Papert's Prediction

From Mindstorms: "My conjecture is that much of what we now see as too 'formal' or 'too mathematical' will be learned just as easily when children grow up in the computer-rich world of the very near future." Not with the iPad.

Reading Papert's "Mindstorms"

I'm finally reading Seymour Papert's Mindstorms from the early 90's. The two main ideas throughout the book are: "It is possible to design computers so that learning to communicate with them can be a natural process," and "Learning to communicate with a computer may change the way other learning takes place." These two ideas have been so ingrained in my thinking since I started teaching with technology I can't wait to see how he talks about them in the book.

OpenSim Mars Simulation

I just finished a fantastic series of classes taking three groups of 5th graders on a virtual Mars field trip. First we looked together at the surface of Mars using the Mars edition of Google Earth. We zoomed in to a particular crater named Tharsis Tholus. Then the students logged in to a Mars Tharsis Tholus 3D simulation I created with OpenSim (standalone, Diva Distro v.0.6.8, 2x2 subset of 4x4 megaregion). Pairs of students manipulated an astronaut avatar. Their mission, as you can see in the video, is to don their helmet and backpack in the space station, venture out into the crater, find and collect meteorite samples, and bring them back to the space station for analysis. (This was all possible because of the work of Drew Crow of BlueSkySchool blog, who figured out how to use NASA MOLA terrain data to make the terrain files for OpenSim. He sent me the terrain files as well as xml files for the Windlight settings so the sky and water would look more like Mars.)

I embellished Drew's efforts by creating a space station, avatar astronaut clothing, and helmet and backpack prim attachments. I also changed the gravity settings in OpenSim.ini to z=-3.8 so they would bounce really high when they went over bumps in the terrain. That was cool. The students logged in using accounts I created and had pre-configured to be located in the space station. I made a tutorial on paper they used to log in, move around, and attach their helmets and backpacks properly, and copy and rez their meteorite samples. They needed to work in pairs to manage all the details of the experience.

And what an experience! The students were awestruck at what they were seeing and doing. I was impressed these kids were able to do this, given that they have never used this type of interface before. It really helped to provide them with the preparation and scaffolding. In our wrap up talk at the end of each class they talked about how they really felt like astronauts and found it interesting figuring out how to coordinate staying together, which I emphasized as a big challenge of the simulation (I mean, who wants to get lost on Mars...).

Some thoughts for next time:

• Despite the tutorial, they did need quite a bit of support. I had to help them detach and reattach helmets that go stuck onto hands and torsos, keep them from flying (extremely fun when they realized how, but not part of the simulation--who could blame them?), and help those who wandered off use the mini-map to find their way.
• One snafu was that in one class two groups got confused about which account they were supposed to use and kept logging in with the same account, resulting in the other group getting kicked out. I didn't figure this out (actually they figured it out) until well into the class, which prevented me from providing the above support to the rest of the class. So that session became a bit of a free-for-all. What I'll do next time is include the specific account info in each tutorial sheet so they won't make that mistake.
• The most difficult part for these virtual world newbies was attaching prims. I mean, when have they ever seen a pie menu? I think in the future I'll see if there's a way to script helmets and backpacks that attach themselves when touched.
• We had to use high-end video cards, iMacs and Dell XPS desktops, for the windlight settings to work. This wouldn't look like Mars on, say, laptops, or even the older (~5 yrs) iMacs we have. And of course wired network connections.
• For the machinema, I found some good tips here, such as hiding the UI. Actually I think Drew sent me this, too.
• I found it really interesting that in order to stay together some students started using local chat. I hadn't shown them that or intended for them to use it, but it did come in handy, for example, as a way to tell another astronaut they had finished collecting meteorite samples and were ready to go back to the station. One thing it suggests is that at times at least they were feeling more present "in-world" than out since they could have looked a few feet away and just spoken to the students directing that astronaut. One thing that would be really interesting--though it would only work with 1 : 1 students to avis--would be using headsets and voice chat for them to talk as if they had radio communication. On the one hand it would be more immersive. On the downside they would have a harder time following the paper tutorial.

Instructional Videos With Storytelling Alice

I had a more successful time using Storytelling Alice with my 7th grade students this year. Last year I constrained the content of the animations to their current biology topic, genetic inheritance. Understandably, this didn't excite them, though a few came up with some good animations. Instead, I decided to let them choose any topic for their animation as long as it was something students learn in our school in Kindergarten through 7th grade with the intention of making the good ones available to teachers to teach with. I thought they would be more invested in their topics if they could choose them and knew that they might be used in the future. Here below is one of the best examples:

Some observations:

• I required them to use at least two scenes and they did for the most part. One interesting thing is some of them simply scripted only one scene, fading the camera to black and back up in the middle of it to transition to the second scene, avoiding the somewhat confusing process of creating a new scene and that business of moving the camera tripod.
• Many of them manipulated the camera angles a lot more, such as following a character, resulting in much more dynamic animations.
• Looking at them as pedagogical resources, many of them ended up looking more like lectures rather than showing their topic with some kind of illustrative narrative. The above example follows the latter approach, but many of them simply depicted a teacher in a classroom talking to the students about the topic! I think this is a result of the dominant paradigm in my school. Students are so familiar with the lecture format so that's how they imagine their animation being used.
• Widening the availability of topics appeared to work well. The topics they chose ranged from teaching math strategies and topics to history topics to French vocabulary to social development, which they learn about in their "life skills" class. This last topic was quite popular, as it allowed them to focus on issues of friendship, social status, and bullying.
• Students this year discovered a couple new things about Alice. One is the ability to drag methods and drop them onto characters even in "adding objects" mode to move them around, which surprised me. They also became very interested in recording their own audio to make the characters speak and matching the audio with the say content using do together. In some cases this resulted in file sizes above 10 MB that became hard to save to network folders and I had to make them keep their audio clips really short.

Scalable Shapes

I'm just about done scripting the first interactive models for our ScienceSim parcel; a cube and sphere that can be scaled up or down, giving their new sizes and volumes when touched. The info is given by llSay so it appears in the lower left. The sphere volume is the only part not working yet. While the formula is indeed correct, the script calculates it differently than when I do it myself. So I've got something wrong in my order of operations or something.

Messaging Prims in OpenSim (lsl)

I just had a big realization about how to make a lot possible in scripting prims with LSL in OpenSimulator. A great way to get prims to play off of each other is to have them send messages to each other on specific channels. This capability makes OpenSimulator and Second Life pretty special environments for network simulations, but that's another topic. What I have done so far with this is make a button that opens and closes curtains on a stage, and clothes that pack themselves when touched. In the first example, you can see the two scripts, the button on the left (the red button itself behind its script), and one of the curtains on the right. Both curtains can listen for the button's message and more than one button can be placed around the stage for easy access.

For the second example, the clothes message the suitcase, which responds with its position so the clothes know where to move. One piece of clothing is shown on the left and the suitcase is on the right. I thought there would be some way to dynamically update the suitcase's position for the clothes and this is it. It gets a little more complicated because there are three pieces of clothing, requiring three different messages from the clothes and three different reply channels depending on which message is received by the suitcase.

OpenSim Virtual Architecture Flythrough

Crash course on building in OpenSim with nine 10-12 grade students. Here are the results:

ScienceSim Land Grant Program

I'm really excited to be a recipient of a ScienceSim Land Grant. I will be developing a parcel from now until June with interactive educational content, with the assistance of science and math teachers and a few students. One student in particular is very interested in architecture and wants to design and build our welcome/info center. The content we have in mind so far range from scalable two- and three-dimensional objects that will assist in students' understanding of area and volume, representations of mathematical formulas, such as distance = rate x time, and molecular models.

Vocaroo, a nice little audio service

Vocaroo looks like a great little service. It seems to do just what you would want with your voice recording-link to it, embed it, or download it. And there's no sign-up and account hassle. You just use it. And it looks simple.

Rotating Sculptures in OpenSim

I've been playing around with overlapping rotating volumes in OpenSim. They make nice sculptures but could also make for nice visualizations of concepts in Calculus. Some math teachers got excited when they saw them.