“…scripting a life size model of the International Space Station… bring in real-time telemetry and state vector data into second life to have real-time operability of an autonomous rover.” http://colab.arc.nasa.gov/node/29

Avatar Academics: Is virtual reality the next frontier for universities? Some of the most famous names in education — including UCLA — are teaching in cyberspace.

Something of a generic “What is this?!” article. It give a good overview of initiatives in California universities.

“Just this past January, the UCLA Library set up shop inside SL, becoming the sixth major library to do so. (All told, there are about 370 library staff in SL, and another 880 or so “friends” of that virtual group.) The library plans to exhibit UCLA’s extensive digital collections, including an archive of local, state and federal electoral campaign materials over the decades that affect the Los Angeles area. UCLA’s virtual library will also provide Web links to an array of its existing services, resources and tips aimed at enhancing the academic success of graduate and undergraduate students.”

SDK 1.0 launches, Consortium created

It looks like a little commercial interest in the form of Qwaq.com has spurred this community to release a packaged product.

Barry Joseph of Global Kids reports: “The geography of Teen Second Life is going to be restructured to clearly delineate teen-property from adult-property. This has occurred, in part, due to the conversations over the past three months, spurred by Global Kids, initially supported by the MacArthur Foundation, about the role of adults in the teen grid. The teens spoke and were heard. Thank you Linden Labs.”

For the longer story, go to:
http://www.holymeatballs.org/2007/04/sl_global_kids_and_tsl_residen.html

See the NASA eEducation Roadmap: Research Challenges in the Design of Massively Multiplayer Games for Education and Training. The author, Daniel Laughlin, spoke at my Second Life Teacher’s Lounge in August, 2006.

See presentation digests and Powerpoints from Dan Livingstone’s conference in late March: http://www.ics.heacademy.ac.uk/events/displayevent.php?id=142

My excerpt:
Virtual Learning Environments and Virtual Worlds: The Sloodle Project
Jeremy Kemp, San Jose State University
As mainstream educators slowly get to grips with the enhanced potential of using web-based virtual learning environment, others are forging ahead with 3D virtual environment. This presentation will outline where the web-based environments provide support for learning that may be lacking in richer 3D environment - and introduce the Sloodle project which aims to integrate the web-based and the 3D virtual learning environments.

From this YouTube Machinima, the latest entry in the MUVE arena appears to be more about “singing songs, going to bars and watching movies” than education. But our comely host “Christina” starts in an orientation space nearly identical to the Linden Lab spot, including a walk downhill with rustic wooden signs.

See the HipiHi website (via machine-translation) and the dismissive Second Life Insider post from Feb 2.

Salacious tidbit - HipiHi’s senior managers hale from Wuhan - home city to Anshe Chung studios. Chung’s Guni Graef told me in November that AC Studios was hiring heavily from local multimedia design schools and had upped its staff to over 30! He sold a 10% stake to a German publisher two weeks ago.

Pure Gossip - Where could that capital be headed? It may not be coincidental that the HipiHi video is narrated in the first person by a young female character….

I have posted our latest Machinima on YouTube from our fledgling campus.
Several innovations you might steal:

• Create a giant logo up at about 250m and film backwards as you jump off.
• Create a duplicate of a campus building and then use camera controls to match a RL video shot of the building.
• Create a 2D chart graphic and then cut it into prims - turn them physical and drop them from the chart - on your avatar’s head! Hardest part of this is getting a single texture to align on every prim to the millimeter.

Created with a MacBook Pro, SnapzPro, iMovie and Garage Band.

TP to the campus and browse the website.

Intellagirl turned me on to “stigmergy.” It is Second Life’s Greatest strength. It is the ONLY animal of its kind - a narrative-agnostic, 3D MMO streaming client with easily editable persistent objects hosting a sizable, active community. As a conveyor of permanent written communication it sucks. Notecards are terribly limiting. As a chatting group ware platform it’s likewise weak. “Park you avatar please.” But no other platform could foster such masterpieces of persistent nonverbal communication in learning as:

• Spaceport Alpha
• Svarga
• Virtual Hallucinations
• NMC Campus
• Human Animal

Wandering Yaffle of the _Black Library built an amazing tour bot system and donated it to the educator script library. Also molecule construction kit, chat tools, survey assessment systems, etc.