Educational tools for Second Life - by Margarita Pérez-García

This book will be released at the end of March as an Open Educational Resource under CC licence by attribution unported, so anyone is free to distribute without restrictions: adapt, translate, re-mix and improve it. More info here.

OpenSim running in my server and accesed from a computer in the same LAN

Finally got OpenSim 0.6.6 working in my server and accessible from computers in the same LAN (mainly problems with my router config and iptables in my computers). Next step: make it work for people outside.

The black monolith you see in the picture is an homage to “2001: a space odyssey”. It is 256m tall.

A virtual world hosted in my machine

I did some experiments with OpenSim and now I have a working 3D world simulator that works like Second Life – you can even use the Second Life official client to connect to it – but since it is hosted in my own machine it is completely free to upload stuff and I get to control everything.

Getting it to work in Ubuntu 9.04 was pretty straightforward except for one caveat: when running it for the first time, it asks for some values. When it comes to the internal IP address, the default value is 127.0.0.1, but you should actually enter 0.0.0.0.

Now I am trying to install it in my server to let people outside my network to log into it. I will continue reporting here.

This video made by Michele Ryan (SL name: Shelly Waco) shows the use of the Give Inventory script, useful to deliver materials to students in one go. Just drop the script and the contents you want to deliver in a box and the contents will appear in the inventory of whoever touches the box, nicely stored in a folder. Best part of the video: it features me!

The script can be found here:

default
{
    on_rez(integer nevermind)
    {
        llSetText(""+llGetObjectName()+".",<1,1,1>,1.0);
    }
    touch_start(integer total_number)
    {
//        llGiveInventory(llDetectedKey(0), "Getting Started");

// give all items in a prim to the owner, as folder (with the name of the prim)
// Ezhar Fairlight <efairlight@gmail.com>

// user-friendly additions by Mechanique Thirty (egypt@urnash.com)
// Script adjusted to run faster by Strife Onizuka.

        list        inventory;
        string      name;
        integer     num = llGetInventoryNumber(INVENTORY_ALL);
        string      text = llGetObjectName() + " is transferring...\n";
        integer     i;
        key         user = llDetectedKey(0);//Set to llDetectedKey(0); to allow anyone to use

        for (i = 0; i < num; ++i) {
            name = llGetInventoryName(INVENTORY_ALL, i);
            if(llGetInventoryPermMask(name, MASK_NEXT) & PERM_COPY)
                inventory += name;
            else
                llOwnerSay("Cannot give asset \""+name+"\", owner lacks copy permission");

            llSetText(text + (string)((integer)(((i + 1.0) / num) * 100))+ "%", <1, 1, 1>, 1.0);
        }

        //chew off the end off the text message.
        text = llGetObjectName();

        //we don't want to give them this script
        i = llListFindList(inventory, [llGetScriptName()]);
        inventory = llDeleteSubList(inventory, i, i);    

        if (llGetListLength(inventory) < 1) llSay(0, "Nothing to transfer."); else
        {
            llGiveInventoryList(user, text, inventory);
            llSetText(""+llGetObjectName()+".",<1,1,1>,1.0);
            llOwnerSay("Your new "+ text +" can be found in your inventory, in a folder called '"+ text +"'.");
        }
    }
}

What you see in the picture is my class inside Second Life for the ABC (Absolute Basic Cornerstone) Scripting that I’ve been teaching for a while. The set is pretty simple: 3 slides and a box that delivers the materials. And yet it took me always like 10 minutes to rez, arrange and align all 4 objects. Those days are gone thanks to Loki Clifton’s (from Inside This World) donation of his company’s holodecks for Muvenation participants.

A holodeck in Second Life is basically a place where you can rez ready-made complicated scenes with the click of a button (more info here). They come with some scenes preloaded but what is interesting is to be able to make your own ones, like the one shown above. And it wasn’t that difficult, following the tutorials made by Shirley Williams and Margarita Pérez, tutors of Muvenation. In a nutshell, you have to add a script to all the objects you want in your scene, make the holodeck produce a crate, put another script in there, put all the objects in the crate and edit a couple of notecards.

A mixture between a PLE and a VLE, this is my new Personal Virtual Teaching and Learning Environment – PVTLE. Wish I was better at picking acronyms.

The idea behind it is that learning contents that follow this format are easily found (via the use of meta-data) and interpreted and can be modified and reused by anyone… who understands SCORM 2004. Fortunately there are tools and you don’t have to worry that much about syntax and the like.

Editing is easy since meaningful content is packed into units of knowledge (called SCOs) that have meaning on their own but do not depend on others. This “atoms” of content can be joined in any form to organize sessions, didactic units or even whole courses.

Exchange of this type of documents among teachers avoids constantly re-inventing the wheel and facilitates enriching from other’s experiences. Right now every teacher lives on an island and collaborates only with those in his department or other close colleagues. If the standard is used, teachers would have access to materials prepared  many other teachers.

Now to the more technical side. SCORM is an acronym for Shareable Content Object Reference Model. 2 parts:

1. SCO (Shareable Content Object) is like an atom of learning content, the smallest possible unit of learning that has meaning. SCOs can be combined to create study units or even full courses.
2. RM (Reference Model) means that the standard describes the interaction between the SCOs and the system that manages them.

SCOs must be:

• Durable: minimum upgrading required over time.
• Interoperable: managed by many systems.
• Accessible: can be easily found via tagging.
• Reusable: units should be small and with independent content.

Creation process:

1. Create Assets: electronic media with learning content, in any format.
2. Describe the assets adding meta-data that complies the IEEE standard.
3. Create the package Manifest, which packs the SCOs into a structure.
4. Add sequencing rules and controls to the Manifest.
5. Upload it to a repository, like Merlot or the Exchange repository of Moodle.

You can also download SCOs or full courses from those sources and modify, join or delete them to tailor your needs.

The ADL provides tools for creation, but I favour eXe since it is multiplatform and open source. There is another tool called RELOAD, which is a bit more difficult to use but provides extra functionality.

Ecamples of Learning contents:

• Introduction to database systems (view) (via GITTA).
• SCORM demonstrator (via the Exchange repository).

Post in your blog about the collaboration in your sub group. You may want to think about some of these issues.

• Was it easy to define objectives and criteria?
• How did you distribute the work?
• How did you feel about your own participation?
• How did you feel about other participation?
• Where there any problems, or misunderstandings?

Collaboration in my group was practically inexistent because everybody else was busy due to the special time of the year we’re at. Objectives were kind of agreed among the other 2 people that showed up in the forum initially and myself, based on our common interests. As for distribution of work, meetings, etc., there was none. I did some research, found places and completed the activities on my own, up to the guide presentation yesterday. There has been some activity in the forum group today but I don’t think I should do any further work in this section even though I’ll help whoever contacts me if I can.

1. Sloodle Island (slurl)

Just arrived into Sloodle Island

This is a whole island about Sloodle, a mashup between Moodle and Second Life. Whether Moodle is Web 2.0 or not is debatable, but it is a good teaching tool nevertheless and I didn’t find many educational places related to Web 2.0 tools, so this is the place I’m going to study.

I liked the idea of a walking tour through the process of downloading, installation and related tools that is depicted in this picture:

Walking tour through download, installation and tools

You can see that the paths for the 2 versions are clearly distinguishable, marked by arrows on the floor of different colors. First thing, you “grab” from the stand the version of sloodle that suits you (windows, mac or linux) and you walk to some boxes that tell you the installation steps of the module itself, its menu block and assignment. After that, there is a vending machine that offers, for free, tools related to sloodle that you can use in-world: Sloodle Toolbar v.1.4 (tested with the sloodle module in MUVEnation’s moodle and working perfectly) and the Sloodle Set, which is basically a physical stand that I could not set because I do not have the permission to authorise any objects in MUVEnation’s sloodle and is basically a tool for Moodle administrators.

There is also a tutorial about the use of the Sloodle Toolbar, as seen in this picture:

Sloodle Bar Tutorial in Sloodle Island

In the island there’s also tutorials about building objects and a sandbox, and a very useful guided tour of a course example that you can enroll and in which you can see in use a variety of tools: a quiz HUD, a musical test, etc.  That gave me a lot of ideas about possibilities of presenting the information and assessments.

This Island is oriented to 2 types of people: admins that want to get sloodle working in their moodle websites and plain users. Sadly, this is not clearly stated anywhere, and usability will be improved just by having a post asking whether you want to install sloodle in your own moodle site or just use some sloodle tools inworld in order to connect with someone else’s moodle site, and separating both areas.

There does not seem to be a group that you can join or an event calendar for upcoming courses.

Update: Thanks to Daniel Livingstone comment (see below), I know now that there’s a group for people using sloodle named sloodlers. You just have to use the search function within SL t find it.

2. Podcaster’s Place – ISTE Island (slurl)

A place about podcasts in Second Life, contains links to tutorials and how-tos. It isn’t really an educational place but a place with links to podcasts. Since podcasts can be considered a web 2.0 tool, I decided it was worth a visit.

Inside Podcaster’s Place, reading a notecard with helpful links

The only educational content is a notecard with links to webpages about poscasting shown in the picture above. The place is probably oriented to people willing to listen to podcasts but the creator probably did not have in mind possible educational uses within SL. There was not a group or information about events.

3. Dell’s Computer (sulrl)

Flying inside a very big computer

Being in there made me feel like I was part of Honey, I shrunk the kids.  You can navigate inside a computer and see its components, like the RAM modules in the picture above. Other than that, it’s a pity there is no other educational value. Dell’s people probably had in mind just an audience of people looking for short entertainment so they didn’t bother placing some signs or adding some video to explain things. There isn’t even tags around the components to identify them.

4. Web 2.0 galleria – Merx Island (slurl)

Inside Web 2.0 galleria, about to get a twitterbox

This place holds a very promising name for a not-so-promising result. The only thing really useful was a free twitter tool: the twitterbox, a HUD you can wear in order to tweet and be tweeted in-world. There’s no indication on how to use it but it’s pretty straightforward to configure, I guess this place is designed for savvy users.

Evolution of my avatar in Second Life – from beauty to the beast

My avatar’s looks

The old Samu Lorefield is on the left hand side, the most recent one on the right. I tried to make it (him?) as close to me as possible, which involved a long and complex process of uglification. It’s hard to say if I succeeded but it’s close enough for me anyway. I would not feel comfortable with an avatar that did not look like me because I think that presenting your digital self as a perfect specimen only because you can is some sort of deceiving, at least in a professional environment. However I consider it’s ok for people that use SL as a recreational leisure space to adopt the form and shape they want, and do as much role-play as they feel like. It is a matter of distinguishing when an avatar is supposed to be representing a real person doing serious stuff and when the person is merely trying to amuse himself, and the avatar’s appearance should ideally match each situation.

My avatar’s clothes

As for the clothes, one of the first clothes for free that I found was a tuxedo, so I was walking around all suited up. I dressed down and wear informal clothes now, very much like the ones I use for teaching. The same goes for the shoes.

Degree of identification

Interestingly enough, in the first paragraph I referred to my avatar as an object – notice the sentence “I tried to make it…” which I corrected later by adding a “(him?)” -, but in the second paragraph I am talking about the clothes of my avatar as if I was him – “I was walking around…”. I probably began writing the post being over-conscious of the task at hand, distanced myself as much as possible and saw my avatar as an object; as I got more relaxed, the identification with my avatar surfaced. The only thing missing for a 100% match are my glasses, but I’ll fix that buying in RL shades like the ones Samu Lorefield wears since it’ll probably be easier. Or else I’ll build my RL glasses in SL as soon as I get crafty enough. Any time soon. Or maybe I’ll go for laser eye surgery, whatever.

Update: I got my glasses as a gift from Viki Silvansky. She crafted them out of nowhere in front of my very eyes! She’s probably a witch, but one of the good ones.

Importance of appearance in Second Life’s interactions

There is no difference between RL and SL when it comes to personal interactions. We know that looks can be deceiving and in Second Life there’s a lot of crazy avatars but, as much as in Real Life, one must treat everybody with the utmost respect regardless of how they look like – there’s always a real person behind. I try not to form prejudices against a person based solely on the way its avatar looks, but it is inevitable if you don’t know the person. Talking with the person for a while helps: you can then form an idea of his/her personality based on an exchange of opinions, not just an image (whether that idea is influenced anyway by the first impression the person gave you with its image is debatable). Since you don’t know a priori if the people you are going to meet will be as open-minded and will bother trying to know you, it is better to be on the safe side and take care of the image you project to others.

How would you describe your first steps? What were the technical issues, if any? What did you feel about the avatar you chose? What was orientation island like? Could you find help as needed? Where did you go? Did you speak to other avatars? What would improve the experience, if anything? What previous knowledge and skills helped you?

I joined Second Life (“SL” from now on) just after joining the MUVEnation project. My first steps were clumsy, but being familiar with computers – although not so much with games – I could get myself together quickly in the basic stuff: moving around, changing appearance, moving the camera, etc. General computer literacy helped me getting things done: moving the camera was the same key combination as some 3D games (Tomb Raider?),  right-clicking on an object gives you the context menu with options, etc.

I had some problems with unboxing things, which I described in the Eureka moment game, but the rest was intuitive enough and with the help of Orientation Island’s tutorials (the design of them was incredible!) I feel like I know my ABCs. What I specially liked was the idea that behind all the avatars that I saw there was also people like me trying to get around, and other people helping them.

First things first, I wanted to change the looks of my avatar just in case it was too standard – I didn’t feel like bumping into unknown twins. In fact I was terrified by the idea of being mistaken by one of those twins who committed a crime, and as a result ending up convicted and having to do time in SL: what kind of horrible things would you find in a virtual jail? Don’t count on me to find out. What I did was uglify a little bit my avatar to make it look more realistic because I felt it was kind of cheating to have violet eyes and long dark hair just because you could. I know your avatar in SL is not supposed to look like you, but I would feel better if it did so I still have to tone down its general musculature. Or else I can gain musculature in real life, whatever is easier to do. Sadly, as much as in real life, we often forget that you can’t judge a book by its cover.

After that, I went into video tutorials and was flipped by the enormous possibilities of creation: you can design your own clothes, build objects, program the objects to interact in a specific way, etc. Absolutely amazing. I used mainly the video tutorials in Spanish that you can find here, which were found via the official video tutorials page.

I spoke to other avatars, some newbies which shared my amazement and clumsiness and some experts which were very helpful. It felt great to be helped by totally anonymous strangers.

As final conclusion, the general interface is usable and intuitive enough, and it is not difficult to learn your basic way around if you’ve worked with computers and have some experience with games. What I would add as a way of improving the flow of knowledge is a way to be able to see what the person trying to teach is seeing, a short of “looking though his eyes” kind of thing. Then, instead of having to describe verbally the position of buttons and the series of clicks or drags and drops to be made, the apprentice could just have a look at the other person’s interface and see how it’s done – very much like in a video tutorial, but live and custom-made to its particular needs.