Scratch 4 Second Life – Scripting Tool

I’ve always used ScriptMe! for quick and dirty scripting projects. Now there’s a new kid on the block from MIT:

Scratch 4 Second Life

This is a pretty cool little desktop application (Mac/PC) that lets you visually construct new scripts using snap together objects:

Give it a spin and I am sure you will find something useful here. When you are done with your creation you simply copy the resulting Linden script and paste into Second Life. How simple is that?

Multimedia Experts – Thank You

This past week we had two top notch (and award winning) teachers come out to help the students wrap up their video documentaries of the Kyoto Summer School:

Tim Vesey (left) and John Scott (right) were working tirelessly with the Kyoto students helping them through the final and most stressful part of their video projects. Their help at this stage of the class was invaluable, and these projects would likely have not been finished if not for their involvement.

Both teach multimedia at Downey High School. You can check out some of their work with students at their Viscom Online webpage.

Thanks guys, you really made a difference for these visiting Kyoto students.

Student Impressions of Summer School

Here are a few impressions that some of the students wrote on their way out the door.

“I really enjoyed being in class with the exchange students and making friends with a lot of them. Although it was hard to communicate at first, we managed to work together successfully. The field trips were a great experience for both the American and Japanese students. There was a lot to explore in San Francisco and it was nice to be able to witness their reactions to American culture. I also loved hanging out with them at Marine World because they were willing to try a lot of things. I will definitely miss them all. This is the first time that I’ve actually looked forward to class, even during the summer.” – Sherri R.

“I enjoyed BBQ with Family. I was very excited. Fireworks, BBQ, and jumping. I enjoyed swimming at lake. We swam very far. But the lake is very cold. I enjoyed San Francisco sightseeing. Golden Gate Bridge, Japan Town, and Fisherman’s Warf. I enjoyed Monterey and Gilroy. I watched fishes and shopping. I enjoyed Marine World. I’ve excited to be Marine World.” – Yuyu S.

“I loved working with the exchange students! It was a very nice experience to work with each other throughout these past three weeks and develop relationships even with the language barrier. Although it was stressful at times (trying to finish the music videos and documentaries in such a short time), it was all worth it. The time spent together in class and on field trips was priceless. I’d do this all again in a heartbeat.” – Jewel A.

“I enjoyed American life. For example, school life, leading a life with host family, and traveling etc. I was anxious about everything. But, I teamed up with my friends and did my best. So now, I think traveling to America is good.” – Kanji O.

“I enjoyed go to the beach. I playing touch football with host father. We went to the beach on the way to the Mystery Spot. That place are magic experience. Thank you so much for having me in your class. I enjoyed BBQ. Many people eating beef and drink. I enjoyed go to the watching fish. Really fun.” – Itsuro H.

“Mr. Cornwell spoke English very fast, but I can understood” – Kengo M.

“It was difficult for me. But it was fun too. I like this class. Students and teachers are so kind. I want to stay more if I can do it. I want to meet you again, if you ok. Thank you so much.” – Daichi M.

“The computer was very difficult. This experience is precious for me. Thank you for having me in your class.” – Masashi Y.

“Time was few. Very difficult but very fun.” – Shinkichi Y.

“This class was very difficult, but very fun.” – Kenta K.

New Flickr Album – Kyoto Discovery Kingdom Trip 2008

Today in class I was given a collection of pictures from the Six Flags Discovery Kingdom trip yesterday. There were too many to post in a blog entry, so I uploaded them to our Flickr site. Click on the album to the left to jump to this Flickr album. Being the end of the trip, the students were mixing together well and have obviously formed new friendships.

We just wrapped up the last summer school class with the visiting Kyoto students. Many stayed up to an hour after class to say their goodbyes. There were many cameras out as they were taking their last pictures together. The late afternoon Modesto class, that normally works in Second Life, are focused on finishing the rendering of the documentaries. It’s going to be a push to get these burned to DVD to go home on Monday with the students to Kyoto.

We will work on getting other albums up over the next couple of weeks. I was just handed a stack of hand written notes from both Modesto and Kyoto students with their impressions from this summer school. I will try to get these up over the weekend. We’ve got almost a 135 gb of photos and still images from this summer school experience. It will take awhile to go through it all and post stuff up to the blog.

Last Field Trip – Discovery Kingdom

Yesterday was the last field trip with the visiting Kyoto students. The trip was to the Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in Vallejo (formerly Marine World).

As you might expect with a place like an amusement park, the students split up into groups and headed out in all different directions after getting through the front gate. Some went straight for the thrill rides while others went to see the animals. Here’s a group that was just exiting the Medusa roller coaster ride:

There were characters wandering the park offering photo opportunities for park visitors. Here’s the scene when the Joker from Batman came around and was encircled by a group of students with cameras:

We were concerned about this trip for a few reasons. California is in the middle of a heat wave, with temperatures in Modesto well over 100 degrees. We are also experiencing very thick smoke from all of the wildfires burning in California right now. For whatever reasons (mid-week, smoke, or heat), the park was not very crowded yesterday. There were very few lines, and the afternoon even had a light breeze to keep it feeling cool. Thankfully, in the center of the park there was a large food area with a big cover for shade. Many of the students ate lunch there (here’s a group with Brad Cornwell, the Modesto teacher):

There were not many parts of the park where you would not run into students from our group. Here’s a group of Kyoto students with their teacher Chris Flesuras in front of the penguin display:

This joint summer school between Modesto City Schools and Kyoto Gakuen has been an engaging experience for all involved. Today the students are working on wrapping up the production of their documentaries from their visit. We may end up working through the weekend to get enough copies made for everyone to take home. The Kyoto students return home early Monday.

We will try to get some student reactions to this summer school posted to this blog in the next few weeks. We already have a long list of changes we will make for next year’s summer school to improve the experiences. Overall, this has been a great way to close out the first year of this program. We really look forward to distilling the best parts from this past year and improving the program for the coming year.

Keep an eye on this blog for additional posts over the next few weeks on this visit and impressions from those who participated.

Swim With The Fishes

Here we are at the end of the second week of the Kyoto Summer School in Modesto. I’ve been very busy with the class and have not had time to blog much. I have been spending my afternoons out at the school working with the students and helping with any technical issues that arise. This next week will be critical, as the students will be pulling together pictures and video for their video documentaries of their trip to the U.S.

The field trip this past week was to Monterey. The focal point of this trip was the Monterey Bay Aquarium. The Aquarium was kind enough to comp us our tickets to the aquarium, which opened the visit up to a lot of kids that were going to pass because of the cost and short time allocated to this part of the trip. After arriving we met out by the water behind the Group Entrance to the aquarium. There we were told a bit about the aquarium and the rules to mind while visiting:

After being briefed, and informing all of the students when they were to meet for the buses, we entered the aquarium in groups of ten students to each adult chaperone. I ran up the stairs outside to get a shot of the group from above. Comparing this to last week’s picture at Japan town, it’s obvious that the students are mixing a lot more now as they get more comfortable with each other (the Japanese students mostly have white shirts):

Once inside most of the students ventured out to the areas that interested them the most. Others were starving from the trip over and went directly into the restaurant to get some lunch while taking in the view of the ocean. When we arrived there was just a bit of fog burning off the ocean just off shore. The weather was perfect at about 70 degrees. There was plenty of sun, as opposed to the smoke filled skies of the Central Valley the past two weeks. There was a fire in Big Sur that we could see off in the distance, but the wind was thankfully blowing it away from Monterey.

This was a quick visit, with less than two hours spent in the aquarium. We started out with ten students to every adult chaperone. Each time we passed through a darkened exhibit we lost a few more students (I think they were actually ditching us). Being that the Aquarium is pretty compartmentalized, it was easy to see where they had all run off to. I even found a few trying to rest while touring the exhibits:

When it came time to get back on the buses the students were pretty good about arriving on time. I think inside of 15 minutes of when they were supposed to be out front, most students had exited the aquarium. We had to make a sweep through to pick up the stragglers, and a few were called on their cell phones, but overall they all were pretty cooperative in getting out on time. Our next stop were the Gilroy Outlet Stores.

It was good to see the students going around in mixed groups at the outlet stores. Many were in the groups they have been assigned for the video documentary project.

There were many bargains to be found at the outlet stores. I’m not sure if it’s the depressed economy or lingering promotions from the tax rebates, but there were some really great deals to be had. I can only imagine how much better the deal is with the exchange rate between the yen and the dollar. Many students were spotted with ads and maps hunting down the brands that they wanted to bring home from this trip:

Again (flash back to Fisherman’s Warf last week), the In and Out Burger looked like the stop many made before hopping back on the buses for the long trip back to Modesto. We saw a group at the intersection between the two halves of the outlet mall look at their watches, point across to the In and Out, and then run across when the light turned green with only ten minutes left before they had to be back at the buses.

The two teachers who are driving this joint summer school and exchange are Chris Flesuras (on the left below) and Brad Cornwell (in black on the right below). There have been many challenges to this visit and these classes. Both of these guys have been extremely patient in dealing with the daily challenges. We are definitely learning what needs to be tweaked next year when we do this again.

From a technology standpoint, we’ve also had many challenges to overcome. The biggest has been the network hostile nature of the new Adobe Creative Suite. We received a new version at the end of the school year, and we decided to try to implement it for this class. We’ve finally had to grant the computers running this software more rights than we normally give student machines to get the software running properly. We will have to fine tune the configuration between the end of this class and the start of the school year in a few months.

Here’s a shot of most of the Modesto class before they got back on the bus:

Compare this to last year’s picture and you will likely find a few who returned this summer to be with the visiting Japanese students. Last year they were only just starting to interact with them online. A few of these students graduated this year and came back to help out this summer. Many of these same kids have expressed an interest in going to Kyoto this next Spring.

We will likely be taking a group of around 25 to Kyoto in April as our first exchange going to Japan since 9/11. Brad has already volunteered to chaperone that trip, and I will likely be the other chaperone. We are all very excited about the opportunity to travel to Kyoto and be shown the sites by these students and their teachers. I have a feeling that the first half of the school year will be filled with fund raising to get these students over to Kyoto in the Spring.

The Day the Golden Gate Bridge Disappeared

Yesterday was the first field trip to San Francisco. One wrinkle in the plans came from the bus arrangements that were made by the two school districts. The Kyoto students were on a chartered bus and the Modesto students were on a district (yellow) school bus. Because of insurance issues, the students had to be kept on their separate buses. That was an unfortunate situation, as it did not allow the students to mix between the buses on the trip over or back (2 hours each way). And when given a choice, would anyone really want to go on a yellow school bus when the other bus was a large plush charter?

The first stop in San Francisco was the Golden Gate Bridge. I was driving another administrator and my kids that are involved in this summer school program in my own car. We got to the bridge ahead of the buses. The plan was to drop the students on the north end of the bridge, let them walk across the bridge, and then be picked up on the San Francisco side. I dropped my passengers off on the Sausalito side of the bridge. I then drove back across the bridge, parked, and walked back to the north end to meet up with the students. I could not see the bridge as I walked across because of thick fog that was blowing into the bay carried along by cold strong winds. When I arrived on the other side I found that the students were back in the buses. Because many of the students did not bring sweaters, and they were in their uniforms, they decided not to walk across due to the winds, cold temps and heavy fog. The students are going to have to use some stock photos of the bridge for their projects, as we never got a glimpse of the bridge the entire day in the city.

Japan Town was selected by the group for their lunch stop. The Kyoto students have been here in the US for a week now, and many wanted some Japanese food (although comments were made afterwards that the food was not as good as back home). There were many choices for their lunches.

The students and teachers split into mostly three restaurants, a sushi shop, a ramen noodle shop, and an American bakery. The students had time to wander the little mall in Japan town. A group of Modesto and Kyoto students found a Pika Pika photo booth shop at the far end of the mall and were taking group shots in the photo booths. These were pretty interesting, as once you took the pictures you walked around to the back of the machine and then decorated your pictures with computer graphics and text. The pictures are then printed on photo sticker sheets.

The students took a group shot at Japan Town before climbing back onto the buses:

Some of the Kyoto students posed for a group shot afterwards:

The Modesto students were never far behind capturing video and pictures for the multimedia projects. The students should have a lot of material to choose from when producing their DVD’s from this trip.

After Japan Town the buses headed for Union Square. Here the students fanned out and did some shopping in downtown San Francisco. The ones that did not eat at Japan Town had lunch here. There was an Apple store that was very popular. There are many shops around Union Square and the students had a lot to choose from. Back at the park in the middle of Union Square, some students (and teachers) got back early to wait for the buses and had time to chat, while others took the opportunity to just sit back and relax.

They still had one more stop to make before this trip was over. The buses headed down to the Pier 39 and Fisherman’s Warf area for a short stop. By now it was late in the day and approaching dinner time. When the buses stopped a surge of students rushed the In and Out Burger across from Fisherman’s Warf. American standard fare won out over fish and chips. After a short stay all of the students got back on the buses and headed back to Modesto. Unfortunately, it was a Friday night and traffic was very heavy heading out of the city.

We’ll see on Monday what the students are talking about most from this trip, and what kind of pictures and video they ended up capturing for their projects.

Textbook: Creating your world

Class Textbook

At the end of the school year we purchased two classroom sets of the new “Creating your world” book on Second Life. The students really like this book, as it gives very good coverage of some of the more advanced techniques in Second Life. There’s also a CD included with the book with tutorials, templates, textures and other goodies.

Here is a list of what is covered in the book:

• Basic concepts: Understand movement, inventory, and client/server issues
  
• Advanced building: Morph prims and design anything with these advanced techniques
  
• SL scripting programs and third-party editors: Use a variety of tools to write, test, and debug scripts for vehicles, games, motion, and more
  
• Become a virtual pioneer: Start terraforming with SL land tools
  
• Dazzle visitors: Make an impact with textures, lighting, landscaping, and more
  
• Go Hollywood: Storyboard, shoot film, add sound effects, and produce machinima
  
• Real communication: Manage data, chat, and send e-mail — inworld and out
  

Today the Modesto students started working with this book by building the snowman. Some of the snowmen were pretty standard per the book:

Happy Snowman

Others could not stop at just one snowman:

Send in the snow clones

A few students grouped up and made snowman scenes:

Accidental Dismemberment

And some of the snowmen just could not take the Modesto summer heat:

“I’m Melting!”

This book is very well done, and it stands out among the other Second Life books which are mostly just introductory to the subject matter. Here’s a free chapter from the book to sample (courtesy of the “official” Second Life website). Any aspiring content creator should get a copy of this high quality book.

Kyoto Summer School Update

Today was day four of the Kyoto Summer school. Over the past three days we’ve seen the two groups of students really getting along a lot better each day. We are not sure if it’s familiarity with each other, or the jet lag wearing off that is contributing most to this. The Modesto students have been having video conferences and online/in-world meetings with the new Kyoto students (freshmen) back in Kyoto late in the day (early morning in Kyoto).

On Monday the new Kyoto students interviewed the Modesto students in a video conference. They asked questions like what were their hobbies, dreams, favorite music, and other personal questions. The entire class was taking careful notes, as this information would be needed two days later in-world to find their partner’s avatars.

Kyoto Students Interviewing Modesto Students via Video Conference

Yesterday, the two groups of students logged into the PacRimX Islands in Second Life to try and locate their partners, armed only with their notes from the video conference a few days prior. The Modesto students were distributed around all four islands, so no island would be overloaded with avatars. We had over 70 avatars in-world on our four islands during this activity. As in the picture below, many of the students clumped up in groups to talk and exchange items with each other.

 

Avatar Hunt In-world

This summer we have been leaving the video conference link open anytime that we are interacting with the Kyoto students in-world. This allows us to record the interactions, and also gives us a convenient communications channel to coordinate the activities in-world between teachers. The students have started to use this open link to have conversations with each other, sometimes staying after class to chat.

It’s really quite amazing to see the difference in students from last summer to now. We have had some great interactions between the two groups, with students on both sides singing, dancing, and being very animated in their conversations with each other. In a few instances we even have had to ask them to wrap it up when the interviews and conversations go long and we have other students waiting. This is quite the contrast from last year’s video conferences. One big difference is last year most conversations were one to one. This year we have two and three students on each side of the video conference, and this seems to put them at ease more.

The visiting Kyoto students are working with their Modesto counterparts to produce a music video as their first project. The first few days were filled with the students sharing music from their respective countries. Once they decide on a song they storyboard the music video and then grab a video camera and still camera and head out on campus to film their footage. I’ve seen students filming stop action sequences in the hallways and stairwells, others are outside capturing scenes around campus, and one group had a full band assembled in the quad complete with electric guitars, drums and other instruments.

Students Planning A Music Video Project

It’s really going to be interesting to see the music videos when they are done. We had to tweak our network configuration in the video lab to accommodate the increased load of having so many students editing video at the same time. Tomorrow we go out on our first field trip to a popular tourist spot, and each of the teams will have cameras and a single video camera to capture scenes for their DVD projects. I’ll post some pictures from this trip over the weekend.

So far the students have been exceptionally cooperative, polite, and involved in the projects at hand. It will be interesting to see how they do tomorrow out of the classroom socially interacting and yes, shopping! So many of the Modesto students are now expressing an intense interest in participating in an exchange trip to Kyoto this next school year. While the Kyoto students have been coming to Modesto for close to twenty years now, we stopped sending student to Kyoto after the 911 attacks. We are both hopeful that we can get the Modesto exchanges to Kyoto started up again this year.

Next week we have board members and other visitors coming to see this experimental summer school. With any luck, this exchange will set the stage for future summer school exchanges with Kyoto.

Second Life’s 5th Birthday Celebration

Linden Lab has set up a Wiki to track all the info coming out of this event: SLFB Official Wiki

Philip Rosedale and Mark Kingdon kick of the Birthday Celebration:

Link to “official” video and audio from event and text transcript

I missed the opening celebration speech for Second Life’s 5^th birthday yesterday. I was out greeting our visiting Kyoto students to their joint summer school with Modesto students. So I had to listen to the audio from the event this morning.

There was not a lot of specific information and policy statements for the future of Second Life made in this opening speech. I was expecting a bit more, with some enthusiastic proclamations about the future of the platform, including open source projects and interoperability of the platform moving forward to be included. And on the stability front, there were only a few brief comments emphasizing that it is still a focus at Linden Lab.

Here are some statements from the 15 minute keynote by to peak your interest to click the link above to go and watch/listen to the whole thing:

• “One of the advantages of using streaming audio is that hopefully, and I stress hopefully, there are many more of you listening than are standing in front of me right now” – Philip Rosedale at the opening
• Second Life Birthday Sim location of the event.
• Mark Kingdon, M Linden and Philip Rosedale, Philip Linden.
• 20 sims make up the area of the SL Birthday location. Philip noted that on June 23^rd in 2003 there were only 16 sims online at launch.
• A million people or more that are actively using Second Life, quarter million a day.
• Stability a big focus as we move forward.
• 250 people working at Linden Lab.
• Over 60% of the residents are outside of the US. A whole set of diverse values, beliefs and even laws that we have to take into consideration.
• It’s phenomenal from an education perspective, and in today’s world where we are so resource constrained in the real world with energy and physical space, the thought of educating and being educated in Second Life is really really exciting.