Wonderland 0.4 – Demo video
What to notice
It’s helpful to understand that Wonderland has been envisioned as a platform for working/collaboration across distance. It provides a more immersive experience than you could achieve with current available technologies such as video and phone conferencing, web-conferencing and chats.
Two things to consider in a virtual environment are its capacity to facilitate users achieving specific tasks alone and together and its effectiveness at compensating for the missing sensory and contextual information we take for granted when we’re face to face.
The first point is not difficult to address. We call it task analysis, which means you break down a task into small components (sub-tasks) in order to understand how to design learning it. It gets tricky when you must also consider sensory and contextual information needed. We easily recognize the barriers to learning created by a classroom with fixed seating, inadequate lighting or instructional equipment, the same holds true in a virtual environment. Most of use use classrooms, we don’t build them. And we may walk into a technologically sophisticated room like our Learning Research Studio and have to learn how to use it technically and pedagogically.
So lots of things to think about.
Watch this video and you’ll see how Wonderland developers are designing for accomplishing specific tasks as well as compensating for missing sensory and contextual information. For example, when an avatar is speaking his body gestures and his name title (above his head) pulsates. This facilitates verbal communication and compensates for some of the visual information we have when we talk to people face to face. What else?
Suzanne
Activeworlds or Wonderland? Hmmm?
As we’re wading in the Activeworlds waters, deciding how we’re going to get in, I’m kind of wondering whether we should also (or instead) get into Wonderland a bit more. I’m connected to their and the Media Grid’s conversations, but we’re also looking at this with new eyes, with building some capacity to support a world in the future.
It’s really and apples and oranges thing, once I actually think it through. But the decision to allocate resources to one or the other is based (obviously) on its ROI. There’s no obvious choice, as there was last year with SL.
Decisions, decisions
What Exactly Is A Virtual World?
Pop quiz: What is a Virtual World?
a) A shared space
b) Avatar-based chat room
c) 3D collaborative experience
d) All of the above
e) Or something else?
With new Virtual Worlds being announced almost weekly, the question bears asking.
The Virtual Worlds Review, for example, a pioneering effort in describing the development of Virtual Worlds, suggests six features common to all Virtual Worlds:
- Shared Space: the world allows many users to participate at once.
- Graphical User Interface: the world depicts space visually, ranging in style from 2D “cartoon” imagery to more immersive 3D environments.
- Immediacy: interaction takes place in real time.
- Interactivity: the world allows users to alter, develop, build, or submit customized content.
- Persistence: the world’s existence continues regardless of whether individual users are logged in.
- Socialization/Community: the world allows and encourages the formation of in-world social groups like teams, guilds, clubs, cliques, housemates, neighborhoods, etc.
However, with more companies and institutions jumping on the VW bandwagon, I begin to wonder if the term is becoming more broadly defined.
Case in point: Weblin.
The Weblin website describes their virtual world as follows:
Weblin “turns the web into a virtual world. Your personalized weblin avatar surfs the web with you, enabling you to see friends and meet new ones on the same site as you. Weblins can chat, move, show emotion, visit lounges, and trade stuff with other weblins.”
Wow! The whole web! Sounds interesting, yes? I thought so and quickly created a weblin for myself. I chose my avatar and decided to surf the web right away.
So.. IS Weblin a Virtual World? Or maybe Virtual World lite? Yes, it allows a shared social space, communication, immediacy. However, is it persistent? Does it allow any level of meaningful user customized content? Not really.
Why is this important? For a couple of years now, educators have been using Second LIfe as the standard by which to evaluate instruction and learning in a virtual world. But not all Virtual Worlds ARE Second Life. They each have unique capabilities and characteristics that must be carefully evaluated.
Does this make Weblin and other platforms “bad”? No. But it does make them different. And a wise educator will take the time to evaluate those differences in light of what s/he is attempting to accomplish with his/her students – and then make the most appropriate choice.
Cultures of Virtual Worlds Conference
I was only able to stay for one day of the conference, held at UC Irvine. It was similar to the MetaverseU conference in that some extraordinary thinkers and doers were there. Maria Bezaitis and I chatted a bit about how important metaphors are as bridges to understanding. Melissa Cefkin is doing some great thinking on interactional space. Jasmin Kafai and Deborah Fields are doing cutting edge research in education and virtual spaces with kids; and Tom Boellstorf ethnography on Second Life is due out soon. I’m also going to check out Paul Dourish’s book Where the Action Is: The Foundations of Embodied Interaction and was glad to hear from Mimi Ito, who’s work on digital youth culture is fantastic.
The audience was primarily academic but the conversations were anything but. Students and experienced researchers presented their work, with the conference being all about emerging questions that crisscross business, education, research, schooling and entertainment.
If It Qwaqs Like a Duck…
… It must be another virtual world!
Thanks to a SLED announcement by Lori Bell of Alliance Library System, I had the opportunity to attend a Qwaq demo yesterday hosted by John at Learning Times. Very interesting, despite some unforeseen technical issues (gotta love technology!)
Built on the Croquet platform, the Qwaq environment offers some interesting collaborative features not currently supported in Second Life. For example, users can simultaneously collaborate on Word or other applications, view multiple live web pages (no dividing land into multiple parcels to support multiple media streams), and even stream a live video camera from their little Qwaq lego-like head. Yep – a talking head!
Due to the tech issues du jour, I wasn’t able to fully experience all the nifty Qwaq features. It plays nicely with Google SketchUp and seems to support multiple avatars quite well.
I’m excited! Does Qwaq replace Second Life? Of course not. But opportunities to experience and compare the differing strengths and capabilities of different platforms helps me think more carefully about instructional design decisions – including on which platform to develop specific projects. A good thing. I’ll be looking for more opportunities to experiment in Qwaq.
Here’s a YouTube featuring a Qwaq demo.
More from Metaverse U
Wish you’d been at the Metaverse U Conference last month? You’re in luck! The Metaverse U folks have now realeased YouTube mini-flicks with participant comments (much like Suzanne’s below).
In addition, they are beginning to put up blip.tv video of speakers. First up: Vladlen Koltun, a Stanford computer science professor and founder of their Virtual Worlds group. Subject: Dryad, a prototype intuitive, high quality, customized 3D modeling tool for “the rest of us” that uses collaborative design space exploration.
More videos promised soon!
My 2 cents about the Metaverse
At the MetaverseU Conference at Stanford last month, the asked all of us these 4 questions:
- What excites you about current metaverse technology?
- What concerns you about current metaverse technology?
- What will be most the surprising impact of metaverse technology on society within the next decade?
- What barriers will metaverse technology never overcome?
Here’s what I said
Here’s what others said:
http://youtube.com/group/metaverseuWhat are Metaverse technologies again?
The Roadmap describes them as those that fall under these categories- Augmented Reality, Lifelogging, Mirror Worlds and Virtual Worlds.
