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Friday 28 October 2011

First of the Shared Media Displays

If you recall from an earlier posting where I had installed a new building at my landing site for this sim, I intended using the space in part for displaying some interactive shared media content for educators. Well here is the first one, took a while I know. If you have use for a diagramming tool and not come across Creately yet, then I think it is well worth paying a visit to the site. There are a number of pricing models available, including a free version that has plenty of features. The models available cover Business Diagrams, User Interface Design, Software, System, Network Diagrams and more. It was the inclusion of software design particularly UML (Unified Modeling Language) diagrams and Database design diagrams that particularly took my attention. You will find that in creating a new document the examples list will provide sets of templates, some of which seem to be partially complete, these would be particularly useful for teaching. As well as the many diagrams available, the user interface also includes a standard set of drawing tools, basic shapes, arrows, call outs, you can add notes, comments and share your diagrams thought the free version limits you to five of these. Upon completion diagrams can be exported in either png, jpeg or Creately format. As a unique virtual trial I decided to create a shared media block at my landing point here in Second life, so feel free to get a couple of avatar friends together a try it out, and let me know your impressions.

regards Skipper



Sunday 11 September 2011

Coding in the sky

The new academic year is about to start for my Foundation Degree students in software Development and I have been thinking of ways that I could incorporate Second Life into the delivery. Thinking about where to hold these sessions, I must say that I was impressed by some of the low cost Holodecks that are around for purchase in SL Marketplace at the moment and was tempted to buy one in, but I do like to apply myself to a little building now and then and decided instead to create a sky platform for the purpose.


I have introduced a little background ambience into the feature by including a visual running water effect, running water sounds and some random bird songs. My plan is to run regular evening, probably once a week, after class programming and design tutorials. I am using the Firestorm viewer at the moment, principally because it supports shared media on a prim, without all the compatible SL mesh issues that seem to have defeated my own PC for now. This means that I can make use of web resources such as an online C compiler, there is a nice compiler available here, and a screen shot of myself running a simple C program.


Another board that features our College vle, so that we can make use of portfolio exercises and also we can post directly toForums, a third and final media board displays a web based poster of student avatar images and names.

Not sure yet whether we shall be using voice or text chat for the conversation, but I will take the popular vote on that. If we do use text chat, then I shall install a logger so that we can review the sessions.


Back soon with some more news, bye for now Skipper

Tuesday 19 July 2011

New Landing Point

It was one of those moments when a couple of things that you have been thinking about for a while suddenly come together. Looking around my Shimmer Island Sim, I have begun to consider dropping-in new or updating existing builds particularly my landing point. At the same time I have also been considering what to do about making use of all those superb interactive web facilities that now become available with Browser 2. At the present time my displays and tutorials are firmly established with Browser 1, which by the way I am still using on one of my desktop PC's at home. The answer, create a new landing point and use it as a feature for browser2 facilities. During this academic year I have in fact been running some trials with my students using SL Browser 2 as part of a Level 3 Maths course, and the Sim features online calculators, a YouTube video board and even an on-line C compiler, similar to the one here but on the surface of a prim as opposed to a pop-up web page. The project has been really useful not only as resource for my students, but also for myself in testing out the viability of the features. Basically then, when you arrive at the landing point in the near future, as long as you are running Browser 2, you will be able to step inside and try out some interactive media. If anyone would like me to install a particular web media facility for you to try, then please drop me a post.

refards Skipper

Saturday 16 April 2011

Matrix Arithmetic Poster

The steady stream of visitors to my Seascape Island sim has been encouraging and the feature of having a simple vendor to distribute course materials such as the C code has proven a good decision. I decided cash in on the approach and provide a poster board that explained the basic operations of Matrix Arithmetic, which will I am sure be of use when my students are here discussing and trying out examples. Of course providing a notecard for is not really feasible given the special characters required by way of very large brackets. The answer I decided was to create a texture and have the poster board serve the jpeg to the avatars Inventory texture folder when touched, hence the invite just below the red title. If you are wondering how I can gauge the usage of the latest resources, well I have installed a script that will write the avatars name, name of the resources plus date and time to a MySql database that is running on one of our web servers, neat little facility this, and indispensible really if you are keen to get some user metrics. Bye for now Skipper

Tuesday 12 April 2011

C Matrix examples in-world

Seascape Island seems to be getting a fare amount of attention from my students, which geven the fact its end of term break is very encouraging in itself. I am finding that different images are showing on prim faces when I return to the sim, this must mean that the Second Life Viewer 2 features of Shared Media on a prim are proving to be popular. One of those shared media takes the form of a web based real time C compiler, and to compliment this particular tool, I have added an freebie crate of C source code examples for matrices. I am hoping for some early feedback on these, which should not take to long as I have just posted the news my course Facebook page. regards Skipper

Sunday 10 April 2011

Adding some ambience


Having started to get some materials together for my new Seascape island venture with level 3 mathematics, I decided it would be nice to include some ambient effects and features as well. A while ago I was looking for some sea shore decorations for my own sim over at Shimmer Island Star Beach and came across Real Waves, anyway I purchased some Real Wave effects, which I must say are superb and decided to include the sim in my SL profile picks. Why am I telling you all this, well because as a result, Real Waves sent me some freebies and one of them was the NEW OFFSIM - all only 3 prims Created by Antreas Alter that features Wild Oceanic Waves Splashing on the Rocks and Calm Beach Waves washing the shore! Anyway I installed just offshore, and the effect is a definate improvment over the previous somewhat empty horizon.

Thursday 7 April 2011

Virtual Learning at SeaScape Island

For the summer term I have picked up the unit Mathematics for IT Practitioners, and the learning outcomes for the unit I am pleased to see are in fact very closely linked to our Software Development pathway. Looking at the requirements and thinking about ways to get some much needed student engagement with the subject, I thought this would be a good opportunity to explore the possibilities of trying out the facilities available with the Second Life viewer 2. I have a strip of virtual land on the Greenwich University sim and set about creating a build. The result of my efforts shown here in the screen shot, is as you can see a four floor modular design, the idea here is of having each floor service a specific Learning Outcome; listed below: 1 Be able to apply matrix methods 2 Be able to apply sequences and series, probability and recursion 3 Be able to apply number systems 4 Be able to interpret data. We have only just started the unit and so I have begun the process of installing resources such as video screens linked to YouTube tutorials an on-line matrix calculator and because I really want to link this unit as closely as I can to the programming activities, a real time C compiler. During the maths class today I switched our network connection over to by-pass the college proxy and gave the group a demo. Will my student group take advantage of the collaborative and enriching features of a virtual world emersive work environment, time will tell. Right now I just need to get them in and trying out the resources. By way of getting some kind of basic metric with regard to usage I have installed a visitor counter in the landing point flag. Please stay in touch for further postings. Regards Skipper

Monday 7 March 2011

New Free Edu Tools Board


I was pleased to come across another collection of free tools for educators the other day, this time from Mattchew Bulloch. The board as you would expect is linked to the SL Marketplace page so feel free to teleport over and take a closer look.

Saturday 26 February 2011

Free Education Materials

Just recently I have been taking a look at the resourecs I have here on Shimmer Island, not only their appearence, but also popularity and generally speaking I feel there is no reason that make any changes, so thats really rewarding for me. Looking on SL Marketplace the other day I began to see some really nice free collections of resources for educators and so I thought why not start an in-world collection. The first in the new suite is a poster board of tools made by Salahzar Stenvaag.

These are all Copy/Mod/Trans and include an eBook maker, 3D wiki, Meeting space and Chalkboard. You can either use the hyperlink here to see these on the marketplace, or the next time that you are inworld visit Shimmer Island and touch on the board that is on the first floor of the main tutorial hall.
regards Skipper