 Hello everyone and welcome to the 9.30 to 10.30 breakout session of the first OpenSIM community conference. As a reminder to our in-world and web audiences, you can view the full conference schedule on our website at conference.opensimulater.org. You can post your questions in local chat here on the Ustream chat or tweet your comments using the hashtag OSCC13. The second hour here we're happy to introduce Hiky Flip who will be presenting Camelot and the Mists of Avalon. That sounds so great. Hiky will share with us today how language teaching and learning meets new challenges in virtual environments and how language educators mastering those challenges are empowered to create Machinima. Machinima for those who don't know is the use of real-time virtual worlds and 3D video games to create a cinematic production. In real life, Hiky is the CEO of Let's Talk Online, a live online technology provider specializing in the field of language learning in real-time in virtual classrooms and virtual worlds. She is the co-initiator of the EU-funded Lancelot, Avalon and Camelot projects, runs her own online conference and co-owns Agination Island in Second Life. Hiky was a keynote speaker recently at the virtual world's best practices in education and I could really hear how excited she was about her newest project, the Camelot. I'm really looking forward to your presentation today. Hiky, thank you for being here. Please join me in welcoming Hiky. Take it over, Hiky. Thank you very much, Erin, if I pronounce this correctly. Thank you very much also to the audience. I'm waving a hello from Brussels in Belgium and I'm just wondering where you are located and perhaps if you could give me a little background as to your professional, yeah, undertakings. Hi, James. And if you could perhaps in just one line, type in the text chat where you located and what your professional background is. And thank you very much for being here. I'm delighted and I'm absolutely thrilled about the OpenSim conference, OpenSim Community Conference, because we have been watching the development of OpenSim with big, big eyes. And as you all know, after Lindenlab abolished the educational discount three years, two and a half, well, a bit more than three years ago. Since then it was actually a struggle. Well, some of us could still get an extended two years of paying educational rate, but this year has been a real struggle. And we're happy and delighted to announce that Lindenlab has reinstated the educational rate about July this year. And this is because a lot of educational organizations have left second life and moved into OpenSim. So it's, it's wonderful to see that they haven't abandoned virtual worlds, but they've just abandoned a very commercial undertaking. So and what I'm here about to present is a bit exciting, very exciting for us because Camelot is now the third year funding project. And if you've been at the Virtual World Best Practice and Education Conference, you will have heard me talk about it that at the time when I was asked to give and present a keynote, it was still proposal stage. And then I took the chances to actually announce it as the title of my talk, knowing that we would get the okay or not in July and Virtual World Best Practice and Education was end of July. So I took a gamble and would you believe it or not a week before the keynote, we got the okay. And this is amazing, considering that 7% of all proposals in that section we handed in were accepted. Overall, this is a little bit of a history of my professional life. And Camelot is the third year funding project, but it's always about language learning at a distance in real time. So I will talk a little bit more about Lancelot and Avalon at the end of this talk. So bear with me. What I wanted to point out is that we will have an our own conference called Slanguages at the end of February, again, more information later on. My passion is in virtual classroom technology and virtual worlds. And I'm quite good with reading text chat. So if you're, if you're give me questions, I'll be able to respond to that straight. And I'm quite happy to also converse with you about this one. But let me quickly now go into the subject. What is Camelot all about? And Camelot is an EO funding project, which I mean, if you're considering that all three projects together, I have been able to initiate and raise more than $2 million US dollars. Yeah, Camelot, these EO funded projects, they have their size. It's about half a million euro, just to be straight, please straight. Yeah. And Camelot is creating machinima empowers live online language teaching and learning. As you are in the audience quite experienced second lifers and who of us could tell me what machinima stands for? I would like to mention that the project consortium is made up of nine partners for which are universities. You can't hear, let me click the stream. Yeah, click on the stream. It's great that you're here. And it's the University of Central Lancashire. Dr. Michael Thomas is Project Coordinator. We will, from December 2013 onwards, be engaged in spending two years producing machinima. Has anybody of you written down what machinima stands for? Are you all familiar with the expression machinima? Now, machinima is a video recording in virtual worlds. Yeah, it can also be in a virtual... Okay, Buffy, you didn't know what it stood for. It is machine and cinema, correct, Camelot, that is absolutely correct. Machine and cinema is what the word is derived from. It is a video taking in a virtual world or in a game. There is actually a machinima channel on YouTube. You will be very much surprised to see that this channel has 8 million subscribers and about 4.3 billion click views. Now, the on-crow is not virtual worlds like Second Live or Open Sim, but the on-crow is virtual games. So, it's a gaming thing. Video gamers, World of Warcraft and these sort of things, they record this screen in order to give some tactical explanations and stuff. So, but Camelot will be about videos taking in virtual worlds of language learning conversations. Now, there's four reasons why the EU has granted us this money and to your project, which is rather large. It's because they're saying it is beneficial for the autonomy of teachers and learners. That means teachers are learning how to create machinima. Machinima is digital e-learning material and there is a need of digital material in future. A lot of people need and teachers can actually produce their own animated films with the teacher training course that will be developed in Camelot. It's also, of course, yeah, I'll be sharing some learner productions. The wonderful thing that teachers can show the students is to record themselves, to create machinima themselves. They are lean productions that is no need for camera equipment because we are recording the screen. Then the live video concept is one thing that we sold to the EU because other than any other video production out there, and there have been many in the past, you know, the BBC recordings of how to learn a language, but the video productions that you see on the web that are there to learn a language, those machinima have a distinct advantage and that is that if somebody is learning the language with a short video of virtual world scenario, this person can actually lock himself into that virtual world, into OpenSim, into Second Life and teleport himself to the location where that video was shot and actually engage in real time with local residents. So, yes, they can teleport to virtual Hy-PAR corner in virtual London in Second Life and actually meet people who are speaking English. And that is very, very unique and no other medium makes this possible if you're learning a language with video. Here, this is what I've mentioned already. The definition, the use of real time computer graphics rendering engines to create a cinematic production. Now, how do we, and I class myself, we as in we language teachers, we are not filmmakers, we are not video producers, we are language teachers. So it was an enormous undertaking to get this expertise or to find out whether the language teachers would not be too overwhelmed really taking videos. And we did a workshop in 2012 and in 2013. And I believe the success of that workshop was instrumental for the EU to understand that yes, there's a great want. We had up to, I think a total of 200 language teachers be part of MASH in EVO. EVO is actually a quite common online session, five week workshop January, February. There are some 2000 language teachers taking part. It's a little bit like a MOOC for language teachers, organized by TESOL. TESOL is the main association in America for teachers of English. Two speakers of other languages is what the acronym is called. So we did MASH in EVO and we started off knowing nothing. So we invited experts and been really, really grateful to learn from those in second life who are real life video producers. The previous one that you just saw, Gromet, is a video commercial producers for a big large company in Germany. Charlie is a video producer. And they freely shared their know how. Dragster, the prayer is amongst those. Yeah. Dragster, many of you know, who's done Fluffy. Fluffy is no longer allowed to be streamed and Pookie Media was around. We had lots of great consultancy, as it's a we're also invited directors of that's my avatar and me is a film production, which is a real life, second life, mixed fantasy documentary that was broadcast on television. They joined us in second life. They shared their know how we learned about bitrate frame rate. We learned about camera controls. We learned about all sorts of techniques, you know, we learned also that the camera should be relatively kept on eye height or focus on objects like in the real film. If you focus on an object, it's part of the story. We did the productions of Machinivo, which now number at more than 50 videos in all sorts of languages like English, French, Italian, German, Chinese. We awarded them with the Machinivo award. And some of them got lots of awards and you must watch some of them. We will be by the way doing this workshop again this coming January, February. And we're looking forward to more production. Well, if we're about to create one channel now, a YouTube channel with all our productions. But the fascinating thing is for us that many of us, well, the workshop was actually for teachers who had SL experience. And in the beginning when that is what we proposed, we didn't think anybody would be interested in joining because there's a many who left second life, right? But we were surprised. The teachers who partook of that in that workshop, they were so excited. They spent day and night on agitation, filming and scripting and storyboarding and role playing and so forth. I'm going through the slides. If it's a little bit too quickly now, it's because it's just a summary of the various machinimas that we were able to produce. Now I would like to show you one now, if that's okay. It's a mash up of the various machinimas that we've created. So you'll see it's there's only music to the video. I haven't transmitted the voice but I've just taken a broad variety of machinima impressions with some music to give you an idea of the stunning quality. This we're also very thrilled that these productions are of really high quality. So let me give you now the URL so that you can watch that first video, which is a mash up of machinimas. I shouldn't say machinimas. I apologize. The plural of machinima is machinima. We had to learn all of this. So I'm going to paste this now into the web on print. It's on the right hand side of me. If you don't see it don't worry, I'll give you the link also in text chat. Okay, so I've done it takes a little while to come through for some reason. But you can also watch it here. And for the sake of you stream, sorry, is that the local chat? The difficult answer. Okay, for the sake of you stream, we're trying to get this going here in world. And Joyce is helping me there, I believe, because it takes a while to for this web on print to budge. Joyce is Riannan here. And as I open to him, she is definitely tired. I can imagine this just started this conference is just breathtaking. Honestly. Apologize is not not coming through for some reason. I'm trying to get this. And then bugger. Anyway, you can watch this for yourself if you don't mind. And let me know when you're finished. In seven years that I've been working in a virtual world, go from a beginner learner to an intermediate English learner in four months, if they will spend 15 hours a week. My name is really, and I'm from Kazakhstan. And I started to practice English here. In virtual reality. So one month ago, one interesting thing I realized just last week, it that I got addicted to it. So in an online environment, you can learn tactically, you can learn visually, you can learn auditory. Plus, you have that experiential type learning, where you can feel what you're learning. Talk to people through voice. Ling works fine. Great. And for those on you stream, probably introduced in seven years, 24,000 people, probably teaching in more around 10, 9 to 10,000. Yeah, there's 54,000 students on the database that have signed up for an SL account. I think it's a way to learn that you don't feel that you're actually in a class. I'm always having fun. I have seen some of the greatest videos and the cinema is one of the best ways to show. In virtual reality here, four months, four months ago, I realized just one interesting thing I realized is that I got addicted to it. So in an online environment, you can learn tactically, you can learn visually, you have that experiential type learning. Plus, you have that. I have probably introduced, I have probably 24,000 people, probably teaching in more around 10, 9 to 10,000. Yeah, there's 54,000 students on the database. So tell me when you're finished. I have seen some of the greatest videos. I have seen some of the greatest videos to show the best way to show. You shouldn't be here. It's now running. You're done. Thank you very much. And it was that it was the finish now. I believe I gave you the link of the one with the interview of Larry Mills. Is that correct? So let me continue. If you're still watching it now, perhaps you want to, so let me just, now I'm trying to stop the one in the world. Just a second. Just one second. I'm trying to stop the other one. Okay, that is in words. So you're seeing the slides again. Let me continue with this presentation. Here, you just heard an interview of Larry Mills. And did you notice, excellent. Did you notice what she said? How many students they language lab has locked into two second life? Did you notice the number that she said? It was, by the way, it was the wrong video. I said it's a mashup of different machinimas and it was the interview of Larry Mills. Larry Mills Community Manager of Language Lab. And she, they introduced 54,000 students to second life. This is about the scale that they've done over the period of seven years. 54,000 students. And you perhaps also saw the lovely machinima that students created at the end. And they're very busy doing this. Yeah. So you'll watch that video with the various machinimas in a minute. Let me just mention the mists of Avalon. Why did I call it the mists? It is kind of funny because Avalon stands for Access to Virtual and Action Learning Life Online and was the project prior to Camelot, which we ran also with some, I think, 23 partners of which seven or eight were universities. Sorry, I've got the Ustream running here in the background. And we called it the mists because when we entered virtual worlds, it was kind of foggy. We had no idea where it would take us. And the Avalon project was led by University of Manchester and was, in many respects, from an academic point of view, a very, very successful project because it hosts on the wiki of Avalon information, scientific research information of learning in virtual worlds, why it is beneficial, how it is beneficial, the research that's been undertaken by various universities in Europe, etc. Now, Avalon was the successor to Lancelot. Lancelot talked about language teaching in virtual classrooms in 2D virtual classrooms with webcam and headset and a white board, typically, and a text chat. So that was the starter. I wanted to mention it here now because this was, for me, a natural progression. Interestingly, it took seven years for this kind of technology, which we now know as webinars and web conferences and Adobe Connect to become mainstream. So this is probably what we will need to expect for virtual worlds as well, about seven years, I think. So we've got another five years to go. So now I have a little game for you. Those who are familiar with the Gardner hype cycle, you can now stretch your imagination. Can I ask you what this peak is called? And if you don't know Gardner hype cycle, type in the text chat that you don't know about this one. What is the peak called? Thank you, Greta. Lovely. She says it's admirable. The peak. Yeah, you've seen it a lot, Buffy. So the peak is the peak of, now I have to sneak myself and check it exactly so I don't tell you the peak of inflation. No, no, no, no, no. Peak of inflated expectations. This wasn't okay. The peak of inflated expectations. Yeah, camera knew. And the trust of disillusionment. That was my next question. James or Callister. That was the next one, the trust of disillusionment. And then do you know what the next is called? As soon as it picks up and we're talking here Gardner hype cycle describes a technology just a moment please. Yeah. The Gardner hype cycle is applicable to any technology. We're not just talking about virtual worlds, but also mobile or any other technology. There's the hype and there's the trust of disillusionment. And then the next one is the slope of enlightenment. Yeah. And the last one is the most interesting for us. You know which one is the last one is called? Yes, we do. The plateau of productivity and the open sim community conference shows beautifully and very clearly that the virtual world have reached a plateau of productivity. And second life has reached a plateau of productivity and we language teachers who've been in virtual words, you know, getting this know how on how to teach here in this environment. We have now also reached a plateau of productivity with well partly with machinima. Because machinima is then a beautiful standalone product as well that we can sell. We also offer of course language courses in real time, but machinima are one of those things that we can sell. And we can use machinima to introduce students into this virtual world. And with that I'm already at the end of my presentation. I would love to still show you the other video which I said the match up and invite you to attend the seventh slang which slang which is actually annual symposium. It is end of February. It's an agination in second life. And we invite everyone also in various platforms open sim, cloud party, Minecraft, World of Warcraft to present if it has to do with language learning. Of course, it's very specific theme that we're doing here. And with that I'm going to give you the last video. Both videos I have created specially for this talk. So that's the mashup now. Okay, I'm going to again try and paste this year in web on print. Enjoy. The web on print is running for me now. So I'll be stopping that one up since you're all finished. Yeah. And what is amazing to us is if you just think of visuals or just look at the visuals that have been created by simple language teachers. Can I say that? We are simple language teachers. We're not film producers. They're absolutely stunning. Yeah, and we're so proud of these productions. And we've it's kind of we're so excited to have now after, you know, after acquiring this knowhow about virtual worlds, we kind of weren't all that challenged anymore. And now we're really challenged. And we feel like film directors and extras and so, you know, and so and the beautiful thing is that groups have formed like the Spanish, for example, they've been producing some 10 episodes already. Yes, it's new. And there's a lot to learn. And there's a lot to learn which borders film making. And we're very happy. So this is my last slide now. Thank you very much for attending. At this stage, obviously, I cannot tell you a lot about the Camelot project, except for that it will start in December this year. That we're all very, very excited that we're looking forward to a beautiful set of productions. And if I may invite the audience to be part of Machinima coming up January, February, that would be fantastic. But perhaps also consider projects that could be undertaken now. What we need to have is institutions who give us certain tasks so that we can produce the Machinima and are ready to test them out with their students. It's an extensive field test. Chimera says, if Haike can teach me Machinima, I will follow her anywhere. Chimera and me, we attended a fantastic course of the University of Washington in Seattle and with a highly recommend virtual world certificate. She has done amazingly. I'm so happy to see her here, real soulmate. So thank you very much for listening. With that, I'm also a little bit good in time, I guess, open for questions. So as I said, I invite you to propose to us projects. We would like to create a specific Machinima for a specific target group, learning Chinese, learning Turkish learning. So and we invite you to come on because we'd love to have tasks. Thanks, Mystic. Mystic is saying, and I'm repeating this for the Ustream. It's very amazing what can be done in any virtual world. So many people who are such genius at doing anything. It always amazes me. I admire and respect all of you. Thank you so much for this comment. It's lovely. So time for questions. And I'm actually missing another presentation yet open sim conference of some Machinima Tographers of our of Agenation, Carol, Rainbow and Leti will be presenting, but correct me. I'm not quite sure when exactly could you let is still here. If she could type that in the text chat so we don't miss her presentation. The question is by Buffy says, do you think virtual worlds will grow in popularity for teaching? Yes, I do for sure. I'm also waiting a little bit for our, I call it the Google avatar because if you've looked around what Google Earth has become over the last couple of years, you're surprised that you can actually walk the fifth Avenue surrounded by huge buildings. And as soon as we get our Google avatar, people will embrace virtual worlds. Yeah, Google World is a very, very strong candidate and also very strong candidate. Our browser based stuff like Cloud Party. Yeah, but as I said, for us, it's it's any virtual world. It doesn't really matter which one it as long as it for Machinima, everything goes. Another question has by James is how do you convince people that they don't get virtual worlds that this is a legitimate legitimate way to learn a language? Well, machinimas have been one way of producing what I could call marketing material for virtual worlds. It actually has invited and are you familiar with Dragster's production? Dragster DePrey, he has produced interviews with people who successfully conduct business in Second Life and he's putting them out his many thousands clicks each. Yeah, fantastic interviews that just awesome. And he portrays the people to say, okay, these are normal people. He combines real life images of normal down to earth, just creative people and then shows the work they're doing in Second Life. And this way he advertises Second Life greatly, the creativity of the people. And so Chimera says, I think it helps a lot to have a natural facilitator personality like Haika does. Folks want to keep coming back even during the heart initial parts. Yeah, we're still seeing very few language learners actually in comparison to the numbers that other virtual worlds see. I mean, good million in Second Life, but concurrent uses are always hovering between 35 and 70,000, which is not really that great. So we've been kind of surprised how few students are around. And those we try to get into Second Life, join for a course and then disappear. Well, many of them. But it's because of the technical challenges still. But when I started Lancelot, 2003, we had software that was part of still development. We had forever better versions of software. We had to install the software and that was virtual classroom technology software we had. And today we have Adobe. I mean, how easy going is that? And I always think of that development. I mean, we went through the hard times. Yeah, but virtual worlds were easy going will be coming and Google Earth may be one of them. Mystic says virtual world has told me so many things. It's a never ending story and millions are spent on it in the real world. Do you mean millions spend in developing virtual worlds? Or I'm not quite sure where the millions are spent. Well, with smartphones, this now I'm talking about greater, greater, she says, and smartphones can handle, right? So more even accessible for learners. But that greater, that's a keyword for me. And it was keyword in the development. If you remember when we took over Second Life, the Aegean Islands, the first thing we heard was the bond abolishment of the educational rate. We had at that time it was really the trough of disillusionment. Everybody was disillusioned. It was a really hard. I thought I would buy the Titanic to be honest when I took over Aegean Nation. And then everybody moved out of Second Life and moved into mobile technology, at least English teachers, you know, teachers, language teachers. All everybody went crazy about mobile. And so I've been scratching my head for about a year thinking, how can I counteract this development? Because I love virtual worlds. I love Second Life. I love Aegean Nation. I love the people. I was just distraught myself. Now, but at that time I had this idea, look, a mobile phone, and what can you see on the mobile phone? A machinima. You can watch a machinima to learn a language. You can see, visually see the conversation. Is it a hotel check-in? You don't even have to be able to understand, lots of visual clues to understand the language. And then, once you watched it on your mobile, you can log into Second Life or OpenSim and actually join that community to learn the language in real-time. That's the thing that is genius about Camelot. With that, I'm closing, and thank you very, very much for joining me. You've been absolutely wonderful. And, yeah, is there no further questions? Then I'll wrap this up here, and thank you so much. I cannot give you a URL as of yet of Camelot because the website hasn't been done. Coming up next. Yeah, end of January Slanguages, if you could keep this in mind. Slanguages.org. We'll be doing the website soon. Bye for now. Yeah, thank you very much for joining. You've been wonderful. Well, thank you, Haikey. That was that was just terrific. I just love the passion I hear coming out in your voice. As a reminder to our audience, you can still see what's coming up on the conference schedule at conference.opensimulator.org. Next up, and I'm sure a lot of you will be happy for this, is a meal break until 11.30 when the conference is pleased to have our keynote presentation featuring one of my favorite people, Lear Lobo. You know, I've never said that a lot. I don't know if it's Lear or Lear. The Exodus to the virtual frontier, the seductive lure of the mind space sounds so interesting. You can find the keynote regions on the map, so come early and get a seat and remember you've all been assigned keynote one to four for load balancing. After the keynote here.