I had a chance to review live the state of the art of  Language learning in Virtual Worlds at Eurocal 2010 in Bordeaux  (8-11 september). The V-lang consortium, to whitch we belong, is  developping a virtual world designed for language learning in OpenSim and a specific methodology for language learning in virtual worlds: http://eduardovalencia.com/2010/03/10/11/

EUROCALL (the European Association for Computer Assisted Language Learning) aims to provide a European focus for the promulgation of innovative research, development and practice relating to the use of technologies for language learning.

5 projects of Virtual Worlds for Language Learning

This year in Bordeux Virtual Worlds for Language learning were one of the areas of the Conference.

I had the chance of listening to the presentations of as many as 5 different Virtual Worlds projects that have dealt with Language Learning.

• LSE Second Life exhibition Déjà Vu? http://eurocall2010.u-bordeaux4.fr/docs_en/PCW8.htm
• 3D world environments for second language learning: An evaluation of SIMiLLE http://chimera69.essex.ac.uk/SIMiLLE_Project

• NIFLAR (Networked Interaction in Foreign Language Acquisition and Research). http://www.niflar.eu

• AVALON. http://www.avalonlearning.eu

• Vocabulary Development in a Virtual World. Learning Chinese vocabulary in Second Life (sorry I got no link)

Featured projects: Déjà Vu and NIFLAR

I was particularly impressed by two projects: LSE Déjà vu and  NIFLAR. Both are very strong at developing task oriented language learning in virtual worlds.

LSE Second Life Exhibition: Déjà vu is a virtual exhibition in Second Life that has been developed jointly by students learning French at the LSE (London School of Economics).

The LSE project consists of an art exhibition by the French artist Michel Herreria, where students participate by leaving their written notes and oral recordings with their comments on the multimedia works by Michel.

On the other hand they learn to build objects in Second Life (note cards, images for creating posters/clothing, etc). This creative experience is carried out in the target language (French).

NIFLAR is also a task based project. It runs both in Second Life and in Open Sim. Students have to carry a number of  different activities in their virtual world, such as 1) They visit a virtual apartment: they have to discuss what they like and dislike in it. They also decide on what to do next: go to the cinema or pay a visit to Valencia, or a museum. 2) They visit to a rather bad Hotel. They have to complain at the reception. 3) A quizz contest on cultural subjects.

Conclusions by most projects

Though projects differ in their methodologies, there are some points on which they all agree.

a. Virtual worlds have a great potential in Language learning and teaching

b. Projects turn out to be motivating both for the students and instructors

c. Task based activities are favoured over other methodologies

d. Virtual worlds are not likely to go mainstream for a while, mostly because of the high technological requirements (graphical boards and the like…) and the hard user interface.

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The European Union, through the LifeLong Learning program has granted DOT and 5 other European partners an aid of 300,000 euros for a project whose total budget is over 400,000 euros.

The project, which lasts until late 2010, will develop a virtual world designed for language learning in Open Sim and a specific methodology for language learning in virtual worlds.

V-lang will test the application and methodology with 40 groups in 3 European countries. The testing will take place in English, Spanish and German.

This DOT led project has come forward thanks to the engagement and support of Iniciativas Innovadoras (Navarra) along with four other European partners:

• Research Academic Computer Technology Institute, Patras, Greece
• Warsaw Academy of Computer Science, Management and Administration Warsaw, Poland
• Soros International House de Vilnius. Lithuania
• DIALOGE SPRACHINSTITUT Lindau, Germany

On 15 and March 16, 2010 we will have the first non-virtual meeting of all partners in Pamplona.(Spain).

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Virtual Worlds and Augmented Reality What solutions provide for e-learning?

On Wednesday 24 February at 18 hours I am participating in a workshop on Virtual Worlds and Augmented Reality at EXPOELEARNING 2010, the IX International Congress of e-learning.

The session will focus session on Virtual Worlds and Augmented Reality.

The workshop has got a sort of original format: a real-time discussion of a practical case to which companies in various sectors provide their own solution.

The meeting will be coordinated by Ruth Martinez (@aureamemotech), Director of ELEARNING3D, SL. Along with DOT there will be companies such us UTOPIA COMPUTER SOLUTIONS (java for cells) and ARPA SOLUTIONS SL (Augmented Reality).

I am very likely to talk about DOT-AULA, our  OpenSim based solution for virtual worlds.

ELEARNING3D S.L, http://www.elearning3d.es

DIENTEAZUL S.L, http://www.dienteazul.es/index.html

DOT-SECONDLIFE, http://www.dot-secondlife.es/

ARPA SOLUTIONS S.L, http://www.arpa-solutions.net

EXPOELEARNING 2010, http://www.expoelearning.com

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Linden Lab has released a beta version of Second Life Enterprise (formerly known as Nebraska) a virtual world behind a firewall, aimed at corporate collaboration. http://bit.ly/1hasiP. The solution allows simultaneous connection of 800 avatars. It includes all features of Second Life and provides a number of pre-built buildings and avatars.

In this post I hold that the bigger the success of Second Life Enterprise (SLE), the bigger the benefit for other enterprise oriented solutions. Both for those based on OpenSim such as Dot-Aula, and for the proprietary ones such as Forterra Olive, Teleplace (formerly Qwaq, etc.).

The pie grows
In mature markets (those who have reached their limit of growth) it is understandable that the entry of new competitors is not beneficial for the running firms. The cake, which has already reached its maximum size, must be now shared with hungry newcomers.

In the realm of newly born categories, on the contrary, the entry of new competitors is paradoxically beneficial. The more the better, because it helps generating awareness, publicity and sales. The pie will grow and therefore the turnover of each competitor.

Despite the work of several hundred evangelists, businesses and institutions have not yet accepted the good news of virtual worlds for business. A few of them have heard of Second Life and its avatars. But they have never imagined that this stuff might serve their organization.

With few exceptions, when we visit companies to introduce virtual worlds for business, we are breaking new grounds in their minds.

Second Life Enterprise can help significantly grow the pie of virtual worlds for business. And that pie is also made up of those who work in OpenSim, the way we do.

Because we must acknowledge that Second Life is the quintessential virtual world today. And it si Likely to remain almost synonymous with virtual world for a few years. As a result, SLE’s desirable success will serve us all.

Virtual worlds: serious gaming

Second Life Enterprise will also help to impose the idea that virtual worlds are effective tools for remote collaborative learning and not just a game.

The leisure dimension of Second Life, which has been the best known feature of the platform, it never interested me.

In one of the firs posts of this blog confessed that “I have to admit that this respectable and entertaining dimension of therapeutic Second Life does not interest me at all, even I find it pointless and bland.

Moreover, for reasons that have guided our work in training, the negative connotations associated with Second Life we often assume an additional obstacle to overcome to reach the customer’s mind. The bailongo, the lightweight Charlita virtual sex with that is sometimes associated with Second Life is not much help to sell training, business meetings, virtual events, etc..

And besides if open source is significantly cheaper …

In OpenSim vs.Second Life we maintained that many of the benefits of OpenSim lied on the fact that OpenSim operates behind the firewall. Second Life now also works behind the firewall.

But, the open and modular system of OpenSim allows us to develop new features to suit the needs of each organization. In Second Life this obviously less flexible.

On the other hand, as SLE has an annual price of over $ 55,000, OpenSim solutions can be very competitive in price.

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In a post on Rezzable, Jon Himmoff makes a critical review of his one year experience with Open Sim.

The work is complete and accurate. While he values very positively the improvements of late ( “OpenSim works, is getting better and will be the future of the 3D Web”), he  identifies 10 points that OpenSim needs to improve.

In this post I intend to summarize the 10 points and discuss briefly the post in Rezzable.

First the point on which I have nothing to comment, if not fully agree.

1. Physics is weak. The proposed solution is to replace the current engine with a more effective. There is nothing wrong.

2. Permissions. Open Sim has a long way to go. Agreed.

3. Documentation scarce. Ok

4. Admin Tools. We must have more information about the user, inventory and server memory. Perfect

5. Mesh support for mesh is needed. Ok

6. Scripting. Should be improved. But the good news is that you can program modules at the server level.

7. Movements between grids bad, but improving.

8. Concurrent users. Sim vs sim Second Life (50 approx) is superior to OpenSim (20-30). But in a single server we can hold 6 regions with less prims and get up to 400 users per server, compared with only 50 concurrent Second Life. We are working on many fronts to improve the ability of concurrent users, as does OSGrid.

Just two short comments. We work on developing virtual worlds for businesses and institutions Mostly education and training.

In our approach to OpenSim, the development of a currency like the Linden Dollar is not necessary. In fact the entire system of buying and selling that works in Second Life now creates more noise than benefits for our learning orientation.

Voice, on the other hand, is a priority for us. In fact it is one of the areas where we work harder. Having fought a long time against Asterix and FreeSwitch (open source), Teamspeak and Vivox (proprietary), our job now is to integrate Mumble (open source), which provides high quality sound, positional audio features and could arguably hacked into activating Lip Sync.

Source: Top 10 OpenSim Issues and Performance Update

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Second Life and OpenSim virtual worlds are the best known and most used by Universities and other academic institutions in the UK, according to a comprehensive study by Virtual World Watch.
They asked what use virtual worlds and why they chose them.

Second Life was chosen for his 6 years of constant development, it is not necessary to purchase a server, because of the great community that exists and the amount of resources that are available cheaply or free.

OpenSim is attractive because, compared to Second Life, ‘land’ does not carry the same expense, there are fewer security issues, there is no dependence on a single commercial vendor, and it is easier to configure how private your environment is; content can also be ported from Second Life.

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Customers need to predict how many concurrent users can be accommodated on a Sim. In OpenSim were used to a maximum of 50 avatars or even less, depending on the number of prims.

The aim of the OSGRID people was to test if the SIM code improvements made in recent weeks have been effective.

The test was made on 9 October 2009.

Their goal was to reach the 100 users (the magic number) and the result is impressive because they managed to accommodate 85 real avatars(not bots). And the server did not crash, it was still accepting connections when they reached 85, people simply stopped logging.

So how did they do it? The answer lies in three points:

1) They abandoned Openjpeg technology to decode the J2K textures

2) Using the experience of Intel’s John HURLIMAN to rewrite the server code. It remarkable that the arrival of people from IBM and Intel is pushing up the quality of OpenSim

3) Improved management of server memory.

The result is impressive, 85 avatars on an old server with less than 1 GB of RAM.

Source

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Microsoft is currently installed on Reaction Grid, a service provider that uses Open Sim as a server platform.

Furthermore, from October 31, Microsoft is abandoning its Sims on Second Life. On that very day they are celebrating an open welcome event on Reaction Grid.

On the one hand we see that Microsoft regards Open Sim as a mature enough platform. Arguably more reliable than Second Life. In fact one of the reasons why they have decided to migrate is because during an event in April 2008 that a mistake occurred and was restarted islands that teleportation system broke down.

We must also take into account that “OpenSim itself is a C # application (a part of Microsoft .Net Frame). As a result, Microsoft is very interested in providing the open platform with its own Windows Server 2008. Last week Microsoft released a case study in touting the success of its virtual servers running OpenSim.

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DOT Aula is a virtual world that allows you to make people and groups at different locations work together more efficiently and naturally.

DOT Aula is a 3D region with auditorium, several seminar rooms, areas for the breaks and an exhibition area.

• Gestures and facial expressions to aid communication
• Visualisation of Powerpoint and PDF pages
• Video and desktop streaming
• Website streaming
• Language support
• Chat and instant messaging
• Web application for the organisation of users and permissions management
• Assistance and support

vComm Aula is based on OpenSim and can be hosted externally or run on the intranet behind the firewall. The hosted version is available as a finished image at Amazon Web Services.

All elements of vComm Aula are also available for Second Life.

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On March 8^th we met in Mendoza (Argentina) the Ambassador of India R . Viswanathan to submit our proposals for collaboration for V-language.

V-LANGUAGE is a v-learning English Course that we are developing in Dot. We will comment on it later on.

Some facts: according to the British Council, between 2000 and 2010 students studying English in the world will move from 1000 to 2000 million, due mainly to the Chinese market (250 million students of English in 2008, 20 million more each year). Hundreds of thousands of teachers of English are needed in the world (only China needs 1 million new teachers right now). Moreover, India is the second country in the world of English speakers (90 million), behind the United States (250 million).

Thanks to Raul Carrizo, president of FUMPADES (World Foundation for Social Development), who was with his wife Alejandra, the DOT people (Eduardo Valencia, Javier Selva, Mauricio and Karina Magni and Rodolfo Giro) had the opportunity to have a full day of meeting with the ambassador, his wife Kasthuri, and their children Vijay and Raja. The meeting culminated in a visit to the wineries of Mendoza La Rural. Finally ate the typical Argentinian asado in the traditional wineries Salentein.

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