Locations and Slurls

Hi my name is Jordan Descenna and I will be introducing you to my top 5 landmarks and to something called a Slurl. But before that I need to explain what exactly a landmark is. A landmark is like using a bookmark for a website. You save a site that you like as a file, and whenever you want to go back to that site you just open up the file. Landmarks operate in Second Life the same way. Landmarks are a specific location in Second Life that is saved in your inventory. Whenever you want to go to a certain landmark just open up your inventory and select the landmark of your choice. Now let’s go on to my top 5 landmarks…

Nix Bazaar:
Have you ever felt in Second Life that you want to buy something but you never have the cash? Well Nix Bazaar is a freebie island where you can pick up all the freebies you need from cars, to furniture, to weapons, to scripts. Anything that you like is there. But, the best part about Nix Bazaar is that not a lot of people visit Nix so everything is yours for the taking!

Harbinger Productions:
Want to watch a premade slide show on a big screen? Then Harbinger Productions is the place to go. You can watch slideshows such as Harbinger Holovender or Harbinger Platformer. These slideshows are only around 100 Linden dollars, and the Harbinger theatre is settled in a pleasant, but elegant district. If you don’t feel like watching a slide show, you can shop around for items such as cars or high quality clothing.

Hyperion:
Hyperion is a great place to go if you want to purchase or rent a particular part of a building and set up a shop. There are many shops set up around Hyperion selling furniture and avatars as well as many other things. Hyperion is also a pleasant place in Second Life but not as elegantly designed as Harbinger Productions.

Lewis:
If you feel like relaxing form the hectic world of Second Life and meeting new people in world, then Lewis should be the first location on your mind. Lewis is basically a big meeting area filled with benches and abstract but attractive looking architecture. Many people come to Lewis so it's a great place to make new friends.

Mecca/Club Bond:
Club Bond is obviously a club. From the inside there’s a bar where you can sit, relax, and chat up with new people in world. Outside the club are many buildings with shops to purchase things such as Bartz Buy (Best Buy) where you can buy things like hoverboards for low prices!

Slurls:

Lets say you want to visit a landmark in Second Life but you don’t have the application to run Second Life. So what should you do? Well, hopefully the landmark you want to visit can be viewed by a Slurl. But what is a Slurl? Slurl stands for Second Life url. Slurls are links to locations in Second Life via the internet. For example, if you want to visit the Nasa Space station, find its Slurl and you can view it on a web page. This helps people who don’t have Second Life to experience what Second Life is made of, off the net.

Looking Ahead: The Villa Project

Hello again! This is Asif Gausman informing you on the current developments of our villa project. Our previous project, the Domino Build, was a success. However, this project will definitely put our Second Life skills to the test. In case you are confused, our current project is to build a replica of our old school campus, a villa, in Second Life. It will display a variety if media and technology resources, artwork produced by students in our school and will become our ‘headquarters’ to do further work exploring the SL medium.

So far we have achieved:

• Determining the basic shape of our building (3:4 aspect ratio)
• Determining the interior layout of our building
• Producing the blueprints of the villa
• Determining the features that this building will have
• Determining the objects/scripts we could use for these features
• Dividing the villa into portions and assigning them to team members

We have begun gathering the supplies needed to build this villa, such as textures, basic foundations, and objects. We have also been collecting objects that might help us such as doors, windows, and furniture.

The next steps in our project are:

• Obtaining the land (in the process)
• Determining the dimensions of each room
• Building a framework of the villa
• Revising our blueprint to fit our needs

To show you the progress of our idea (and to give you an idea of our progress :P), a blueprint of the villa when we initially started to design the villa is shown Below. Below that is a blueprint that we cleaned up and modified with the aid of the memories of the people who worked in the villa.

Making the Local News!

Our local newspaper, 7 Days, ran a short article on Second Life last Thursday, the 22nd. It mostly focused on the business aspect of Second Life and other similar games. The article names the genre, which also includes games like World of Warcraft and Habbo Hotel, MMOG's, or Massively Multiplayer Online Games. The rest of the article mostly gives numbers about how much real money people spend in virtual games, and believe me, its a lot. I've also noticed that games for Xbox 360 and PS3, and even PC, are starting to include upgrade features that are downloadable, for a cost of course. For example, in Need for Speed Carbon, you can purchase cars you would normally unlock later, download them, and use them earlier to your advantage. However, in Second Life, there is no real objective other than having fun and living large. As the article point s out, with a little real cash, one could purchase really nice virtual possessions. 7 Days hasn't as of yet put the article on line, but they probably will in the next couple days. I'll post it as a comment as soon as they do!

Fun + Education = Serious Gaming

This is Ro Shan here to discuss serious gaming. By what you've seen in the video above you may have already recognized the value of games to real world education. This is just one of the many ways games can be used for educational purposes. Simulation games are already being put to good effect by many organizations around the world to train staff. The military for example uses flight simulation games to prepare pilots to handle a plane. This is also economically efficient compared to having every trainee fly real planes.

Serious gaming also plays a motivational role in teaching. What may seem boring in a lecture may seem much more interesting in a game and besides you also have the advantage of visual aides to help you remember. No person will say its easier to remember the time he had a boring lecture compared to the same thing being taught in a much more practical way demonstrating the same concept. Even if it was essentially the same thing, when taught with a new concept that draws attention its simply a lot more interesting and that much easier to remember.

When we get to it SL is essentially a type of game itself, but one that allows people from around the world to interact in real time. It has greater value as a social learning tool than most other modern methods and it's an intriguing concept for both teacher and student. Education aside it also holds great potential to host activities between schools such as Forensics debate and discussion.

Whether serious games are used as simulations for the real thing or they are used to connect people from around the world they hold a remarkably great amount of yet to be discovered potential. In fact it may well be possible that in the near future serious games will be integrated into our educational system to make learning fun and easy.

It is a success!

When we all sat down at our computers ready to work, we were not sure that our project was going to work at all. We have always had mess-ups in the making and finishing of the domino project. However, we were unaware that it would be the last time we would have to work on it. Yes, that means we have finally succeeded in completing the tiresome job of building, rebuilding, permissioning, dropping, and recording.

Recording was the hardest thing. Machinama is tough to use, however we got the hang of it after a couple of tries and have taken a suitable recording of our dominos falling down...on the second try. The first try was a mess. We had a few problems. First, we didnt even have the dominos on the floor, then we could not put the ball on physical because the owner (Dre Masala) was disconnected because of some bad internet connections. Then, the last problem that we had to work on was to even get the ball through the hole!

All in all, it went well. We have finished our project and are glad to have worked on it because it has taught us alot. We hope you like it.

Shizzle Rau

Zoomlab Partnership with DAA

Myracle and I are very excited to partner with Zoomlab for our pilot project. They have very kindly offered to host us on their Kids Connect Island in the Teen Grid until the end of the semester. Sixteen acres are clear and ready for us to begin terraforming and building!

I first met Zoomlab's director, Josephine, in Second Life following one of Claudia Linden's Teen Educators meetings. She had mentioned doing dramatic activities in SL, something that intrigues me as a Forensics (Speech & Debate) coach. While we are very grateful for the use of their virtual land, we also look forward to working together during the pilot project and beyond.

We met with the Zoomlab group over a Skype conference call for over an hour last week. Josephine, Dan and Katie, all from Zoomlab, described their own pilot program, Kids Connect which they ran in July and August, 2006 with students from New York City and Amsterdam. Zoomlab is very innovative in using Teen SL to create cross-cultural experiences for youth collaborating on interactive, digitally-mediated performance art performed simultaneously in New York and Amsterdam. Students learned about performance skills, creating a common language, digital storytelling, communication, media technology and virtual environments.

There is great potential to collaborate on future projects with Zoomlab. DAA is the defending EMAC Debate champion and we host the EMAC Forensics tournament in November, 2007. At the same time, we hope to be establishing a permanent presence on the teen grid this fall. I am particularly interested in Josephine's current work preparing for a UN youth conference in November, 2007, lining up closely with our EMAC event. I see a lot of potential in using Second Life to extend the EMAC Forensics experience to a broader community.

The UN has been involved in Teen Second Life in a previous project with Global Kids. I'll update you as I get more details from Zoomlab!

Alpine

Evaluation Procedures & Upcoming Plan

Hello my dear friends,

Just to assist Mr. Alpine in guiding your amazing efforts towards the construction of our Media Center, I have collected a list of criteria items for your blog postings. To assist with your time management, I have also included our exciting upcoming activities for quarter four. Enjoy, and let me know if you have any questions about the info below. Everything evolves, even this piece of rubric.

Grading Procedure: Weekly Blog Postings and Final Reflection

The blog assignment has five clearly defined areas for completion: blog postings & content requirements; regular comments throughout the quarter; and a final reflection posting due the last week of class. To earn credit, you need to turn in a hard copy of the self evaluation rubric to your teachers at the end of this quarter.

Blog Postings:
Include a detailed description of your assigned activity, challenges and successes.

Postings are assigned to specific students by your teacher.

Blog Content Requirements:
The content has a well-stated clear purpose and theme that is carried out throughout the blog.
External links to relevant websites/references (at least 2)
Screenshot, picture or movie that captures part of the activity

Blog Design:
The Blog Postings have an exceptionally attractive and usable layout.It is easy to locate all important elements. White space, graphic elements and/or alignment are used effectively to organize material.
Graphics are related to the theme/purpose of the Blog, are thoughtfully cropped, are of high quality and enhance reader interest or understanding.

Blog Comments:
Two comments per week are required.
Blog should be free of spelling errors and all links should work correctly.
Post due at the beginning of each class.
Comments should follow netiquette rules.

Final Reflection:
The final posting will reflect upon what you have learned this quarter in regards to your Second Life project and your understanding and knowledge of using the presented technology.

Fourth Quarter Plan:
1- Promotion of SL Media Center through school’s newsletters, assemblies, morning announcements, posters, etc. as well as in-world promotion
2- Establishing social networking etiquettes and procedures
3- Documenting in-world social and education events in blog
4- Monitoring the dynamics, outcomes, benefits, and challenges.
5- Evaluation & reflection
6- Report & present (you decide on the MM format) results and analysis to your teachers.

Almost There!!!

Hey Guys!

This is Dre Masala, one of the co-workers on the Second Life team. Based on our first experiences with Second Life, we have managed to put together a work of art known as the Domino Build. This is a stucture with a stand-like base and a tube that allows a ball to go through the stand and fall into the chute. This allows the ball to roll down and to have enough contact with dominoes in order for them to fall down.

My team and I have been working on this project for over two weeks now, and have built everything. However, we are still struggling to actaully make the ball hit the dominoes. Today in class was our first day to put our skills to the final test and what made it better was that we actually filmed it! Despite the fact that we didn't reach our goal, we were almost there in terms of positioning the dominoes in the right way. However, towards our last few tries, our computers were quite laggy, so as a result we had to leave it for another day.

This class was really exhilerating as we had never before actually experienced the ball going through and hitting down the dominoes to make them fall. To keep track of progress in Second Life, you are able to create screen shots of anything you wish. For filming, we used a program built into the Second Life client program that records streaming video of everything your avatar sees. The technique is called Machinima.

When filming there should be a heading in your menu bar ( this is in world ) that you just press in order to start filming. The file size is very large and requires compression but it is high quality! These films will be posted up on the blog later on when we have edited them. Overall, with starting Second Life new, I really do enjoy it, being able to interact with people in a second world, and being able to build things so easily! I'm looking forward to making our Media Center with my team and being able to go inside and look at what we have done! Can't wait!

Thanks,

Dre Masala

Hope you like the blog!

Second Life Promotional Video on Hold

I've been asked to put the Second Life video on hold to work on another project. This will be a video that will be used for recruiting new staff to our school. We did one a couple months ago, but that was in Flash and it was too complex for its purpose. After I finish, I will return to the Second Life video but for now, I'll be working on the new video. I'll try to post it up when I finish.

Sony's New "Home". Competition for Second Life?

Hello All! This is Greg Mathy, a member of the DAA Second Life Team. I recently came across a product extremely similar to Second Life. I’m sure many of you are familiar with the Sony Playstation. Very recently, at GDC (The Games Development Conference), Sony announced a new feature for the PS3, known as Home.

Home takes advantage of the PS3’s breathtaking graphics, and, being a console product, will probably be more user friendly than Second Life. Every user will have his or her own “Home”, or apartment, in which he/she will have trophies received from the games played and can put up other pictures and videos that they choose to upload. The avatars will be customizable, but unfortunately will be human-only. As Mercury News puts it,

“Users will be able to upload and share videos, and watch various programs. Sony said its recently acquired Grouper division will help with user-generated videos.

The PlayStation 3's motion-sensitive controller helps navigate the world. Users can also take advantage of voice communication or type messages with an on-screen keyboard.

Users will be able to buy and download music; Sony has not indicated what other studios besides its own will offer songs.

Users will be able to communicate with others using text, audio and video.”

A drawback of Home is that it will not allow users to create their own content, something that is taken advantage of heavily in Second Life, and is part of the reason that it has been so successful.

Sony plans to launch the beta version of this for free in April, and is hoping for the official release this fall. Will this be competition for Second Life? Only time will tell.

On a side note, the team and I have been working on the domino build, and have been successful a few times. Our goal, however, is to record the working product for the video, but unfortunately, when running the recording software, Second Life begins to run quite slowly.

-G

P.S. Check out the Video Below, as well as Engadget and Joystiq.

Media Center Design and an introduction to Google SketchUp

This is Ro Shan and I'll be introducing everyone to Google SketchUp which is being used to develop the conceptual stages of design for Dubai American Academy's TeenSl media center.

First an introduction to Google sketch-up:
"Developed for the conceptual stages of design, Google SketchUp is a powerful yet easy-to-learn 3D software. It combines a simple, yet robust tool-set with an intelligent drawing system that streamlines and simplifies 3D design. From simple to complex, conceptual to realistic, Google SketchUp enables you to build and modify 3D models quickly and easily."

Anyone can learn to use it and you can download the free version from http://www.sketchup.com. Say you want to make a building and you don't know where to start then try building the base first using the rectangle tool. Then use the push/pull tool to pull up the base into the form of a building. Now to add windows make a rectangle and make several copies and snap them to the front of the building in neat rows. All this is made easier by the automatic snap to feature that lets you move and connect points together and x y z-axis which keep you from drawing stray lines. You can also choose to draw freehand though I wouldn't recommend it. With the paint bucket tools you can choose from a number of textures and the best part you don't have to worry about coloring outside the lines.



This is a draft for the TeenSL media center based on the picture of DAA's 1997 to 2000 campus.

Getting Started in Second Life

Hey, this is Jordan Descenna and I'm here to talk to you about beginning in Second Life. I bet the first thing on your mind is what is Second Life? Second Life is a online multiplayer program (notice that there is no game in that phrase) where you can basically lead a Second Life. You can attend classes in online colleges, meet new people from around the world, build anything that you desire. And I bet, the next thing on your mind is where should i sign up and take advantage of this Second Life?

Well the first place that you should go to is www.secondlife.com. However, you need to create an account. So create an account depending on your age (Teen Second Life is your choice if your under 18 years old, don't worry its the same as Second Life, its just a teen version of it), and fill out your Second Life first and last name, etc. From there on, you can register your personal details (don't worry they are not that personal!) including your real name, email address, etc. You might want to fill out your credit card details for signing up for: Teen Second Life (In Teen Second Life its essential to make sure that a guardian allows you to play this game by asking for credit card details, to buy land in Second Life, or for Linden Dollars(Yes, Second Life has its own economy!). After you create your account, you need to download the actual program to your computer via http://secondlife.com/community/downloads.php. Select your operating system, download the program and your good to go!

Once your downloads complete, your brought to a menu where you type in your First and Last Second Life name, and your password. Eventually, your loaded and you see your Second Life character for the very first time. Your character is in a place called Orientation Island. On this island you learn the basics of Second Life from flying to creating an object.

After you feel comfortable in Orientation Island, you can leave and dive into the real world of Second Life! I was looking for a Youtube movie to show what Second Life really is. So sit back and enjoy!

Promoting the second life

Before I even started the class, which was supposed to be a video editing class, I was asked to join the Second Life group. However, I really wanted to work on videos since I didn’t really have those skills yet and I knew they would be useful, especially in college. So after getting used to how Second Life works and talking with my teachers, we decided I should work to create a video that we would use to promote Second Life around our school.

So far, we know the video will be about 3 minutes in length. It will include real videos from inside Second Life as well as live footage from the real world. I was introduced to a couple of programs from Alpine Tendaze. The first was Camstudio. This program is essentially the video equivalent of a screenshot. The second was Inspiration, a brainstorming and planning assistant that is useful for recording ideas and storyboarding.

Speaking of storyboarding, that is the next thing I need to do for the video. Some of my ideas include a short video of some people talking about what Second Life is like and then zooming into a computer monitor as a transition. I’d also like to use an avatar to “film” another avatar in Second Life. That’s all for now. I don’t want to give away all my ideas ;)