Archive for the ‘3D Worlds’ Category

A Guidebook to Virtual Worlds

Tuesday, May 13th, 2008

Blue Book

The Association of Virtual Worlds has published The Blue Book: A Consumer Guide to Virtual Worlds. This free, downloadable book provides a guide, with links, to over 250 virtual worlds along with a glossary. Included are virtual environments for every age group ranging from Disney Fairies Pixie Hollow, Creebies, and Frenzoo, to one of my faves - Neopets, Planet Cazmo, and Scions of Fate. Coming soon: The Green Book: A Business Guide to Virtual Worlds.

Emerging trends in serious games and virtual words

Thursday, April 3rd, 2008

VW_Training

Sara de Freitas writes a chapter for Volume 3 of the Becta research report, Emerging Technologies for Learning, discussing educational trends, issues, and potential uses of virtual worlds. Other interesting research from this volume includes:

Second Life and Higher Ed

Wednesday, March 12th, 2008

SLandHigherEd

University Business discusses the innovative ways colleges and universities are using the Second Life virtual realm for collaboration, instruction, promotion, and machinima creation in Sizing Up Second Life: Higher ed learns how to live in a virtual world.

“The greatest benefit of our Second Life campus has been as a marketing tool, really extending our brand out into a whole different channel,” he says. “Along with creating the campus, we also created a corresponding machinima video on YouTube that has had thousands of hits. That has done wonders in terms of throwing attention not just on our Second Life campus but on Ohio University as well.”

via Educause

Learning in a Virtual World

Thursday, December 20th, 2007

WVFC

I’m all for empowering women to learn about technology, so when Women’s Voices for Change asked me to contribute a piece about educational opportunities in Second Life, I was more than happy to write this article about Learning in a Virtual World. If you’re interested in Second Life learning, you may want to check it out.

A Quick Guide to Second Life for Librarians

Friday, December 14th, 2007

OhioU

Ohio University Campus

Second Life is a massive virtual world with many opportunities for learning and entertainment. Over 60 colleges and universities have a virtual presence there, and are joined by more than 500 librarians. If you are just starting out in this MMOG (massively multiplayer online game), this guide should get you up and running. Follow the SLURLs (Second Life URLs) by clicking or pasting them into your browser’s address bar and then clicking the “teleport now” button on the page to go to that location, (note: you will need to have established a SL account first & have the program installed).

Library Sites in Second Life

These sites are the 12 islands of the Alliance Library System which make up the Info Archipelago:

Places to Learn about Second Life
(building, working with prims, etc.)

Here are some sites to visit when you’re ready to learn how to build the world around you.

Sights to See

SL Blogs

SL Educational Resources

Videos of Second Life

Key Terminology

Your Guide to Virtual Worlds

Sunday, October 21st, 2007

Virtual Worlds

The MediaShift blog has compiled a resource guide to virtual worlds including a glossary, background and history, a section discussing Second Life, a summary of how media companies are using virtual worlds, and a list of resources. Worth a look if you’re a fan of these online environments.

New Second Life Study Shows Slowing Growth

Thursday, October 4th, 2007

A recent study by the Yankee Group has indicated that there has been a significant lack of growth in virtual worlds such as Second Life which may be due to their non-mobile nature. According to this study, Second Lifers only average 12 minutes per month in-world, while sites like Facebook entertain visitors for 186 minutes per month.

Via CrunchGear.

13 Social Networks for Gamers

Tuesday, October 2nd, 2007

The latest niche to expand in the social networking arena is online communities for gamers, and most prominently for players of MMOG’s or massively multiplayer online games, and MMORPGs or massively multiplayer online role-playing games. This is hardly surprising considering it’s recently been reported that 217 million people worldwide play online games, and that strategists are forecasting the online games market to triple its current $4 billion dollar worth over the next 5 years.

guildcafe

  • Second Life Profiles - Social network for Second Lifers.
  • GuildCafe - Slick social network for MMORPG players.
  • Koinup- Social network for players of SL, WOW, The Sims, IMVU, and others.
  • Rupture - Social network for MMORPG gamers, right now aimed at WOW players.
  • Warcraft Social - Social network for WOW players.
  • WOW on MySpace - Quite an impressive MySpace page for WOW players.
  • The Sims Resource - Social network hub for The Sims players.
  • GamerVision - Social network for gamers.
  • Wii Tube - A YouTube for the Wii community
  • MMO Faces - A MySpace-like social network for gamers.
  • Sparter - A gamer-to-gamer marketplace.
  • Steam - Social network hub for Valve games and more including Call of Duty 2, Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike, etc.
  • WOW - Rumored to become a World of Warcraft social network in the near future, owned by AOL, see article for details.

British Philharmonic to Give Live SL Concert

Thursday, August 16th, 2007

The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic will give a live concert in Second Life on Friday September 14 at 7:30 pm. According to their website, the RLPO will be the first professional orchestra in the world to give a performance in SL. The orchestra’s Principal Conductor Vasily Petrenko will condcut Ravel’s Sheherazade and Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances. Following the show, orchestra members will take questions at the virtual Grand Foyer Bar. There are a limited number of seats, so those interested are asked to register.

Science Learning Opportunities in Second Life

Tuesday, August 7th, 2007

The School of Dentistry and Health Sciences Libraries at the University of Michigan have partnered to create a video which features opportunities for Science learning and research within Second Life. This instructive three minute film spotlights such destinations as Genome Island, ISTE Island, ARC Research Center, and the New Media Consortium’s Research Park.

Watch the video to learn where you can find real-time weather data displayed on a 3D map, interact with cholesterol molecules, enter a giant cell and interact with it, conduct genetic experiments, take part in clinical simulations, and participate in a real-time conference with other learners.

Read about their experiences making the video in their blog post here.

Defining virtual worlds - Second Life in action

Wednesday, July 4th, 2007

Much is written these days about Second Life and 3D virtual worlds. Every day there is a new story about online worlds providing new learning environments. Articles and books are describing how a generation raised on video games is invading the workplace and demanding new online learning environments. Unfortunately, for those not on the bleeding edge of game technologies, all this talk of virtual worlds, avatars, MMORPGs, metaverses, and microworlds seems right out of a science fiction novel and, in some cases, it is. Karl Kapp’s article Defining and Understanding Virtual Worlds very deftly puts Second Life into the broader context of online virtual worlds.

By knowing more about this broader context, it becomes even easier to see and understand the potential of Second Life, and the pressing need for some of our libraries to ‘get into’ the metaverse.

In fact, Wade Roush from Technology Review at MIT suggests that the Second Earth will be the World Wide Web absorbed into the World Wide Sim: an environment combining elements of Second Life and Google Earth. A very complex and challenging article that pushes the possibilities of the metaverse into the future.

Meanwhile we continue to explore the world of Second Life. According to Erika Smith many academics are using it for research and in the classroom. About 2,000 to 3,000 educators from universities and colleges around the world have a presence in Second Life.

At present, there are over 40 libraries in Second Life. And the list is growing. Most can be found in a place called Cybrary City on Second Life’s Info Island - a purpose built space where libraries can establish their own virtual library presence to showcase their local resources, and where they can provide their services and learn new skills associated with 21st century librarianship.

So I was interested to read that University College Dublin has extended the boundaries of traditional library services with the UCD James Joyce Library being established as the first Irish library in Second Life. At the Second Life branch of the UCD Library you can search web resources using a virtual PC, consult several e-books, view library presentations, complete a visitor survey, leave comments and suggestions, and even watch Sky News.

It is hoped that over time the virtual library branch will develop further to perhaps include a regular staff presence that would teach visitors new skills and ways of availing of the services offered by the UCD Library.

Library of performance in Second Life

Sunday, June 10th, 2007

I was glad to read that RMIT has put ‘creativity’ first in exploring Second Life as a virtual campus. RMIT launches Second Life Island, but unlike many other universities using Second Life, the RMIT island is not used as an online campus, but as a creative space for students to learn in.

The Island features a variety of creative projects, but in one project the students designed a “library of performance”, in collaboration with RMIT Library, which explored the future possibilities of library spaces within Second Life.

[From: Openline: the Online news magazine of RMIT]