to take snapshots of your interface?

Take two photos of your interface with your avatar facing the camera:

• the first with the snapshot button
• the second showing the snapshot window, by using the Screen print key of your keayboard

Put the photos on your Flickr account and post it here, in medium size, as a reply to this discussion.

02 – I go nuts when I see all these numbers

Create 4 boxes on the ground:

• The first will be a perfect cube with size at X:1.750, Y:1.750, Z:1.750
• The second will be a large prim X:3.250, Y:3.250, but with Z:0.750. Mind the dot!
• The third will be a tall and thin prim X:O.950, Y:0950, Z:4.500
• The Fourth will be a wall X:0.200, Y:3.000, Z:5.000

If your prims with the modification get half buried in the ground, then lift them up by pulling the blue arrow. Now guess! What are all these numbers for? Which coordinates X, Y, Z help you to make an object larger? Which help you to make an object taller?

Want more?

• Opening edit tools – Second Life Video TuTORial QUICKTIP
• Learn building at the Ivory Tower of Primitives
• Strongly advised: The 1-prim barstool trick – Second Life Video TuTORial (If you manage to make a barstool, sit on it and add it to the photo)
• For a quick overview on building: Building is Second LIfe

03 – One meter higher please!

Take a photo of the 4 prims created during challenge 02, but positioning them precisely on the space, in the MUVEnation sandbox

• First prim, the cube, at position X:135, Y:205, Z:25
• Second, the large prim, at position X:138, Y:205, Z:26
• Third, the thin and tall prim, at position X:141, Y:205, Z:28
• Fourth, the wall, at position X:143, Y:205, Z:32

Now guess! What does the black bar with numbers in the upper part of the screen indicate? If someone asks you to put a box a little bit higher, which position coordinate do you have to change: X, Y or Z?

04 – Remind me again: How do I duplicate an object?

Take a photo of 10 walls, their size is X:0.200, Y:3.000, Z:5.000. You will have to make the first wall and then reproduce the others 9 horizontally. To duplicate just SHIFT+click+drag on X. Once finished, make sure that all your walls are spaced horizontally, 0.500 between them! What? Aha! Work out how you do this by increasing your horizontal position!

Now guess! Which coordinate do you have to drag to duplicate a prim vertically? How do you make sure that your objects are positioned precisely at 0.500 from each other?

Want more?

• Go to the Duplicating prims station in the Ivory tower of primitives at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Natoma/176/196/26
• Shift-drag to copy objects – Second Life Video TuTORial
• Copy prim
• Building in second Life Basics 4: duplicating objetcs

05 – Rotate that prim and show me the East!

Take a photo of a wall with size X:0.200, Y:3.000, Z:5.000, with the initial rotation at 0, 0, 0, when you are rotating it to the East. Your photo must show the rotation circle on Y (green) around the object and the related grid with East and West positions. Final rotation should be 0, 90, 0.

Want more?

• Go to the Rotating prims station in the Ivory tower of primitives at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Natoma/161/171/26
• Rotating a prim: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHSSfCRPIZ0

06 – Under the grid

Rez two boxes, standard size in the sandbox. Sit on the first. And put the second one at Z:24.500, then rotate on X it at 225. Activate the local ruler mode and make it visible by touching the green/orange position ‘sliders’ (or tiny triangles or whatever you prefer to call them). Take a photo of yourself under the grid!

Now guess! What are the differences between world and local grid? Why the local grid is useful?

Want more?

• How to use the building grid – Second Life Video TuTORial
• Using the Grid in Second Life for Prim Placement
• Reference ruler & grid – Second Life Video TuTORial QUICKTIP

The Holodeck versus the Builder’s Buddy script: 3 teacher’s point of view

June 23rd, 2010 • 2 comments MUVEs
Tags: Builder's Buddy Script, Holodeck, MUVEnation, MUVEs, mvn08, Tutorials, Workshop

Last year, during the MUVEnation programme we explored different holodeck technologies for the design and deployment of flexible learning scenarios inworld. Amongst these, we focused in the 2in1 Production Holodeck by Inside This World and the Builder’s Buddy Script by Newfie Pendragon.

Professor Shirley Williams, from The University of Reading, led this process and developed herself the tutorials that we first used in the course:  Building with limited space, Workshop on using the Builder’s Buddy Script, Unpacking your Holodeck, and Putting content inside your Holodeck. She also blogged about it here: Holodeck: first steps at production and Builder’s Buddy First workshop

The participants found the process particularly challenging. We even had a collection of Holodeck horror tales in a dedicated forum! But despite the complexity, 50 participants effectively engaged in and completed the production of their learning scenario with either the holodeck or the Builder’s Buddy Script. To support this process, I have also developed a detailed visual tutorial of the 2in1 Production Holodeck that can be found here: Creating a simple scene with the Holodeck!

The release of these tutorials launched an interesting discussion about pro and cons of the 2in1 Production Holodeck for educators and its comparison with the Builder’s Buddy Script. You will find here 3 teacher’s point of view about their use, all based in personal experience of the tools: Jaime Álamo Serrano, professor of chemistry at the University of Valencia, Spain; Nergiz Kern, English language teacher in Turkey, presently completing a MA in Educational Technology and TESOL at the University of Manchester; and me!

For Jaime, the main criticism was related to the conceptual differences between exterior and interior scenes that are not so clear:

I would add that the difference between exterior and interior are not so clear. For instance, to say that a house is the exterior and the furniture is the interior is very restrictive idea, because you cannot ass more interior scenes as any new replaces the former. Instead think of ‘exterior’ as what will be permanent and not changed accordd different ‘changing’ (interior) scenes. Another example: think of your classroom. Some furniture will be always the same, but in each day or session you’ll use specific scenes for the topic of that class. You need different interior to practice different sets of vocabulary, botanical species, architectonic samples, and so on. So that part of the furniture, educational tools and other parts being always there should be ‘exterior’. A kitchen, another example, will have different foods each time you teach how to cook. These changing foods will be the interior.

In relation to using the Holodeck versus the BB script, Jaime’s opinion is that:

The Builder’s Buddy is much more customizable than the Holodeck. It’s open source and free.

Also the BB rezzes the components more precisely and much better than with the Holodeck

Also the BB has the possibilities to Reset and Record again  that the Holodecks lacks.

In addition when using the BB you can nest several levels of BB scripts. When using the Holodeck, only two (interior and exterior). Besides the BB provides a much nicer and intituitive menu system.

Finally, the only issue is that you have to learn to handle the channels.

My opinion is that:

• The process of using the BB script and the Holodeck are close: making scene, putting scripts, taking back, recording position… However using the holodeck is more complex. Once you learn one, the other won’t be very difficult to learn.
• On the other hand I find the holodeck, once you’ve learned how to use it, quite practical, in one single object you have all the scenes you need.
• I agree: “the Builder’s Buddy is much more customizable than the holodeck. It’s open source and free”.
• I agree: “Also the BB has the posibilities to Reset and Record again that the holodeck lacks”.
• I agree: “Using the BB you can nest several levels of BB’s. Using the holodeck, ony two (interior and exterior)”. But I still prefer the Holodeck menu, because it offers all in one.
• Finally what I really prefer in the Holodeck is the easy way to be used by visitors and owners with different set of rights , without touching the scripts.

One issue that came often during the MUVEnation programme was the complexity of using the Holodeck. I’ve received requests for help and even complaints about people who could not use the Holodeck because it was too difficult. At the time, some of these people were not yet able to position correctly a platform or a door, to modify alone a simple script, or even to retrieve the Holodeck object in their inventory or to send a landmark to another resident’s profile. Without any doubt using the Holodeck is much more difficult than using the BB script. And in the Holodeck’s user manual, it is clearly stated that the Holodeck is for people who have two months of building experience.

But what concretely is two months of building experience for an educator? In helping the students to understand and use the Holodeck I observed that those who succeeded were confident inworld and were capable of 1) managing their inventory and retrieve perfectly any element within; 2) positioning precisely objects in the grid; 3) editing the basic features of these objects using the camera independently of their avatar’s position.

At the time of this discussion, in April 2009, Nergiz Kern’s opinion was:

So, on one side we have the issue with building skills. You need to have some basic building skills as you mention. You don’t need to really now how to “build” from scratch, though. The scenes most of us built are made up of freebie objects like chairs, boards, tables, etc.. So, you only need to be able to move them and position them where you want. The only scripting skills you need for the BB script is to be able to open a script, modify and save it. For simple scenes (that are not nested), the only thing people will need to change in the script is the channel number. The version we are using, makes changing other settings easy, too. On the other side, we have the different tools, namely the holodeck(s) and the BB script. Which is easier, more intuitive and more practical? I think we can’t anwser the more practical question clearly because a lot will depend on your needs and the purpose of the scene. If you, for example, need a shell, a holodeck can be easier because it provides you with ready shells that you can, then, modify according to your needs. In order to build shells with the BB script, you need to have good building skills and it will take time. I agree with Marga, that the holodeck allows you to have everything in one place/prim with a nice menu to select the scenes you want. On the other hand, I can easily hand out the boxed scenes made with the BB script. Holodecks, because they are commercial products, have some important limitations regarding permissions. I am not quite sure yet how far these go but this makes them less useful for educational purposes, especially when you want students to work together or don’t have the money to buy everyone a holodeck. Regarding ease of use, there seem to be huge differences between different holodecks. I have unpacked, rezzed and browsed through the scenes in the Production holodeck, unpacked the scripts, etc. But reading the long instruction and reading all your “horror” stories, did not make me want to use it. Around the same time, I was provided with a Horizons holodeck. And I have to say, creating a scene was very easy, even easier than with the BB script. There is only one script and the moment you put it into an object, it’s position is recorded. It’s also much cheaper then the Production holodeck. Another advantage is that rezzing and clearing scenes is much easier, also changing permissions from private, to public or group. When rezzed, the holodeck looks like a disk which is easier to click on than a small wall pannel. It has a small wall pannel, too and even a HUD to control it, when this is want you want. There is only one problem that I have to find out about. Once you create a scene and save it, it becomes unmodifiable which is a complete nuisance if you want to change a scene or even only rename it. My conclusion is that the BB script

• is easy to use once you have used it a couple of times and practised by creating mini scenes,
• It doesn’t cost anything,
• you can easily share your creations
• you can be creative with the box. It can come in all kinds of shapes (Nick/Corwin showed me one that came in the shape of a rucksack which had a picnic scene in it).
• The nesting allows for complex structures. Again, it was Nick I thik who showed me a kind of pyramid. Each time you clicked one level the next appeared. Great for presenting something in a gradual way.

If you have a folder in your inventory with all the boxed scenes, it is not much more difficult or time consuming to drag out the scene you need than to rez your holodeck and select the scene from the menu. Also, sometimes, you might not want others to see all your scenes. You could have differen copies of your holodeck for this but then it gets complicated again. If you want all your BB scenes in one place, you can create a picture board like you did, Marga.

Nergiz has also extensively written about her experiences using the holodecks for education in:

• Building holodeck scenes in Second Life
• Holodecks and language learning
• Holodeck or Builder’s Buddy Challenge

And you, Holodecks or Builder’s Buddy Scripts, what do you think?

Creating a simple scene with the Holodeck!

June 23rd, 2010 • 1 comment MUVEs
Tags: Comic Life, Comics, Holodeck, MUVEnation, MUVEs, mvn08, Tutorials

Last year I created a 10 pages visual tutorial*, with Comic Life, about using the 2in1 production Holodeck from Inside this world. At the time, it was carefully reviewed by my colleague and friend Jaime Álamo (Professor at the University of Valencia), but I never had time to integrate his changes to the tutorial and release a new version. This has been done now. You can download the PDF file here. Enjoy!

*At the time of the production of this tutorial, many teachers asked me how was it done. Here some information about the process: the visual tutorial was made from the experience gained during the workshop to my own students. It took me 32 hours of work. This included in particular: the review of the complete documentation of the holodeck, writing the story board/scenario, testing the instructions, 50 snapshots taken inworld to illustrate each of the steps of the tutorial, preparing the layout and putting together the objects (photos and text) into Comic Life.

The collection of educational tools for Second Life

March 2nd, 2010 • 6 comments MUVEs
Tags: Book, MUVEnation, mvn08, OER, Second Life, Tools

I’ve been interested, for several years already, in creating a documented collection of educational tools for Second Life.  The effort however to produce a snapshot in time of the variety of tools available for educators required a dedication beyond individual commitment. If the purpose was to create a valuable contribution for the community of educators at large, it was clearly a work for many, many helping hands and contributors.

The MUVEnation open online programme gave me the opportunity to organise such a work. First, back in September 2008, I coordinated the efforts of 33 partcipants in the introductory course for the identification of more than 100 tools used for teaching and learning in Second Life. Later, in March 2009, 55 education professionals (lecturers, researchers, learning technologists and teachers) have collected, tested and fully described more than 150 tools for teaching and learning in Second Life. The result of this collective work has been transformed into a book, published as an Open Educational Resource under CC licence by attribution unported, so anyone is free to distribute without restrictions: adapt, translate, re-mix and improve it.

The book is presently under a last quality control review for public release and it should be available by the end of March 2010. The book was edited by me in collaboration with Jaime Alamo, professor at the University of Valencia. The list of authors who contributed to the collection is here:

Read more »

Selected participants in the MUVEnation programme

December 31st, 2008 • 3 comments MUVEs
Tags: MUVEnation, MUVEs, mvn08

Back in October 2008, we were overwhelmed by the number and quality of the applications to the MUVEnation peer to peer learning programme. Although our initial plan was to accept only 80 practitioners, we decided to admit +200 participants from around the world and carry out the selection process based on their participation activity during the introductory module of the programme.

We have now finished the selection process. The high rate of effective participation made us reconsider the numbers. And we have have admitted 107 active participants, from 26 different countries. 80 of the participants are based in Europe. 27 are across the world, from Argentina to Australia, from Jamaica to Israel, from Venezuela to Morocco. Leading countries with the higher number of participants are Spain, Italy and the United Kingdom.

We will be further exploring the use of virtual worlds for education from January to June 2009. And working together on the following areas: analysis of teachers needs, competency framework for the use of virtual worlds in education, commented collection of educational tools in Second Life, exploration of other virtual worlds, Sloodle, narrative analysis of teaching practices including the analysis of factors that impact their success, elaboration of learning patterns connecting RL educational challenges to virtual worlds scenarios, and the validation of these scenarios by concrete implementations inworld.

The story of my first Bot or ‘Voorst: a forest trapped in a crow!’

November 27th, 2008 • 4 comments MUVEs
Tags: Bots, MUVEnation, MUVEs, mvn08, Second Life

This is the story of Voorst Turbo and how he became a Second Life Bot. I created Voorst because I wanted an ALT to live again, with new eyes, the experience of my first steps in Second Life. I wanted to be a male avatar and for name I’ve taken Voorst, for my son Forest, and Turbo for the speed of my life.

My motivations come from the difficulties of setting up a group subscriber, for closed groups in SL, that sends automatic invites to people who ask for membership. Actually, what I wanted was a procedure to send out group invites to verified Moodle users, so as to recreate somehow Moodle groups inside Second Life groups. I contacted Daniel Livingstone who introduced me to Paul Preibish (Fire Centaur) who suggested me the use of a Bot:

‘I too use a Bot to accomplish automatic group inviting (You’ll find her on my Island English Village, her name is EnglishVillage Robonaught). I programmed her using the basic examples from libsecondlife.org. (using Mono), and she lives on my server (and in SL). When someone clicks on a “join group” button in SL, the prim sends a specially formatted message to my Bot, and my Bot (who is an officer in the in-world group) sends a group invite to that person automatically. In addition, I could theoretically program her to automatically insert the users name into the mysql db at the same time, so you could display the Inworld group membership on your website. There are several scripts on SLexchange that already offer this sort of service’

So a Bot? It looked quite challenging, but I decided to give it a try. Here is what I’ve learnt:

• What is a Bot? a Bot is a Second Life citizen that is used by his or her owner to perform machine tasks inworld. Or better: A Bot is a SL citizen who is driven by a machine and not by an human being. Some call them ‘non-human players’. A Bot is an avatar: looks like any other avatar inworld, has an avatar name, has an avatar profile, can participate in a conversations and perform several kind of tasks like sending IMs, TPs, inventory items, invitations for a group…

• What are they for? A Bot can be used for several things: for maintaining presence inworld, increasing traffic statistics, appealing audience (pole dancers)… But also to perform automatic tasks inworld, like, in our case, sending invites for closed groups after a membership request.

• How can we make a Bot? This is a two steps process. First you need to create an account for the Bot, then you need to buy the little piece of software that will control the Bot. In my case a bought The JVA multi-purpose Bot for sending group invites to MUVEnation participants for 7 groups at the same time. When I installed the Bot manager in my computer, Paz went inworld for rezzing the Bot base and its utilities like the group subscription and the mailing list. Paz made Voorst officer of all her MUVEnation groups and positioned the Bot base where she wanted. Once the initial set up finished, Voorst went inworld to decide about his appearance. And after all the coming in and going out necessary for final tweaks, I connected the Bot software and Voorst appeared at the same time that Paz, inworld. Magic!

Setting Voorst has been finally easy. I was prepared for a very complicated procedure, but no. The only tricky thing was the logs in and out between Paz and Voorst. For example, Paz had to log in for making him officer of the groups. Then he had to log in for accepting. Then Paz had to log in for giving him money to buy an avatar. Then Voorst logged in for trying out. Phew! I have never launched my viewer so many times during the same day! And forcing SL to close via the task manager. And restarting the computer as well!

On the anecdote side, I can tell that Voorst wanted to become a non-human avatar, a wolf for instance, and forced Paz to buy him a new brand skin for 4000l$, in Lost Ferals. After expending all the money, he wasn’t happy with his new skin and started to beg for money again: to StevenW, to Daffodil and also to Daf. StevenW gave him 20l$. But it wasn’t enough. So Paz had to return for another 1000l$. And again Voorst for trying out the new skin. And then Paz for setting the base. And then Both!

Some spare thoughts:

• Becoming a non-human avatar with a robot, machine or feral animal skin appears like an appropriate solution for Bots, so people get less disrupted and don’t start speaking with them as if they had an human player behind them.

• Now that I know that Voorst lives 24/7 inworld, because my computer is acting like a server, I feel the pressure and struggle when shutting down my computer.

Finally some useful links about Bots in education: [SLED] What kind of Bots do you want for education? initiated by Fire Centaur as well.

Last but not least a stolen story from the MUVEnation forum, written by Sus Nyrop about Voorst, Paz and me:

The raven Voorst is now helping Marga with certain registration tasks. I saw the two of them, Marga and Voorst late yesterday night, but apparently they were very busy and logged out before I could learn more about how this Bot was created and set up.

I looked up the name, Voorst, and the ethymology is Prince in Ducth (a village named Voorst, as well as a musician).

Perhaps Dutch princes have this power over their owner, but I was puzzled about Marga’s report from setting this up (see this in another thread written today), as she explains how the Bot was demanding a very costly skin - the creature was described in rather independent terms.

I did not get any closer to understand more in detail, about what it takes to set up súch automated systems. The Bot appears to be a real avatar, so naively I was offering my friendship, as a usual procedure whenever I bump into MUVEnation inhabitants.

Marga, Lawrence, I think ”setting up a Bot” would be an eye opening training session either as a witness to the process, or hands on doing it –  maybe as group work, and others have given sign of interest. Perhaps later in our course, if not soon?

I am looking forward Sus!