1/23/12 Definitions

Early thinking and definitions:

Creating peninsula, a virtual island in Open Sim on the Kitely Grid.

Definitions - Second Life is the original widely known virtual world grid.  Originally a haven for educators, they changed management and created an environment that was not educator friendly.  Many educators are going to OpenSim, the open source equivilent of Second Life.  Its kind of like using Open Office instead of Microsoft Office.

There are hundreds of grids in OpenSim.  They are run individually or by grid managers who oversee a large number of related grids (ReactionGrid and Jokaydia are examples) or a large number of individual grids (Kitely is an example).

I am on Kitely because they provide a useful service - I can create a grid and duplicate it as many times as I want.  So, I can create a curriculum looking at the southern plantation societies of the 1850's by creating a complete plantation on a grid, write the curriculum for the unit, and duplicate it every time someone wants to use the unit.  Up until now, that was more difficult to do.

However, one of my primary interests in bringing teens to a virtual world is to provide an environment where THEY can create the content.  A grid that can be duplicated is also valuable to me in being able to facilitate that kind of activity.

What I need:
a vehicle script.  Maria Korolov (Hypergrid Business publisher) says that there isn't really a good one for Open Sim.  :-(
a dance/poseball script.  I had implemented this in Second Life (SL) at one point, but I am having trouble duplicating that in Open Sim.

I was in Jokaydia today looking around and it occurred to me that a lot of space and effort in vw's are put towards teaching noob's the basics.  The tutorials that I see seem long. I wonder if they can be taught in about 10 - 20 minutes avatar to avatar  (a2a)?  I don't think teens will need these, they are much savvier that the average 35 - 55 year old. I think these inworld tutorials will be more confusing for them - they can probably figure L1 skills at least for themselves.

As I go through this process research questions (RQ) occur to me.  These do not have to be addressed with formal research (although they could be), but are questions to keep in mind with informal/formal data gathering.

RQ - how quickly and thoroughly can teens find their way around L1 skills without another avatar? w/another 'knowing' avatar?  What pre conceptions do teens come in with?  pre existing skills?

RQ - once the teens are able to move around comfortably in the environment what do they want to be able to do?  How about when they achieve L1 skills?

I am looking for a 3-dimensional maze to model on peninsula - participants can move up and down as well as right and left.

Started private flicker site for textures by mark.  Although Creative Commons, I would like them to maintain attribution if used again.