Gary Hayes, Director of the Laboratory for Advanced Media Production in Sydney, has just released his 2008 Metaverse Tour Video: The Social Virtual World’s A Stage :

I am doing a commercial report and curriculum development on the evolving range of social virtual worlds and have recently ventured into fifty of them to review and sample the culture, creative, business and educational potential. On my travels I got out my virtual camera and decided to capture a bunch of small vignettes which quickly turned into a body of audio visual delights - so decided to create a nice seven minute video for posterity.

I thought I would share the video publicly as it demonstrates how ubiquitous, popular and streamlined many of these spaces are becoming across the intraweb / ‘cloud’. With over 300 million frequenting or registering for the non-game based worlds and millions of new investment in 2nd and 3rd generation services there seems to be no stopping them

Sit back and enjoy the journey…

AjaxLife is now available for the iPhone and iPod touch! It’s currently about where AjaxLife itself was just over a year or so ago - you can chat to people, IM those on your friend list (online or offline this time ’round), and receive IMs from arbitrary people. Thus far, there is no movement, no inventory, no money transfers, etc.

Lacking an iPhone, I was able to connect successfully on my iPod Touch over my home wireless network, which provides a basic menu to do local chat, IM, or access my contacts:

The contacts list does show who is in world:

I sent a few IMs to contacts but did not get any response, so I decided to do a local test, and logged in as my alt avatar, Zoraster Gaffer. I did manage to get back and forth IMs from the iPod (CDB Barkley) to Zoraster, and when I teleported Zoraster to CDB’s home, I could see him as he normally would look in Second Life:

And the back and forth communication was near real time. The people I was IM-ing did report getting the IMs I had sent from my iPod, but I did not receive their replies.

This is pretty neat in terms of spreading the connectivity to/from virtual worlds and a super impressive accomplishment again for Kathleen Katharine Berry, but do not get carried away when someone labels this “Second Life on an iPod”.

Not yet!

Learning is the a culmination of over a years worth of development by NMC Virtual Worlds and was built in response to many faculty member’s requests for a sim wide resource center with content specifically pertinent to educating in Second Life.

Here is a sampling of what you can find.:

NMC Modular Building system, created by CJ Carnot, which can be easily used to create buildings and rooms of any size by connecting together what are essentially “unit blocks”:

The NMC Amphitheater, an event and presentation space with built in screens and room for 80 avatars which appeared first on NMC Campus (and is still actively used there) as the Gonick Amphitheater.

For a unique presentation venue, try the NMC Coliseum, an “in the round” approach to an event and presentation space, which has been used in many of our symposiums in Second Life (The Cooper Coliseum and NMC Conference Center) and seats up to 96 avatars.

If you are looking for something smaller, look for the NMC Mini-theaters, which seats 48 avatars and is scripted to sink below ground with a click when not in use.

As aids to new users, get a copy of the NMC Orientation Kit, based on NMC’s own Orientation with everything you need to build a basic version of your own.

We also offer a copy of Stephane Zugawang’s Virtual Reality Room, an immersive photo realistic environment free for educational and non-profit use.

And there are many more items in the NMC One Linden Store, where you can purchase hundreds of items made by NMC Virtual Worlds for 1L$ (the fee is just so we can track the usage- it costs you less than 3 cents!). You can find everything from classroom and library furniture to entire avatars in professional attire.

We hope you find useful items at Learning. Stop by and fill up your inventory! Find us at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Learning

The NMC Virtual Learning Prize is envisioned as a way to surface and realize creative ideas for how to make optimal use of a virtual setting, using a process that provides recognition, financial incentives, professional development services, and a return for education as a whole.

The first-round awardees are:

Tim Bell
University of Canterbury
"Computer Science Unplugged in a virtual world"

Natasha Boskic
University of British Columbia
"Collaborative creative writing in predesigned space"

Eric Hackathorn
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
"Exploring Weather and Climate Change Through a Climate Time Line"

Lisa Ortiz
Metropolitan State College of Denver
"Experience Virtual Disabilities"

Heidi Trotta
Seton Hall University
"Endangered Ecosystems - The Virtual Salt Water Marsh (Part 2 - A Case-Based Learning Scenario)"

Ruth Tringham
University of California, Berkeley
"Student-Designed Virtual Archaeology Class"

Thomas Waters
University of Pittsburgh
"Measuring Heart Rate and How Medications Affect Heart Rate"

Michael Zerbe
Stark State College of Technology
"First World Economics in Second Life"

Nearly 75 applications were received in the initial round of this highly competitive program. Each awardee will receive US$5,000 — a cash incentive paid to the awardee of $500 as well as $4,500 in expert development assistance from the NMC Virtual Worlds team to create their proposed learning experience.

As many as 20 awards will be distributed during the 2008-9 award year – since all 20 were not awarded in the first round, the process remains open, and proposals will continue to be accepted until all funds have been expended.

For further information, or to download a proposal submission form, please see the Virtual Learning Prize website. Questions related to the criteria or the submission of an application should be directed to virtual-learning@nmc.org.

As many as 20 NMC Virtual Learning Prizes will be awarded in 2008. Each of the US$5,000 awards will provide a cash incentive paid to the awardee of $500 as well as $4,500 in expert development assistance from the NMC Virtual Worlds team to create the learning experience. The range of inworld services available to awardees to actualize the proposed ideas includes professional building, scripting, design, animation, avatar design, and/or related services.

The NMC is committed to pushing the boundaries of how we collectively view teaching and learning in virtual space. The NMC Virtual Learning Prize is envisioned as a way to surface and realize creative ideas for how to make optimal use of a virtual setting, using a process that provides recognition, financial incentives, professional development services, and a return for education as a whole.

"Projects funded under the NMC Virtual Learning Prize program will be those that make learning fresh or novel, or that illustrate concepts that are usually very difficult to teach," explains Dr. Larry Johnson, NMC's CEO and director of NMC Virtual Worlds. "We are seeking immersive learning experiences in particular, as well as tools that support the craft of teaching. We hope to see a number of proposals with broad applicability across disciplines as that will allow us to maximize the reach of the shared resources that are to be developed under this program."

As a requirement of funding, all materials and content produced as part of the program will be licensed for broad use under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Proposal authors will retain full copyright to finished products, and all funded materials will be made available to educators and educational institutions at no cost via either the NMC's Educational Resource Center on Learning in Second Life or via the NMC's website, as applicable.

For the 2008-9 award year, funded ideas will be limited to those that can be implemented in the virtual worlds of Second Life or Project Wonderland. In future years, the program may be expanded to other virtual world platforms.

Review of proposals will begin on June 16, 2008, and proposals will continue to be accepted until all funds have been expended.

For further information, or to download a proposal submission form, please see the Virtual Learning Prize website. Questions related to the criteria or the submission of an application should be directed to virtual-learning@nmc.org.

Lest you think this is not serious, check out the Science article of April 18 by Gonzo Scientist John Bohannon titled Scientists, We Need Your Swords!

This will not be your typical conference. Sure, there will be sessions devoted to various research topics involving virtual worlds, panel discussions, social activities, and those conference goody bags that we’ve all come to love. But to attend this conference, you don’t have to splurge on grant money or add to global warming by flying to another country. And in the goody bags, you won’t find brochures, pens, or those quickly lost notebooks.

Instead, each conference participant will receive (while supplies last) 10 gold pieces, a red “Sciencemag” shirt, a colorful conference tabard emblazoned with an infinity symbol, two extra bags for swag, a telescope, and a pet creature. Between sessions, there will be group field trips across landscapes inhabited by dangerous beasts–some earthly and extinct, others fanciful–an introduction to the world’s auction-based economy, and finally a massive joint assault on an enemy city. (Beat that, Gordon conferences!) Anyone with an Internet connection can take part, from anywhere in the world. All you have to do is install the game, create a character, and join the guild called “Science” on the Earthen Ring US server.

In addition to the main conference web page (which has a lot of useful links) there is much more in the conference wiki.

If there are an WoW educators out there, we’d love to hear some dispatches from this event.

As part of an event atClever Zebra’s vBusiness Expo, in this interview, Metanomics host Robert Bloomfield asked Larry about the NMC’s Virtual worlds programs and then discussed more on Larry’s recent experience testifying before the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet of the US Congress.

You can find audio recording and video recording of this interview plus soon a transcript, at http://metanomics.net/larry-johnson

“U Pacific” is a based on the real campus area around Burns Tower. For those at the university, you can meet at Pacific Theater for a live demonstration and virtual ribbon cutting of the Pacific campus. Elizabeth Griego will officiate the ceremony. For all attendees, a virtual dance party with live DJ will follow.

Open Virtual Worlds video announcement (6.5 Mb Quicktime)

In launching the Open Virtual Worlds project, the NMC will build on its extensive presence in Second Life and add to the services it offers educational institutions with a suite of services aimed at those who need a secure extensible platform or simply prefer an open solution. Open Virtual Worlds will be a new project housed within NMC Virtual Worlds, along with its extensive Second Life project.

The NMC remains deeply committed to the Second Life platform, and plans to continue to offer comprehensive services for it for the long term. At the same time, we believe that Sun’s open-source platforms will meet the needs that many institutions have for higher levels of security, clear ownership of intellectual property, and portability. Adding a suite of open-content, open-source services will add an important dimension to NMC Virtual Worlds that we hope will help members continue to explore the evolving range of options unfolding in the virtual world arena.

As part of the Open Virtual Worlds effort, the NMC will also join the Sun Immersion Special Interest Group , which is a Sun Microsystems Inc. sponsored community dedicated to advancing the state of open source technology and content for virtual worlds and gaming in education. At the same time, Sun Microsystems will become the NMC’s newest Platinum partner, which is the highest level of corporate participation in the NMC, and reflects a strong commitment on the part of a company to the work of the NMC and its members.

"Sun is delighted to participate with the New Media Consortium and their outstanding community of creative individuals and organizations in expanding the opportunity and use of open source virtual worlds and game-based learning to enhance student achievement and academic scholarship around the world with Sun's Project Wonderland and Darkstar technologies," said Kevin Roebuck, Community Manager, Immersive Education, Sun Microsystems, Inc.

The project’s business plan includes scalable hosted solutions that will make it very easy for any institution to experiment with the educational spaces and content that is planned for development, as well as very high quality custom development services. Over the long term, revenues from custom development will support a range of off-the-shelf products, activities, and events that will be open to all.

See the official press release for more information. As the Open Virtual Worlds project unfolds over the next few months, we will add a major new component to the NMC Virtual Worlds website that will be the repository for news, information, downloads, and more.

Learn more about Project Darkstar
Learn more about Project Wonderland
Learn more about the Sun Immersion Special Interest Group