 Hello everyone and welcome to the 6 to 6.30 p.m. session of the 2017 Open Simulator Community Conference. As a reminder to our in-world and web audience, you can view the full conference schedule at conference.opensimulator.org and tweet your questions or comments too at OpenSimCC with the hashtag OSCC17. This session, we have a terrific session called the Digital Art Museum. Our speaker today is Andrew Wheelock, or as you see in front of you, Spiff Whitfield. Andrew is a 20 year educator with a degree in elementary education. He is now a technology integrator who works with schools around the western New York area. Currently, he is the project director of the Islands of Enlightenment. This is a self-hosted OpenSim virtual world that offers schools the opportunity to create and explore history, architecture and language arts through virtual simulations. Welcome all. Welcome Andrew. Let's begin the session. Hi everyone. Thank you so much for having me again. I did an earlier session with my colleague and good friend Mary Howard and we did something on literature in OpenSim. And I just have to just say how much this conference in particular inspires me personally because I get to see so many great like-minded educators. We're, I think, a very exclusive club in the sense that I think we're all pretty innovative beyond our typical education colleagues. So with that said, I just want to tell you kind of my, a little bit of my journey and the latest project that I've been working on and really, and hopes to really develop it as we go to the future. So if you want some more about me, certainly you can, within the schedule, there should be the presentation that I'm sharing. So if you want to see that on the Google Doc that I created for this, you can do that. Also, if you click the little cube next to my avatar here, you should be able to get some notes about me. Probably the most familiar place you can get in touch with me is my coffee with the geek website. I try to do a lot of interviews with fellow like-minded teachers. And again, that's a way for me to keep inspired is just learning from others. And I think, you know, even just beyond us, I think as educators, we do such amazing things and we don't often, I think the public at large doesn't know all the magic that happens behind the scenes. And of course they should know because we're dealing with such a wonderful group of young people with our students. So let me just give you some background as to the Islands of Enlightenment projects. And again, if you go to islandsoe.weebly.com, that's the main website. And again, that's within that card that you can follow us. I'll just give you the briefest of briefest kind of reviews of the Islands of Enlightenment projects. And so this will be hopefully an under five minute review of all the things we've been doing. But of course, this has spanned going on probably five to six years. These projects have been put in place. And again, within that, there's so many great people that have been helpers and collaborators and colleagues and supporters, including, you know, my work at, we call it the WinniRick and, you know, the supportive managers I've had. And that of course always helps too. When you have leadership above you that is willing to, you know, take a chance on a pretty wild and crazy idea, you really are grateful for that because it doesn't always, you don't always find that. So special shout outs to all the great managers that I've had that have supported my work. And also I want to just say a shout out to the New York State Department of Education, who gave me a grant that got this kind of the funding going with this. We know that, you know, servers cost money and putting an open SIM program on a server and having somebody manage that, you know, that's cost money and energy. So thankful to New York State Department of Ed for seeing the potential in this project and giving me the kind of startup money for that. So again, in 2010 is when this whole project kind of started and it started really with the, what we call the understanding of the Holocaust project, SIM. And that was really meant to be a companion piece to the diary of a young girl, Anne Frank. And we recreated essentially the streets of Amsterdam 1944 and within we created the secret annex digitally. So kids could use their avatars and explore the annex and that sort of thing. It was, you know, more than that in a sense that we also wanted students to explore concepts of the Holocaust as well. And the final two projects I think are the most powerful pieces for us. And that was one to become kind of a digital museum curator. So each student gets a chance to be a museum creator, create their own exhibit in open SIM that displays their learning from the Holocaust. It doesn't have to just be excluded to Anne Frank. It can be any topic. And over the years we have just countless different exhibits. And I think it's a great way to express information for kids. And that really was one of the powerful pieces for us. And again, you don't have to give kids so much of do this here, do this here. They will take it and run with it and create all kinds of magic. And that's really the fun is, and again, I think that's where we have to convince teachers is let them create because they will surprise you with what they can do. And just, you know, going back to Marzano's work in the 80s, that's what we, one of the true ways of learning is kids expressing something in a different way. So open SIM building to me is one great way to see what kids have learned because it lets them present something in a different way. So getting back to the project again, that was just one of the final pieces. But then one of the other pieces was a writing piece where kids have to create a reflection candle, basically an essay about their learning. And, you know, going into such a big epic event like the Holocaust, you're always wary like, you know, we don't want to make it too much of a game where kids think the Holocaust was just a game. So we wanted to make sure that the history still had that impact and certainly Ann's diary had that impact. And when we had students write the essay, we knew that, you know, the kids were walking away with some great learning because they were expressing a real heartfelt. Powerful ideas, images, you know, and again, learning and concepts and empathy as well. So that was really the starter piece. And I was so grateful for that as a starter over the summer. I got to go to Amsterdam and see the Annex and found that, hey, you know what, we really did a pretty good job with that. That was my fear, you know, going over there. You know, we were basically creating from, you know, images, designs, you know, all of the things we could find on the internet and history books. And we did, I think, some really good justice to it. And one of the things I liked about it from the Amsterdam Sim is that, you know, when you go to the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, all the furniture is out of the house, you know, because it was taken out after the war. So we were able to actually, in Opensim, by recreating that, we were able to actually kind of enhance, I think, the experience. So that was our first project. And again, that was super powerful, super rewarding. Our second project, again, was with a group of teachers, but primarily Mary Howard was one of the big drivers of that. And that was the Air of the King project. And that was a medieval role play. So we basically created a medieval village with a castle. And the kids have to work their way up, level their way up to the castle. And then when they get to the castle, there's a medieval role play in there. And they have to, there's a medieval mystery, I guess, kind of an Arthurian legend, you know, who's the Air of the King. So the kids really have to use problem solving skills. I got some local theater students to create the characters. So they did the full English accents and all that. So the students were able to kind of interview in quotes the characters who they thought was the Air and they had to go back and kind of put the pieces together. So there was not only historical learning, there was a literature tie-in and then problem solving there. And it was, you know, game-based. So definitely up the engagement level. And that was, we did mostly with sixth grade. And that led us into the third year with, I think, for any of you who've worked with kids, especially, you know, grades six through 12, which is what these were geared towards when you let them go. And again, if you're a Minecraft person or have even seen kids with Minecraft, you understand the power and the passion kids have for building. So that brought us to the Learning by Design piece in Buffalo. There's a Frank Lloyd Wright home called the Darwin-Martin House, which has a lot of local Buffalo history, a lot of history of the, you know, the Depression. Darwin-Martin, who was the owner of the home, wound up losing everything in the stock market crash. So a fascinating history about Buffalo, about Darwin-Martin. And of course, Frank Lloyd Wright, his architecture is so powerful in that building. And they've restored it to its original glory. So, and they've been a great partner in that. So we basically take kids to the Darwin and Martin House, talk about Frank Lloyd Wright's principles of architecture. And it's really, you know, fascinating because, you know, Frank Lloyd Wright, if, if you're, you may or may not be familiar with it, but his, you know, I can actually, I think there's a picture in my slide share here. His architecture is so bold and so different and so American. And the, the neighborhood that this house is in is all, you know, very two-door style homes from, you know, European style architecture. And here's this home that's just so big and bold and so different. And Frank Lloyd Wright's real, like, architectural, for lack of a better term, it really shines through in the house. But it also gives kids a totally different perspective on architecture. And, you know, Frank Lloyd Wright's use of using natural elements or recreating natural elements within his homes was, was really fascinating. And the kids took those general concepts of Frank Lloyd Wright's and developed their own worlds. That was kind of our, our third year. And again, if you saw Mary in my presentation earlier, she's done some things that are totally her kind of creations, which is really the ultimate goal of what I wanted to do is make sure that, you know, teachers were not only just taking what I've created, but what they can take beyond. So that's been really great to see that blossom. So then that got me to thinking that, you know, architecture is so powerful and there's those artistic elements. Then I was kind of looking for, well, how can I get the art community involved because so many artists of today, if you look at, say, you know, digital game design, you look at movies, everything is digitally created now and it's works of amazing art. I mean, the Picasso's of our day are in game design and movie creation as well as, you know, even just web design. I mean, there's artists, talented artists. I mean, amazingly talented artists that are, that are doing things. So why not get started with OpenSim as their platform to, to create. So that's where I went. Of course, I was a C plus student in almost every art class I ever took and I can tell you my painful story of art. I love art, but it never rewarded me as hard as grades go. So I think, you know, what I see on paper may not be as wonderfully artistic as everyone else sees. So I wanted to find a partner and, and a collaborator with that. And the art teachers that I talked to were all interested, but to be honest with you, they were all really scared to death of approaching a digital art, especially in elementary and public schools. And, you know, there's, there's a couple of different reasons for it. First of all, it's higher in technology. Second of all, for art teachers, I mean, they already have their curriculum pretty well established. They, you know, they, they know what they know. They do what they do. They do, you know, magical things with kids. And so, you know, why, you know, why change things? I'm doing great things. I'm doing things according to the curriculum. So why take a chance on this? And so again, that, and again, I guess the general fear of doing something different, doing something that kids, you know, that they're not comfortable with. It was a big, was a big hurdle. So I finally found my collaborator and that is Sheila Cannon. And she's a Fredonia art teacher, which is in New York state here. And you can see her picture. She, I had her also helping me with a sketch note workshop. And she was, you know, she's getting close to retirement, although to look at her, she looks like she, she's about 20 years old. But she, you know, she, I saw, and I said, you know, Sheila, I've got this, you know, wild and crazy idea for you. And she said, you know, Andy, it's time for me to try something, to try something new. And she, you know, was scared. I think, I don't think she would mind me saying that. She was fearful of the technology when I helped her work with it. I mean, she was, she was very, you know, it was something, it was giving up a control that she had. And she did it. And I was so just grateful for her to do that. So finding that collaborator, you think is probably your easiest step. That's probably your hardest step. So let me move on here, because I've got a few more slides to share with you. So step one is finding that awesome collaborator, which I did in Sheila. And let me just advance my slide. So then was finding inspiration. And again, for the art project, we also brought the kids at the Darwin-Martin House. You can see it on the left. We also showed the kids across the street from the Darwin-Martin House. There was what's called the Church of the Good Shepherd, which has some Tiffany art, stained glass art design. So we gave them that inspiration as well. And you can see the group of teachers that we had. Some art teachers, some tech coordinators and some other, you know, just building people. We had a construction guy in there, too. We're going to try that with him. And so again, then it was really just turning the kids loose and letting them bring their artworks. So some of what they did was they brought the artworks they created and then created an exhibit out of them. So kind of combining the elements from the Holocaust project we did and then have the kids create their own exhibit in world. And then the next frontier in that is to have them do 3D creations and making 3D images as art. And that's where we're kind of in our next phase. And what we did this year was we tried to use some programs that would get them kind of developing into that mindset of digital creation. So we used SketchUp, Google SketchUp. And we used CoSpaces. If you haven't seen CoSpaces, I would highly recommend it, especially for young kids. It really is a really nice precursor program for 3D building and animation. And they're really developing it. CoSpaces is really doing a great job. I have to give them some kudos for it. It's easy for kids to do. They can do it on an iPad. They can do it on a computer. They can do it on a Chromebook. So that offers a lot of different compatibility. And they can also see if they have Google Cardboard, they can see their creations in 3D. So really fun to use that as a great program. So again, there's other building programs, of course, Wings 3D. Unity is going to be kind of a really higher end program for more, I'm guessing, more high school level. But so we've combined some of those kind of standalone programs with the idea of bringing those in world so that kids have a little more flexibility of the things they've done. So that's kind of where we are now is to let kids create on that level. And I think it's been a huge success. I've just been overjoyed that, of course, that I got the collaborative spirit with Sheila to come in. I think, you know, any for those of us have seen, especially K through 12 kids work with that. And if you've seen kids on Minecraft, you see the passion and the excitement and engagement. So this is an avenue that I really want to continue to explore and really create some more works of art for the kids. So I guess I've got a couple more minutes left. So if there's any questions, I'd be happy to entertain those. And thank you so much for listening. Any questions I can answer again. Feel free to connect with me. I am on Twitter. I'll put my Twitter handle in chat here. Okay. Thank you, Andy. I am scrolling up to see if there's any questions in the chat. I'd be happy to connect with anybody who'd want to learn more or somehow collaborate. I'm always open to that. Okay. Good. You've answered everyone's questions before you even asked them. That's wonderful. All right. Well, thank you everyone for coming out. You can, your ISTE group, ISTE group. Tell us about that very briefly. Yeah. ISTE, please feel free to join us. It's, again, I think it's Venn Network. So V-E-N-E-T-W-O-R-K at weebly.weebly.com. Feel free to join us there. We have events every Tuesday evenings. One is a writer's workshop. The other is a, you know, office hours. Then we have a machinima night, a focus series. And we have a machinima night. So every Tuesday there's something going on. So yeah, join us there. I'll put it in chat as well. Okay. And then there's one, looks like a brief question. Are your projects open for use by other teachers? I am open to collaboration. How it works, because I'm a New York state entity, we really need to work with New York teachers. But we do have it where, if you want to say, partner with one of our New York teachers, and they're great teachers, and they're always willing to do that. We've been able to do that. So basically the, you know, you'll partner with a different school or a different teacher and we'll try and get you to, like work through the program there. So yes, the answer is yes. Okay. And then there is one other question about covering Moodle, but I don't think we quite have enough time for you to provide. I know Moodle and it could take forever to talk about all the things you could do with it. So maybe that's something that you can address in the text. It does sound interesting to integrate that with Moodle. Okay. Well, thank you, Andrew, so much. That was a wonderful presentation. Thanks. As a reminder to our audience, you can see what's coming up on the conference schedule at conference.opensimulator.org, which is our, will be our closing statements by our fearless leader. Also, we encourage you to visit the OSCC 17 poster expo in the OSCC expo three region to find accompanying information and presentations and explore the hypergrid tour resources in OSCC expo two region, along with sponsor and crowd funder booths located throughout all of the OSCC expo regions. And thank you again to our speaker and you, our audience and don't go away. We have more briefly coming up right now. Thank you.