The Owl and the Pussy-cat

I am involved in a really interesting project in Second Life at the moment. Whilst talking to another educator, Caroline, over the last few weeks, ideas began to surface and get bounced between us. Eventually we came up with an idea, a whole educational build based on Lear's The Owl and the Pussycat nonsense rhyme. We thought it would be a useful resource for her class of adults with special educational needs.

So began, once again, quite a steep learning curve :-)

Caroline has been building “The Runcible Spoon” a huge paddle steamer on which most or all of the build will be situated, and I have been creating content.

Day 1 was mostly preparation work and done outside of Second Life. In SL I have made a scripted puzzle, a bit like a jigsaw but where each piece has a choice of six different images. Touching the pieces will make them scroll through each possible image for the puzzler to choose one of them. When all of the pieces achieve the same orientation a whole picture is made. There are twelve pieces to the puzzle and six different pictures that can be made – so 72 small sections of the six final pictures to be made. To actually create those 72 images takes a while. The original images needs to be gridded up, then each section copied and pasted as a new image. Not a quick process! I also has sketched out a treasure hunt, all the clues needed to be based on pictures again – so another 12 images needed. Finally, to go with them, 12 vocal recordings or the clues being read out, and another 16 vocal recordings ready for the Owl Facts work. Finally in the preparation work I wanted to make 15 images ready for a pelmanism game. Someone in-world had given me a free game to modify so it looked like a serious possibility. This session ended up with something like 100 images and lots of sound files to upload.

An early idea was for the students to be able to carry out very simple level research so we thought that a website of simple owl facts would be a good starting point. This could be played on the web on a prim in Second Life. We also wanted the students to be able to play the poem whenever they wanted to, so thought that a web page with a recording would be fine. We could not add podcast links etc. to this page as you can’t follow links in SL.

I created the pages. Both had embedded sound files so the students who mostly do not have reading skills, or have low level reading skills, could still access the information. When I tried them out in Second Life the web pages could easily be read but… the sound files did not play! So some of one day’s work wasted. However the sound files were made and could be uploaded into SL to be used in-world instead – but how?

Day 2 saw me making textures of all the owl facts. I made prims (primitives – the basic building shapes that can be created in SL) covered with the textures with the sound files embedded and a script to make them play on touch. With the individual facts prims linked the sounds would still play – very pleasing! Even this step did not go easy though. The facts that I had done in purple on the web page (each fact was a different colour to aid finding and reading) did not show up well enough in SL so had to be changed for use in-world. Having done the writing in one colour it is quite hard to change, it is more than just colour replace as the original was anti-aliased, so several different shades of purple :-{

As some of the questions ran more than 9 seconds of speech they had to be recorded in two parts. That meant the written questions had to be in two parts as well, then joined to make them look complete questions but with two touch to play sections Eventually the owl facts came together but so far the poem page was not any use. All good fun!

Also on day 2 I created the treasure hunt. Again with the uncertainly of reading skills this was made up of pictures, note cards each with the written clue and vocal recording on it, obviously this had to be scripted so that when the avatar touches the clue it gives the note card. So many tiny steps to each clue!

Day 3 – thinking again about access to the actual poem. The only sound files that can be played in SL are just over 9 seconds. To create the poem in 9 second sections would not give enough fluency, it would be too disjointed. So far, even though interested, I have not played with a podcast player in Second Life! So - into SL it is with a view to mastering the podcast facilities in-world. Several hours of fiddling left me really frustrated. Help came via Twitter from the sim owner, and podcast tool owner, Dudeney Ge (many thanks Gavin) who was working in Russia at the time, but to no avail. Between us we did not get it going so I will wait now until he gets home to see if he can see a simple reason! I am 99% certain that it will be me doing something wrong – it usually is :-) Meanwhile I am sort of creating the podcast..awaiting permissions and all sorts.

I tried to put the pelmanism game together, half of it worked, then the last 15 tiles gave me the owl image – oops! Help came from Scripting expert Eloise Pasture (thanks El) , but she declared the script I was trying to use “Ugly” and is going to make a new one.

Before this project I had created a pentatonic music maker in-world, it is a set of blue tubes that play their note on collision, so walking through them plays them. They are randomly ordered and there are buttons to start and stop drums, a drone and ostinati as required. To make this part of the Owl and Pussycat project I changed the tubes to tall square towers, and put the image textures on the outside ones to match the poem.

So at the end of day 3 podcasting and pelmanism both on hold – what next?

Retail therapy! I went shopping in-world instead. It is soo much easier shopping in SL than in RL. I managed to find and buy a beautiful peacock, a moving pig, a cat that rolls over and plays with a ball and an owl that appropriately hoots and tells all in range that “I wov u” as part of his hoot. Very corny, great fun…
Addendum - don't go shopping at midnight - you may buy a peacock instead of a turkey :-( I have had to go shopping again to buy the turkey!

The Ship - I have seen the ship, it is a work of art in progress! It is a huge paddle steamer in three floors. The top is the “edge of the sand,” sand, sea and a huge moon with dancing poses and romantic music playing. There is a ball-gown and a tux provided! The bottom floor has the money, honey and five pound note, the middle floor has pictures of the whole poem. It is going to be the most wonderful setting for the whole educational process. The bottom two floors are teaching and research areas where, hopefully, as well as the puzzles, treasure hunt etc., discussions about all of the teaching points raised by the poem can take place. It should be a space to combine structured and unstructured learning including the development of social skills etc..

I am really looking forward to bringing all of it together, and, hopefully creating a quest. Both of us are learning – loads – and making loads of mistakes, and I am sure more will show up as time goes on. If we can get it together, it works, and is useful, we are hoping to be able to offer it to other users. However – it really is a case of the proof of the pudding is it the eating, if it is useless we will learn from the mistakes and try again!

Where to put it – this is the final piece of the puzzle! I am not sure what the answer is yet either… I will keep you posted! Anyone got some water for rent :-)