Archive for the 'Establishing' Category

The Begonia Island Code of Conduct

Published on August 19, 2010 in Administration, Begonia Island, Establishing, Project Team and Students. 0 Comments

One of the tasks of our Virtual Worlds Project Team was to help establish the Begonia Island Code of Conduct, a set of guidelines for our school’s virtual worlds community.

Part of the process in establishing the Code was for members of the Project Team to suggest words that they felt described the kind of virtual space they wanted Begonia Island to be.

You can view the Code of Conduct Display below or the full document on SlideShare.

Begonia Island Code of Conduct Display
View more presentations from Lucy Barrow.

Educational Opportunities with Virtual Worlds

Published on March 21, 2010 in Begonia Island, Establishing, Teachers and Virtual Worlds in Education. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

bgi_teacher_display

I recently met with teachers from our Religion, Philosophy & Ethics Faculty after they expressed interest in learning more about the use of virtual worlds in education.  They were particularly interested in hearing about the work already being done by our Year 6 teachers with Quest Atlantis as well as our new private 3D virtual space, Begonia Island.

Although I had planned to take them on an in-world tour, including a teacher display, the school’s wireless network had other ideas! ;)  However, I was still able to show them a slideshow with a number of screen shots. (This was still enough to see their faces light up!)

The current teacher display on Begonia Island is a very basic one and plans for the future will include a Staff Centre, to house resources for educators.

For the staff of the Religion, Philosophy & Ethics Faculty, I can see why virtual worlds would be a highly appealing tool.  They are always searching for ways to engage their students as often they are reluctant to participate in activities.  Because student participation is done via their own customisable avatar, this offers greater opportunities for a deeper connection with others, more so than traditional forms of online communication.  You can click here to read more about the experiences of students at Northern Beaches Christian School.

So, now the seed has been planted and they have lots of “food for thought”.  Plans are already underway to create a place of worship, inspired by the wonderful work of the Virtual Anglican Cathedral.

I look forward to posting about our progress in the coming months!

How Can We Use Virtual Worlds in Education?

View more presentations from Lucy Barrow.

New Terrain for Begonia Island!

Published on December 21, 2009 in Begonia Island, Establishing and Hippo Viewer. 1 Comment Tags: , , .

Island03-terrain

Sharing resources is something that seems to come naturally to most educators and the same can also be said for many OpenSim users.  This culture of sharing and assisting others is something that we also want to promote on Begonia Island.

Begonia Island is actually made up of four simulators or “sims” as they are known.  We have the ability to edit the terrain in these areas as we wish, adding to the look and feel that we wish to achieve.

Whilst exploring some virtual worlds resources, I came across a variety of terrains by OpenSim user, Norse Writer.  If you are new to setting up your own sims or have limited time to devote to the task of terraforming, I would highly recommend downloading these terrains.

Upload terrain guide 01

Thank you for downloading one of my raw files to make your own terrforming island
on Opensim.
Your *.raw file canbe uploaded directly to opensim within your viewer. The Upload terrain guide
will show you how to use the menus for this job. This works for both Hippo, SecondLife and Meerkat viewer.
The terraforming Island01 through Island11 is free for anyone to use within the opensim comunity.
Good luck!!!
Norse Writer

Norse Writer provides you with the zipped .raw file, along with screen shots in an Upload Terrain Guide to explain the procedure for the Hippo Viewer.  At the time of writing this post, there were eleven different terrains available.  Even for a complete developer newbie like me, it was very simple procedure!

Once the upload process has started, it takes around five minutes to complete.   However, I found it very exciting to watch as the new terrain appeared!

Begonia Island now has four areas with beautiful terrain that will provide the perfect blank canvas for our students to create different areas of interest.

It’s the Little Things…

Published on November 28, 2009 in Administration, Begonia Island, Establishing, Hippo Viewer and ReactionGrid. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , .

welcome_page_begonia_island

One of the many exciting things about establishing your own virtual space is the ability to customise, not just the space itself, but even the way users access the space.

By logging into our server via Remote Desktop Protocol, (see previous post, Define:RDP) and altering some of the code, it is possible for us to customise the welcome message and even display our own image that appears in our 3D virtual worlds viewer.  In our case, we have chosen to use the Hippo Viewer. An image can either be copied to a particular folder on the server or an image URL can be pasted into the appropriate area.

Of course, I would never have know how to do this had I not been assisted by the ReactionGrid Team.  This time, the assistance came via one of their “Metaverse Heroes“, Chris Hart, and her excellent Knowledgebase article with step-by-step instructions.

For me, this type of customisation was quite exciting and I can see this as an excellent way to promote the work being done by students on Begonia Island.  I hope to alter the welcome image on a regular basis, giving the students the opportunity to create their own.

Recently, ReactionGrid updated their welcome page with some exciting new features.  I’m told more detailed customisation, as featured in the new ReactionGrid welcome page, will also be available to owners of private spaces.

reactiongrid_welcome

Define:RDP

Published on November 27, 2009 in Administration, Begonia Island, Establishing and ReactionGrid. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

server_has_been_running

One of the many advantages of having an OpenSim server hosted by ReactionGrid is that you are provided with the tools to easily manage your virtual space.  As a school administrator, there are a number of tasks that you need to do quickly and easily.  This is where RDP comes in!

I had no idea what this acronym even referred to and went straight for the trusty “define” feature in Google! :)  I soon learnt about Remote Desktop Protocol under the guidance of Kyle Gomboy, CEO of ReactionGrid.  Kyle, also known as Dr_Manhattan on Twitter, took me through the process of setting up a remote connection to our ReactionGrid server.  I learnt how easy it was to create users and change passwords.  If anyone had told me that one day I would be learning about RDP and using DOS commands to manage a server, I would have laughed! :)

At the moment, users are created one at a time.  However, only basic information is required so the process takes only seconds to complete.  In the future, it will be possible to create users using data directly from our Active Directory accounts.   This will make the process of creating large numbers of users even easier.

One of our Year 6 students referred to learning with virtual worlds as “the future of learning”.  Steve Collis has written an excellent blog post about virtual worlds being an integral part of learning just as a school’s SharePoint, Moodle, Blackboard or other type of intranet may be.  This is why the easy management of these virtual spaces is crucial.  I agree with Steve, just as students find it quite normal to access their school’s intranet, their school’s virtual world should be and will be seen in the same way.

This experience highlighted some very important points:

  • Having the right support in order to tackle new tasks with confidence is crucial
  • In order to successfully manage a virtual worlds project of this nature, schools need access to simple tools

Many thanks to Kyle and the ReactionGrid team for their assistance!