How ’bout this apple for the teacher?
(Image by Ramona.Forcella)

What would a full year’s virtual world curriculum look like?

The 2009-10 school year should see significant improvements in the functionality and stability of the OpenSim application; yet, the platform is likely to still be experiencing growing pains. So how could that virtual world be utilized across an entire school year?

Based on experiences with one Boston high school, I suspect that the best results will come from combining synchronous sessions with ample opportunities for—and some requirement of—independent work. The first sessions would occur in class (or computer lab), with the instructor present. Later, assigned projects could be pursued like homework…ideally, the school would make computers available for individuals. The first phase of implementation could address the basics:

Orientation

Familiarization with client viewer; navigation, communication, avatar appearance, preference settings

Basic building

Applying color and textures, linking prims, minor prim torture, modelling a RL object

First Project

This should be a simple assignment; possibly with no relation to content area (i.e., build a car, a house), simply demonstrating basic skills.

Early experiences with the Boston students revealed an important gap for these learners: they had not experienced a virtual world. Imagine being told to build something in SL if you had never even seen The Ivory Tower of Primitives or wandered around Help Island. They had no taste of the many flavors of content being created with this technology. So, the next phase of the curriculum might begin with a visit to an existing build in another sim, or possibly another grid.

First Field Trip

Visit another region/grid and report on experience. The destination would not necessarily contain material that is related to the students’ subject area. This first trip is simple exposure to a variety of content and design techniques…to get the imagination going, whip up some inspiration. The report could be submitted individually (paper, digital doc) and a class discussion about virtual world design should follow, sharing discovery and insight.

Second Project

This could be a more complex assignment, requiring several skills or design elements (exhibits and displays are suitable goals at this stage). This project should be related to the subject area.

Second Field Trip

Visit another region/grid and report on experience. This destination should be related to the subject area, if possible. Here, students could be given the option to produce a report in the virtual world. Reports could vary from simple oral presentations to VW exhibits, and on to collaborative multimedia blog/forum/wiki projects.

Finally, the year should culminate in the implementation of what may be SL’s most subtly seductive feature: We are in it together. The social aspects of Second Life® continue to surprise me. In fact, after just two years in SL, I have already collaborated with more people than I did in a decade with HTML, JavaScript, CSS and Flash Animation.

Remember these diagrams?

Have you ever teleported to a Second Life® location just to spend a lot of time trying to figure out where to go next, what you are supposed to do, or where you should point the camera? Suppose you arrive at a location and know you are in the right place. How long are you willing to look, to find what you were after? Five minutes? Ten?

How often have you teleported away before finding it, or left thinking you probably missed something you were supposed to see? Such experiences indicate a challenge for instructional design.

And, we’ve seen these problems before. Just “open in browser” to jump back into the proving ground.

“The only certain trend on the Internet and WWW is that there are no trends on the Internet.”
Jakob Nielson, in 1995

Sound familiar? The first decade of the Internet saw many lessons emerge from web page design:

• Hyperlinks should be grouped, but not at the bottom of the page
• one style of text does not work everywhere, but some font/style choices are even worse than a page full of monospace
• and, a variety of visual content is appealing, but clutter does not communicate

If unfamiliar with the study of web design, one look through Nielson’s Alertbox posts and it becomes clear that there was much to consider when designing for the Internet. On the growing web, lesser designs were tolerated as new sites employed fresh options; and we selected the best designs, mouse-click by mouse-click.

Now we have Web 3-D.

Cafe 101 (SLURL) – An inviting space with resources for educators

How do we evaluate usable spaces?

What are the design trends in the metaverse? If a pattern exists in labeling content like streaming media, I cannot think of it. If a trend has emerged for the design of navigation cues, I have not seen it. What types of content require rapid recognition or consumption? What examples demonstrate the most effective designs?

Is it new to consider virtual world design as quite similar to designing for the web? (It is to me.) To see the parallel, just work your way up from the earliest posts by Nielson. One article, Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design (1996), was later reprised in ‘99, ‘02, ‘03, and ‘05. Open any one and you might find yourself recalling a particularly wonky experience in world. Can VW design be informed by the study of usability in early web page design? In the next few posts, I plan to investigate further.

You are welcome to join the fray.

Basic scripted objects

Running checkbox in script-edit view

I have begun to develop a series of scripts to introduce various effects to new users. These scripts can be placed in a default prim which becomes an interactive, instructional object. They are a series in that each script (or possibly group of scripts) will build upon what was presented in the previous script (or group of scripts).

I had worked on a similar project back in my first year as an avatar.

A major priority back then was to create an extremely low-prim object. This resulted in objects that might have the user toggling the “Running” checkbox (see image) in the script-edit panel to advance the lessons; or, any one object might have multiple scripts… or rezz other objects for demonstration. The scripting and comments needed to manage those behaviours sat right next to bits that were the meat of the lesson; and, the comments in those scripts were often instructing the user to look at one script first and then another, or toggle checkboxes to activate a script. It just became too clunky.

This new approach places scripts in separate objects. Each script can now be written with clear instructional content (read: extensive commenting), without the distraction and clutter found in the previous project.

On reflection, my own drive to develop low-prim objects in SL might have been unnecessary or extreme, restricting the design in an artificial way; but, it took OpenSim’s abundant elbow room to bring me back to a project that probably has value.

First use of OpenSim-specific functions today. Even though this occured on the same day as a significant HubBub erupted in the OpenSim community (note the date of this post), it is encouraging to find that the potential of OpenSim is already proving itself…making strides beyond the capabilities of Second Life®.

TextureDrawing Example

I implemented the example script for TextureDrawing in ReactionGrid’s OpenSim. This function allows the display of text on a prim’s surface. Font resolution is crisp (see image) and some styles can be applied to the text (font size, decoration and color all applied in object in background). I modified the example script to receive a string from public chat, edit into display-size chunks (lines), and draw onto prim surface.

Next, we poll a file on an external server to retrieve text submitted via website.

Odyssey region

Logged in during a first Reaction Grid OpenSim visit by some students who happen to live in Boston; captured a bit of video. There were a few glitches as we are in the early days of the OpenSim platform. The group will be working on two group projects in the coming weeks; the design of a cell model, and a human anatomy design.

An entire region to work with, what a world!

The interactive Display Panel has a home in Reaction Grid; albeit, a Simple version (OpenSim not yet implementing the llLookAt function that rotates the iDP to face the owner). Touching the lower corners advances or reverses the display through the images, one by one. There is also a “Delete” hot-spot in the upper right corner, too. (Only owner can delete.)

Having asked about sharing the simple slideshow display with the community (one of the Gridizens had Twittered a request for such a tool), a small platform was promptly placed in the Orientation Isles.

Thanks to Cathy, David JS (“a middle-schooler”), and the Grid Masters at Reaction Grid for helping test the Simple version of the image display panel (iDP).

Object description, script, and sample images now have a page in Widgets wiki. Hmmm, maybe I will improve the images next…

Newly purchased space in Gyatso region of Mãebaleia mainland in Second Life®. One appealing feature: parcel is in extreme southwest corner of sim…all objects can be placed easily, as parcel sits at region origin (0,0). Naming the parcel “Instructional Alchemy” prompts the opening of a new chapter.

In which a content developer trains both eyes on instructional design in virtual worlds, particularlySecond Life® (SL) and OpenSim (OS).

The day saw progress in a new user orientation activity, page revisions at the widgets wiki, a lengthy e-mail consult on a sim-wide sound effects system for Monash University’s new airport, the purchase of a new parcel, and modification of an image display tool for migration into OS.

All of that, and a trip to el mercado.

The reworking of an existing SL object (OpenSim Error msg: “function not implemented”) has me wondering if a display in Gyatso should include a section specifically for these OS versions…