Virtual Maternity Unit wins 2012 RCM Innovation Award

The Virtual Maternity Unit which I built (and Fay Cross scripted) for Jenny Bailey, Academic Division Midwifery, School of Nursing, Midwifery and Physiotherapy at the University of Nottingham, has received the Philips Avent Award for Innovation in Midwifery from the Royal College of Midwifery.
A press release went out on Friday the 20th. Look for 'Click here for the full story,' where Jenny describes the sim in greater detail, or view the full press release on the MIDIRS site.

Meanwhile, I have edited my PowerPoint presentation for the demonstration on the VMU I gave at the IRVW2011 conference, and you can now see it on SlideShare.

The poster I created to describe the VMU for AltC 2010 likewise won the Best Poster Competition, as voted by conference delegates.
Another poster along the same lines went with Jenny Bailey and Bob Hallawell to the Net11 conference.A lot of work went into the creation of the Virtual Maternity Unit, so I will be following up with a review of the build while it was under development. The PP presentation on SlideShare covers some of this. I can personally attest to the immersive nature of the simulation, as I had to test the birth mother's avatar skin as I was making it, as well as test and tweak the animations and poses while in progress. There is nothing like having folks [virtually] walk in on you when you are [virtually] draped (clothed) over a birthing ball and ask "What are you Doing?" to give a sense of truly 'being there.' Oh, if avatars could blush.

World War 1 poets in SL_9th Virtual Worlds in Education Forum

Lest We Forget: The Sound of the Western Front

After lunch, Chris Stephens, Senior Developer with Oxford University Computing Services, shared his Second Life recreation of life and conditions on the Western Front in the 1914-18 time period. The environment uses several levels to model the life in the camps and on the front, and features digitised archival materials from major poets of the time period, as well as shades of soldiers recounting various aspects of life on the front. The WindLight settings were grimly atmospheric, with bomb-blasted trees in silhouette on the horizon. Rats scurried about most realistically and sounds faded in and out as he walked along the trenches in uniform.

As a means of setting a scene to understand literature, this environment succeeded almost too well, as itevoked a depth of emotion unfathomed by reading alone. The senses of sight, sound and touch were engaged, and a desire to learn more instilled. Amazingly, Chris Stephens, with the help of Alun Edwards, had only 6 weeks to complete the re-creation.

If he had not already been an adept builder and scriptor, such a promethean task would not have been possible. Visit the sim in SL, or browse the Flicker photostream. Link to machinima of the sim: Torn Fields – war poets1914-1918

Missionmaker, Virtual Identity, OpenSim_9th Virtual Worlds in Education Forum

The first presentation was by Andrew Hutchinson, Project Leader, Midland Leadership Centre, who gave an enthusiastic demo of an interesting and inexpensive tool for drag-and-drop creation of virtual learning/gaming spaces. Missionmaker is touted as a game authoring tool for creative learning. A child could use it, yet the interactivity creation seemed quite feasible and the results looked professional. Some examples were shown with Western environments, and Space centers, complete with avatars, props and a robot with a voice recording. Apparently, it is fun to use, and a standalone version costs under £100 with VAT included. Site licences are also available. Missionmaker is made by Immersive Education, who also created Kar2ouche.

Hey, Spike! What’ya Like?*

After the coffee break, Mark Childs made a presentation from the floor, highlighting his recently completed PhD, Learners’ Experiences in Virtual Worlds. The gist of his talk centered around the notion of ‘embodied cognition’. Mark had found that for cognition in Virtual Worlds to be effective, one first needed to establish a virtual body schema.

Learning outcomes were tied to how well students inhabited and related to their avatar selves. In the absence of sufficient time in which to customise an avatar, students felt less immersed in their surroundings. A newcomer, for example, would not understand the notion of the ‘feel’ of a virtual space. Thus, immersive feelings such as ‘claustrophobic’, ‘airy’ or ‘cosy’ would not be understood as descriptions of a virtual space in the absence of self projection. To illustrate the difference between pre- and post-embodiment, Mark, aka, Gann McGann, has allowed his virtual self to be photographed ‘before’ and ‘after’. A certain jaded look seems to have accompanied the transformation, and he now looks like he knows how to use those spikes. *Tom Petty, 1985

Is there VoIP on Mars?

In another presentation from the floor, Drew Crow from Worcestershire Local Authority shared some insights into development and use of Open Sim for creating a virtual space in which school students themselves could recreate a Cholera Hospital. Another project shown was their Mars open terrain sim, housed in a crater at a reduced scale, wherein students explored issues relating to creation and habitation of space stations.

Projects and workflow are covered in greater detail, with videos, in Drew’s own blog. The difficulties in arranging for Linden Labs to accept under 18 yr-olds in Second Life precluded use of that environment, so OS seemed the best choice, with FreeSWITCH used to enable Open Source Voice Conferencing. Apparently, some fore-knowledge of Linux was useful, but not mandatory. Drew mentioned that OS allowed creation of 2×2 regions, and demonstrated it could even be run as a standalone on a laptop, installed with time-saving Diva Distro . Drew has also created a blog covering solutions to getting the most out of the commercial University learning platform, which many of the schools in his area are using.

More presentations to follow: WW1 in SL, COMSLIVE and VERT.

Notes from the 9th Virtual Worlds in Education Forum

This series of articles was first published on the IS Learning Technology blog in December 2010.

The one-day conference was held in the amazing new Secole Building at Birmingham City University on the 8th of December, 2010.

This being my first such virtual worlds meeting, I was surprised to recognise names amongst the participants and encounter builders of well-know marvels, in person, no less. The event was organised by Jane Edwards of RSC West Midlands, and hosted by Nigel Wynne, a Senior Academic in Learning and Teaching at the BCU and Head of the Online Simulation and Immersive Education (OSIME) Research Group, ‘which develops and evaluates 2D and 3D technologies in support of health care education. (I had a look at the Seacole website prior to heading over and was very impressed.)

Ongoing Costs and Restrictions

In general discussion, delegates agreed that many of the HE institutions with a Second Life presence are concerned about Linden Lab’s upcoming withdrawal of the 50% educational discount. The frustrations of delivering learning content in a commercial virtual world are propelling many to consider an exit strategy and the potential to grid-link with others’ educational sims in a non-commercial environment.

As of Dec. 15^th, 2010, Linden Labs has closed the Teen SL and is allowing under-18 residents onto the main SL grid. The new terms of service appear when logging in the first time thereafter. The Viewer 2 maturity ratings guidelines are less reminiscent of those used to describe movies, and are now letters ‘G’ for General, ‘M’ for Moderate and ‘A’ for Adult. Children younger than 13 years-old are not allowed, and the other ages have guidelines for which rated areas they may enter. Many are disappointed at the loss of this more sheltered environment.

Shared Resources and Strategies

Along the collaborative route, Nigel Wynne proposed pooling resources from HE institutions such that easily transferrable items such as scripting solutions and 3D assets could be made available to the educational community. I could certainly contribute some textures.

Later, when searching for articles and events around HE strategies concerned with sustainable involvement in Virtual Worlds (as a cross-UK initiative), I came across the Virtual Worlds Education Roundtable. The VWERGrid’s Educators Land Initiative has 40 parcels available ‘for free to those with direct ties to education’. Parcels are being assigned a rapid rate and a community is expected to grow and flourish in this new OpenSim-based grid.

The University of Rockcliffe is also holding a virtual conference, Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education 2011, in Second Life, March 17-19.

Back up for a minute

Although on last perusal, Second Inventory appeared to be the ideal solution for backing up builds and scripts created and owned by a single avatar, many conference attendees at the Virtual Worlds in Education Forum recommended the Imprudence viewer, which I assume can back up inventory, much like the now banned Emerald Viewer. A bonus when launching the Imprudence viewer is the assumption that Second Life is not the first choice of one’s default grid. The logo for Imprudence is the American Sign Language gesture, often seen held aloft at rock concerts to show appreciation, signifying, ‘I love you’, which seems rather fitting for a third-party viewer. On another note, the development team behind the Emerald viewer has recently launched a brand new viewer for accessing the Virtual World Web. From them I would expect more of a sign language gesture for tenacity.

Group discussions also centered on potential use of Xbox 360’s Kinect sensors and code to enable natural avatar movement. On further investigation online, some interesting and unforeseen things are being done with it already. Some uses might even raise your eyebrows, if not your heart rate.