Reaction Grid

From the web:

Create, learn, share and, explore on ReactionGrid - the 3D Virtual World for business, education, collaboration, and learning. Microsoft Case Study here.

We offer a PG/PG13 experience with content created by our residents (often refered to as Gridizens), and provide a friendlyand open environment for all to come and share thoughts and ideas. http://www.reactiongrid.com/TheRGTeam/About.aspx

Several times I have heard mention of Reaction Grid linked with Education. Leon Cych urged me to visit and make contact – but that was months ago! Today I finally got in and made contact with Chris Hart and Kyle who are two of the three owners. I was there along with two friends from Second Life, Anna and Graham and we were shown around some of the more impressive educational builds.

Reaction Grid is quite a lot cheaper than Second Life – but possibly not so stable, three out of the five of us did not have voice today. There is no currency and one can upload pictures, textures and, I guess, sounds freely. It is possible to move your own creations from Second Life and Open Sim using something called Second Inventory and may be possible with a viewer caller Meerkat – I will soon investigate that!

Once one has registered and account users can log in any time and access the grid but users under 13 must have an adult with them all of the time. Schools and social groups could build projects there comparatively cheaply.

They have around 140 regions on the public grid, but also host several small grids for clients who want something a bit more private.

We had a conducted tour visiting LearningOnTheEdge 4, Digiteen island which was built by about 15 pupils form a school in Georgia, they have been learning about digital law and copyright. See their work here http://digiteendreamteam.blogspot.com/

Project Manhattan - an area where data is shared in a very visual manner. It is all to do with current, too much causes an overload and the poor computer operator goes mad waving her arms about etc, or Frankenstein sets on fire L This is a collaboration, showing physics in action, touching the "real world". Entertaining! Also here a recreation of the Trylon and Perisphere from the 1939 World's Fair can be seen. This is being built in great detail by many people.

Code Troque The CodeTorque sim is where they do training, building, scripting classes, all sorts of training sessions.

Public Works This was built by a real Public Works manager who is showing filtering, the reactiongrid team is working with her to bring real world data in to the build. Once the data is in they can have some fun with it and see historical data about how much this is helping as well as show that data in unique ways.

Expo - This sim was built to reflect a real-world solution that has been implemented enabling a fuel distribution company in Florida to monitor levels in tanks around the state. It is to show tank levels for fuel and lubricants in real life in Florida for a client and it has been enabled to gather weather data so it will soon have real data here showing fuel levels in real life that will even show weather over the tank. This clearly has a very real purpose enabling the fuel deliveries to be where and when needed to maximum efficiency.