 Okay Okay, I'll start right now then Okay. Hello everyone and welcome to the 1230 breakout session of the open simulator community conference 2013 as a reminder to our in-world and Web audience you can view the full conference schedule on our website at conference that open simulator Org and you can post your questions in local chat on the uStream chat Or tweet your comments Or tweet your comments on the hashtag OSCC 13 This hour we are happy With the enterific panel on the fantastic voyage of converting to open sim for biology and archaeology education The virtual islands for better education called vibe is a collaborative of college and k12 Educators and virtual world builders looking to leverage open sim for learning activities What the panel will cover is their experience moving lessons from second life to open sim Usage by college students for genetics and global health Usage by fourth-graders for biodiversity and construction of massive creative commons literature libraries Our panelists include Max Chatner Eva Komarowski Steve Gassior Joe Graham Dragon Lalloc Carolyn Lowe Lazaron Papadopoulos Greg Perrier Martin Smeltzer Rachel you Moran. Let's all Welcome the panel and we will start with Steven Zuflach Thank you Dylan. Thank you for moderating and thank you to the organizers of the OSCC 2013 It's real great privilege for us to present and have this opportunity to talk about our work I would like to open with machinima made by one of our members and I'm going to post it into the media screen and This is a machinima that gives a nice overview of what it'd be like to visit our grids now You may need to click on the media screen as it pops up behind us To actually view it's about three minutes. So we'll let that play Okay, as I have that people are indicating that it's done Again, if you didn't have a chance to view the whole thing Please look at the link and local chat And I'd like to have Bert matchman in real life dragging like a give a quick blurb about the machinima Thank you. Thank you very much Steven Thank you vibe for the opportunity to be part of such a great Virtual world educators and for the opportunity to create the wild trailer Thanks to East the Sigma for nominating this video as the finalist of the people's choice in the science show Categories of the Sigma at the machinima first 2013 and thanks to VWBP for selecting this video as the second place of the VWBP 2013 film and machinima award at the 2013 VWBP conference As a member of vibe, I would like to present this machinima as the overview of the huge achievement of the virtual world educators. So, um, I will actually Just have a quick overview of the fathers and sons exploration of the 3d virtual worlds But the vibe was the main one which we actually enjoyed So I will just pass the message to Young generations to continue Using the virtual worlds and start making the films and machinimas in the virtual worlds. Thank you Okay, thank you And that's going to be the main Points for today's presentation is that we're going to talk about an overview of what the vibe grids are about and for Then let the grid masters talk about their individual experiences with bringing students through the different grids so this slide Is showing a little bit about my perspective again as as educators How educational technology can be used to to Do a class and really at the very base level it's about delivery And I have a few exemplars here different platforms that can be used to again present information chat videos to uh for learning And then that next level up where you can use flash animations or virtual worlds really has to do with enhancing that educational experience Maybe bringing in field trips or manipulatives that allow the students to engage on their own through different activities to really learn the material more clearly That's really only those virtual worlds those class those classes of platforms allow students to interact to present concurrently That allow you to do things like drive a mars rover or to cooperate in building Or to visit places like a holocaust museum where again A quick shout out to the virtual pioneers and shift whitfield Who had sorry spiff whitfield who had a tour and that It was really powerful going to the second live holocaust museum and You know anybody out there who's wary about virtual worlds and doesn't know or doesn't feel like they can engage You emotionally well, then they haven't been to the holocaust museum in second life But again, it's this level the highest level of really getting students brains and activities and thoughts and personalities engaged in learning that we think are Best for bringing in and allowing the students to learn and really truly incorporate information into into their learning experience and Second life, of course is a wonderful environment, but if you have been in the educational space, uh, there's a lot of Momentum against trying to get second life used in a lot of different situations And some of that has to do with perspectives on what second life can do Some of it has to do with the ability to actually control that environment and to control the students in that environment And so this highest level of being able to perform the instruction we feel are these open source Virtual worlds where ultimately you do have complete control over the access the content How much you duplicate it? Again, if you are finding that you don't have enough capacity It's relatively easy to duplicate that because open source and that open license now Our main mission is to provide these educational resources that take advantage of that open sim platform Because we feel that they provide those immersive learning experiences I do want to Talk a little about the history of our group where we didn't know about open sim other than being this vague mythological beast until a land grant uh Call for proposals went out from the fashion research institute Then that was being done in conjunction with intel and they were hosting that on a science And that's where we said oh, hey, maybe there's something beyond what we can do to virtual worlds beyond second life using open sim Now we moved to our own hyper grid servers, which we maintain And serve and that these are something that again for us to fully provide and control Is something that we feel uh having our own server experience and our own servers is really important for that again What i'm going to do at the end of my Segment is to just give a quick perspective on what that is like because that's a relatively Rare phenomenon, I think for the non-technical user So our grid list right now and this is just a listing that is Uh Something you can view later. I don't want to go through all the details of it right now because these grid masters will be presenting In relatively in order The people who are not here last pop Cannot make it. He does pediatric dentistry has a nice simulation and a grid As well as nova saunders who's having some personal Things to take care of on this weekend and so Those grid masters won't be here now kira komarov is a scripting and Administrator wizards and if you have not been to her Uh wiki was.fm and looked over the stuff she's Doing for open sim and second life and a variety of other computer related areas Then you know you're missing out and a lot of her stuff Is basically an open license and so it's stuff that you can take is available She has descriptions of how to implement it videos And you really should take a look at that and her technical expertise has been something that's really been integral To are doing what we've been wanting to do again. She does have an attribution license So please make sure you credit her when that credit is due now greg premier Who's a biology educator at northern virginia community college also cannot be here for technical issues And he's someone who doesn't have a grid, but is very engaged in using second life for his students instruction To go through some of the grids in terms of their usage by students genome island Something that a lot of educators are familiar with from second life something that has Been a part of their showcase Max has been taking about 35 students per year from texas wesley and through there Which is an underestimate of how many people use it. I was teaching biology classes I would have my students go on field trips to genome island Her open sim grid in a little bit smaller in terms of prims, but you'll notice it uses four regions And she had 40 students in one of those regions when it was was on science sim And she had 40 students in that open sim grid this last spring And she'll talk I think a little bit about the ability to spread information out over more area Which again has its pluses and advantages in terms of the student experience The next grid I want to just mention is bio something that carolin low chloe greenwood and second life Had up and running in second life for several years bringing many students through from northern michigan university Now again, you'll notice on the left here I have a little grayed out region when I was actually collecting these map tiles There happened to be an offline region called fantasy land with a ph nearby genome And I thought that that having it being offline was just a good visual indicator of what some of our experiences are with second life that you know if you Can't pay for you can't bring certain students in there or people don't like it Then it's just a fantasy land and it's going to be offline in terms of second life She has biome as a grid And that she's had students come through there including k through 12 much more spread out And in many ways a much more controlled and enjoyable experience for many classes of students Now because of her experience with some fourth graders with the collaborator We've actually completely duplicated that grid and made it Biome for kids again. This is a completely separate server instance That was relatively easy to Make a copy of the original and now it's something that's a closed system exclusively for the use of fourth graders or k through 12 students In the this summer and the upcoming semesters global health by rachel and moran again rachel glow eu in second life Is something that she had started in second life and she you'll notice the region on the right She had 10 students come through that were nursing students and has about 3 700 prims And it's a homestead region. So the number of concurrent users is also relatively small On the right or her open sim grid with 20 some thousand prims again A lot of those are linda kelly based prims But there's a region on there which is a specific global health experience where the avatars can go through interact with essentially bots of villagers to understand Various disease outbreaks and again you can die in terms of having your health go away in terms of a gamification The one thing that we used open sim for that grid was while that region was nice having it on there We actually created a whole separate server instance of a separate traveler grid that only is that one region And that's something that took very little time and effort because it's easy to duplicate it from the Prior creation and that's something that 70 students have been through so far and again There's some plans for that in the upcoming semesters as well Nova archaeology again, this is something that again nova saunders mary and smelter in real life had at Indiana University of pennsylvania And again that funding went away for that grid and so now she's been on open sim And she's spread her archaeology out again one of the advantages that she has In terms of recreating digs that are going on at her university Is that she can take various Recreations that are different dig sites and space them out into different regions So that they are more dedicated regions. You're not crowded and the students can experience them One at a time because her department's doing a variety of digs around the world including Belize and some roman ruins as well as local ones in pennsylvania Now project alexandria again something that in terms of second life is just impossible There are server decisions that are a part of a creation by kira comoroff And that's something that allows you to upload content from the server into prims On the region and then have those be drivable by a menu for the various users And so we've been uploading creative common license We're basically creative common materials both images and text that then are searchable and accessible by individual avatars And callion will be giving joseph gram callion will be giving a little bit of an overview of that okay, so in terms of the transition from To open sim from second life there are a lot of things that In terms of my experience First when I got started as well as other second life users that you just don't know about it And so you aren't going to venture into it unless you have some concrete knowledge of what use useful features it has And so here's just a quick listing of some that I think are probably the most important that whether it just exists at all the ability to import and export Your creations into open sim The wide variety of material that's pre-built out there and the fact that whatever skills that you develop with a viewer That all maintains the same you don't have to learn a whole new platform of of manipulating an avatar And the fact that again the land is free if you're running your own servers or again You can use a hosting service that provides land at a cheaper price in second life And I think you know, there's a bit of a marketing and advertising angle that we as a community Need to do just on an ongoing basis with people that we know To get them aware of the advantages of open sim and that doesn't mean you have to abandon second life But there are things you can do in open sim that you otherwise can't do and in fact The panel will probably back me up on this is that really they were sold on the first The first four when we talked about some of the transition from second life into open sim for our group And again, Greg premier at northern virginia Community college. He hasn't made that transition to open sim and he was going to present today a little bit about some of the barriers that He's making that transition But he right now has a system where hundreds of students every semester in his genetics lab are actually using second life for their classroom experience now One of the things that I want to address and to talk about very briefly is once one is there. What is that experience like? and I think that This picture kind of reminds me of what that experience has been for me as well as for our grid masters And again, this is called the grab by Frederick glacier and photographer in the early 1900s and That trapeze artist that woman who's in the air She is presuming That she is not going to fall to the ground But there is always that moment in time of not knowing How that is going to end up and again, that's part of the drama of watching the circus and so Acknowledging that open sim is I think a relatively hardened although alpha software that is a community effort the There are going to be certain inherent uglies about it that again one has to manage or work their way around And at the point for someone like myself who actually is running the console right in the servers themselves Then for and for anybody who would want to run one of these you have to learn how to be comfortable with text command and console information and editing These iron files which are said as you start software is really important. You have to do that manually I think if you want voice your grid there's one model that you're going to have to make It's long settings or even just having formatting it to will break your grid. And so it's It's very nerve-racking anytime you go in there and do that Uh creating and managing archives. So again people talk about how great it is to have archives to do a safer information to upload people's Okay, can you hear me now? Sorry, we had a little bit of a Internet traffic on the voice. Okay Uh, let me log back out Log back in okay. Sorry, we had some voice issues Is that working better now? Okay great, thank you uh That these are very daunting tasks and there's a lot to learn and in fact one of the things that we've had to deal it's been quite a bit of time with is uh Grid bills that just blow up on a grid Or crashes and there's this watchdog that comes up. Oh, I don't know what he's watching You know, and so uh, there's no documentation of what the watchdog is if you do a google search for open sim console watchdog The first pages don't have a description of what that is or the issues related to it I keep running into unknown user. This guy is after me all the time And so these aircodes these odd ball of glitches get sometimes even full of great crashes That is a barrier to adoption Okay, I'm hearing we're having some some technical issues. Let me just say one thing and that uh, to be able to people in the tech hall Correct, can you exit the tech hall? And then I have my voice now Dolan, are you able to hear or can you speak quickly to see how the voice is from you? Okay, uh, this is Dolan. We're having a little bit of voice problems with uh, Steven We're working on getting it fixed right now. If anyone has any questions, please ask them in text chat Okay, I'm almost done. So let me make let me make one more point out The issue I have my voice now. Is that working? It's okay people I don't hear anything right now You don't hear anything for me Oh, I we're waiting right now for Steven to come back in He's having unfortunate troubles with his voice chat right now Maybe someone else would like to take over and uh Do they're part of the presentation right now because it's um Almost one o'clock. Okay. I can try that. Are you hear me? Yes, I can hear you max. Good. Okay. Let's see if I get my slides on here Um while we're in it and maybe we could take the question Okay, uh max are you Talking right now. I don't hear you. I'm not. I was talking about slide below You're working on the slides right now Yeah, actually maybe Okay, audience while we're waiting, uh, does anyone have any questions for Steven about his part of the presentation? I See Gwinnett has a question. Do any of your friends focus on students learning to create to enhance curriculum? Or maybe she means do any of your grids grids Um, chloe could talk about that. Yeah, we'll do that Um, let me see if my audio Is not all my audio. Okay I just want to make sure. Oh good. I have um Been working just primarily to enhance learning. Um, it does make sense to me with my aunt my face to face classes To use a virtual world if it's not going to make the learning better. It's a tool and so that's what I've been doing and uh With both undergrad graduate students and um pay 12 as well so how do you Exactly what would you want to tell about that? Um, for example I use, um A point quarter that i'm for diversity studies was just something that is used by Horisters and it's great where I live you can go out in the woods and do it and I'll be doing that but If you're teaching in inner city should talk about you can't do that. So I created that activity So I can have that experience. Um, also we have Yes Yes, I can hear your voice Heidi, uh, caroline. Are you able to speak right now? Oops, we just lost we just lost caroline. Okay, can you max is talking? Um, am I still in? Yes, okay Well, let me just talk a little bit about, uh, what I've said Doing on um on the five islands Oh, let's check we've got caroline Yes, what would you like me to do hidey? Yes, do you want me to speak right now? Okay, I can hear you hidey Do you want me to hang up and call back? Oh, okay Yes, you want me to speak am I alive or just speaking with you guys? I think Caroline is trying to present in text. Yes, I'm back Hi dragon. Can you hear me caroline? Yes, we hear you and we see you on the Skype call. I'm I'm here caroline. Yes So do you want to stay? The problems that we've had with implementation Has um with the administration. I have not had any problems with parents which is I'm opening it up to homeschooled kids Kids and um online programs And kids just for fun So I have some several kids going in there. They love to build They like to interact They love to help teachers Tell them how to build and so it's been really um Beneficial the school who has been using it as part of one of my student thesis Um has moved towards they want to use it for all their grades So the school board is 100 behind it Obviously, um online schools are going to be interested and I just met some people whose children are enrolled in an online k-12 school They're elementary kids and I think this will be a good venue for them Obviously as we get bigger then we'll have to look at more servers and You know more more uh space Right now biome has six islands. Um, I'm using earth systems education as a basis So I have Tidersphere biosphere atmosphere Biome, which is the home island and you know me again, which is a native american Island biome for kids has the same islands except it does not have you know me again Instead of seaborgia, which is a club island. That's kids and I are building That imagine area which is an island just for them to build I had to create that island because we're building everywhere And I have a car before they study Those kind of organisms and there were all kinds of random objects in it. So I had to create a place kids love to build one of the projects that That my student actually did with her kids for um classroom Is we created an environment We had to create organisms that were adapted by that environment if you go to biome and you go to Atmosphere, you can see those organisms these were 10 to 12 year olds mostly 10 year olds. So you can see that They were actually exhibiting understanding of adaptation environment a lot of ecology concepts But that's um her thesis study So since um open sim versus second life, I will not use second life again for education OSM solves a whole lot of problems. My biggest problem is moving animals and if they have good animals that would be great But uh, I will not be using Uh, second life education anymore. This is working better for my undergraduate students At work, it's obviously So I'm going to leave it at that and my email is the l o w e At nmu.edu should be up on the slide. Please contact me or chloe greenwood Via biome or virtual second life And I'd be happy to work with you and answer any questions that you might have any I guess I'll pass this on to the next person Okay, we'll take a break for a second. Wow The next person gets ready If you have any questions, please type them in text chat Rachel is going to be on next I made it back Did I start the call? Yes, originally I was on the call. Am I not on the call right now? Do you want me to hang up? Okay, I'm hearing fairly Yes, I'm back. This is Dylan This is Steven. I'm back Hello, can you hear me? Rachel right? Yes, I'm back Okay, wonderful Okay, so as I transfer my slides, um just as a precaution in case I Fall out. I'm going to go ahead and post some text chat here about what I'm going to say But we started Looking at the possibilities of can you hear can everyone hear me? Okay, wonderful. We started looking at the possibilities of using open sim About a year ago. Actually, we'd been using second life for two years And we were very limited In terms of some of the things that we could do on second life And so we started looking at open sim as a way of Illuminating some of those issues So I think I should have slides coming up momentarily And as soon as they come up Oh Start going So I'd like to give a lot of credit to Eva Komarowski as Steven said earlier. She's Been scripture slash designer For one of the projects that I'm going to be talking about as well as Natalia Reibas who's been A great source of help on intercultural communication, which is something that we're focusing on and Jill Heffenstein Who's the director of our interdepartmental global health track So the landscape of us global health programs and this dates back to 2011 but it was one of the better slides I could find Is very broad There are a lot of people working in global health right now And there is a lot of student interest in global health, which means that we need to scramble at least we have And scramble health educators have over the last Five to seven years to develop good preparatory experiences and also good measures Of students knowledge Now some of the ways that we teach global health are the traditional dreaded lecture journal clubs case-based discussions In-class cultural vignettes are kind of the closest you would get to Being able to role play or Do what we do in virtual worlds But in a simulation you can Really represent a local hospital or village or refugee camp or shanty town something that you wouldn't be able to do Without it being prohibitively expensive in real life Students can learn in context they can interact with users from many different countries Now in practice our global health focus has actually been in eastern africa and so You know while the broadband patrons there is getting a little bit better It's not to the point where we can really say that our students are able to interact with either their colleagues or With members of the local community there. So in practice what we have been able to do is use NPCs and bots And those of you that've been to a few sessions Or done a little bit in open sim know that NPCs are something that you cannot replicate in second life whereas bots you can have those Um and bots work equally well in open sim and sometimes actually better because you have more control over how you can link them to external databases So this shows um one of our regions that travelers activity And as you can see it's divided into eight sub activities um, the students are Start out at the start and they followed up a path all the way through And each activity builds on the next in order to Get the students to the final point Which is the mizongo house and that's um another name for white white people in swahili So the students usually have fun with that They do interactive tasks and there are two focuses Two main objectives one is to teach the student about health and disease And the other is to start the process of teaching intercultural communication The second is much more challenging than the first But the second is where we can really use the affordances of open sim So the students use a health exposure tracker attachment that monitors their health They are able to get microscopic views of a water sample for disease causing microorganisms Um, they need to use the right medication to cure exposures and there are periodic As if not through the entire build Um with for intercultural communication They are able to interact with and obtain information from the NPCs And so I will finish up with a few pictorial slides of the build And in the distance you can see a cattle herder And this particular part of the build is the masai herdsman portion where they are Asked to interact with a masai herdsman who is an mpc With a ractor script in him and so he is able to communicate with them Depending on how polite they are to him his responses are much more Welcoming and they're able to get the information that they need Otherwise he is rather dismissive This is the village. Um, here their goal is to Identify the leader the community leader who's the chief and to get permission from him to test the water They have to figure out where the water source is also And once they receive that information they can go to the water source and test the water for disease causing organisms and Along the way and through this process They are exposed as they go through the sim to various endemic diseases that are typically Encountered in this setting and you know once their avatar is ill They will know that from their exposure tracker and they will start to lose health. So it's a The goal is to learn about these diseases because they have information from Their backpack and their no cards But also to stay healthy and so we find that as they repeat this activity their health scores go up Because they more they show evidence of retention of this knowledge So they don't They don't get ill either they avoid the exposure or they don't stay ill very long because they're able to quickly treat their condition So we have a local hospital with patients and Getting to the last slide here We have the mozonga house and the vision of this Hasn't been fully realized yet because students have kind of just gone through the simulation But the goal is to provide a meeting place for not only debriefing after your simulation But also regrouping and being able to connect. So i'm going to stop there And let somebody else come in Yes I am done So that was my last slide Yep And thank you for your attention Okay, thank you rachel. This is steven again and We've run near the end of time. So i'll just make a quick mention about project alexandria as possibilities What i've read here in the front of the room is a bookcase That you should be able to take a copy of that has an example of the A literature library of children's stories Something you can take something that can be created by using the technology of project alexandria I would like to summarize and thank My grid masters for being here and talking about their different grids And to just make one final call that I had at the end of my presentation Which is that for people like myself who are not technically inclined that are at the console But aren't builders aren't programmers that The more people can Create tutorials create clear guidelines for Other people who are trying to build regions to talk about best practices The more that those are available the better for the community as a whole We have on the left I put up a poster where you have grid tours september 17th From 5 to 7 p.m. Pacific and at this point I'd be happy to take any questions And please put them in local chat and then I think our time is up Okay, thank you Thanks to our panel for a terrific presentation As a reminder to our audience you can see what's coming up on the conference schedule at conference dot open simulator dot org In this room the next session will be at 130 students as avatar pedagogy psychology and learning by bill solomon son Thank you again to our speakers and the audience will be back shortly with our next session If you want to talk to steven or the other audience members They will hang around afterwards or be sure to friend them and talk to them later