When worlds collide - learning activity management for avatars

July

20

07

Andy Powell, Eduserv [email protected]

www.eduserv.org.uk/foundation

When worlds collide: learning activity management for avatars

or “Taking LAMS to Second Life” (but hopefully not “Like LAMS to the SLaughter”)

image by ialja @ flickr.com

July 20072007 European LAMS Conference, London 2

Summary


Second what?

• 3-D virtual world

• run by Linden Lab

• populated by avatars, a.k.a. residents

• ‘proprietary’, but public commitment to open standards and OSS

• a ‘metaverse’ almost entirely built by its residents

www.secondlife.com


So it’s just a game right?

• looks and feels like a gaming environment

• but no purpose as such

– use it to buy / sell, entertain, learn, collaborate, …

• do not approach it simply as a game – you’ll be disappointed! image by J0@nn@ @ flickr.com


A collaborative space

images by silversprite @ flickr.com

• meetings

• conferences

• lectures

• group work

• informal discussions

• chat, IM, groups and gestures


A creative space

• not just building objects…

• scripting

• putting on plays / gigs / performances

• art installations

• creating machinima

• written text

• …


But note…

• “It's easier for [Second Life] to be a chemistry set than a chemistry class”

• “One of the issues with SL is that generally only 10% of people get it”

Babbage Lindenhttp://artfossett.net/meetings/2007/06/19/efsym-followup/transcript.txt


SL as part of a blended experience• SL is good for some things but not everything - good for some people but not everyone

• SL will offer a potentially useful

venue for some of the activities

managed using LAMS

• pedagogies have to be flexible enough to allow for multiple modes of collaboration and creativity

• our learners won’t be fully immersed in virtual worlds for the foreseeable future – therefore LAMS integration can be partial


Functional requirements

• in-world (LAMS->SL) information about activities

– workflow snapshot (what have I done? what do I still need to do?)

– dates and times (when do I need to do it by?)

– participants (who do I need to do it with?)

• out-world (SL->LAMS) information / tracking about progress

– stored chat-logs

– log of activity

– saved artefacts


Issue 1 – logging collaborations

• chat and IM history not stored persistently across sessions

• need to maintain record elsewhere

• automatically or by manual copy-and-paste


Issue 2 - displaying text in-world

http://www.jeff-barr.com/?p=587

• difficult to dynamically display textual information in-world

• XYText vs. ‘text as image’ vs. chat

• HTML on a prim long promised but not yet available :-(

http://www.slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=123668


Issue 3 – data transfer

• SL scripting language has built-in support for HTTP requests and RPC

• but no in-world XML or Ajax parser support

• so need to process complex data using external scripts and pass data in-world using simple formats (e.g. CSV)

• also note limitations in amount of data that can be passed


Issue 4 - shared credentials

• avatars have a name – e.g. Art Fossett

• in-world objects have a unique identifier

• need to reliably tie avatars to LAMS accounts and LAMS accounts to avatars

• need to trust the intermediate in-world objects thru which messages are passed


Mapping the landscape

Second Life

Moodle

LAMS


Learning activity management for avatars

• LAMS adds activity management to the mix


• Eduserv Foundation currently funding

development of SLoodle

• contact Daniel Livingstone

[[email protected]] to

find out more

When worlds collide - learning activity management for avatars

Technology

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