Monday, May 10, 2010

Virtual Drama Project in OpenSim

The 8th grade drama teacher and I are in the third cycle of our virtual drama project. The last two groups showed inconsistent engagement in the project, which has been surprising considering they get to act with an avatar and design their own stage sets. With the first group I can understand the lower engagement as they had to weather the bumps of the first run--disappearing prims (after a sim crash) finding the optimal hardware, few pre-made prims, and our lack of knowledge of what might provide a good experience. One improvement we've made is facilitating the students' taking ownership of their performance stages. They really don’t have time in a trimester to learn to build their own props but I’m finding that at least encouraging them to modify what I build for them is resulting in much more engagement. The stage for a scene from Alice in Wonderland is becoming truly surreal and the others are really working to make their sets as convincing as they can. One innovation from a couple groups last trimester was for them to find an image for their stage backdrop and they are all doing that now.We are so pressed for time in the few classes we have for each run of the project (about 10) that we’ve been stingy about letting them edit their props and appearances. Unsurprisingly it turns out this is what makes them want to make it good in the end.










2 comments :

ale said...

Interesting to see drama being taught using opensim. A few years ago I was involved in a 3d engines workshop where we used SL to enact a scene from a play. What I think made this interesting was the sheer speed with which it was put together, the resulting simplicity of the props and characters, and the mixing of live performance and 3d environment projected behind it. 2 voice actors read the words for the avatars, as was done in some asian silent films in the 30s. The avatars were controlled by two other "grips" - and this led to something much more present and entertaining than I think just a 3d play would have had...

Erik N. said...

Really what we're doing is machinema, though the students aren't involved in that aspect. Again, if we had more time....But I am documenting the scenes with my meager video skills the best I can. Fraps basically.