Posts tagged sl_future
VWER: Future of Education in Virtual Worlds?
Jan 8th
(cross posted from http://blogs.sanjac.edu/virtualworlds)
I attended the Virtual Worlds in Education Roundtable (VWER) Annual “First Meeting of the Year” for 2011 this past Thursday. I believe this is the third year the VWER’s new year has begun with a panel discussion. The stated focus of the discussion was on the Probable, Possible and Preferable Futures of education in virtual worlds. Of course, the majority of the discussion focused on the first two. The discussion was moderated by (using Second Life monikers) AJ Brooks and included Buddy Sprocket, Fleep Tuque, Anthony Fontana, Wainbrave Bernal, and Kenny Hubble. So what’d the panel have to say? (with my thoughts mixed in throughout.) More >
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Loading ...Metanomics: 2010 & Next – Second Life, Virtual Worlds & the State of the Union
Dec 15th
I attended the Metanomics series on virtual environments Tuesday afternoon; this epsiode was 2010 & Next – Second Life, Virtual Worlds and the State of the Union. I observed the virtual broadcast via NMC Teaching island (http://bit.ly/dYFJzi) though the chat, audio and video were all available via the Metanomics website.
One of the panel members was Larry Pixel (RL: Larry Johnson, CEO of the New Media Consortium); my primary interest in the event was to listen to commentary regarding the future of virtual worlds (and perhaps Second Life in particular) within the education sector. A few notes, comments and thoughts follow.
A quick summary? I believe Second Life does and will continue to offer unique benefits that other platforms and technologies do not; I believe the capabilities provide value-added benefit to education beyond what other platforms may currently offer. If at all possible, I believe educational institutions should maintain their presence in Second Life while exploring other platforms in parallel; I understand that an institution’s presence may need to be reduced to meet budgetary limitations, but I do not believe using the elimination of the educational discount as a reason to leave Second Life is a good or rational decision. More >
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Linden Lab Post- OpenSim & Interoperability?
Jul 18th
A bonus and rare two-post day here at MUVE Forward. The news of Linden Labs’ & IBM’s cooperative effort to teleport from the Second Life preview grid to a location on an OpenSim space has created excitement and raised more than a few questions. Brett Bjornson (RL: Brett Bixler, Penn State) asked several questions in a recent post that made a few thoughts gel.
Last week, Erir Reuters interviewed Linden VP Joe Miller (SL: Zero Linden) – Linden prepares for an OpenSim Future – to explore what Linden Lab’s strategy might be for the long term. After all, Linden’s current profit model is almost entirely dependent upon land sales and management; if they are actively pursuing interoperability and the increase of OpenSim within the market,
“Linden is banking on OpenSim to bolster its strong position in the virtual worlds industry.”
How will Linden maintain profitability?
Naturally, Miller provided vague answers at best, but according to Reuters, he suggested that Linden intends to provide search and economic and trading services, particularly if the $L can be maintained as the “gold standard” of virtual world currency. Plus, Linden Lab could assume administration responsibilities within the virtual worlds standards naming and communication protocols in a manner similar to VeriSign’s role in managing top-level internet domains.
I think the “very specific plans” Miller mentioned during the interview will be much grander and different than economic and trading services. I believe Linden Lab’s future profit model will include:
- Trust Certificates for OpenSim operators/owners. As noted by my previous post – OpenSim, SecondLife & Interoperability – the transfer of assets from Second Life to an OpenSim space will require a trust relationship between the two grids to ensure that content creators’ rights and control over their products are preserved. Based upon a 2005 blog post by Gwyneth Llewelyn which I discovered via a more recent post by Danton Sideways, I specifically asked Tess Linden (during Zero’s office hours on Tue, July 8) if it would be logical for Linden Lab to offer fee-based “trust certificates” to OpenSim owners; she indicated that it’s possible. I think it’s obvious.
- Establishing secure, enterprise virtual worlds for corporations. I perceived this to be a viable profit model for Linden Lab when it was announced in April that IBM and Linden Lab had established a private Second Life server behind IBM’s firewall. In my post A New Hype Curve for SL: Private, Secure Sims & Open Source, I described how I think this may occur, why it’s viable and what it would allow Linden to accomplish – specifically, open sourcing the server code.
- Providing business data integration services for Second Life and OpenSim servers. In addition to being ideally suited to support businesses as they engage virtual worlds, Linden is also uniquely positioned to integrate OpenSim/Second Life backend data streams and institutional business data. Services and products that help connect OpenSim to Active Directory or other data structures makes sense.
- Custom virtual world solutions. Out of the box isn’t always the best solution, and there’s plenty of room for consultants to offer services which customize OpenSim server code to meet specific business needs – perhaps beyond the integration of business data. Linden Lab’s experience in building Second Life in the first place places them at the top of this list as well.
What does this mean for education? I believe this answers questions regarding the long term viability of Second Life – perhaps not as a unique platform but as a type of virtual environment; the revenue streams I’m suggesting allow Linden Lab to actively pursue interoperability between the main grid and OpenSims, as I suggested back in April and as they are currently doing with IBM. For me, all of that suggests that the Second Life type platform – either Second Life proper or the reverse engineered OpenSim version – will continue to exist and expand. It makes educational ventures into Second Life more viable over the short term with some level of confidence that work done now may realistically be transferred to an institutionally owned OpenSim server that potentially integrates with other business systems.
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Teleporting between OpenSim & Second Life
Jul 8th
A rare instance of simply passing along news from another site, but the news warrants it, imho.
IBM and Linden Lab have announced that research teams from the two companies successfully teleported avatars from the Second Life Preview Grid into a virtual world running on an OpenSim server, marking the first time an avatar has moved from one virtual world to another. It’s an important first step toward enabling avatars to pass freely between virtual worlds . . .
The full story is available at the Second Life blog.
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Understanding Project Wonderland (NMC 2008)
Jun 15th
Project Wonderland – the Open Virtual Worlds project by NMC and Sun Microsystems – was highlighted by both a pre-conference workshop and a concurrent session. I attended the concurrent session on Thursday. All of my notes are available in the archive of my live blog, and Brett Bixler of Penn State also blogged about the session and project.
My comments here will focus on comparing Project Wonderland and Second Life. My primary interest in virtual worlds other than Second Life is whether or not they have capabilities to suggest they could or should supplant Second Life as the “MUVE of choice” for instructional activities.
Project Wonderland does offer several intriguing features that are particularly useful within learning environments. First, it natively supports live application sharing via X Windows; the session demonstrated the application sharing capability using what appeared to be the Windows Calculator. While there are limitations (only certain applications are supported), the capability still appears to be well ahead of anything I’ve heard suggested or planned by Linden Lab for Second Life. Second, as described by Dr. Jordan Slott, integration with business data is important, and it is very scalable. That provides unique advantages given opportunities to integrate enterprise management systems with the backend of a virtual environment platform. Third, the integrated telephony features to Wonderland are, in my opinion, truly impressive. It is possible to dial a call directly from within Wonderland; the caller on the other end of the line is represented in-world as an orb-shaped avatar. That avatar can be picked up and carried around by an in-world avatar and/or handed off to any avatar as an object; that makes it easy for teleconferencing and switching from multi-party to person-person private phone conversations.
Unfortunately, I believe there are several issues surrounding Project Wonderland that make it less attractive than Second Life at the moment.
First, Project Wonderland does not have in-world building or scripting tools; it utilizes what Dr. Slott referred to as an “Art Path” for building, and a scripting tool will not be available until a Fall 2008 release (assuming it stays on schedule). Wonderland uses existing tools like Maya, Photoshop, Blender or Gimp to develop objects and textures to be imported into the environment; they do have a World Builder that provides more rudimentary build tools, but it still provides a develop and upload type process whether than in world building tools. I prefer the in-world building tools of Second Life for two reasons. First, they allow in-world, real time collaborative building among avatars that Project Wonderland doesn’t seem to support very well. Second, despite the many complaints regarding the Second Life in-world build tools, I believe they make building more accessible to a broader audience; many more educators are capable of learning the Second Life build tools compared to those that will be able to learn 3D development tools like Maya or Blender. Dr. Slott did indicate that the 0.5 release of Wonderland – anticipated for Fall 2008 – will have a simplified art path, but I don’t believe that includes in world build tools that are less difficult to learn and use than tools like Maya, Blender, Gimp or Photoshop. For the long term success of Wonderland, I think it will be important for it to offer in-world build tools in addition to supporting 3rd party tools.
Second, as an open source project, Project Wonderland is being designed with less capability than Second Life and an intentional and necessary reliance on the open source community. Certainly, open source tools can provide a robust solution that’s ultimately configurable and ultimately affordable, and once it has matured, the development community is of tremendous benefit. However, the growth of any development community takes time (I estimate at least 1.5-2 years), so I think that makes Project Wonderland a longer term consideration as a realistic alternative to Second Life for most institutions. And, for any organization other than a research university, it seems unlikely that the programming proficiency necessary to customize or add features to a virtual world environment will be immediately available. So, until the development community has matured and stabilized (perhaps 3+ years out) and barring catastrophic changes or events at Linden lab, I believe Second Life will and perhaps should maintain educator’s preference in regard to virtual worlds for at least the next 2-3 years.
With that said, with the interest in and growth of virtual worlds combined with the development of Project Wonderland by a partnership between the New Media Consortium and Sun Microsystems, the project could certainly move much more quickly. And, there are other issues (interoperability) which could intervene and have a significant impact as well.
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...A New Hype Curve for SL: Private, Secure Sims & Open Source
Apr 3rd
Semi-breaking news is worth a mention here followed by an educational and instructional design type perspective. The story was scooped by Reuters, although apparently ahead of the wishes of Linden Lab & IBM. In short,
IBM said on Wednesday it will become the first company to host private regions of the Second Life Grid on its own servers, marking a new focus by Linden Lab on serving corporate customers.
There are additional links to the story below which are drawn from my diigo/delicious feed; as I add additional stories to that feed, links to them will show below. Check back for updates.
Before I get to the implications and issues I see relevant to education, I *have* to point to point out a blog post written in late September of 2006 that predicted a transition for Linden Labs into the business of being a “secure virtual host . . . perhaps focusing on enterprise islands.”
Now. Potential implications and issues.
First, I believe this may reinvigorate the declining hype curve regarding Second Life, or perhaps more accurately, it will create a new hype curve. Big business entered Second Life initially looking to explore and exploit the marketing potential of the platform. In contrast, this move by Linden Lab and IBM focuses on the collaboration potential of Second Life for global organizations: reducing travel costs, increasing communication, establishing deeper relationships within an organization, etc. It will be interesting to see how many businesses jump into (or back into) Second Life for the collaborative possibilities; if the hype curve does heat back up, it may benefit educators attempting to sell administrators on a Second Life
Second, the initial report, along with earlier speculation, suggests that this is a transition in business model for Linden Lab. They are uniquely positioned to be the unquestioned leader for managing secure, private servers for corporate & organizational clients . . .
As originators of Second Life, likely minders of the open source platform development, and a 3D world hosting service, Linden Lab could roll out another platform that would be compatible with the original, but which was improved in a number of ways . . .
This transition enable subsequent changes which have further applications.
Third, with Linden Lab transitioning it’s business model to focus on private, secure Second Life servers for corporate/organizational clients, it becomes feasible, from a business perspective, to open source the server simulator application. Open sourcing the current server application would facilitate the rapid development of the platform by the community-at-large; plus, institutions could explore and innovate on local, private secure simulators without connecting to the main grid. That’s particularly important for K-12 classrooms; a K-12 institution with a local sim and controlled access to the main grid could engage Second Life locally and then branch out to the main grid, with proper classroom supervision. Essentially, the open sim could better integrate Teen Grid activities with the main grid without increasing the risk to young learners.
Fourth, one of the first issues mentioned by IT personnel when I first raised the SL question focused on the concern that all of our SL assets would be stored on servers other than our own; that raises questions around disaster recovery, backup plans, data recovery and business continuity which are critical for the institution. Having the option of either using an open source sim behind our own firewall or having a private, secure server hosted by a company focused on that service may overcome objections raised by IT personnel to SL projects.
Fifth, the early reports all suggest that interoperability is becoming a reality. At the very least, the interoperability between the private, secure sims and the main grid is a reality, for IBM at least, and as that business grows so to will the development of established interoperability standards and protocols. If this transition leads to open sourcing of the simulator, the worldwide development of an open sourced simulator would simultaneously require and facilitate interoperability as well.
There were a few other thoughts floating around. Most of them are related to open source sim; if something else surfaces, I’ll post here. The articles I’m tagging related to this story are below.
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Second Life for Dummies Event
Mar 27th
Wiley Publishing hosted an in-world event with Intellagirl Tully and Typewriter Tackleberry, the authors of Second Life for Dummies. Although I missed the first twenty minutes or so stuck longer in evening commuter traffic than I expected, it was a good event. The question and answer time was well worth it. There were several take-aways I had from the discussion that are worth mentioning here:
First, Intellagirl commented that SkidzPrimz is an invaluable build tool; I believe I had encountered it before but had not looked at it closely since I’ve not done much building to this point. After re-visiting it, I will likely purchase it based on Intellagirl’s recommendation as I begin building an upcoming project. See the SkidzPartz website for more information.
Second, Intellagirl’s comments regarding the change in Second Life leadership were interesting; if I remember correctly (didn’t save a transcript, see below), the essence of her response was that she doesn’t think it will impact the day to day use of Second Life much in the short term. The impact will primarily be behind the scenes at first with growth coming later. I thought it was interesting that she commented that “all bets are off if they IPO.” I assume the IPO would lead to faster growth and development with the increased capital to support development of the platform.
Third, I know this question has likely been addressed extensively on the SLED listserv, but I’ll post it here again since it’s come up. I asked the Wiley staff about a chat transcript being available; the response I received was that it would not be available because they would need to get permission from each person that participated in the discussion before they could publish it. Is the event not considered a public event? Or, at least, would Wiley Publishing not own the rights to publish the transcript since it occurred at their event and on their parcel?
Finally, the event was well organized with an adjacent parcel housing “balcony seating” for overflow avs. The cool thing about it was “Opera Glasses” which, when worn and activated, automatically focused your camera view on the stage with a perfect view of the moderator, Intellagirl and Typewriter. It’s a useful tool which needs to be socked away in memory for use later.
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Future of the Multi-User Virtual Environments? Second Life?
Aug 28th
With any exploration of Second Life or other virtual environments by my institution currently on hold until, at the very least, we get further into the Fall semester for things to calm down, I know I’m going to face a number of questions regarding the viability of multi-user virtual environments for educational uses in general and, specifically, the long term viability of Second Life.
With news and blog headlines like:
- Crisis in Second Life Financial Sector Deepens
- Why I gave up on Second Life (by Wired Magazine)
- 500,000 for an elaborate Second Life build in the middle of a ghost world
- The realities of Virtual Worlds for Corporate Sites
- Second Life Companies Leaving for First Life
- Second Life Growth Slowing Down
- Second Life Business Exodus
Why should any educational institution get involved with MUVE’s or Second Life? A few thoughts.
First, multi-user virtual environments aren’t going away. Two stories highlight this simple fact.
My daughter recently got a Webkinz; it’s a stuffed animal that has a virtual counterpart online at www.webkinz.com. She named her pink poodle webkinz “Cotton Candy,” and she goes online for at least a few minutes a day to feed and play with Cotton Candy, and she’s learning as she does it. Wes Fryer commented on Webkinz as well. Multi-user virtual environments are not going to go away, if for no other reason, because our children are now growing up with mixed reality toys.
Second, Second Life may be merely experiencing the hype curve which is widely acknowledged although perhaps not fully understood. Whether it’s the hype curve or the s-shaped innovation curve, there will be increased use of Second Life and other virtual environments.
Third, the possibilities and promise of multi-user virtual environments will sustain interest by the education industry, and for Second Life in particular, the relative openness of the framework, in my opinion, guarantees an advantage of competing virtual environments. Second Life allows educators to build freely at first; the scripting language further enhances the possibilities along with the llHttpRequest function which enables interoperability with web-based resources : Metaverse Roadmap : Pros and Cons of Second Life.
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...SL Grid Strain – Linden’s Contingency Plan?
Feb 26th
Brett Bixler writing for the Penn State University Virtual Worlds Blog called this issue to my attention; I believe it is important enough of an issue to cross-post here.
Linden Labs’ official Contingency Measures to Ensure Service as Second Life Grows was published on the LL blog a little more than a week ago. In summary, when use peaks to the point of causing grid slow downs (typically on the weekends), the Grid Status will be changed to Restricted which means that only premium account holders, land owners or those that have purchased currency on the LindeX will be able to log-in. Users not meeting those criteria when the status of the grid changes will not be affected unless they log out; they won’t be able to re-enter the grid until the status changes back to normal.
Bret, I believe, accurately indicated in his blog that this Contingency Plan could have a disproportionate impact on education-centered users. If you’re using SL as a means of communicating with your students, you should consider and/or ask your students several questions… Do you qualify as a SL resident able to log on when the grid is Restricted? To what extent are you using SL for academic activities during weekend hours? Can your schedule be modified to engage class activities during SL’s non-peak hours? Is the $10/month for a premium account beyond your financial resources?
As Bret also suggested, you might consider posting a comment to the Official LL blog requesting they review their contingency plan and consider the impact it may have on educational endeavors; copying and pasting his comment may be an effective choice.
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