This post was live-blogged, so please excuse typos and awkward wording
This is a typical avatar, and this is a typical user…funny, picture of Keith Richards. First game that was in any way immersive was Stellar. Compare that to Crysis, a new, nearly photographic quality virtual world game. Avatars! Exploring & Building Virtual Worlds on the Internet by Bruce Damer is a book about the history of virtual worlds. The top players are:
The Wannabee’s
Keep your Eyes on
- OpenSim – Open Source Software
- Croquet
- Cobalt
- Project Wonderland
Multiverse is working on a concept related to pear to pear sharing, where you can move easily from world to world with one avatar.
Educationally?
- Mark designed a vritual expo to promote cross-cultural understand of students from around the world. It’s a wheel looking thing where each spoke goes out to a pavilion of a country, with teleportation doors that take you to regions of, say Canada.
- Also created a virtual art gallery with mockups of famous art work, clickable to web paes about the works of art.
- MarsBase 2021 is a quest about the first scouting mission to Mars with problems to be solved, by students who are working together.
- SciCenter/BioLearn is also in Active Worlds where student can conduct experiments.
- River City Project has been very successful, a simulation of a small town with some health issues, and students study the environemnt to find the cause.
- Quest Atlantis has students working to recapture the wisdom of ancient Atlantis.
- Global Kids Project has students in SecondLife in the Teen Grid.
Now Mark is showing a video of a possible project a student might do about Van Gogh’s Stary Starry Night, with Don Mclain playing in the back ground. It’s a Machinima of the building of something. One wall, copied to another wall and another. Now various shapes are being made, but evidiently he’s put an affect on the video to make it look paint-brushed — amazing. It’s becoming a village — perhaps the villae from the painting. Trees are now being makde, and a back drop.
Excellent presentation!
heheeeee. Wow, finally got your attention! Great that you see some potential here. We’ll go in depth (“Ahm goin’ in, Captain!”) in our 3 hour NECC workshop, “SLedupotential,” already up to 11 registrants of the 30 who can attend. You need to spring some of that Connect Learning discretionary funding and come join us 🙂
I’m writing a song for it, me lad! Come! Bring your guitar!
Actually, if you just want to join us from your San Antonio barstool or your North Carolina veranda, just be there at ISTE Island, at 6:30 a.m. SL time on June 30. It’s gonna be a blast.
Reading this over, it sorta sounds like an ad but it’s really truly not–It’s a celebration of my guru David taking a fresh look at Second Life and Virtual Worlds and seeing how engaging they can be. And thanks for your shareout of Mark’s work. Still another resource for the 9 of us panelists, from 9 different states, to share further.
David, you really need to get to NYC to see “Sunday in the Park with George.” Its’ interactivity, while primarily with the performers, uses animation to highlight the artists’ creativity in a way we’ve never seen in the theatre before. Really great. The Machinema post on “Starry night” really compelled me to comment.
David,
I don’t mean this to sound like I am spamming your blog but rather hijacking it temporarily to utilize your network to distribute my research. Since you have the largest readership of any education blogger I know and since my research fits the topic of this blog post I thought it would be appropriate.
I recently completed my MA Ed. In my capstone project I merged virtual worlds with WebQuests. My paper explores research on the educational use of virtual worlds, game-based learning, constructivism, and intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation. Bernie Dodge thought my research should not just sit on the shelves at Hamline but it should be out there.
I uploaded my paper to Lulu.com to make it available there for both print and download. Since the paper is so long and contains so many color images the cost of printing it is a bit high. I am not interested in making money from the sale of this work. I am interested in sharing what I learned. So, I am making it available free this week to download (or first 100 copies) using yousendit.com. Click here to download a copy.
I would kind of like to know who is taking copies of my work so I can establish dialog on the topic of virtual worlds and education. If you do download a copy I would appreciate it if you let me know. My email is anderscj@yahoo.com or you can just post a comment on my blog.
thanks,
Carl Anderson
Art Teacher
Technology Curriculum Integration Specialist
Online Teacher
I’ve had so many gamers in my classes over the years that I think it is great that many online game environments are being used for educational purposes. This is a great way to get kids interested in school who otherwise don’t want to be bothered. I have tried Second Life but it looks like I gave up on it too soon. There are a lot of great games here that I can’t wait to try!