 Well, hello everyone and welcome to the 5 p.m. 5 30 session of the 2020 open simulator community conference in this session We are happy to introduce a presentation called SOS extended environment supports for expansion and educators, please Our speaker is dr. Eileen O'Connor She is my mentor in VR I am happy to say and she is the director of the SUNY master of arts in learning through emerging technologies program Please check out the website found at conference open simulator org for speaker bios details the session and full schedules of events This session is being live streamed and recorded So if you have questions or comments during the session, you may send tweets to at open sim cc with the hashtag Hashtag OS cc 20 welcome everyone and let's begin the session Hi everybody. I'm Eileen O'Connor and And the brilliant gentleman who just spoke previously is one of the ones who has graduated from the mallet program at SUNY Empire State College And really reflects well on the wonderful students we've had and keep in mind our students are not Typical, you know, going to college or going to graduate school as you know mom and dad wanting them to these are adults Who have made strong commitments with their lives and what I'm going to be doing is showing The kind of progress we've had as a program at SUNY with virtual reality and then show some of the challenges we want to grow And what Scott just talked about was a conference that we've done locally residency, but we want to be able to do more But um Empire State College started into virtual reality Way back in about 2005 I got involved in 2006 And Scott said I'm the stem person. I love this stuff My background had been I had been a chemist Then I worked for IBM for 10 years and then it took a buyout and went back to school to combine both science and technology And went on from phd So I bring that to the background. I love all things technical I particularly enjoy the communication aspects, but I am not at all artistic So what I need to do is work with teams And so when we first started Empire State College had funding for Second Life We enjoyed it um My work itself I was adventuresome, but at one point The work I had done was so fundamental that they literally moved me into the sky And had other people develop a nice looking island and Eileen had the sky island Anyway, what happened was you know funding didn't remain And then when we did try to have our students work with Second Life It was very limited. So what we eventually did was found something called open sim And kitely we started worth early on you could get islands for very reasonable prices And the students not just the instructors could develop So what we've done since about 2012 and the masters program began shortly before that We've had meetings there. We've had classes there And scott just talked about the virtual residency, which we've been doing now for three years It's been very successful and we keep on getting better at it So not only that we've really benefited from what many artists have made available to us And use those as jumping off points Quite a number of students of our of almost half of our graduates have made their own islands and moved out on their own But we still have a lot of challenges, which are kind of endemic in the business So that's what I want to let me go to my next slide Review here as we're looking at Looking at how do we continue to expand? And scott mentioned too that the residency Was supported not only by our efforts within SUNY, but we've had an institute for new paradigms Which started several years back and we've brought in wonderful people who've continued to help us grow Bethany who will be speaking soon has been a real Supporter of our efforts. So we're seeing that partnerships can work What I'm interested in doing now though, you know, I've We've been very fortunate with kitely. They've done a wonderful job and what I always though Being a bit of a nervous Nellie and wanting to be able to have more control want to understand How we can get to some of the next steps So what I'm going to be doing now is simply just showing you Something that I started as a mind map To look at where are those next steps? We have this institute looking at pieces of this We've had some groundwork and what we need to do now is how to start networking in others and I was able to go to one of the meetings of the developers At during a break and realize they're doing and looking at a lot of the same things that we're trying to start on a mini level So we're looking at ways to partner Ways to find resources Ways to go get well beyond excuse me, which what any of us know individually. So I went from the mind map. I was really actively working on this So I'm you're going to see most of my mind map. It's not aesthetically beautiful Again, I'm the stem person, but what I'm trying to do is create a hub This time I just am starting with Google docs and you know is warned again because be careful of permissions, but I'm going to try to ask those of you Who can start giving information? Relative to any of these pieces that I'm going to show If you might please jump in jump into google docs put it in the chat I'll try to catch the chat But start helping us populate these so this is more my request for things. I don't know how to do and could use help so, um, yeah Yeah, none of us can do it all and certainly I can't now This I'm not excited. I by the way, you will have all of these I do have the slides and I do have the google doc that came from this, but um Okay, I'll put the google doc in here now. I was warned I'm going to have to ask you to be to be good and You know, if you wouldn't mind the google doc The google doc took What this mind map has I was using mind maesters very nice You can populate the subsections and then I pushed that out as a word document brought it up into Google and went from there and you'll see I'd love to have a wiki someday But I've been wondering what are the best types of wiki. So I'm going to put this out here And let's see Okay there If you feel inspired As you go through to populate any one of these sections and I'd ask if you put your name on it You know, it's a google doc if I I work a lot with students and I really encourage people To be creative at this point. This is just a set of groundwork. See if there are others who might want to Come in and You know help me down the road. So just put your name and I won't be able to get to it right away because I have three days of conferences that I have to hold at the school So what I'm doing now is taking some of those sections that you saw Yeah, and Please put any recommendations. You'll see at the end. I'm going to really ask for Good platforms, but I thought Google docs I could get my head around so what I'm trying to think of is what is this hub? and We need to have shareable information But it also has to be understandable And now I'm thinking I'm I'm willing to mucky around with technology, but I'm not an expert in it You know, I listen I learn about things But I will I'm not an IT person I would love IT people to be willing to work with us. So you're going to see here I'm going to be asking For people to think I'm looking at both an organizational level and kind of a functional level areas that I know we need Just because I've been doing this now for 15 years and I know what students need My population is adults Are the students but they in turn work with their own students So the real audience are the students that my students work with Which couldn't be anything from high school teachers Elementary school teachers corporate trainers. So I'm looking to create resources that can be used on many different levels The first though most consistent thing I have When people land they do not like the avatars They don't like the fact that the closing are are skin tight I try to go on and explain why they kind of have to be that way because of the way the The models work and that if they really want this flowing clothing It's going to take a lot more money and expertise than I have but I've been asking for artists to please sell us stuff that we can then You know modify what we I don't have a lot of money I work for state university and honestly, I pretty much fund myself on this So what I'm looking for are ways, you know to get leverage get more More and more appropriate avatars one of the first things I always hear is You know, these are over sexualized. They're you know, all sorts of problems And so I sure you hear that but consider that very often. I'm really trying to expand over to k12 There's a big need right now and that's the first problem They all have so I have a whole section if you can fill it in if you know artists who are willing to You know for reasonable prices, maybe develop clothes all of those things. So I this is just kind of my plea of things that I need and again, I just took screen captures of the different parts of the Mind map that I had so again, it's not aesthetically pleasing, but I had to actively work on this till the last minute Uh the it systems Now I work for the state university of new york, which is big and you think that they would be real helpful Well, they just always aren't as helpful as I would like So I have to be my own it right now. So I'm looking for More information there K. McClellan was very good a couple of years back explaining what her it department did I wish I could say I have that now I do work for the third fourth largest city, which is the state university in new york It's a large school But we're spread over the state as god said and so consequently there isn't just a computer department I can go and buddy up with so I'm looking for lots of things there. This is all the stuff that you guys know the The privacy issues security Downloading opening ports, you know, I would love to someday have my own server Ideally run by the school, but there's a lot of different things. I want hopefully I made that document open permissions um So we'll see if people aren't respectful, but I think you know You're a bunch of adults and I I can move comments out if they're inappropriate so it department the it department and avatars are things I can't do on my own So but what I want to do is also is I think we all keep on talking about it And we mean it on different levels, but we're pulled in many directions Join up with others But joining what they're doing and also sharing Well, I have another one for sharing the tutorials, but shared projects grants Even things like how do we acquire the institutional support? And again, my mind map had some arrows connecting things. So that's why you see arrows just showing up They're not really meaningful in this context We do have Events we have our institute of new paradigms Which we started about three years ago, which really is a mini think tank And we've had a lot of projects created by students And over the years we've had really wonderful projects. Scott has done one of them And uh, he has a whole island dedicated to art history So we we have a base But we need more now. This is really a big to do to do list that I would like to have The way the courses run that I have I get them to kindergarten opens them They're they're at kindergarten, uh, but there are many more things that I'm not qualified to teach them, but Students like scott go on and take a second class where they do a lot of their own work And you know, but I want to make that more official There's a whole lot of things that I don't know And I know there are community groups doing a lot of this And so if you can help me by populating where, you know, these community groups are Where you might know there are free things. I love what out worlds has We we find scripts and all that but if you could help by putting in resources, you know places, you know, that would be great um So, you know, those are the areas that I can't really do on my own but What I was thinking about and I always had a little meeting where people were talking about this Okay, as you get this together right now, I had to go down and dirty with what I could do Which is kind of always my approach. I I start with proof of concept. I I have to work too independently So I have to go with what I can do and so google docs is about what I can handle I know there are a lot of other wikis That are available But I went with a rather simple interface But what I'm seeing and I think this is kind of where I end I'm going to show you there are a lot more interfaces coming out for wikis and for community groups and I think Bethany is going to be showing you some of these groups. There's alt space vr There's mozilla hubs and I think I have some pictures of other interfaces that might be a little more modern looking That I was hearing from another meeting here how people are looking to find ways That the interface looks more up to date than some of the big wikis that we have historically And I I'm looking for things that could be on a couple of levels Documentation is going to be very important. There can be the academic quality But there can also be the user quality and so What I'm going to do is I'm almost through here What and I'm looking at the time If people can jump in again Eventually I would like to have a coding system. So right now I'm starting out Just with the basics But down the road we'll find out who might want to contribute something on the user level kind of tutorial level But maybe somebody sees an academic level that they could be able to work with so again There are resources and there are other models not only are mozilla hubs and all space enviable because they have Web-based interface which also means they have very simplistic avatars at this point, but there's a feature I would love to see Mozilla hubs has something that you can send out an invite very easily and you can use Twitter and other things as well. So I when I'm putting together my wish list I wish I could have some of these things Some of this is an example of some of the documentation. So as We get the different sections together I think we should look also at how other people are presenting this and see if we can learn from what they're doing And I interestingly heard that same discussion Just earlier. So What I'm going to wrap this up with is Again, I think this should come back These were just at the end. I took some examples From other places just to show What their interface looks like and I think I'm actually at the end of my slides I'm going to go right back to the beginning for a minute to see if I can get to My phone my access and my wet and the emails so What I'm doing is trying to lay out the groundwork of all You saw my wish list The things that I wish could get together Get different people together to work with this Kitely has been wonderful and But at the same point you can't be so dependent on one vendor Particularly in the world today. So I think What I want to do is broaden out and and get the partnerships get better avatars Understand better the it pieces and if any of you could help even just by putting in Links or information that you know at this point. I would greatly appreciate that And you don't have to commit for more But if you want to join in later as I get a chance to assimilate this I would appreciate it and so I think I'm just about at my time limit here and so Thank you very much and I will see if I can push out that URL again Yeah, that should get you to the google doc And if you can't get to it this evening, you know, I'll try to Make it available in the future But thank you for giving me the opportunity to get my plea forward. I love this stuff Learned a lot more and I'm a hundred percent. I am the choir So thank you for being part of the choir with me And thank you Eileen for a terrific presentation Give her a big round of applause Now as a reminder to our audience, you can see what's coming up on the conference schedule at conference.opensimulator.org Following this session the next session will begin at 5 30 in this keynote region here And is entitled using browser based virtual environments as a gateway drug to get people hooked on virtual worlds Also, we encourage you to visit the oscc 20 poster expo in the oscc expo 3 region And find accompanying information on presentations and explore the hyper grid tour resources in oscc expo 2 region Along with sponsor and crowd funder booths located throughout all of the oscc expo regions Thank you again to our speaker eileen and to you the audience