3/27/12 Upgrading the Blog!

I am taking a temporary hiatus from this blog.  I will be adding videos and rewriting some of the tutorials in this blog.  Please check back in June!

Thank you for reading!

3/14/12 Changing Your Appearance - Edit Clothing

Control over How You Look and What You Wear


You can change the way you look by editing and creating clothes.  This is an easy function to use, but it can take up a lot of your time.

To customize your appearance:

1) Right-click or opt-command click (mac) on your avatar.  A menu will come up.
2) Click on Appearance. The Appearance Box comes up.
There are 2 sections to the Appearance Box - Clothing and Body Parts.


Clothing:

-->  The most important thing to remember is to SAVE AS when you are done.  

NAME your new look.

 (Just like when you are saving a word file...)

When you click on one of the clothing buttons, that article of clothing will appear with slide menus. You can edit the shape, color and texture of the clothing.

• Choose which piece of clothing you want to edit. 
• Change the shape of the clothing with the slide menus
• Change the color.  Click on the color box and a color picker will come up - you have thousands of colors to choose from.
• Change the texture.  Click on the Fabric box and your texture inventory will come up.  You can use ANY texture - it doesn't matter what the texture was originally created for.  
• Save the new item - be sure to name it.
• Open your Inventory to double check that it is there.

Just Try It!  Experiment with the sliding options, the color options and the texture options in the Appearance Box.

3/11/12 Connected Learning

Connected Learning - a new model
Designed to 'mine the new social, digital domain'
http://hastac.org/blogs/slgrant/2012/03/01/researchers-introduce-new-model-learning
http://connectedlearning.tv/
http://clrn.dmlhub.net/


I was happy to see the introduction of Connected Learning at the DML (Digital Media and Learning) conference this year.  The elements of this idea have been around and talked about quite a bit, but this is a framework that professionals can use and build on.  Importantly, it is not meant to be the 'be all, end all'.  As we work with students to learn, we share our understandings and this model will evolve and emerge.  The MacArthur Foundation www.macfound.org is the leading institution exploring these ideas.


Here are the set of principles of Connected Learning (italics) and a brief interpretation.  


3 Contexts:
Interest-powered.  Research has repeatedly shown that when a subject is personally interesting and relevant, learners achieve much higher-order learning outcomes.
If the learning is interesting to the student, they will be engaged, they will want to experience the learning and therefore learn more more broadly and deeply.  The more they learn, the more they will want to learn, the more they will want to share their learning, the more complicated their understandings become.


Peer-supported.  In their everyday exchanges with peers and friends, young people are fluidly contributing, sharing and giving feedback in web-powered experiences that are highly engaging.
When people can make a contribution to a shared environment, such as a virtual world, they have a vested interest in that environment.  They will be more motivated, more engaged, more interested in sharing their experiences.  They will both learn and support their peers in learning.


Academically-oriented.  When academic studies and institutions draw from and connect to young people's interest driven pursuits, learners flourish and realize their true potential.
Academic studies which connect to young people and their interests can enhance and optimize the teens learning experiences.  For this to happen the academic studies must be able to access the young people and their interests.


3 Design Principles:
Production-centered.  Connected Learning prioritizes the learning that comes from actively producing, creating, experimenting and designing, because it promotes skills and dispositions for lifelong learning, and for making meaningful contributions to today's rapidly changing work and social conditions.
This learning model focuses on learning in highly networked connected environments.  There is user agency in exploration, experimenting with ideas, designing and creating, and publicly shared products.  These activites evolve and emerge from users perspectives and  interests.


Open networks.  Today's platforms and digital tools can make learning resources abundant, accessable and visible across all learner settings.
New media is proliferating, allowing as never before, for production centered activities.


Shared purpose.  Today's social media and web-based communities provide unprecedented opportunities for cross-generational and cross-cultural learning and connection to unfold and thrive among common goals and interests.
Learning occurs around common interests.  The nature of the communities formed around these common interests is changing - the communities can be much more diverse than ever before.  And, that diversity leads to more learning.


Briefly:


More research needs to be done to explore these points.  Lets try this with teens and see where they lead us.  Practice informs research as research informs practice.


These ideas are not discreet.  They are connected.

3/7/12 Easter Eggs

Stuff for your Inventory


All through the island are easter eggs - objects that hold items that you can put in your inventory.  When you mouse over an egg, a $ will appear - you can 'buy' the items in the egg.  Everything on Peninsula is free because it is a Creative Commons environment.  The users of Peninsula share the objects they create for free with other users of Peninsula.

For instance, many of the eggs hold clothing.  Most of this clothing was created by Linda Kellie Designs, another user in Kitely.  (ty LKD!) LKD has provided these free of charge to users in Kitely because the clothes are licensed under Creative Commons.

Here's how you get that clothing into your inventory and then wear it.  When you find an egg:
1.  Mouse over it to see if $ shows up.  If it does...
2.  Click on the egg.  A box with the list of contents with the option to buy.
3.  Click on Buy on the menu.
4.  The items will appear in your Inventory.

Once you have those items, all you have to do is drag and drop them from your inventory onto your avatar.  Voila!  A new sweater.  The word (worn) will appear next to the item you are now wearing in the inventory.  It may take a minute or two for the clothing to 'rez' (appear).

I will add eggs on a regular basis.  Some may obvious and some may be hidden  :-).

2/20/12 Simple Scripts with Scratch 4SL. Example.

Simple Scripting with Scratch

Here is a concrete example of creating a script with Scratch.  We will put a script into an object to make it rattle and roll when touched.  The object is a crate which has fallen off of a pirate ship.

Think about your screen as divided into 4 parts:

• the Commands (in Scratch), 
• the Script a place where commands are assembled (in Scratch), 
• your Inventory where you save the script on your grid, and 
• the contents of the OBJECT you are scripting for. 

You move from left to right, going through each one of these sections.
In this video you can see the crate outlined in yellow - this is the object we are scripting for.

Scratch Commands --> Scratch Script   First move commands into the script window.  
From the control menu:  When I am touched
From the sound menu (the rattle):  Play Sound  (type in the name of the sound.  I put in rattle441)
From the Motion menu (the roll): Roll 15 (this is the motion.  Change 15 to 90 = 90 degrees)

From the control menu:  Repeat (type in how many times you want it to repeat.  I put in 6 times)

Scratch Script -->  Linden Script --> Inventory 
Save the Scratch script as a Linden script (Copy Linden Script button).
Then, Create a New Script in your inventory.

Named the New Script.  We named it rattle and roll.  Double click on it to open it.

Paste. The Linden Script will automatically paste in.

Inventory --> Object Contents.

If the Object isn't opened yet,

Right click (opt-command) on the object you want to rattle and roll.

Select Edit.

The editing box will come up.

Click on the contents tab.

Drag the script rattle and roll from the inventory into the contents.

Drag the sound rattle 441 from the inventory into the contents.

Close the inventory. Close the editing box.

Test!

(video coming)

These scripts can involve sound, motion and any number of other actions.

2/15/12 Simple interaction using Scratch

Making Scripting Simple


It is important to make all of the features of the virtual world as accessible to users and to creators as possible.  Scripts provide this accessibility.  Teens can learn OSS (OpenSim Scripting) but the learning curve is fairly steep.  Most will want a simple way to generate scripts for movement, for sound and for special effects.


You have a few options in how to create a script.

• You can create your own script.
• You can copy existing scripts and edit them for your purposes.  An example of how to do that with sound scripts is in an earlier post.
• You can create YOUR OWN UNIQUE interaction using a script generator - Scratch for Second Life.

--> Background:
Scratch is an animation scripting program and is a project of the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab.   Eric Rosenbaum is in this Group.  He has taken Scratch and developed an interface to convert Scratch scripts to LSL (Linden Scripting Language) and OSS.


--> The link to download Scratch for Second Life (S4SL) is:
http://web.mit.edu/~eric_r/Public/S4SL/
It looks like this when you open it:

The left column is Commands.  Clicking on the categories on the upper left will bring up different commands that you can string together to create movement, sound and interaction.  You drag the Commands into the Script area to create the script.  Go to the next blog post to see an example of Creating and Using a Scratch Script.

2/13/12 The importance of detail and interaction

Create Interaction and Detail

One of my hypotheses is that including attention to detail and interaction will be more motivating and engaging for users in the environment.  So, I have a shipwrecked pirate ship that is fun.  You can crawl all over it and find boxes and items that you may be able to use in your own builds.

I have built 3 levels of detail and interaction.  This is the beginning of thinking of a taxonomy of interaction:

• First level (visual) - There are a number of crates (thank you AJ Kelton) scattered on the sea floor, the beach and in the pirate ship.
• Second level (audio) - when you touch these crates, a noise is made - a bomb, a creak, a zing, a rattle and so on.
• Third level (animated) - when the crates make a noise, they move. They all move differently and there is a relationship between the noise and the movement.  For instance, one crate has a whistle and then a bomb sound when touched.  As the whistle starts , the crate moves 2 meters up, rotates and falls back down hitting the ground as the bomb goes off.

(video coming)

You get visual by BUILDING inworld.  There will be several posts in the future explaining how to build inworld.  You get audio and animation by WRITING SCRIPTS that tell the objects what to do.  The next blog posts explain how to write a script using Scratch for Second Life.