Sun Microsystems has recently released information on their Project Darkstar platform. You might remember we posted a video of the launch of Sun Island with the announcement of Project Darkstar earlier this year. They used this platform to create a virtual workplace demonstration called MPK20.
Here’s a video demonstrating their virtual workplace:
On the Sun Microsystems website they have a page up about Project Darkstar:
New Frontiers in Virtual Learning
This environment is intended to be a virtual collaborative space where people can interact and work on applications (how long have we wanted HTML on a prim in SL, how about Application on a prim!?!). The office app they are using in this demo is Sun’s own Open Office.
Here’s a passage from the Sun website:
“Second Life, however, is not right for every educational institution. Some educators worry about inappropriate content. For others, creating a virtual presence requires time and resources they don’t have. But for designers seeking alternatives, generations of incompatible technology — in the form of multiple proprietary APIs, data models and messaging systems — have created a landscape of complexity.
To give education customers more choices, Sun Microsystems and other organizations have created Darkstar University, a community of academic systems users, designers, and students working to create open source 3D learning environments for immersive education. The idea is to help educational institutions build their own virtual environments using open source technologies — and allow those environments to connect to a university’s existing academic and administrative computing systems.”
Linden Lab is going to have to kick it up if they are going to hold onto the education market. I’ve wanted to host our own servers in my district from day one for PacRimX. The large companies entering this space (like IBM and Sun) know what people want, and it looks like they are finally starting to deliver.
This holds a lot of promise for educators. Now to just find the funding to get all the hardware to make this happen . . . . . . . Anyone from Sun reading this? Drop me an email at Pacrimx@comcast.net
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UMBC Instructional Technology Blog » Blog Archive » Sun Microsytems’ Virtual Learning Environment MPK-20 // November 15, 2007 at 3:00 pm |
[...] this real world ability gives you the cognitive clues that enhance collaboration. Check out the video to get a tour of MPK-20. NOTE: Sun’s campus in Menlo Park has 19 buildings. You get one guess [...]
VirtuED Wonderland Servers are Online! « Virtual Education // May 19, 2008 at 9:21 pm |
[...] of the Wonderland project and Sun’s inclusion in the initial platforms of the Media Grid (1, 2, and 3). We made contact with Sun right after their Wonderland announcements and initial videos [...]