September Road Trip: Rune-Racing and Rabid Bears

Location: Rune Sim

When I read Hamlet Au's account of Rune, a new racetrack for ATVs and motorcycles, I was interested. When I read about bears that attack drivers, I logged on right away.

Teleport over the Rune, find a rezzer, and hop on their ATVs or dirt-bikes.

Rune does not disappoint. The designers make clever use of physical objects, like boulders that fall to stop racers from finishing a lap. Going off road to avoid mud-holes that slow you down or boulders that stop you cold only works so well: the slopes are steep and a bike can flip right over.

The bears had me howling with laughter. Since the simulation enables damage to avatars, I stopped my bike and let a bear chomp me...it wasn't a race, and I was the only driver. My health rating dropped quickly, and despite my suicidal intentions I roared off again. When I next met a bear, it pinned me to a tree and mauled me until I figured out that I could reverse the motorcycle out of trouble.


My only quibble is that I'd like an area where I could rez my own bike to run the course. It might be worth a small monthly fee to join a Rune Rampage group, or somesuch so we maniacs could rez our toys and race.

Mona Lisa in Metaplace

Location: Metaplace's Portrait World

With a few moments free, I decided to see what new worlds have appeared lately in Metaplace.

I came across Portrait, focused on da Vinci's Mona Lisa. It has:

• A giant canvas of the painting
  
• Embedded video on how to paint the Mona Lisa with MS Paint
• Links to the Louvre and Wikipedia Web sites
• Explanatory kiosks about portraiture & da Vinci's masterwork.

It's all simple and straightforward fun, and for middle school students, it would be a great place to begin learning a bit more about the visual arts.

Update: At tonight's SL Roundtable meeting (details coming soon) I was pleased to hear Tom Boellstorff, author of Coming of Age in Second Life, praise Wikipedia as a non-academic source. One of my students recently said that Wikipedia is like "having a very smart friend." Tom noted its accuracy ranks alongside most printed and online encyclopedias. Teachers...get over your aversion to this tool.

Saving Isis: Critical Thinking with Rezzable's Open Sim Tut

Location: Rezzable's Valley of the Kings in Open Sim

On my first tour of Rezzable's Heritage Key site dedicated to King Tut, and when the entire project was quite new, I was taken by the South Wall of the young king's tomb.

It was an immersive moment; I felt that I was as close to the actual site in Egypt as I'd ever get.

Anubis and Hathor greet Tut as he enters the other world, but Howard Carter had to destroy a figure of the goddess Isis (to the left of Anubis, in the image above) as he and this team made their way into the tomb. This struck me as a tragedy that might have been avoided.

With modern technology, we might have been able to plunder (there's no kind word for it) the tomb without destroying Isis' image. So I've decided to let my writing students have a crack at this. They'll work in teams to solve the problem, if they can. And to make their writing "count for something" beyond a grade, I'll have readers I invite vote for the strongest solution to this archeological dilemma.

Read the assignment here. Projects are due Oct. 29 and I'll provide updates and may open up judging the projects to readers here. Meanwhile, my Heritage Key avatar will be bumbling around virtual Egypt, trying to look like the poor man's Indiana Jones...

CANVAS in Scotland: Students Display Artwork in Open Sim

Location: CANVAS Web Site

Scottish students and their teachers now have a new canvas for their projects: CANVAS (Children’s Art at the National Virtual Arena of Scotland).

This Open Sim virtual world will provide learners a space to display art projects while avoiding the administrative difficulties associated with other worlds blocked by school-system firewalls. The Consolarium of Learning and Teaching Scotland partnered with virtual-worlds developer Second Places to develop the showcase for student work. All 23 Scottish local authorities will have a virtual gallery for both still images and digital video created by students. Children using the virtual world can earn currency to spand at the gallery shop, where they can buy items to cusotmize their avatars' appearances. CANVAS also houses seminar space in an auditorium and a building where students (and faculty) learn about good behavior in virtual worlds.

Educators often encounter resistance when proposing that they employ open virtual worlds, and some, like Second Life®, do not permit minors on their main grids. This initiative, however, allows administraors and teachers "to create our own bespoke virtual world that can be hosted on our servers so that we have full control over whom we allow in to view and interact in the world." With this technology in place, students ranging in age from nursery to high school will be able to log in and work on projects with their teachers and invited guests.

This type of behind-the-firewall solution provides more evidence that educators and administrators can work closely to devise solutions that encourage multimodal projects in virtual worlds. Today my wife's kindergarten students do podcasts that are sent all over her county; tomorrow, perhaps, they'll be building content in limited-access virtual worlds like CANVAS.