Archive of projects in the Second Life world

Rebecca's project

I thought it might be worthwhile setting people a creative challenge in the Second Life world - otherwise I suspect some of us will never get round to making anything. Dan's project sounds quite scary if you haven't made anything so much as a small box yet :-)

Signpost survey idea

I went to a workshop recently where people were given a sheet of images of road signs (Google image search 'uk road signs') and asked to choose one which represented their experience of school. Lots of people chose dark tunnels, exclamation marks, swerving out of control etc.

What about getting everyone to put a road sign on our island to represent their experience of education? Perhaps it could be a talking sign, like Nogbad's talking flowers. This would get us all building something fairly easy (at least, I hope it would be easy) and to reflect in fairly simple terms on our previous educational experience.

I like this idea - could we turn it into a kind of survey? So each person gets one signpost to which a note is attached that says 'I <love, like, don't mind, dislike, hate> school because <some free text of their choice>'. The shape of the sign would reflect their choice of love/like/don't mind/dislike/hate. Their note text would automatically include their username and profile info such as their age and gender. We would have a script that would generate 'the results' (number of folk saying hate/love/etc and a random sample of explanations) on a big noticeboard. So collecting data and giving young folk a voice. What do you recon? PeterT 11:38, 4 December 2006 (GMT)

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Mgaved 14:39, 27 November 2006 (GMT)

Will continue when Digilab is up so she can access a computer compatible with the SL viewer

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Mark's "prisoner's dilemma" project

Starting to think that maybe a psychology project is one to explore at the moment. I'm wondering about a group game or exercise that would then get the participants to reflect on their actions. Something that might get them reflecting about real world situations which mirror how they behaved. Fun versions of "prisoner's dilemma" style games, that kind of thing.

I'd really welcome ideas, collaboration, help on this one. I could really do with chatting to home learners and educators. I thought that might be a target audience. I am guessing - but need help with this - that one thing the SL world could be useful for home learners would be the opportunity to do group work? Perhaps home schooled kids don't get as much opportunity to do group learning activities? would this be the case? (though I guess of course they might belong to local groups where they do stuff like this, Cubs, Brownies, etc...).

I think I'll need help from a scripting guru with some of my ideas, I'm not sure I'll be very good at learning enough building and scripting skills quickly enough.

This sort of activity works really well in the SL world - we've done a similar commercial/educational training programmes where a group has to complete a treasure hunt together to build a group object constrained by a 'difficult' group member for example was very useful in developing negotiation and compromise skills and exploring these for example (although it was horrendously difficult for the 'difficult' group member to not simply be perverse). Exercises for interview skills, counselling skills and presentation skills have also worked well in different ways with some in depth discussion about image and body language as well as verbal interaction - and for some, just the chance to "rehearse" in SL (that's not the right word really but not sure what to use) has proved valuable. (I'm no scripting/building guru although I'm porting programming and 3D design skills to the SL world as fast as I can go but may be able to help)--Jacquie 17:53, 25 November 2006 (GMT)

Hmm... I've rather put this on hold at the moment as I think more about the "circus cannon idea. If you go to my user page I talk more there, as well as under Olly's project on this page. Right now I am working on building the bullseye target for people to fire the human cannonball at. I've built a basic target, I need to learn how to script the impacts and get actions to happen in response to an impact on the target (making fireworks appear, sending the score to a text file). --Mgaved 10:02, 6 December 2006 (GMT)

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Learning objectives? Evaluation criteria: - technical skills - soft competencies - teamwork - leadership

Transferability

We need cool things so there's something there

(PeterT)

--Mgaved 14:42, 27 November 2006 (GMT)

Mark's mad circus cannon idea

Ok so this was just a bit of a mad chat over a mug of tea with my house mate (Sam who works in the same building as Peter) developing from the Digilab chat.... but.... How about an instantiation of Olly's cannon as a circus cannon? - negates militaristic aspect of 'guns' - comedy / humour aspect - got to be fun for a bunch of kids to stuff their mate in a cannon and fire them at a target? - got to be fun to be in the cannon and fired, right? (well I'd like to have a go)

So: take the cannon, make it big so an avatar can fit in and be fired at a big comedy bullseye target. Kids get points for how close they get to the the bullseye (centre) of the target (10,25,50,100 points...) so it's a bit of a game. Kids still have to learn all the same lessons - angles, vectors, trajectories, force required etc. Maybe make it with different settings, simple for little kids that only require a few parameters to be set (and will always get them close to the target so they aren't disheartened) and advanced for older kids (A Levels?) that requires a lot more work and thinking and they can completely miss the target.

I chatted to Woop and Faji about this in the SL world, we were thinking of noticeboards as well - so you could have a big sign which digitally displays the angles etc when you're setting up and displays the outcomes (distance travelled, score, velocities, etc).

Plus of course we had some fun ideas about when the cannon fires it has rings of fire, when the person lands they send up fireworks where ever they hit, we could make the 'pilot' a crash helmet and crazy goggles, we even thought the person could pick up wings or maybe a script that makes them flap their arms comedy stylee?

What do you all reckon? --Mgaved 12:10, 5 December 2006 (GMT)

I think this sounds great fun. Wings are easy to get (I have dozens!), I'm sure goggles could be made quickly if not already available. And surely the idea of someone firing their mate out of a cannon is a great way to engage with the physics stuff. Plus I love the fireworksy stuff for scoring direct hits --Dan 15:03, 5 December 2006 (GMT)

I think I have specific code questions now. I am going to focus on the target to start with. I can build the target but I need to know how to script the target so it recognises when another object contacts it, and in response carries out a series of actions (displays fireworks, sends a number to a text file). Can anybody help me with this? --Mgaved 09:57, 6 December 2006 (GMT)

My immediate thinking is to use the sensor functions. Would be good to hear if anyone else agrees before we set off down that path though. --Dan 11:18, 6 December 2006 (GMT)

I think we need to be careful that

(a) folk can't force someone into the cannon (spelt correctly this time thanks to Mark) and

(b) that when fired you cannot be aimed at folk who are standing nearby (unless they choose to stand near the target).

So how about there is a 'chair' at the front of the canon that you sit on - and when you are sat on it the control panel comes down that lets you set the paramaters for the canon - then when you have done that you are automatically loaded into the cannon and fired according to the paramaters you just set.

Another - seperate thought - stimulated with a discussion with Sam (where are you Sam - you should be joining in here too) - if we have a series of activities for folk to do, then maybe they have to fire themselves from one activity to the next (with a net or target that they have to land in - or else they get returned to ....). As they progress around the series of activities the complexity of the controls for the canon could be increased - from very simple (almost can't miss) to quite complex ... PeterT 13:18, 7 December 2006 (GMT)

Cloud bank 9

A meeting place, with clouds as chairs, which floats around over SchomeBank (once it exists). PeterT 06:20, 24 November 2006 (GMT)

Jacquie: Chairs shaped like clouds are fairly easy to build with simple prims and textures then they just need a simple animation to waft them around the sky. Made as prims they would be easy to sit on.

Dan: I can probably manage the scripting for this, although these things always end up more complex than they first seem, so don't expect it to be done over night.

Jacquie: There is now something similar floating above Cetlment, borrowed and tweaked from the Sloodlemeet - any use?

Dan: Cheers Jacquie, I'll take a look. I had some other thoughts about these, like whether you might want cloud chairs arranged on the ground, and when you sat on them they whizzed up to the meeting space. Thought it might be a bit more fun and engaging than having to fly to them yourself, but I guess everyone has different ideas. However if the chairs Jacquie has supplied are good it might be more useful to spend our time working on getting some other ideas off the ground, rather than tweaking these.