 for teachers. We had some great, it's basically allow students to explore the streets of Amsterdam in 1944 and take a tour of the Annex and do 10 common core-based activities. And their final, their final project is to create a exhibit as if they're a museum curator that has something to do with their learning and understanding of the Holocaust. And at first we were getting very simple type presentations, but now we're getting actually students doing building of World War II airplanes and, you know, Anne Frank's desk and some really powerful displays. So the building piece of it is a really wonderful project or part of that. And I'll just take a tour of the Annex and do 10 common core-based activities. Sounds like I'm getting a loop here. So let me throw the video. If you go to the padlet, and if you post that padlet again, you'll see the video. I can put it back again. Okay. And if you just double click on that video, you should be able to see it. And the great thing about padlets is they take away all the extraneous information on a YouTube video. So you can just view it. So it's about a minute in length. And because of our time limitations and the streaming issues, I'll just have you watch that on your own. But I hope you'll watch that as well as the Air of the King video, which gives us the intro to the Air of the King project. And again, these are just scenes. You can see that these are student builds. So you can see one is a postcard that someone created. One was a student desk. One is a World War II airplane. If you can see that on the presenter screen. And so it really was a wonderful project. Again, there was a great group of teachers. Again, within our link, there's a teacher tab to see the various teachers. And then year two was the Air of the King project, which was meant to be a medieval project around middle school. And as I was developing the project, Mary does a lot of great work in ed tech. And again, her blog is a wonderful ed tech kind of journal of sorts. So I tapped Mary and asked her if she wanted to be part of it. And she of course took off with it. So with that, I'm going to kind of turn it over to Mary and let her kind of talk about the Air of the King because she did a ton of great curriculum work. So Mary, take it away. Thank you. Yes, it was quite an adventure. Andy brought me in and introduced me to the open sim environment, which I had never been a part of before. So I really had to do my learning from the ground up and I'm still quite a noob doing my best to learn and develop as a user of this platform. And but it was complete immersion when it came to the Air of the King project. Our premise with the Air of the King project was to try to gamify the social studies curriculum. I'm a sixth grade teacher and medieval is a big part of my curriculum. So Andy approached me with the concept of can we teach the medieval ages through a gamified environment in an open sim platform. And so we sat down and planned and planned and planned. And we came up with the Air of the King project. The project is essentially a story and the students are presented with four potential heirs to a throne. They have to evaluate evidence and seek information in order to determine who they believe to be the Air of this Kingdom called Stormfield. Because our students were getting into this virtual world for the very, very first time, we decided to start from the ground up. And what we did was develop a game board for them so that as they came into their virtual world, they could learn how to address themselves in medieval attire appropriate for the worlds, you know, because it was a complete gamified situation. We wanted to make sure that they were being authentic. So that was one of the badges that they would earn. Then they needed to learn how to navigate and explore. So we also had to do that and have them navigate the virtual world, explore what was going on. Can I still be heard? I feel like I just lost audio. I think you're good, Mary. Okay, I had a little gap there. I thought I lost audio. So they would come into the medieval village and they would explore and they would learn how to take snapshots, learn how to use note cards, do a journaling of their experience through the virtual world. And as they did that, they would get a badge for the different things that they did. So the game kind of progressed as their skills progressed. Then finally, of course, they were presented with all of the errors. And if we could change the slide, I think we can, Andy, we can get a little bit of a view of the game board. So that's the quest for that the students would approach at the very beginning of the game. And they would each badge from working away from left to right represented a task that they had to complete. When I used the Air of the King with my class, I used Edmodo as the game host. So my students would get their quest through Edmodo and get their points. And each point that they earned or each hit point HP that they earned or XP, they would see those points through their Edmodo. So that was kind of how their grades were connected to the project. Yet all the experiences, of course, were through the Air of the King. And Andy, if we could progress to the next slide, here are some of the things that the students saw. Their first quest was to view the clothing and get themselves dressed in medieval attire. They also had to agree to a certain set of rules, the digital citizenship. So we linked to Google Doc within the virtual world. So the students would log in and they would click the link and they had to agree to obey Lord Darkraven's rules. And one of the rules, of course, was to bow every time they saw Lord Darkraven, a.k.a. Spiff Whitfield. And the students really were excited every time Lord Darkraven would make an appearance. And so eventually we built Lady Darkraven as well, because I was jealous. They enjoyed that quite a bit. They would bow and they would ask us questions and look for clues from us. So this picture you're looking at now, if you're looking at the presentation board, it's just the section where they would look at the clothes and learn about the medieval environment and the different kind of booths and sections. Eventually, level two of our quests, they would end up in the castle. And it was in the castle that the majority of their learning came in when it came to feudalism and the feudal system. They viewed coat of arms, which associated with every, all four of the heirs of the throne. The coat of arms had Latin words and Latin roots and connections for the students to evaluate and investigate. The rooms had clues embedded within them. There were portions of a parchment that the students had to piece together to determine whether or not it was a clue. They had to investigate knights in the history of knights by watching a video, answering some questions and turn them in via a note card. They had to design their own coat of arms as part of the project and submit that coat of arms through a note card in the virtual world. And then in the end, the common core, I'm an English teacher on top of being a social studies teacher and one of my big objectives was to sell this in terms of common core. So we made it align with over 12 different learning standards with the common core because it was evidence-based learning. They had to speak with different heirs. They had to talk to the air and gather evidence, take notes on the evidence, establish a stance, make sure that the evidence supported the claim or the stance that they were making, make sure that they could explain where they gathered the evidence, how the evidence connected to the medieval world, and then eventually argue their point. So it was very rich in curriculum connections, very rich in the common core connections, which I think really gave the project the teeth that it needed to be successful. And of course, for the students, the hook was this virtual learning environment. They were mad about it. They just loved their experience, clamored for more, downloaded Singularity at home, and those of you that do this type of thing, the students understand what I'm saying. It's simply something they crave and want more and more of. And it was a really rewarding experience for me and for colleagues that completed the task with me. We ended up with over 90 kids doing the project in the virtual world, got through a lot of technical issues, learned a lot along the way, but we also created a nice new generation of virtual open sim learners. Eventually it got to the point where they were so astute and good at what they were doing, they began building. And the slide that's showing right now, we see a catapult, which was something that a few of the students built. And the time allows, we'll talk a little bit more about more of the building and the progression that we saw with the students as a result of being in this open sim environment for a good four months after, even after the project ended, it was a two week, three week project for the Air of the King, but they stayed active and they kept on and clamored for more. And, Andy, I'm going to turn it over to you for a moment, see if there's anything you want to add. Well, I think the slide that you're looking at, I think says a lot about where the project turned out and where it headed. And I think what I wanted to see and my goal really with the project, and the goal really of the grant is to empower teachers using technology. So long term, what they wanted to see with the grant and what I think I've proven in spades is that teachers really took on a really high, high powered tech piece. And within that high powered tech piece, we really used just all kinds of other side texts Barry mentioned at Modo. We've used Google Docs, we've used really, we've used Google Hangouts. We were just at the Darwin-Martin House in Buffalo, which is a Frank Lloyd Wright build, and we presented to a history conference from the Darwin-Martin House using Google Hangouts. So it was, that was really the end game is to try and bring teachers' technology used to an empowering level, which of course just naturally lends itself to the students. And I think, you know, Mary mentioned, we did have some issues, and I always tried to tell the teachers as hopefully to keep them with me is that, you know, we're pioneers, and the first pioneers are going to have to go through some struggles and cut down a lot of trees that will make it easier for others as they as they follow. And so I'm hoping that there's people going, that will follow behind us. And we've recruited some and even Mary's been recruiting some of her colleagues to come into it. We've got a high school art teacher and a and another sixth grade teacher. So we're getting them on board. Andy, we had a question about Edmodo, if you'd like me to address that briefly. Edmodo is something I use in my classroom for a lot of different things. The students view it as somewhat of a Facebook type platform, a social networking style of platform, but it is designed exclusively for educators and for social networking. It's Edmodo.com. It is a free site. The way I used it was I would push out assignments to the students through Edmodo, telling them what their expectation was within the virtual world, what the task was that they had to complete any additional directions that they might need to be successful. And when they accomplished whatever the objective was, they received their badges via Edmodo. It was nice because they could see each other earning badges and Andy and I went back and forth on what type of platform to use for this gamification concept. We looked at a few things. I'm forgetting Andy, the name of it was a 3D game lab. Yeah, 3D game lab was one that it does was one that we looked at. We looked at a few badge maker websites, but I had been using Edmodo for quite a few years just for the flip classroom concept. So I would push videos out to my students related to vocabulary. They do a work assignment at home, come back to school. We do an in class activity. So they were very familiar with that platform. So it gave me a nice anchor for the students that they knew what their expectations were. They knew one place to go for their directions in case, you know, in the virtual world, maybe they were getting a little bit lost. For me, it made a nice anchor. You know, there's 10 years old. I wasn't sure myself what to expect. So Edmodo's Edmodo was nice to facilitate this. I really prefer I would have preferred to probably have more in the virtual world. But when we began the project, being a little bit of a newbie, I think it was a nice comfort zone for me as well. And when you're communicating with parents and when you're communicating with colleagues and administrators, it's a little easier to demonstrate and show the progress through a site like Edmodo, you know, because you can track things a little bit more, you know, two dimensionally and show those things to people that may not have an avatar. So that worked really well for me. And I do, you know, I would recommend it for even for the flip classroom concept. It's a neat thing to use. Okay. So, you know, we're into year three of our project. And I see someone asked a question about, are you familiar with Moodle or Sludo? I'm very familiar with Moodle. Again, that was a platform that we looked at as a possibility. The challenge with Moodle is, at least from our experience working with teachers, it's a pretty overwhelming program to learn, and with OpenSim being an overwhelming program as well, we didn't want to push too heavy tech concepts and, you know, risk really turning teachers off or getting them frustrated. And so, yeah, Edmodo, I think, was a simpler interface and worked really well. You know, for teachers, I think they could latch on to it and certainly Mary was comfortable with it. So we really let teachers take it where they wanted to, but I know that some of the other schools that were part of this also started using Edmodo. I really like 3D Game Lab. I guess our challenge with that was at the time we were rolling it out, 3D Game Lab was looking to go have a free version versus a paid for version. And, you know, with the grant, we were looking at the costs and where we could put our money. So just kind of fell on kind of a tough decision. And we really wanted just teachers to take off with it, but really the teachers have flexibility to use whatever platform they want. And I'd love to see like a Google Classroom or something else to use it. And I felt in some ways I didn't want to lock teachers into one platform for the learning. So yeah, and we didn't really, you know, we really didn't have to. I know some teachers that weren't using Edmodo were still able to use our Air of the King concept with the gamification. Some teachers kept points just, you know, pieces of paper, charts in their classroom. Others really didn't use the point system. They used more of a badge system to monitor what levels the students had achieved. With mine at the very end of the project, when they were evaluating who was the Air of the King, we ended up, they ended up presenting to me a five paragraph essay. You know, that was the ultimate, you know, goal of the project was to ensure that they were doing the writing piece. So I really didn't, near the end of it, I really didn't need the Edmodo. They had already been hooked. They were already motivated to use the program. And they were already very, very curious about what the result was. Who was the ultimate Air? So that curiosity in the end was the major hook for the kids. So year three, which is where we are right now, my ultimate goal, as I said, was to try and that year three to be kind of wide open and let the students and the teachers really lead the way. And I think that happened in a really fun way because in Buffalo, we have the Darwin Martin House and a colleague of mine, Jim Daley, said, you know, I've been working with the Darwin Martin House and they're really open to collaboration. I thought, wow, this is a perfect, this is the perfect fit because the Darwin Martin House is about history and architecture and art. And really the year three of the program, we wanted to start developing students as creators and in a sense kind of digital maker movement. And Mary really, I think tapped into it towards the end of last year as she saw the passion for building. And I think any of us who've worked with OpenSim and worked with kids and just this Minecraft explosion, you'll notice that building kids just have this incredible passion for digital building. Andy, can I take them on a little side trip? Yeah, please. Two seconds. This is kind of the second half of what happened for us last year. These kids were clamoring for more. They just loved the virtual world and they started to learn how to build. So we went on a bit of a tangent in my classroom and Andy was kind enough to just let me go with it and gave us a virtual mall. And each student got to have a location in the virtual mall in order to build. So I presented the students with a question. Can you build a product? And they had to establish a patent for their product. They had to propose to the patent office what their product was going to be. They had to come up with product specifications for their product. Then in the virtual world, they had to design and build their product, put it in their store, market the product with, you know, posters and information about it. So it combined their lust for the building, which Andy's referring to, but also the writing component. Springboarding on that comes this Darwin-Martin complex project that Andy and I are working on. And Andy's right. The architecture is the hook. The build is the hook. And that's what we're trying to capitalize on is see if we can develop a virtual environment where the students are learning about Frank Lloyd Wright, learning about the Darwin-Martin house, learning about architecture, and again still marry it to the curriculum. So that's what we're working on now. I'll let you keep going, Andy. Sorry for interrupting. Oh, no, by all means. And I think that's, you know, Mary and I kind of, you can see, I think we have a pretty good working relationship at this point. So and we kind of bounce ideas off each other. And I think it's become that kind of fluid process that's really, I guess, inspiring, I think on all counts. And I think the kids are what really charge us when we see those, the enthusiasm on their faces and see them learning in a whole different way. And so that's really where we are right now, is the Darwin-Martin house is we're going to take kids on a tour of the Darwin-Martin house and talk about the great, you know, the principles of architecture and art and the history of Darwin-Martin and the students. So it's amazing what we've been able to come up with so far. We've been to the Darwin, well, I've been to the Darwin-Martin house three times now with Andy, and we've had several tours of the complex and they've provided us, you know, a great deal of literature to read over videos to watch. And every teacher that's involved in the project, we're getting more and more involved, is approaching this one from such a different perspective. And it's pretty amazing. We have an art teacher from the high school, my, our high school in Grand Island, he's approaching it from a photography perspective, wanting to bring his high schoolers in, photograph and maybe create a gallery in the virtual world. I'm taking it from more of a historical, let's do a little bit of research on Frank Lloyd Wright and his accomplishments, learn a little bit about architecture. And we're also very lucky, Andy and I, that we're working with a German exchange student that's outstanding at work with Blender. He creates most beautiful Blender builds. So we're creating a very authentic world in our open sim with Frank Lloyd Wright buildings, Frank Lloyd Wright furniture, and many different things that the students can view within the virtual world that they can hopefully emulate, create, explain, and at least understand. Buffalo is very, very rich in Frank Lloyd Wright history, and it's such a blessing to have that here in our backyard. And I think a lot of people in the community don't realize it or don't appreciate it. So I feel like we're giving the students an amazing gift and opportunity to learn a little bit about their local history that I don't think as a teacher, I would have been able to do otherwise. Yeah, exactly. And again, it's been a great partnership in the Martin House complex and Gina Newrider, who's the education director has been a really, again, collaborative spirit. And for the teacher training, we actually were able to go to the Darwin-Martin House complex and work in the gardener's cottage. And it's just this gorgeous little cottage. And we hang out, we drink coffee, and we have our computers, and, you know, we tour the house and ask questions and bandy about different ideas and solutions and build and create. And it's it's it's everything I wanted this project to be in more. I know our time is coming up here, but I someone mentioned they wanted more information about how we can see some of the materials and projects. We do have the project website that has a lot of the project information at work. I don't know if we have the air of the king curriculum on there that that Mary developed. If not, we could certainly do that and provide it for you. Mary did a really great job on putting together the air of the king curriculum. Jill Pallante did some really good stuff on the understand the Holocaust project. She created rubrics for the writing, and she really pushed the kids to develop the writing. And when I say push, it was a real more of a gentle nudge. The kids loved it. And the writing just was a natural extension from it. So really year three. Again, I haven't tried to pin any teacher down saying you must do this or you must do that. I think each teacher is going to take their twist to it and and put their own stamp on this final project. But we're we're looking at opening, you know, this up long term to either all the schools in West New York, but really to make connections beyond New York as well. And Mary and I have submitted a proposal through ISTI to try and do a teacher workshop in, I think we said the spring didn't we Mary? One thing hopefully spring. Yep. So look for that. If you're a member of ISTI, we're going to try and put that out there so that people could get their own avatar and the islands of enlightenment and do either the understanding the Holocaust course or the air of the King project themselves and see what they think of it. And then, you know, collaboration policy possibilities are endless. Yep. Anything else you want to add Mary? No, it's just also very exciting. It's just wonderful to see how the kids responded this and for me it's nice. Every year I have a new batch of kids and I get to relive this through the students when they come into the virtual world and haven't started yet this year. Just truly can't wait to see their reactions and see their excitement. It makes it all worthwhile. All the work, the sweat, the tears just makes it so rewarding. I have a question. Did you tell us yet what ISTI stands for? Did I miss that? Good question. It's International Society for Technology and Education. Okay. I know I rattled that out. It's just ISTI.org is there. ISTI.org. Okay. Yeah. We do a lot of work with NiceGate, which is kind of the New York State version of ISTI. Is there affiliate? Yeah. And Mary is the NiceGate teacher of the year. Okay. We didn't have to mention it. Well, congratulations, Mary. Does anyone have any other questions at this point before we wrap things up? We have a couple of minutes left. If I can just say, you know, I believe that this is a really powerful way to help kids learn. And it's just developing when we, Mary and I were talking while Phillip Rosdale was talking, and there's so many more possibilities that are coming down the line with Oculus and, you know, the Avatar work he's doing, you know, the narrative possibilities are incredible. That's our next frontier. That's what Andy and I are talking about. Definitely. So it looks like we're getting our five minute warning. Any other questions in the audience? Feel free to put the padlet back in there. Feel free to go to that padlet if you want to connect with us after. Just put a note on the padlet or any feedback after we close down here. Feel free to touch base with us and share the resources and see the videos. Thanks everyone for coming. Okay. Thank you, Mary and Andrew, aka Spiff, for a terrific presentation. As a reminder to our audience, you can see what's coming up on the conference schedule at conference.opensimulator.org. The next session in this track will be From Start to Scholarly Finish, Best Practices for Developing and Evaluating Virtual World Educational Models and that session begins at 2.30 p.m. Thank you once again to our speaker and to you, the audience. We will be back shortly with the next session.