Today's Building Design trial

Dale and I have started the building design trial today in the computer lab at Newport. To note initially:

- only 3 students have come in. (It's a beautiful day outside and the end of the year, and this is an optional activity)

- James H from Melbourne Grammar School is also here to provide technical server support.

- the students are two females and one male. The two females are mothers - and apparently the leaders of the class, which has 3 females and 20 males.

- after some concern about the internet speed, it is now apparent that the Newport lab speed is now excellent (see previous post) so we're using the lab machines instead of the laptops and modems. One of those unpredictable variables...

- the 'web in prim' function in OpenSim is not ready yet - the open source developers have not completed this function, which is up in Second Life. One of the issues with working with Open Source...deadlines are sometimes unpredictable. Instead, Dale has gone back to the previous version of the PushLMS, and the questions provided by Sue in the in-world assessment exercise (to happen after lunch) appear in a dialog box rather than on the clipboard. You need to be nimble, adaptable and able to probelm-solve on the spot in this space (which may make some more risk-adverse educators nervous)

- so far, two of the students seem to be very engaged in OpenSim - Dale is currently showing them the ropes. The third, the male, came in later after a dental appointment and after some cajoling by the other two students.

- the morning session happening now is the virtual world intro...Dale is going through avatar modification and building

- before we started this morning, a couple of unrelated students were in the lab and a teacher. One of the students (male) was immediately drawn to the virtual world and wanted to try it out - no prompting involved.

- both female students were familiar with computers, Autocad etc. Male student also (inc social networking)....he'd also done a multimedia course and knows 3d software such as 3d studio max. One female used to work in advertising. None of the students play computer games for recreation. Male said Second Life 'isn't really his thing'.