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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

Compártelo

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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.

Compártelo

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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

Compártelo

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.

Compártelo

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.

Compártelo

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

OpenSim to buid a Parliament

After signing the contract with the Parliament of Navarre, DOT has initiated the construction of the Virtual Parliament of Navarre. This project is framed within a broader construction of a virtual classroom in which students will find various materials for insight into the Parliament of Navarre (news, videos and the Virtual Parliament itself). 

Building the Virtual Parliament of Navarre

These are the main features of the project: 

1.-Create a configured server with Open Sim.

This is a project in which the coexistence of teenagers and adults will happen pretty oftehn and therefore the security and privacy needs are of the highest importance. 

In addition to that, an entity such as the Parliament of Navarre also called for guarantees of security and development in a server. Thus development in Open Sim facilitated the work that was unlikely to be developed in Second Life. 

Moreover DOT is developing new tools and applications in Open Sim, which is making this company a benchmark in the field of virtual worlds. 

OpenSim can be installed on any server server, which offers privacy and scalability of the solution. Its open and modular nature provides flexibility to adapt to new requirements

Building the Virtual Parliament of Navarre

2 .- Recreation spaces 

We are recreatin the main venues of the Parliament. Those who are actually visited by the students when they come to know the facilities. 

Exterior Building 

Advances in the reconstruction of the exterior of the Parliament of Navarre

Entrance and atrium space

Hall

Chamber of Deputies

Top view Chamber of Deputies

Hall: Equipped with a presenter, where students may receive explanations 

Construction of multipurpose hall

3.-Creation the custom avatar of the President of the parliament.

This avatar is also the protagonist of a video that will be the main features of the project. 

All this in two languages, Castilian and Basque, to visit that are guaranteed their educational success.

5.-Development of a customized edition of the connection software (client open sim), configured to connect to the virtual and downloadable from the website of the parliament.

6.-Making of a virtual QUEST application, for students to implement what they learned. 

Our virtual QUEST application is  to some extent similar to a WebQuest, but it would be developed in the virtual parliament. Our virtual Quest will allow an overview of the contents of the teaching unit. 

Students must move through the virtual spaces of the Parliament of Navarre to solve and respond to the challenges proposed in the quest. 

There are two different levels of difficulty in the quest.

Virtual Parliament of Navarre

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

From 3 to February 5, the LERANTEC-2009 fair took place in Karlsruhe (Germany).  LERANTEC is an international venue for experts in  e-learning and knowledge management. Among more than 200 vendors who gathered there, we (Eduardo Valencia and Javier Selva, joined Volker Gässler of VCOMM.

At the booth for the presentation of the DOT CLASSROOM. 

LERANTEC-2009 is a major appointment for the experts in e-learning and knowledge management, as well as the most important of this kind in Germany. Learntec is the right place for the presentation of the latest products, applications and services in this sector, accompanied by conferences and other special events and forums. 

DOT did not want to miss the meeting to present DOT Classroom and accompanied VCOMM at the F6.1 booth of the fair. 

The benefits of DOT CLASSROOM

DOT Classroom  focuses on several key factors: virtual reality, feeling of immersion, cooperation and cost saving.

DOT classroom is a virtual environment that allows companies to facilitate communication between individuals and groups located in different places. Avatars and environments are similar to the real ones, which allows to hold training sessions in an immersive way, while helping them overcome the obstacle distance. 

The effect of virtual reality is that the user receives the impression of actually being emotionally close to others in the same environment. Furthermore, the virtual learning becomes more relaxed and the participants end up feeling a lot less tired than when using a web conference or videoconference. 

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