What Virtual World tools are the favorites of educators and trainers?

Mixed Reality Presentations - [ZONE] Touch Screen Media Television with Searchable YouTube and Flickr

What's special about this in-world media TV?

You can substitute the uploading of Powerpoint texture slides into Second Life for L$10 each, and stream a Flickr slideshow into Second Life for presentation purposes for free. When in standby mode, the default screen can be replaced with your own picture by dropping a texture into the contents of the TV. This thus enables mixed reality presentations using Flickr as repository.

Mixed reality videocasting (or webcasting) using the video (or audio) function needs to be assessed.

- The recent U2 concert at the Rose Bowl was streamed live by YouTube Live.
http://ca.reuters.com/article/entertainmentNews/idCATRE59J07R20091020
- 2009 Nobel Prize Announcements are the First Live Stream Event on YouTube Broadcast From Europe
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/2009-Nobel-Prize-prnews-1806693347.ht...

http://www.youtube.com/live

Use cases: Mixed reality brainstorming, mindmapping, project management, even virtual world retailers, nightclubs, and events without educational ambitions...

Second Life seeks to mix the real and virtual worlds
http://www.v3.co.uk/v3/analysis/2245257/second-life-continues-grow

Top 10 Sites about Flickr
http://www.xmarks.com/topic/flickr

Facebook Group: Augmented Reality
http://www.facebook.com/augmentedreality

Check the general, YouTube, audio, video, receiver, streaming, and HUD remote control features.

Xstreet SL purchase price L$849
https://www.xstreetsl.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=ite...

Flickr Features

- Browse public photostreams as thumbnails
- Direct link photostream url in chat or load a preset from your TV's web based setup page
- Sequential slideshow of public images
- Random slideshow of public images
- Adjustable slideshow display time
- Licensed by Flickr for commercial distribution

Notecard configuration is also a thing of the past having been replaced by a new web based configuration system. Lifetime free updates.

Assessment Summary

Target Requirement: To reduce the need for deploying other tools, thus lowering costs and time of the learning curve and enhancing quality at the same time - in total, increasing productivity.

Costs/Savings:
1. The purchase price of L$849 is offset by picture texture upload savings. Assuming 85 uploads @ L$10, the tool purchase price quickly breaks-even from an opportunity cost viewpoint.
2. The learning curve for the deployment of a variety of other tools is significantly reduced, thus reducing time and costs. Lifelong free updates of this media TV also allow to expect for further-going features and savings.

Benefits:
1. Further savings are achieved due to the extensive multi-purpose features (Flickr and Youtube streaming) offered. The general, audio, video, receiver, streaming, and HUD remote control features offered enhances this viewpoint.
2. A mixed reality configuration can be implemented, thus increasing the marketing and promotional capability to attract out-world and in-world people and avatars.
3. Fits into an androgogic "man-lead" versus pedagogic "child-lead" context.

Drawbacks:
1. The Receiver requires to be deeded to the Sim on which the media TV is operated. The operator must also be a member of the according Sim group. The operations manuals as notecard and website yet provide extensive explanations.

Quality:
1. For the end-client avatar, the streaming quality of the tool is outstanding.
2. Support and technical manuals are outstanding.
3. Operational control via website is outstanding.

Tags: Flickr, Media, Screen, Searchable, Television, Touch, YouTube, ZONE, audio, control

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by James O'Reilly on October 28, 2009 at 5:00pm: Daniel Livingstone pointed me to this...

hi james,

cant recall if you've covered the sloodle presenter in any of your posts.

part of the open source SLOODLE toolset, the presenter allows users to prepare presentations which can combine web-pages, images and videos on the web (using Moodle). Presentations can then be viewed either in Moodle or in SL/OpenSim.

e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f50oagpkEfg

There is also a plugin that automatically converts pdf's into multiple image files.

Presentations can be edited, re-ordered, etc in Moodle at any time.

cheers
daniel
more on SLOODLE here: www.sloodle.org; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by James O'Reilly on October 28, 2009 at 6:01pm: Both examples can now be assessed using opportunity cost principles under the following Target Requirement: To reduce the need for deploying other tools, thus lowering costs and time of the learning curve and enhancing quality at the same time - in total, increasing productivity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_costs; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by James O'Reilly on October 28, 2009 at 6:22pm: Daniel Livingstone followed-up...

The target requirement "increasing productivity" is a key motivator of the SLOODLE project overall - specifically to make it easier for teachers to bring their classes to SL without having to create all their content in SL. Indeed, to make it possible for mainstream educators who don't have three months spare to learn SL to still be able to bring their classes into the virtual world.

It can seem daunting because there is a complete suite of tools - but the same is true of Learning Management Systems in general, large and complex systems which at the end of the day are about making it easier for tutors to create and manage eLearning without having to learn html or how to create web-sites themselves

Moodle is already used by over 30 million tutors and students worldwide - and this is real users, not just people signing up for SL who then maybe only log in once every few months. Many more regular users than SL can count. So I think using Moodle for a productivity/learning management back end does make some sense :-)
Statistics here: http://moodle.org/stats/

While many of our users install their own Moodle sites, install SLOODLE and do everything themselves, the key target is institutions where technical support staff install the web software - leaving tutors with much less work to do.

cheers

Daniel; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by James O'Reilly on October 29, 2009 at 5:36am: Daniel Livingstone followed-up some more..

There was one previous case study, from work at KAIST and the Dubai
womens college:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/13151825/SLOODLE-Case-Study-1

And Cypris Chat is a community which mixes andragogy and pedagogy, and
includes registered students, informal students, and language tutors -
many of whom are there primarily as a form of online CPD

See http://cypris.ning.com/

This last is run by Prof Merryman in-world, and has been using a whole
bunch of experimental and in-development SLOODLE tools,

cheers
Daniel; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by James O'Reilly on November 11, 2009 at 6:32am: I found that Flickr caps the sum of pics to 200, then you need to pay! I just hit that limit, so i deleted some pics. Just $24.95 for a 1 year pro account. You can get a 2 year account for $47.99:

http://www.flickr.com/help/limits/

The link says that you can't recover any of your monthly allowance by deleting pics, but for total limits, delete has an affect. It was described when I hit the limit.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by James O'Reilly on November 14, 2009 at 12:29pm: Meanwhile, I added a process to the Mixed Reality Presentation process using the Flickr.com slides:

1. The slides can imported into Photoshow.com as provided by Roxio, and then be processed to a Flash video including music, captions, and some graphic elements. This is amazingly striking. Photoshow offers a 30 day free trial, then you pay US$40 annually.

2. In reverse, you can take a screenshot (maybe using Jing from TechSmith) of single Photoshow slides, and improve the Flickr slideshow (e.g. for an address card).

3. Photoshow.com then allows for export to a MPEG4 file for YouTube.com. Even iPhone and DVD export is available, and a sharing function is provided in order to embed code into blogs etc.; ▶ Reply to This