Technorati claim code: UEDV838NH3WP

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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Technorati claim code: UEDV838NH3WP

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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Technorati claim code: UEDV838NH3WP

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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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.

Compártelo

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.

Compártelo

We have just published a new catalog of virtual worlds for business. This new catalog is complementary to that already published previously: Using Second Life in learning activities of the company. 

The new catalog contains an extensive explanation of the benefits of Second Life and OpenSim for cost savings and improved communication. 

This catalog also contains a detailed description on each of the application areas of virtual worlds: corporate productivity, training, language learning, simulations, training sales teams, technical assistance and consultancy.

Compártelo

This is Dot’s Christmasts Card for all our friends. Those who populate the “picture” are left to right Mikel Meoki, Javier Selva, Diego Demonte, Eduardo Valencia, Yolanda Amatriain, Mikel Belasko and Enrique Bauluz. We also have many others friends that didn’t arrive on time for the picture, such as Juankar, German, Paloma, Rodolfo Andres, Pablo and, last but not least, Volker. 

What we expect and hope for next year is that virtual worlds aimed at training and corporate productivity will grow apace. The obvious advantages of these platforms are going to make the projects multiply. Dot will grow along with them. 

Let me, first, bet for V-learning as the fastest growing use of virtual worlds in 2009. 

Here you are my second bet: along with Second Life, Open Sim is going to be the platform on which more virtual worlds are going to be developed. 

What we expect and hope for next year is that virtual worlds aimed at training and corporate productivity will grow apace. The obvious advantages of these platforms are going to make the projects multiply. Dot will grow along with them. 

Let me, first, bet for V-learning as the fastest growing use of virtual worlds in 2009. 

Here you are my second bet: along with Second Life, Open Sim is going to be the platform on which more virtual worlds are going to be developed.

Compártelo

Technorati claim code: UEDV838NH3WP

OpenSim is an open platform for creating virtual worlds. When compared to Second Life Open Sim has some clear advantages for businesses.

Before coming down to these advantages, it is important to know that, apart from Second Life, there are a few dozen virtual worlds. In a YouTube video (2008 METAV TOUR - THE SOCIAL VIRTUAL WORLD’SA STAGE) Gari Hayes makes a nice animated catalog of some of them. As the video shows, most of them are geared to gaming or socialization.

The video, however, does not mention two open source platforms that arguably will be the most influential platforms por training and virtual Meetings: Wonderland and OpenSim.

Wonderland is an open source project promoted by Sun that it will become, with all certainty, a reference for project management in a virtual space.

Open Sim is like Second Life

OpenSim is an open source simulator (BSD license) that uses the same standard of communication that Second Life. You can use the browser to OpenSim from Second Life (the client software that is downloaded from secondlife.com). The code was liberated by Linden Labs

IBM is supporting  the community that develops OpenSim. An interesting article in Ciberpaís described the force with which IBM is supporting OpenSim.

Both Second Life and Open Sim are so close from each other that IBM and Linden Labs have teleported avatars from Second Life to an OpenSim server:

OpenSim: open source

It is a project with a dynamic community of developers and highly supported by IBM.

-Open source allows us to develop new features that are tailored to the needs of each organization

OpenSim: our own server

-Open Sim is installed on our own server or servers running in cluster mode (Linux or Windows), which allows us to scale the capacity to our needs. We could have hundreds of simultaneous avatars in a virtual single event.

–Avoid the problems of confidentiality associated with operating on a server controlled by Linden Labs

-The reliability of our service depends on us. Stop relying on the Linden Labs “rolling restarts”, “disruptions” and the like.

OpenSim: Featured Projects

-Various projects led by IBM

-Intel is working on OpenSim to develop “ScienceSim”.

In DOT we have spent several months working on the platform. We’ll talk about our projects soon.

Compártelo

The economic newspaper Nueva Gestión echoes in its latest issue the advantages that the use of Second Life and other virtual worlds can bring to our companies in terms of cost savings. Given the importance of the issue, especially in these times of crisis, the report occupies a sizeable part of its issue of November 25. 

New Management has contacted Dot in order to help them summarize the benefits and to give practical advice on how to start working with this platform. 

Throughout the lengthy article it discusses the following points: 

-Brief history of Second Life 

-Data on the savings that could involve the use of Second Life 

Direct benefits for your firm. 

    1. Immediate savings in terms of accommodation and travelling. 

    2. Time saving 

    3. Help to reconcile work and family life 

-Guidelines for use starting a business in Second Life 

    1. Free download of the program. 

    2. Companies that can assist in the implementation of the program 

    3. Creating virtual spaces for meetings, workshops … 

-Key features of Second Life 

    1. Advantages of video versus (feeling of immersion, much cheaper and easier to use …) 

    2. Voice. We can talk in real time with the attendees. 

    3. You can submit videos, Power Point documents … q 

About Nueva Gestión 

New Management is a newspaper aimed at business and professional world, that offers exclusive information about companies, investment, market trends, training, environment, etc.. It also informs on subsidies, public procurement, start-ups, collective agreements, future investments, etc.. 

Nueva Gestion has two different editions: Basque Country and Navarre. The newspaper has a circulation of 15,000 copies.

Compártelo

Dot has made a very successful virtual presentation for students in  the Pau engineering faculty of EISTI (www.eisti.fr). The purpose of the event was hiring trainee engineers to develop a project in OPEN SIM.

Thanks to this Second Life presentation DOT saved as much as 30,000 km in travelling, 300 hours of work and 9000 euros. Each of the 5 speakers from DOT was in their own city (Madrid (2), Pamplona, Zürich (Switzerland) , Mendoza (Argentina).

Eisti Auditorium, presentation of DOT

EISTI is a prestigious engineering school located in Pau (Pyrenees Atlantiques) and Paris. EISTI also belongs to PEBA (E-Business Pôle sud Aquitaine, which brings together ICT companies of the French departments of Pyrenees Atlantiques and Landes (see the post about Navarre-Aquitania meetings in Second Life). 

The event took place on November 20 at noon in the auditorium of the Engineering School in Pau and like other companies in new technologies, DOT sought to convince EISTI engineers to join our own Open Sim project.

Screen in EISTI Auditorium

But unlike other companies that shared the EISTI auditorium with us, the DOT speakers used Second Life. Our presentation in real time was seen and heard by students in the auditorium of EISTI. We also interacted with them in an event that mixed the real (the auditorium with its 50 students) with the 5 DOT speakers.  

DOT speakers that day: Eduardo (who was in Madrid that day), Estíbaliz (Madrid), Diego (Pamplona), Volker (Zurich, Switzerland, was in the airport) and Rodolfo (Mendoza, Argentina). All in all almost 30,000 km. saved, 300 hours of travel and 9000 euros. Mikel should make the calculation of CO2 savings (see the post Mikel: Second Life to combat climate change)

And in addition to the speakers, there were other people from the DOT as Yolanda Amatriaín, Javier Selva , Mikel Meoki, Germán Pérez,  Enrique Bauluz, or Juankar Sanz or Mikel Belasko Mikel. 

Eduardo Valencia speaks before students at EISTI. Behind, Estíbaliz, Diego and Rodolfo

The presentation (about thirty-five minutes), was a success, judging by the applause of the audience at the end and the words of the director of Campus EISTI of Pau, Laurence LaMoulie: “La présentation a été très appréciée de nos élèves et des professeurs de l’EISTI, tant pour sa technicité que pour son originalité. Ceux qui n’y ont pas assisté le regrettent déjà: elle a été la plus remarquée de la journée “(The presentation was highly appreciated both by our students and by the teachers, for its technique and for its originality. Those who do not have been able to attend, are already regretting it).

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