Tim Wang's eLearning Blog

*update* The sound recording of the session is here. It's in mp3 format.

It's happening right now... Join us at Sun Microsystems in Second Life: 123.23.63

This meeting is a follow-up to the Education Grid discussion that started at the Boston Summit a couple of weeks ago. Three platforms will be discussed: Second Life, Croquet and Wonderland. Discussion Guideline include:

1.0 PLATFORM ECOSYSTEM + EDUCATION GRID OVERVIEW
1.1 EDUCATION GRID KEY FEATURES AND CAPABILITIES
1.2 FIGURE: PLATFORM ECOSYSTEM + EDUCATION GRID
2.0 EDUCATION GRID BASELINE REQUIREMENTS UNDER CONSIDERATION
3.0 EDUCATION GRID TIMELINES
4.0 COMMUNICATION AND DEVELOPMENT PROCESSES

The full discussion outline is posted here.

Julian posted this video on his blog over the weekend and it is quite funny to watch. It's a demonstration of the Second Life avatars and social networking behaviors using first life avatars. Make sure you turn on your speak, it makes a bit more sense with the SL sound effects. :)

Julian points out that the virtual communications in the massive multi-user 3D world are some what limited due to the mis-leading avatar figures. This is an interesting point. When we introduce SL to faculty members, we often say, "it's not a game, it's a simulation". But is it really? A simulation suppose to be an imitation of some real thing, but the avatars in SL reminds me too much of the game Sim...

He also points out that the Croquet SDK offers developers an opportunity to change whatever they need about the way people are represented with virtual environments. It looks like people at the University of Minnesota are working on some interesting Croquet Avatar R&D, would love to find out more about their development.

I have heard many people had bad experience dealing with Linden Lab via phone on various type of services. I personally had a very disappointing experience with Linden Lab just recently. We have purchased the Buchanan island for almost a year now. We are paying US$150 every month for the island maintenance fee. My administrator at work is asking me for receipts due to the end of the fiscal year is near. I realized that Linden Lab have never provided any sort of receipts for the payments. I called up Linden Lab's support department and learned Linden Lab never provide receipts unless someone specially requested. So I asked, “how would I SPECIALLY request it?” The gentleman could not help me on the phone but he gave me an email address: concierge@secondlife.com to send the request to. I did that 3 days ago and have not yet received any response. I believe this is a simple request from a customer to any company that is selling services or products globally. Providing a electronic receipt should be as simple as pulling a payment record from the database. I don't understand what's the hassle of this? Anyway, maybe I need to use my avatar to request for it inside of Second Life to get a more decent service?

Some of my blog readers have asked me the question that Second Life have made the move toward open source by releasing their code for the Second Life Viewer. I just want to quickly note what they have released are the code for the client side application, not the server technology. Without the server being open source, Second Life is still a proprietary system. In another word, Second Life is a server based technology that allowing multi-users to log on and share the simulation experience, without the server, the client is only a useless portal to an empty space.

The next question would be will this hurt Linden Lab's business? The answer is not likely. Sure people can reverse engineer the Second Life server and then “duplicate” the entire second life technology, but what's more important is the business model and service model behind the business. This reminds me when Macromedia just released their Flash Viewers' code, both Adobe and Corel came up with their own Flash authoring applications (Adobe LiveMotion and Corel R.A.V.E.). However Macromedia didn't lose much of their flash application buyers at all. I do need to point out Flash is not a server based technology (all flash animations are rendered on the client side). So, Linden Labs is, of course, in a much safer position. In order to replicate Second Life, one needs to create their own server to work with the clients.

Then why would Linden Lab do this? I don't know, and I don't understand either. Because many of the open source network based applications I have come across with are poor user interface on the client side but solid server architecture. This is because most of the open source projects do not have hundreds of marketing specialist and support staff to feed the users' need back to the developers at a timely basis. From a pure technical point of view, I personally think companies would benefit much more by releasing their server side technology rather than the well thought and well designed front end applications. Linden Labs is doing exactly the opposite by releasing the client side codes only and hide the server side code from the Open Source community. This way they lose the opportunity of having hundreds and thousands of brilliant open source developers to improve their server side technology.

Croquet, needless to say, it is a complete open source product. In fact, you can even start your own company based on the code.

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so... - from Croquet License page

However, I do respect the effort of Linden Lab making the client application code available to the developers, it is a baby step towards the open source community. I am looking forward to see them working out a better strategy, a plan that is win-win for both them and the the open source communities. That, of course, will always benefit us the end users.

Remember this article on Chinese Gold Farmers where people are playing games 24/7 to “dig” gold and treasure out of on line multi-player games? Well, I think re-organizing the talented players to develop virtual properties in Second Life and then sell them to the Americans would be much more profitable. Think about it, while there are thousands of western individuals make a living by buying empty land, developing the land and then selling the land, why not officially start a company in India or China to do formal development in SL where the labors are much cheaper! There is my business idea of the month! I wonder if there have been people doing things like this... Gonna go do some digging...

LOL, guess what?! This idea has been long implemented by Anshe. Read the amazing story! The lady is originally from China and she has a studio in Hubei China where two dozen of local developers are doing virtual realty development in SL. I knew about anshechung.com, but didn't know their developers are in China. Brilliant people...

With all the hype about Second Life and virtual simulation platforms used in education, here is a quick review of the UBC Arts Campus – Buchanan island.

The island was purchased early 2006 by Arts ISIT, thanks to the grants from Dr. Marvin Cohodas, a fine arts faculty member here at UBC. It is a small island in the Second Life virtual space, we named it after the Faculty of Arts' main building – Buchanan. Everything starts from the scratch, modifying the terrain, land texture, and geographical planning.

(Island Type 3, and olive shaped island)

(Me standing "over" the island)

The very first thing we built was the Rose Garden and the Flag Pole which is a symbolic site of UBC. Of course we included the "Plaza".

(UBC Rose Garden and Flag Pole in Second Life)

(the "Plaza")

The first architecture we attempted to build was the clock tower and the water fountain besides it.

(UBC Clock Tower in Second Life)

The Helen Belkin art gallery was the next in line and as you can see, we have modified the concrete roof into a glass panels for extra lighting and easy navigation access.

(UBC Helen Belkin Art Gallery in Second Life)

We had a lot fun building the Chan center (it's big!) which we will attempt to use it for film and creative studies courses.

(UBC Chan Centre in Second Life)

The immediate academic purpose of building the island is to recreate the Bonampak building in order to accommodate the artistic paintings on the interior walls. Until today, Marvin's students are learning the paintings through books and photos where the stories are not connected and spaces are not defined. With the building in SL, students are able to browse through the paintings “room” by “room” in the virtual space.

(Bonampak in Second Life exterior)

(Bonampak in Second Life interior)

We have also filled the gallery with rotating vases where the scroll on the wall is changed according to the vase you choose and the vase will rotate in order to illustrate a continuing visual art story of ancient Maya.

(Maya Vases in Second Life)

Today I found a new use of Second Life. I had a few shots of a living room that I would like to create a panorama of. But due to the limited space in the real world, the pictures were taken from different spots of the room which means the perspectives of the photos are really screwed up. You can't possibly use any standard “stick them together” software to create the panorama. Therefore, I uploaded the pictures into second life, created a few boards and textured them with the photos. Then I freely rotated / enlarged the boards and easily fit them together in the 3D space. Voila, an accurate panorama created using on 2D photos that were shot in different angles and location of the room!

Yes, I have to confess, I do have a second life. My second life started early this year in the virtual world known as “Second Life” created by Linden Lab. It is a multi-person, real-time interactive 3D space where hundreds and thousands of real people controlled avatars interact with each other in the simulated dimension. Second Life has created many interesting phenomenas in the real world economy, society and education industry.

I am still a newbie in Second Life and am learning many new skills (scripting, 3D modeling, in world texturing...) in this simulated world. What bugs me now is every time I look out of windows of my high rise apartment, I want to “fly” out... Just joking...

Both me and my avatar belongs to an education consortium – NMC (New Media Consortium). Today we had a great poster session in the virtual world of Second Life. Here are some screen shots from the session. Stay tuned, you will be hearing a lot more stories from my second life on this blog.