It will be a fun meeting tomorrow, with the topic "Tell Santa: What Simulation Do YOU Want in STEM, the Arts, Humanities, or Social Sciences?"
Cue the ho-ho-ho music, cause I'm your Santa Claus as seen on TV.
I hope to publish a list of what we've never seen in any virtual world or have lost, such as the King Tut exhibit in SL's build of Heritage Key. That was a stunner.
Can't make the meeting and would like to suggest some simulations? Post 'em right here and naughty or nice, you may at least get your wish heard!
Readers new to virtual worlds for education, or perhaps looking for new places to go alone or with students, should have a look at the transcript posted from a large group of educators at the VWER meeting of August 25.
It's doubly useful in how I aggregated recommended sites, by academic field, at the start of the transcript.
My sense is that while schools are generally downsizing their SL presence and educators are moving some work to OpenSim, much great SL content remains. In fact, I'd hazard a guess about why the Reaction Grid region for the 1939 World's Fair appeared. It's one of the few well known quality builds outside SL for educators.
I'm hoping that in comments to this post (and the post at VWER) readers can suggest other sites, particularly those outside SL. Ener Hax will, I hope, discuss what is going on at I Live in Science Land, and we'll get other non-SL updates useful for "back to school" planning for sites such as Heritage Key, where I've not been in some time.
For some time, Viv Trafalgar has been after me to come back to a few regions in Heritage Key to see how the HUDs now available enrich an explorer's encounter with the past.
I have to say, these were just what I'd have wished to have for The House of Usher roleplay with my classes last year. The easy-to-master interface, shown here, provides a number of tasks for the adventurer. When all of the tasks are complete in a section, the explorer gets a prize.
Using the HUDs
I began at Amarna, and the HUD told me to visit several sites. For this part of the experience, Viv gave me a primer on the current version of the HUD (here's a sample from the Valley of the Kings):
Viv: each tab - uncover - envision - explore Viv: has a quest attached to it Viv: the first is finding four clay tablets, another is doing tasks around the household. Viv: when you do [all the household tasks] you get a ring that lets you dance like an Egyptian
I began at the river's edge, where, upon clicking on the reeds, I began to gather them. This led to my first task's completion, and I learned something about how the ancient Egyptians used the river, as well as its flora, to sustain themselves.
Being the mummy-hunter that I am, I had to send the avatar to Valley of the Kings, where a HUD can be found at Howard Carter's camp. I'd already gotten a mask of Anubis on a prior visit, after figuring out the hieroglyphics in the mural room (with some hints from Viv).
I explored for some time, getting four of Carter's missing journal pages. I also got a stylin' bead necklace.
There's more to the HUDs than prizes, however:
Viv: at the top, there is a map button and a 'small' button Iggyo Heritage: very nice for a first effort! Having a Web page in the viewer...familiar metaphor Viv: clicking 'map' will pop up an aerial map
Viv: that will go away when you click it Viv: click the envision tab so quests are explained Viv: but they are also logged so visitors can engage in multiple quests simultaneously. There are more suprises on the way, too.
The Valley of the Kings has grown in scope since my last exploration. I found more useful interactive features, like this display about Harry Burton's role in the excavations.
Other objects loaded web pages (here's an example) from Heritage Key's rich library of 2D Web materials.
Other clues have to be unearthed, and when they do, some of them provide links to videos or other content to help solve the riddles of the architectural site. In this video linked to a clue I dug up, Fiona, 8th Countess of Carnarvon, gives a tour of the recreated tomb of King Tut at Highclere Castle.
How HUDs deepen immersive learning
As much as I love these Web links, it would be richer for students--if the speed of streaming the content permits--to have these materials inside the Heritage Key experience.
Viv and I talked about how the sort of in-world experience (as opposed to popping up Web sites) deepens learning:
Viv: it was important to have a way for people to reflect on what they did - inworld, not just on a webpage ... that breaks the immersion Iggyo Heritage: this is brilliant
The hard work of many hours by Rezzable's team shows. All in all, I could have spent many more hours just at the Valley of the Kings. It promises to provide the sort of learning about Antiquity that cannot be done with a textbook or film alone; the immersive simulation brings the Tut dig to life.
Heritage Key content rezzes faster than before, though there is still some lag as pages of Carter's journal loaded for me. That would prove frustrating for students, and I was on a hard-wired connection with a very fast and new laptop.
Now I'm laying my plans for bringing some of this technology to my own pet projects.
For Usher, I could see the HUDs being customized so that the friends of the Ushers might each wear a different one, depending on their roles in the story. One of the group might have to look for medical clues, and when finding them all, s/he might discover a text on Chloral Nitrate, a drug that we decided would have been used to treat the sort of narcolepsy Madeline suffers. Then the student would know that Roderick had been giving his sister too much of the substance, sending her into a coma. A different HUD would lead the student to find the hidden passages and passwords that Roderick uses (and forgets, in his madness) to parts of the House that reveal secrets.
In an interview with AJ Brooks that I'll soon publish here, we agreed that virtual worlds, given the current state of higher education, will remain a "niche" technology. Content such as Heritage Key's merits a larger audience, and the company's initiative with Unity's Web-based viewer may get them the audience they want.
IggyO Heritage razzed in his old spot, the Amarna sim, and he quickly found that a good deal more of Heritage Key's grid had changed. He found his way to the Rezzable starting point in order to pick up an animation override. These were on offer when last I visited HK, and I've been eager for them because it's a pleasure not to walk like a duck. In time, I'm sure Rezzable will offer variations on these AOs, so we don't all walk like Billy (or Billie Jo) Badass in exactly the same way.
I'm planning a post on the journal HUDs that will guide explorers though Heritage Key, but as usual, a map view distracted me to just, well, do what novice users might do: jaunt about randomly. The map view is enticing; it indicates how many sims Rezzable is adding to its virtual world.
Rezzable's coders are also moving things around, so none of my old landmarks work. That Heritage Key even has working landmarks, teleportation, and a good map shows that the virtual world is nearly ready for explorers. It was also good to see that I did not crash, even once. I used the Hippo client rather than Rezzable's, but I don't think that accounts for the good performance I found.
I suspect that a lot of other work remains--such as avoiding my mistakes of "pick a spot on the map and teleport," which left IggyO stranded underwater or on desolate parcels with the real content nearby in a large box or bubble. This is, of course, how any precocious student would wish to travel. It's also intuitive: pick spot on map by name (or green dots) and go there. I'm certain these anomalies will vanish as quickly as Rezzable's staff sets default landing zones for each sim.
The Travel Center remains a great place to start, and from my peeks behind the scenes, Rezzable has many areas planned for Heritage Key. The teleporter boards--rather like the old Linden Lab telehubs?--provide a sense of that. The entire system worked well, except for a then-offline Collections Gallery I'd wanted to visit, until I went off script and began my random map-hunting.
Thus far, Heritage Key passes my test for what an OpenSim world should be with one exception: user-generated content. Right now, with so much in flux, that probably should not be a high priority. Opening building up could also invite griefers still angry over the Builderbot program that Rezzable briefly considered offering to the public (and DO I want a copy to back up my Usher build in SL). If Rezzable wants residents instead of occasional explorers of Heritage Key, however, some sort of educator's sandbox would be an excellent start.
That lack of a "dwelling" keeps me out of HK, but even a small academic office as a base for my research and teaching, and a place to stash my archeological finds. Such spaces for regular users, even for a small monthly fee, would retain the metaphor of time traveler meets Indiana Jones.
CEO Jon Himoff has noted, many times, that Linden Lab made a mistake by becoming a landlord. So I can see why Rezzable might not want to begin renting us offices. Yet like many faculty, I like being in charge, or at least the illusion of being in charge. If I cannot build stuff or scatter the virtual equivalent of my books and academic impedimenta, I'm still a tourist, not a creator.
But I can wait for such improvements. There's a lot of Rezzable's plate: the Chinese Terra-Cotta warriors, more at Stonehenge, and of course Ancient Egypt will keep the company busy for a long time. I got a peek into the test-area for the Unity-based viewer, so I confirmed that it's part of the main HK grid. That means that avatars using the full client should be able to interact with the web-based users, a very exciting prospect indeed.
I've been hollering for some time that the UIs for virtual worlds are not intuitive enough to get faculty to try them. That's why I jumped at the chance, recently, to preview Rezzable's implementation of the Unity Web Player.
The screen shots here show me, avatar-less, wandering about some of Rezzable's Heritage Key content and visiting "Tropical Paradise," a demo at Unity's Web site.
I've tested Rezzable's implementation of Unity Twice, and I'm only seeing a preview. Based on these two visits, it seems that Unity, for now, serves to give a hint of what lies in wait for those who create avatars and then venture into Heritage Key. In time it may do a lot more and, just maybe, obviate a stand-alone client.
Some of the shots at Rezzable's blog show a "basic avatar" who looks like a clay figure exploring. As Rezzable's blog notes:
The first objective was to present existing OpenSim content in some useful way inside the browser. The graphics are quite close to what we get via the SL 1.23 viewer. As the physic[s] are on the Unity client, the performance over the web is very snappy by comparison.
Based on a site called my trips to Heritage Key and Tropical Paradise, educators should take note of this technology and keep an eye on further development for a few reasons:
No special client needed
No customizing the avatar needed (yet)
Ability to run virtual worlds on portable devices such as iPhones.
Educators would love to see the following:
Ability to interact with those using avatars
Ability to manipulate content in-world (clicking, answering questions part of a quest or game).
The unknowns:
How soon can full avatars with inventory be driven through Heritage Key using Unity?
Could Unity permit out-of-world inventory storage so we could take avatars from world to world?
If the answers to both of the last questions are "yes," Unity could change how we all interact with virtual worlds. Then someone could get very rich by hosting content creators for out-of-world inventory that we hypergridders would use.
The Rezzable blog indicates that, at least, avatars are coming:
Our prototype/test covered the presentation of prims and sculpted prims and results looks good. Our next wave will work on things like: Avatars, scripted interactions, pushing into Unity strengths, improving lighting as well as connecting up things like chat, IM, user log-ins. One of the big opportunities is to be able to use mesh objects directly with Unity. From a content creation side this is a huge lift in productivity and photo-realism capability.
Jon Himoff has a five minute video about the project on YouTube. It's worth a look.
So far, for Rezzable's preview, movement is limited to the four arrow keys; in Tropical Paradise the mouse allows up and down and side to side views, like the point of view in a combat-oriented game.
I also saw a flock of birds that moved realistically as I explored, though of course they were looped. I would love to explore landscapes that look this realistic in Second Life or Open Sim: Back at Rezzable,clicking the signs in the preview area, for now, did nothing, but it seems that sort of interactivity is not far away. Then Unity will be more than a gateway experience into Heritage Key, but a way to explore all of the content. It will become how many of us connect to virtual worlds.
Around 30 folks showed up for the meeting last Friday, and this tested the ability of Heritage Key's system to hold up under a lot of pressure. Crashes were indeed fewer, even as we all moved around more than we did last year.
In this post, I'll share my impressions of what we saw, what changed since the last visit, and what Rezzable's Team will need to consider.
Special thanks to Pavig for going above and beyond to serve as docent for one group, when another docent failed to show up. Viv and I led the other two groups.
Navigation: The Travel Center / Hub is a brilliant idea, because it's the intuitive point of departure for the past. The time-travel metaphor works better, however, than overheated teleporters. Too many educators crowded in at once. Only one of my three visitors survived the trip without crashing. The other two, who had friended me, did not relog.
Those who left for Egypt seemed to have fared better. We all gathered for some group photos at the end, near the Life on the Nile exhibits.
I am not technical enough to tell my friends at Rezzable how to fix this. But a new metaphor for travel would be counter productive... so a large-group teleport strategy, perhaps one that allows a leader to teleport a group of people at once, or a HKurl system, or a wearable customized tour HUD, or all of the above.
Rezzable's folks are clever, and I'm sure they could build something as cool as Irwin Allen's Time Tunnel!
Right now, I'd recommend two changes. First, that Rezzable remove the "Solstice" teleporter for modern-day Stonehenge and put those bound for Salisbury Plain through the one marked "Portal" so they will then choose their era. Traveling companion Hobbs joined me in making the mistake to go to modern-day Stonehenge. It was lovely but not as interactive as the ancient site. We also had a heck of a hard time getting back as there was no return teleporter we could find.
Second, Rezzable will also want to be sure that teleporters back to the Travel Center are readily available at every destination. This would avoid how Hobbs and I became stuck in the time machine, rather like Allen's hapless scientists.
Interactivity: This will be needed in all areas. I'll confine my remarks to Stonehenge, though I'm keen on seeing what my Rezzable colleagues have been doing in Amarna.
Visually, the modern circle of stones was absolutely stunning and the evocation of a Summer Solstice dawn perfect. I've spent a good amount of time in stone circles in the UK where one gets a view of the horizon. I was unnerved by how the HK build moved me, emotionally.
To keep student interest, some sort of quest / game might enhance the modern site as it has done (find that log!) in the Neolithic areas. For example, I showed Hobbs the Welsh Bluestones, the Avebury Sarsens, and the famous Heelstone just relaying on personal knowledge. A quest to find them with a prize would spur visitors to learn the geography of the site.
Education & Games: There's an element of both paideia and ludus in the HK sites. The former idea, of playfulness that may not result in a goal or outcome, encourages the explorer just to look about the site. The second, with rules and outcomes, works well for educators (the Valley of the Kings segment is particularly strong here).
I hope to see more materials, however, for educators rather than for a broader class of visitor. I've suggested to Rezzable that a teacher's kiosk with possible assignments in range of disciplines could help, perhaps with links to parts of the Heritage Key Web site. Right now, it's hard to see how a teacher could structure an assignment beyond "explore all this and write about it." Since many teachers will be new to any virtual world, I'd recommend that Rezzable challenge us with an assignment competition, with small prizes going to a dozen winners.
Their projects could then become the nucleus for the Teacher's Kiosk at the Travel Center. Meanwhile, I'll be looking forward eagerly to future visits the other parts of Heritage Key. I don't have nearly enough time to explore it in depth, even this summer, but I'll keep readers posted as I continue my explorations. Final note: I love my Neolithic log...the crazy "help the builder move the Sarsen" is perhaps my favorite bit at Stonehenge.
I hope you'll join Iggyo Heritage and the members of the Virtual Worlds Round Table this Friday at 1pm Pacific Time for a journey into the multiple pasts of Heritage Key's virtual world.
Visitors will be able to choose a destination: Howard Carter's camp in Egypt's Valley of the Kings in 1922, the Egyptian city of Amarna in the year 1350 BCE, or Stonehenge in several eras of its construction, from the Neolithic Era to the present day.
Tour-guides to the past will be on hand to show you the wonders of the ancient world. I'm the Stonehenge docent, and if you make any Spinal-Tap references, you will become part of the exhibit.
Once you have created a heritage key avatar at http://heritage-key.com, you may use the Heritage Key viewer, or, if you prefer, you may log in using Hippo or Imprudence. For the latter, please put the following URI in for heritage key, login.heritage-key.com
"Hello Iggyo Heritage, be very quiet or you will be discovered before we can make you look like one of us!!!"
Well, I don't need to be told such things twice when I'm posing as an Ancient Egyptian.
Getting a sneak peek at Heritage Key's Amarna, "home of Setmare the court scribe" in the age of Tut, shows how many resources Rezzable now is willing to dedicate towards making an industry-leading immersive 3D world for education and cultural tourism.
The area is not quite finished, but when it is, visitors at the Travel Center will be able to choose it as a destination from the time-travel booths. Viv Trafalgar showed me around and got Iggyo Heritage changed from 1970s Ron-Glass clone to a 1350 BCE dark-skinned badass with a topknot and some stylin' and breezy clothes for the hot Egyptian climate. The Rezzable staff is adding quests, games, and a travel journal to this simulation, as they have done at the Valley of the Kings and Stonehenge.
One feels to be at home in a brief period of Egyptian history when some heretical pharaohs dared to institute monotheism. Their names were stricken from the official histories for such impiety.
Viv Trafalgar: we're going to have NPCs ask questions that = "do you belong here" Viv Trafalgar: ie Viv Trafalgar: "who's the Pharaoh?" Viv Trafalgar: "what year is it?" Viv Trafalgar: "how far are we from Luxor?" Iggyo Heritage: oh oh Viv Trafalgar: and if you get them wrong Viv Trafalgar: you get tossed in the pond.
Okay, when I go back, I'll read all the notecards and copy key names into a text file. I don't want my new clothes getting wet!
Viv notes that "We're redoing all the clothes now; the hair I have on is a prize. There will be skins and hair and braids and stuff and a walk like an egyptian anim as a prize."
Viv give a big hat-tip to LT Bartlett for putting together three different avatar options each for male and female visitors to Amarna. I was impressed; even the stock items, like this armband my avatar wore, show the level of detail on display.
The Amarna build features a building map of the huge complex, a expedition journal that visitors will receive as soon as they arrive, as well as several games:
Uncover - find four clay tablets containing clues to a plot against the royal court, as well as who in the household to tell about it. Be careful to tell the right person!
Explore - a day-in-the-life challenge that has you exploring 7 different tasks - do them all and your reward is a walk-like-an-egyptian AO and ring.
Envision - an exploration of the art of the Amarna period - collect rubbings of all of the items while wearing the charcoal and paper (don't try this in a RL museum) and you'll be rewarded.
Challenge - do battle on a Nile river raft, either against a friend, or against the river gods. This is a classic rock-papyrus-scissors battle, with the added danger of lurking hippos.
Royal-Match - find the royal match game in the house and match the three royal couples to receive your own Sobek mask.
The simulation is more than games, however. Parts of the build supply excellent historical data with a click, such as:
Nefertiti Statue: Attributed to the sculptor Thutmose, this polychrome bust of Egypt's queen is world famous. Thutmose, whose workshop was excavated in 1912, must have been one lucky sculptor, being asked to capture for eternity the ravishing face of the Queen who's ancient name meant "A Beautiful Woman Has Come."
Compared to the old Amarna build in Second Life, this Heritage Key version provides a new loggia, tapestries, and "examples of period art throughout the house," according to Viv. Many levels of detail are visible in my photographs. I'll close with a slide-show from my Koinup account to give some idea of the treasures that await a bold explorer.
You can also get a sense of the real-life ruins at The Amarna Project's site. I think I'll take the cool shade of the Heritage Key simulation, for now.
I've had a preview of what visitors see at the redone Valley of the Kings in Rezzable's Heritage Key virtual world. Viv Trafalgar's photoset at Flickr gives a sense of the changes at hand.
This is going to be stunning, in terms of visual appeal and educational potential. The quests, prizes, and improved performance all promise great things for educators. The new avatars and equipment at the Learning Center should deepen visitors' immersion in the experience.
I commend Rezzable's team for working so hard to address issues my class and others identified in the past year. Now the treasures of King Tut will be accessible to more visitors in a meaningful and entertaining way. Click over the Rezzable and begin exploring.
I'd promised Viv Trafalgar that I'd spend time at the Valley of the Kings, and I'd feature a discussion of the HUD for exploring that region. Then I saw the Stonehenge teleporter at Heritage Key's travel center and...well, time-travelers are not supposed to be a cautious lot.
The teleporter took me to Rezzable's version of Irwin Allen's Time Tunnel, a passage to several epochs of Stonehenge's history. Now I wish I could do this in real life:
"Walk straight ahead to the center circle and select a teleporter to be transported to the Stonehenge time period of your choice."
I have a fascination with Neolithic Britain, especially the stone circles, so I had to abandon my quest to explore the Valley of the Kings and meet some of Stonehenge's builders. I began at the earliest era for the site on Salisbury Plain, the prehistoric forest of the Neolithic era. I saw bots in the distance and left my friendly druid guide behind, when I heard this:
"It looks like we've run into some builders! Go and talk to them to find out how the stones were moved. Take some time to explore the ancient forest, too...Help the builder repair his wagon and follow the 'Flora and Fauna' path to win items for your quest."
Both Flora and Fauna impressed me greatly...BIG animals back then! May I commit what historians call the "sin of presentism" to note how quickly prehistoric people destroyed the forests of ancient Britain? It seems that we moderns were not the only lunkheads...most of ancient Britain was thickly forested. No longer.
I ended up with a wearable falcon and a rather fanciful Druid's staff. I enjoyed helping the builder fix his roller for the Welsh Bluestones. I will use a similar technique, with logs, to move a 1000 pound truck box-body mounted on two I-beams at our family farm, though I'll have a John Deere backhoe and not oxen to help.
A serious footnote about how we learn from history: after reading Rodney Castleden's book about Stonehenge years ago, I moved a 10x5 foot garden shed on large PVC rollers. Call it my version of Redneck-Henge.
Already, Rezzable's Stonehenge build has incorporated the lessons of the Valley of the Kings, and it promises to equal in depth the redone VoK area or the promise of the Nile palace that Viv has mentioned to be under construction.
The build is worth walking for the lush forest prim-eval (sorry, I could not resist that) done with painstaking detail by Rezzable's team. I really felt in another time.
If only Iggyo Heritage could lose the duck walk. Animation override in the works, Rezzable?
Incidentally, how DID I get through a Stonehenge post without ONE Spinal Tap reference?
