Laying Out the "Campus"

Okay, I know it's real-life residue, buildings that look like buildings, but I'm beginning to work on the design for my kids' new virtual campus in ReactionGrid and I'm beginning with an OpenVCE .oar file from which I deleted some stuff, moved some around, and replicated some in ways that the makers likely did not intend for them to be replicated. I love the OpenVCE setup because it seems just the right mix of land and water and it features that wild water-filled volcanic pit mountain with the landing zone level cap. I wonder what we'll end up putting _in_ the mountain? A soda shop? Skateboard park! That's IT! Both!

Here's a first draft map after only about 3 hours total inworld design time:

and I'm sticking to it (at least for now). In the lower right hand corner, the "Dorms" are stacked 5 high (will be 7 high, and contain a computer lab meeting place where kids can sit together and login and do their online class work while chatting. There's a big drawing board in one window, a Jeff Lowe Brainboard in another, and there will be sprawling stations with relaxing poses on the Persian rugs I laid out. I'm just beginning, you understand, and the idea for dorms, places each student can call home, just came to me yesterday morning. 

I haven't locked down anything yet, and I'm sure that I'll need to at some point, so the mountain feature sports a big sandbox with a filled texture giver for building. Offices for the admin team will be in the center right building, and the open roofs will give some flexibility for take-off and landing. Campfire stations in the open green, a dance area which will have music, and an ampitheatre round out the place for now. 

I haven't heard any complaints from neighbors, but the two-megaprims each walls around the region's perimeter are intended as much to save my neighbors from the sprawl I hope to maintain in my region as it is to tidy up the horizon for my students. They are coded phantom, so fly right through and visit anytime! Oh, the sim name is "MNPSVirtualLearning."

OpenSimulator Work Begins for MNPS Virtual Learning

Woot. I successfully managed to get OpenSim running on my laptop this past weekend and I'm sharing some pics right here to prove it. I have the embryo of a plan and it's developing nicely. With any luck we'll have our virtual world up and running for Tennessee students sometime by the beginning of 2011. I want to make sure it's rolled out right, and that it's thoughtful, welcoming, functional, and most of all, sustainable. We'll soon mount our world on a little used server in an adjacent room at our physical location so we can team-collaborate in its design, and we'll likely soon transform my "Scottsperiment" space in ReactionGrid to an MNPS Virtual Learning Island, where activity of different scale will take place and where approved Students and Teachers will have access to the burgeoning wealth of educational resources in ReactionGrid.

Speaking of that last, mark your calendar right now for Tuesday, September 21, at 5 pm Second Life time at ISTE Island in Second Life, when the ISTE SIGVE 3rd Tuesday Speaker Session will host a panel of dynamic and innovative educators working in ReactionGrid. Following that Session, we'll move into ReactionGrid for an Educators' Evening, an hour or two of touring, socializing, and learning which will feature the ReactionGrid ISTE Island Grand Opening party!

One more pic from the local iteration (I have since fixed the flag on the left! lol:

And a couple pics from Scottsperiment, where I've been playing around toward demo'ing potentials for my team:

Teen Second Life Eulogy

Barry Joseph, invoking a long and brilliantly crafted reference to Prince's "Let's Go Crazy" in his introduction, created a group over at the REZed community that is "invitation only"--simply for sharing thoughts about Linden Lab's recent announcement that it is closing its Teen Grid and opening up Second Life to older teens (looking forward to understanding the ramifications of that move, and to learning more details about it) I just replied and I wanted to share those early morning musings with ya'll. So....

Thanks for creating this group, Barry. I'm not surprised at this decision from Linden Lab, and like Wesley, I am hopeful for the future. Just yesterday, in my explorations that will hopefully lead to implementation of some virtual world as a synchronous meeting place for students in a new public school's version of "online virtual school," I ran OpenSimulator for the first time on my Dell laptop, locally. It was invigorating and exciting! The fact that I have not even taken a peek at SL Teen Grid for this project might have been prophetic. In their vacuum-tight security policies and their doomed efforts to at least break even and perhaps to maintain some semblance of profitability in TG, Linden Lab still managed to imagine, create, and maintain the pioneering iteration of a world where kids can be safe, guided, and motivated to learn. This is a legacy no one can deny. The ways that you used TG, the ways that Peggy Sheehy muscled her kids into it, Wesley's fabulous creations, and those of others, will stand as examples of record alongside the visions facilitated by Claudia L'Amoreaux as Education Community Manager in the adult grid and ISTE's pioneering community-building there.

Prophetic too was the morphing of the "Playground" that was ISTE's "Second Life Playground" into the "Virtual Environments Playground" this last summer at ISTE2010 in Denver, CO. Our 35 back-to-back mostly half hour shareouts, both from ISTE Island in Second Life to Denver and vice versa, and also from several other platforms--including OpenSim (ReactionGrid, 3rd Rock Grid), Quest Atlantis, AWEDU, and others--dramatically demonstrated that Teen Grid wasn't the only game in Town. Sense of presence and community of place at a distance continue to be the mainstays of virtual environments, and I am guessing that my colleagues at ISTE's SIGVE will help show me the way(s). Let's continue to archive and share (if you haven't seen the archival fallout at the SIGVE wiki from Denver, go look) and, most importantly, let's keep it as open as we can. That delicate balance between caring/sharing and earning a living has always impeded progress, and that's not going to change. I encourage us all to err on the side of open discussion. You who are in there, if you can machinima your little tushes off before the Teen Grid evaporates, please make that an urgent priority!

Keep the faith, ya'll, and even if we don't find that purple banana, we'll bolster one another's creativity by continuing the dialog and sharing the creative work. Let's (to continue Barry's analogy) pahtay like it's 2099!

Check out Tatero Nino's musings on the closure at her "Dwell On It" blog.

Intro Welcome to SIGVE