The Helen Keller Day

June 26th 2009 in Second Life sees twentyfour hours devoted to accommodating people with deafness or that are blind in virtual worlds. There is a series of places to visit, things to do, talks and games to play, more information can be found on the wiki http://blinddeafawareness.pbworks.com/Press-Release, the press release explains what the day is all about.

Linden Lab collaborated with Virtual Helping Hands to produce the day. It was designed as a community-event to examine the best ways and tools to support disabled people and explore how people with various disabilities can be entertained and achieve education etc., through being in a virtual world.

The highlight of the day for me (apologies to anyone blind or deaf who was looking for something more along the lines of what was provided), was the trained dogs. The dogs that I was playing with are created by the same people who developed Max the guide dog and they are just wonderful. I have every intention of going back and buying one 
I am living in hopes that Hope is still available!

The Holodeck Challenge

Visit the Flickr SLExperiments page to see a collection of photographs from earlier today:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/980856@N23/

Weeks ago the SLExperiments group and Osnagroup embarked on a project to build and share holodeck scenes that could be used for teaching languages.
It has finished today as a challenge but of course will never finish so long as people still keep finding the scenes useful and creating them!
About a dozen scenes were shared this afternoon, a Venezuelan shop with musical instruments, hammocks, vegetables, pots and flowers ready for one to haggle over the prices and pass the times of day, an Italian cookery lesson with free recipes and hover text explaining what all of the items are. There were four gardens, all very different, Mary has made two with notecard readers, Word Rez, lots of tools that are quite formal and very organised, Dennis has created the Dogme garden, a beautiful place to sit and talk and the fourth is the one I created, a very simple just grass, trees and seating.
There was a clothes stall ready for discussion on colours, costs, names of clothing and an Italian food and vegetable shop, a reading room where groups could discuss texts etc., a street with stalls where avatars can sell their own items, discuss needs and haggle over the price and a build not quite ready yet based on the English poem by Edward Lear called the Owl and the Pussycat.
The afternoon was very enjoyable and very successful!

SL6B

Well I have a plot on SL6B, I am very thrilled! In the first year that I was in Second Life I did little except tried to learn what it was all about and how to do things but in my second year I have done a Burning Life, Education Faire and now the 6th Birthday Celebration exhibit and it feels like I have really achieved something! Also, of course, and probably more importantly I have done the e-safety training sessions for teachers which are running for the third time now.

I had already spent a load of time building the main part of the sampler disco set over the spring so when I got a plot with a few days to put something together it did not take a massive amount of work, just some time to pull it all together with the aid of a SL friend and colleague Often Hird!

We had a small party on Thursday evening and Anna Begonia took a film clip – which was a lovely surprise. :-) Thanks Anna!

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.

A visit to various OpenSim Grids

After diving in and almost immediately out of OpenSim once or twice and not really getting to grips with it at all I decided to investigate more fully today. I visited OpenSim and looked around, there seemed to be no-one about anywhere but on teleporting around I arrived on a sim that had at least one orientation board on it. That looked hopeful and whilst I was reading and looking around a wonderful person called Doctor Rorrim came and gave me clothes, landmarks etc. This was a huge breakthrough – I have one friend on OpenSim, am dressed and have places to visit!

There are currently 70 people here, not as many as I expected but even though there are so few I still got well and truly stuck. When I broke free, by choosing a spot on the map and teleporting out, I ended up stuck underground.

A few more teleports brought me to a stargate – a real working stargate, I went through and came out on Grid4Us, a developed but deserted sim with another stargate, that is too good to resist so this time I went to HyperGrid! It was on this journey that I got logged out L

Ah well – interesting – all the features of Second Life, but undeveloped and few people.

I will return when I have a couple of hours to spare J An interesting little exploration!

A visit to RM's Real Centre

The REAL Centre has been created to promote discussion and debate about how technology and furniture can support learning and as a space for experimentation for teachers, with or without their students and product developers. We are planning to do some Oxfordshire meetings here in the future, watch the Harnessing Technology newsletter to find out more!

The whole area is split into five learning zones, each equipped with tools and furniture to demonstrate versatility and total integration of ICT with learning and teaching.

Click To Play

1 - Communication Zone

The focus of this space is on developing communication skills with students of differing abilities including PMLD and sensory work. The whole area is built around the most up to date touch screens and height adjustable plasma screens (driven by infrared to match existing wheelchair technology), and had light beams, voice and modern switch activation. The idea is that instead of having a sensory room as we have in many of our special schools now, the whole building becomes an immersive, learning playground. It has height adjustable tables that can be placed in a horseshoe configuration with 45 degree tables that enables staff to engage directly with four students, so aiding concentration. It has multi-sensory seating allowing for positioning and integrated sensory activities. It has technologies that encourage students to communicate using the full range of senses we played with a computer driven totally by eye movements. This computer made social contact through e-mail so easy!

2 - Creative and Media

This area shows and example of how a classroom space can be re-organised for practical and creative activities. It has individual tables and chairs that can easily be cleared and stacked by students to create space for other activities. Six of us sat at a hexagonal arrangement of individual tables, we all had plenty of room but still actually took up very little space. The table and chair units can be moved to sit over the electrical boxes in the floor, so that power and cabling needed are already in the floor and the table unit is simple plugged in. This area includes a green screen video creating area with the pop-up background and cover providing as much or little exposure as required on the video clip. The green screen lens will fit any camera so it is quite versatile. We watched how a group of children had created an Amazon news report and placed themselves against a tropical backdrop showing the river and animals. The video and stop motion animation can be used across the curriculum to develop a creative and motivational approach to learning. There was also a music keyboard and headphones to create soundtracks for videos and podcasts, unfortunately this was Apple and Garage Band, most of our schools currently do not have access to Apple computers, it is a pity that nothing OC was added to the area. There was also an opportunity to create podcasts here.

3- Open Learning Area

This area demonstrates an open and flexible space that can be reconfigured to cater for a range of different activities to support project based and collaborative learning. There is a table where groups of students can work collaboratively on the same activity; this can be moved to anywhere there is an electrical box built into the floor. It has the most amazing new type of interactive board, built on an old but much improved technology – an e-beam! The board is a table with integrated ultra short throw projector, it can be raised or lowered by a simple winding mechanism, it also can be used as a vertical platform as well as flat table. The e-beam, fitted at one corner enables complete interactivity, the small laptop shelf remains in place at the same orientation so that the laptop can be left in place and connected while the board is changed to a table and visa versa. We could have stayed for hours studying Google maps – a whole group of us around the table looking at and discussing geographical images!

This area also had a mobile presentation and seating area with step seats used to create a pleasing support forum style debate, discussion and interaction horseshoe shaped arrangement. The back of the steps includes an internal resource storage which could have built in laptop charging facility. Once again it uses the project table as an interactive / projection screen and has the capability for using voting pads built in.

In the middle of the area is a Video diary room. This air conditioned pod can be as large or small as required featuring digital and video camera and audio. It is air conditioned and sound proofed, is constructed of clear panels as well as brightly coloured panels, it enables one to ones or group work. Pupils could do a quiet or noisy activity without interrupting the whole class. Teachers could do pupils briefings without having to worry about child protection issues they are very visible the whole time.

4 – The Da Vinci Studio

This area is a hub for practical, exploratory and creative activities that enables students to develop their expertise with hands on learning and problem solving. It is made up of a demonstration area that incorporates an interactive whiteboard and visualiser which can display objects in real time. The Teacher wall is very good, it is a standard IWB on the wall with cupboards built underneath, these have built in laptop charging facilities. To the left of the IWB there is a partition screen that one can pull out to form a partition wall but in this case it is also a projection screen. This areas has project tables for practical work that can easily re-configured, a range of LEGO® Education resources to support practical and problem solving learning incorporating machines, mechanisms and robotics and science resources including data loggers and microscopes listening activities that can be separate pod that incorporates data and audio activities or informal meetings video, mp3 recording devices.

5. Independent working area

This area gave ideas for equipment for students to work on their own or in groups. It had an oval sofa seating unit with integrated power. The orbital desks enable pupils to work alone or pull them up together for group working. The seats swivel so from anywhere in the room pupils can look at the teacher. As soon as the pupils sits at the desk the chair locks into place.

To find out more or arrange a visit contact RM :

http://www.rm.com/Generic.asp?cref=GP1448188

Chinese Lessons in Second Life

As I popped in-world to pick something up the other day a friend invited me to a Chinese taster class. I went, purely out of interest, I am not likely to be trying to learn Chinese, but was fascinated by the introductory session. We managed to say a few words and started to learn about numbers. Using tones as part of a language is something completely new to me, but very interesting! The Chinese language includes four tones and the written language based on graphical stokes akin to paintings. There are thousands of graphical characters instead of just the two dozen or so letters of the Western alphabet, I can’t begin to imagine really trying to learn it J

Ling Teardrop led the session, I believe that the Chinese lessons are being run by Language Lab. At the end of it she took us all on a dragon boat ride – it was quite spectacular!

To find out more visit: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Destiny%20Hills/238/12/22

The Charter:

Ever wanted to learn Chinese but didn't have the time? Ever wanted to spend some time living and studying in China but can't fit it in to your busy life ? Our Learning procedure takes place in Second Life, a 3D virtual world. We have built tools and lessons for language learning, our study plans are designed to meet your specific Chinese learning goals.