Virtual Worlds

Virtual worlds have been around forever, first as religious edifices (recreating heaven on earth) then as plays, opera, and movies (recreating distant and past events in the here and now.) They have been mostly passive, up until the 21st century at least. Computers, now, allow us to interact with those virtual worlds. I found some 1st generation approaches to this still around. Some are simple click and go websites -- http://www.photographymuseum.com/guide.html Some others attempt a pseudo spin and zoom in that format -- http://www.villa-rustica.de/tour/toure.html.  Then cranking it up a notch to this "Virtual Worlds for Art History Teaching" site -- http://www2.gsu.edu/~artwgg/atmos.htm -- using a 3-d viewer -- to virtualize ancient sites.

A screen shot from the "Virtual Worlds for Art History Teaching" site

 

Then there is Secondlife

http://secondlife.com/
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Second_Life_Education

here's a video:

Here's another: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOFU9oUF2HA and lots more videos where that came from, you see them all stacked on your right as you watch.

You have to join, then log in, get an avatar, before you can go anywhere or do anything there. There are more than 100 education destinations. I found the virtual University of Delaware art gallery there. Secondlife is being used as a virtual classroom facilitating discussions and other group projects. If you have the time and expertise to set up something there, it looks like a great place to teach. A caveat: it’s still mostly a social site and like a real campus, students might rather spent time at a party than in class.

 

Wide, Wide World

‘Virtual worlds’ is a big topic, too big.

A scene from http://www.lascaux.culture.fr/#/en/02_00.xml

Look at the site on my Virtual Cave page for an immersive but controlled experience. Look on the Virtual Tours or Google Art Project pages for experiences as immersive but more self-, or teacher-directed. You could say they are more web-2.0ish if you like jargon. You, the instructor could use these sites “flying” from feature to feature teaching as you go or even better, your students can do it themselves in a treasure hunt kind of way.

However, I have stumbled around enough to realize the one novice e-teacher is not going to create anything like these by himself in time for next semester, or at all, so I narrowed my goals. Look at the work involved in making this Virtual Museum:

The site is here:

http://www.annefrank.org/en/Subsites/Home/Enter-the-3D-house/#/house/20/

Virtual museum in PowerPoint

To make a virtual world for a class I have set my sights lower; make a virtual museum in PowerPoint. There I can create a museum with several galleries that a student can wander through. Some rooms could be examples of the completed project as art on the wall  and the how-to Jings linked to sculptures in the center of the room. There could be non-skill related, but still task-specific rooms for history or current-master galleries. The museum format would allow the student to go through the sequential project rooms in order but wander the other galleries by their own inclinations.

I think I could take some tutorials in Dreamweaver, make some slicker images then the clunky PPT ones in Photoshop, but that would take some time, which I don’t have right now. But in either case, Powerpoint or Dreamweaver the lesson plan is the same; what I do first in power point  I can translate into a Dreamweaver later.

So watch this video:

You can download the grand entry PPT template from here: http://christykeeler.com/EducationalVirtualMuseums.html  Or go here: http://www.classhelp.info/virtualmuseum.htm They have PDFs, step by step for building a museum and some examples.

A screen shot from the museum building PDF

Then there is this: Prezi. http://prezi.com/index/ a free alternate to PowerPoint. They claim to be able to add fades, pans and zooms to the slide show, sound and imbedded video too. We’ll see.

Borders and U.

 A linkedIn e-mail sent me here-- http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/could-many-universities-follow-borders-bookstores-into-oblivion
   After a cursory read I panicked. Could what is happening to journalism be happening to education? Could what once was deeply local --one teacher in a room with a group of students-- be dead in the water the way local newspapers are?
   Are we, EDT6020 students, by pushing for online course work, sealing our doom? is the next step where one 'master' teacher develops a course and computers teach it thereafter forever?
   I hope not, because students need, want and deserve feedback from another human every class, every project. if this were not the case they all would just buy books are learn everything by themselves. And Borders would still be in business.

Virtual Museums

A virtual museum seems a good way to get at the background of whatever it is you are trying to teach. For me posting a VM would get the students thinking of how other people (artists of the past and previous students) have solved the aesthetics side of the project before they tackled the technical side. Of course a little quiz too to encourage them into actually looking at it

Some things I want to do…

> Starting here http://www.youtube.com/googleartproject  I love this site just to wander around in but it certainly can be educational. I think I can make slide shows from it and have students do the same

> So, I thought I would look up other virtual museums already built. Some are simple click and go websites -- http://www.photographymuseum.com/guide.html. Some attempt a pseudo spin and zoom in that format -- http://www.villa-rustica.de/tour/toure.html 

 > Then I found this -- http://www2.gsu.edu/~artwgg/atmos.htm -- he uses a 3-d viewer -- to virtualize ancient sites. There you can spin and zoom (no learning curve, I like that.) Wow, with something like this you, with a set of written instructions, could have the student spin and zoom on their own to find a feature then answer a question about it before moving on to the next object or room.

> And this, to make a virtual museum in PowerPoint: download the grand entry PPT template from here: http://christykeeler.com/EducationalVirtualMuseums.html and then watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORut3s7osus&feature=related. Or go here: http://www.classhelp.info/virtualmuseum.htm

> Then, after a cup of Earl Grey and four dates raised my flagging spirits, I downloaded the free version of the spin/zoom program from https://unity3d.com to give it a shot. Likewise Prezi. http://prezi.com/index/ a free alternate to PowerPoint. Wish me luck.

Red in tooth and claw

Today I Googled “‘virtual worlds’ and education.”again.

I went here http://www.miamiopia.com/ and played this game-- http://www.kidspast.com/history-games/hoping-through-history-game.php. It was all about speed. Hoppy the frog will be eaten by Carrie the crow if he/she does not answer the questions fast enough. Perhaps this is good training for the corporate world most kids will be tossed into after their "blissful" school days but…

 I would like to make my efforts on the teacher side of education not be so Carrie-the-crow-like. I would like my Virtual Worlds to be in that zone of optimal whatever --neither too little nor too much challenge-- a space not ‘red in tooth and claw’ [1] but one where you can go one step at a time with little errors easily fixed and small successes easily built on. Going forward to the goal of gaining a unit of practical knowledge.

[1] From In Memoriam A.H.H  by Tennyson, referring to the natural way of things.

Virtual Worlds

"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up." and "Computers are useless. They can only give you answers" --Pablo Picasso

There will be virtual worlds wherein one either/both as student or teacher can hop into (via that-which-was once-just-a-phone or computer) and 'play' games with gestures in an augmented reality. The point of the play will be to learn something as does a child while being an adult.

Read more: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/p/pablo_picasso.html#ixzz1oFlWg1Cd

Week 1 post 2

This is what i think a blog is: I will pick a subject and tell you what i think about it.  Of course, should any of you who have stumbled here with to comment on my comments you can and wish you world. However, it has been my experience that blogs are more to be written than read

In this blog, ‘virtual worlds as educational tools,’ is specifically about how I would like to  teach art and by art i mean a conflation of history and technology.

I am going to begin by Googling ‘‘virtual worlds’ and education.’ and but the most interesting links in the links page as well as in each post.

So I went here: http://www.angellearning.com/products/secondlife, signed up with Secondlife and somehow found my way into a virtual University of Delaware art gallery!  I am try to get my  “see” legs there. I will get back to you when I find the other museums promised. this could be the…

“…pushing this tech another step, I could, in the history part of my classes, begin with a visit to a museum, either a real one or a constructed-by-me one specific to the topic at hand. We could float 50-60 feet in the air to get a close look at the Sistine Chapels ceiling more interactively; with a controller in hand, we could fly around --learn about-- the, unseen by mere mortals, upper reaches of Chartres Cathedral.” I rattled about in the discussion board.

week1post1

Hello fellow 6020ers. This blog is going to be about my emerging technologies essay topic "Virtual Worlds." My art and society rants are will continue to be at ehjohnson3.wordpress.com