Using SoaS to Create Virtual Worlds Offline: Free Webinar for Educators - June 17, 2017

"Beyond Second Life: Creating and Saving Virtual Worlds Offline"

Free Webinar for Educators

Learn how to use virtual worlds in your classes, even when there's no Internet connection, or the school's firewall prevents you from accessing an online grid. This presentation/webinar will take place on Facebook. If you would like to participate, please join Teaching with SoaS group on FB.

When: June 17, 2017 - 10 AM SLT / 17:00 UTC / 18:00 Lisbon

Where: Teaching with SoaS Facebook Group
URL: https://www.facebook.com/groups/teachingwithSoaS/

This event is part of #SLMOOC17

An Introduction to Sim-on-a-Stick: Free Resources for Educators

This content is now available at Teaching with SoaS.

Free Webinar for Educators: "An Introduction to Sim-on-a-Stick"

"An Introduction to Sim-on-a-Stick"
Free In-World Webinar for Educators

What is Sim-on-a-Stick and how can it help you to use virtual worlds in your class, even when there's no Internet available at school?
This event includes a short video presentation followed by a 20-minute Q&A session using local chat.

When: Wednesday, May 31, 12 Noon SLT

Where: SoaS Classroom, Creative Learning Park (Chilbo, SL)
SLURL: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Chilbo/18/60/1751

Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/1279317552188791/

Join #SLMOOC17 today. It's free!

#SLMOOC17 is a Massive Open Online Course for educators, schools, and public and private businesses that wish to provide training in virtual worlds. Weekly badges and a final certificate of completion will be available for free.

The fourth annual Second Life MOOC (SLMOOC17) will take place from June 1-30, 2017.

The theme of SLMOOC17 is “Connecting in Virtual Worlds. Communities of Practice”

There is a plethora of communities in virtual worlds promoting education and learning through connecting online via web technologies such as Second Life and OpenSimulator. The MOOC will focus on connecting online for collaborative learning and teaching around the world through virtual worlds like Second Life, Minecraft, or OpenSimulator based grids. The live presentations will include the speakers’ reflective process on teaching and learning in fully online and blended learning formats.

SLMOOC17 organizers are:
Dr. Doris Molero, Ed.D; Dr. Nancy Zingrone, Ph.D; and Dr. Nellie Deutsch, Ed.D.

Join SLMOOC17 on Moodle for the full MOOC experience:
https://moodle4teachers.org/enrol/index.php?id=114

Join SLMOOC17 on Second Life for an in-world only experience:
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Madhupak/111/94/62

Image: Second Life Wiki

#elearning #onlineEducation #immersivelearning #virtualworlds

Short URL for this blog post: http://tinyurl.com/aboutSLMOOC17

Teaching in Virtual Worlds: OAR files, Sim-on-a-Stick, and Kitely

This post was written for SL MOOC 2016

Resources for Teachers:
OAR files, Sim-on-a-Stick, and Kitely

OAR

I love OAR files! They're the perfect way to save and share an entire SIM.

The OpenSimulator Archive (OAR) function has existed since OpenSimulator 0.5.9. The facility does a similar job to load-xml2/save-xml2 in that it saves prims so that they can be later reloaded. However, OpenSimulator archives (OAR) go a step further in that they can save all the necessary asset data so that you may fully restore the terrain, region parcel data, the textures of objects and their inventories when loaded onto a completely different system using a different asset database. ~ http://opensimulator.org/wiki/OpenSim_Archives

There's a considerable collection of ready-to-use islands in OAR format available for free. The ones created by Linda Kellie can currently be downloaded from Zadaroo. There are also free OAR files created by Ener Hax available at http://enerhax.com/

SoaS

Right now you might be wanting to ask me: "I don't have any virtual land. How, and where, will I be able to try these ready-to-use-islands?" And my answer would be: "No problem. You can use Sim-on-a-Stick."

Sim-on-a-stick (SoaS) is a virtual world developed by Ener Hax that works on your computer and its not connected to the Web. You can download it for free at http://simonastick.com/ 

2. what's Sim-on-a-Stick? A standalone, single user Windows package of OpenSim that runs on a USB flash drive or other convenient location. In addition to the OpenSimulator server, it contains the Apache web server, MySQL, and PHP in order to create a "portable" server. ~ http://simonastick.com/faqs08.html

Using SoaS will allow you to experiment building your own virtual learning environments for free - i.e. without having to rent an entire SIM in order to do it. You will also be able to save multiple versions of your work as it evolves, as easily as you would with any simple presentation. Furthermore, collaboration with others is possible: all you need to do is to save your OAR file and then send it to the person you're collaborating with, using Dropbox or a similar service.

The collage below illustrates the very first virtual learning environment I developed from scratch using SoaS, several years ago.

Collage of a SIM I created using SOAS. The textures for the granaries (picture in the middle on the right column) were obtained by photographing real-life traditional granaries at the villages of Soajo and Lindoso, in the Minho region, Northwestern Portugal.  

And here's a video tutorial I made a few years ago, explaining how to (legally) turn prim items into mesh objects, using Singularity. The first part of the tutorial takes place on that same virtual environment I created using SoaS.




A little final note about SoaS: although it is called Sim-on-a-Stick (aka Flash drive aka USB drive), in my experience, SoaS works much better/faster when you run it on a computer's hard disk.

Kitely

Kitely backup options

Working offline on your virtual learning environment for as many hours as you wish is a great thing, but there might come a time when you feel like sharing your final work with the World... or just your students.

When it comes to connecting your virtual world to the Web, there are several options within public and private grids that support OpenSimulator. One my favorite grids is Kitely. It's not free, but it's not very expensive either, and it makes uploading and saving a SIM in OAR format quite simple.

Hope this post has helped you expand your virtual learning environments builder's toolbox. Feel free to ask me any questions about these resources.

Teaching in Virtual Worlds: The Most Important 'Basic' Skill [For Educators]

"Figuring out how to move, look around, and interact with others is not intuitive for most users. If the first class begins here, some students will exit the software, vowing never to return. Rather than startle students, the first class needs to show them the benefits of using virtual worlds, demonstrate what students of all ages have accomplished in only a few days, and provide a brief introduction on how to use the tool effectively. The first class should feature cool technology, exciting research, entertainment, and great visuals to inflame students’ imagination." ~ Cynthia M. Calongne (“Lyr Lobo” in SL), Professor of Computer Science at Colorado Technical University. (You can read the full article here.)

I tend to agree with Professor Calongne's view: for me, the most important 'basic' skill for any teacher/trainer is the ability to effectively communicate the benefits of using virtual worlds to their students/trainees. I find that skill to be especially important in adult education, due to the characteristics of adult learners.

Once the teacher/trainer manages to successfully communicate the benefits of using virtual worlds, students/trainees will then feel more motivated to develop technical skills - e.g. how to join Second Life [or any other virtual world], move around, communicate, search, etc. In many cases, learning how to do these things can be accomplished with the help of video tutorials, several of which - with rather good quality - are already available on the Web.

Here's an example:



And these video tutorials are not all in English. Here's a very short video tutorial, in Italian, showing how to use "notecards" in Second Life:



Students/trainees can also learn how to do things in Second Life by, for instance, completing the very detailed Basic Skills Tutorial available at the Caledon Oxbridge University campus.

Image via Caledon Oxbridge

See you in-world, :)



P.S. - Text, links to videos and picture originally posted on the SL MOOC 2016 Moodle website.

SLMOOC2016: "Everything about ISTE Virtual Environments Network"

Scott Merrick and Andy Wheelock's Panel Discussion, "Everything about ISTE Virtual Environments Network" took place in Second Life at 8am SLT (Pacific)/11am EDT on Saturday April 9th, 2016.
Location: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/EduIsland%209/15/81/31

The Virtual Education Journal (Vej) was also discussed at this meeting. You can read Vej january 2016 issue here. Educators interested in writing for Vej may contact Roxie Neiro in-world, or visit Vej HQ in Second Life. Articles should be "approximately 500 – 1800 words (in Cambria 14pt) and the highest resolution possible for photos (png, tiff, jpeg)."

Those who were not able to attend this event will probably be interested to know that all the recordings of the sessions will be on the SLMOOC16 Playlist on Nellie Deutsch's YouTube Channel.

Also, if you'd like to sign up for the SLMOOC group in-world, there's a YouTube tutorial showing you how to do it: https://youtu.be/GMc0g8fCI_g

Virtual Worlds and Education - Six Years Later

I started using Second Life in 2010, while studying for my Postgraduate Diploma in Education (specializing in e-Learning Pedagogy). Since then, I've explored many other Virtual Worlds/Grids, like Kitely, InWorldz, other public and private OpenSim grids, as well as Sim-on-a-Stick (SoaS), and even the very promising (now apparently very dead) virtual-world-on-a-browser Cloud Party. Recently, I had the opportunity to share my views on the potencial of Second Life and other VW for education/training with educators who have never used any of these platforms.

Image via Second Life Wiki

Second Life and other Virtual Worlds are platforms where creativity and collaboration can be easily stimulated, while providing users with a very strong sense of co-presence [aka social presence] and immersion.

Also interesting is the fact that on SL and other VW users can perform tasks that would be very dangerous or even impossible in the physical world (e.g. exploding structures; flying as birds do; walking on the bottom of the ocean without any sort of breathing apparatus).

Another useful VW feature is the ability to build, at very low cost, structures and environments that would represent a huge financial investment in the “brick and mortar” world (e.g. recreating a medieval village for a class about that period in History; creating an immersive alien landscape for a class about a Sci-Fi book). 

The avatar itself can be turned into a powerful learning tool (Yee and Bailenson, 2006).

All of these aspects make virtual worlds particularly interesting for educational purposes.

Because I have a special interest in adult education, I’d like to share this video with you: it’s one of my favorite episodes of The Drax Files: World Makers. In many ways, this inspiring story summarizes with accuracy what I think about using Second Life and other Virtual Worlds for adult education. Hope you’ll enjoy it as well.



P.S. - Text and link to video originally posted on the SL MOOC 2016 Moodle website.