Oct 27

Snapshot survey #7 of virtual world use in UK Higher and Further Education

Social media, Surveys, VWW 2 Comments »

This is a “Request For Information” for the seventh Virtual World Watch snapshot survey.

This time, there’s just one main question, and a few side points. The main question can be interpreted as broadly, or as narrowly, as you wish. As before, the scope is limited to UK Higher and Further Education.

Blue Mars by Flickr user Connie Sec

The question

How are you using virtual worlds (e.g. Second Life, OpenSim, Metaplace, OLIVE, Active Worlds, Playstation Home, Blue Mars, Twinity, Wonderland) in teaching, learning or research?

Things you may want to include:

  • Why you are using a virtual world.
  • If teaching using a virtual world, how it fits into your curriculum.
  • Any evaluation of the experience of using the virtual world.
  • Will you do it again next year? Why (or why not)?

A few side points

  • Do you know of any other individual, group or project at your institution using virtual worlds for teaching, learning or research? If so, a contact detail would be appreciated.
  • Do you have any interesting screenshots of what you’ve been doing in virtual worlds? If so, then please consider submitting them to the Virtual World use in UK Education Flickr group – thanks.

Group of Second Life avatars by Flickr user James Schwarz

Deadline

Please send your contributions, in whatever format (e.g. email, Word, text) to john (@) virtualworldwatch.net by the end of Friday 20th November. Relevant content submitted by then is guaranteed to go into the report; content received afterwards is unlikely to make it in.

Thank you for your contribution,
Virtual World Watch

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Dec 17

Playstation Home / Annabeth Robinson

People, Quotes, Social media, Worlds 2 Comments »

A message in from J Ross Nicoll at St Andrews University in Scotland. You can reply to him directly at: jrn2005 (@) cs.st-andrews.ac.uk

I’ve been looking at this. From what I can tell initially, there’s a development kit available to PS3 developers (great), but being a PS3 developer means getting a €7,500 PS3 dev kit (not so great). Querying locally to see if anyone would object to a project to recreate an archeological site in Home (we’ve got all the models already, and a version in Second Life, so makes for an obvious comparative study), and hope to approach Sony before the end of the year.

I’d love to know if anyone else is doing anything. Also, if you have any ideas where we could get funding for hardware :)

http://www.scedev.net/home/ is the URL for people to express interest to Sony, for reference.

Annabeth Robinson is a regular contributer to the VWW surveys and a well-known SL developer in UK academia. She also has a beautiful-looking personal website that, for academics with virtual world interests, is well worth a look through. And she is one of the academics having a good exploration of what Playstation Home has to offer. She has a set of pictures on Flickr, of which here are a couple:

Lakeside Apartment in PS3 Home

Lakeside Apartment in PS3 Home

Making a furniture den for the Bears

Making a furniture den for the Bears

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Dec 11

Playstation Home goes open beta

Worlds 1 Comment »

Playstation Home goes Open Beta today. This event is widely covered in the mainstream and gaming media.

The BBC news website has a good introductory article on this games console-based virtual world.

Playstation Home (Picture by Flickr user Dekuwa)

From the article:

PlayStation Home will let gamers create their own avatar -a virtual representation of themselves – and then interact with other users in a 3D environment. Players can chat to other users, invite them into their own “home”, and stream music and videos via virtual Sony TV’s.

VWW has, though not currently in possession of a PS3, had a look at an earlier incarnation of PH. The environment does look good, with lush graphics and backdrops. However, options for building or manipulating content seem either very limited or non-existant, which will be of concern to practitioners in the education sector. Another Google Lively from a functional (or lack of) point of view won’t help the education sector much.

The Wikipedia entry (base reference unknown) hints at future customer optimisation options:

Every user has a private apartment space that they can modify and change over time. The basic apartment is free and will offer users lots of options for customisation and personalisation. In the future, Sony will provide tools that will enable users to have an even greater ability to create their own Home spaces and content.

And this statement (base reference unknown) in the same article is, well, kind of vague:

In the future areas can be developed by major companies outside of gaming. The then Executive Vice President of SCEE, Phil Harrison stated that locations built around famous coffee companies, famous drinks companies, clothing companies, record companies, major retailers and so on could feature depending on whether these companies felt it worthwhile to create something for Home.

(Basically saying “Well, Starbucks might have a presence in Home. Or they might not.”)

Facial detail on avatars does look impressive:

Facial detail on avatar (Picture by Flickr user ukokapi)

Is it worth experimenting with Playstation Home? Unsure. The PS3 is the most expensive of the three games consoles on the market, and it is very unlikely that every student in a class (even of games programmers) will possess one. Kitting out an academic laboratory with PS3s will be difficult to justify.

Having said that, it may be worth exploring Playstation Home to see what is currently technically possible from a high-end, closed technology, virtual world.

Has anyone in the UK HE/FE community experimented with Playstation Home from the perspective of learning, teaching or education? Or are thinking of doing so? Please do let us know if you are. Thanks.

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