Pentatonic Scales

Last month I heard the Piedmont East Bay Children's Choir sing a hauntingly beautiful pentatonic 'chance' piece. There's something about the underlying tones that is both reassuringly predictable but still open to exploration and creative construction.

Today I saw this video featuring Bobbie McFerrin bringing a pentatonic scale to life for an audience at the World Science Festival. Enjoy.

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival on Vimeo.

Watching Obama

On Saturday I took my seat among 40 or so other avatars in Metaplace, and waited for the speech to begin. Thanks to hard work from the Metaplace engineers, Keith Morris, Evonne Henning and Joyce Bettencourt we had a live stream of Obama speaking in Ghana coming into Metaplace. The speech was powerful, as so many of his are, and I wish more people would have seen it.

As it was, we had an international audience in the two virtual worlds, Metaplace and Second Life, watching together, discussing the ideas being raised, and then expanding the conversation afterwards with guest speakers Ambassador Kenton Keith, Derrick Ashong, and Professor Timothy Burke. I have a strong belief in the opportunities that virtual worlds offer to bridge cultures and this amazing event only underscored that belief.

Check out Draxtor Despres' machinima:

Richard Bartle's Embedded World

I went to check out Richard Bartle's embedded Metaplace world and found a really fun puzzle game. While certainly not a virtual world in the 3D, immersive, walk around with avatars sense, this example shows the breadth of options it's possible to explore with Metaplace.

ThisMoment

I'm experimenting with This Moment, a new photo and video sharing tool. Here's my first "moment". I'm disappointed that the embed window doesn't auto-fit to the space. I can't figure out how to make the pics show in full, instead of part-way through the photo.

Virtual Worlds, Real Learning

This past week I participated in a special conference track hosted by Global Kids at the GLS conference in Madison, WI. The conference is part of their RezEd effort, bringing together people with a special interest in virtual worlds and education.

My presentation can be found at prezi.com. I've posted my speaker notes below. I'd love to get feedback, and I'm happy to answer questions.

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Speaker Notes - RezEd at GLS, June 10, 2009
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Intro
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- I am not an educator, just a marketer and virtual world enthusiast who has been learning as I go
- I know most of you have some experience with virtual worlds. I want to share what I've learned about the possibility of virtual worlds
- the main goal is to get you thinking about the varying options as you look for better ways to create enhanced learning environments
- secondarily I hope we'll all be even a little more excited about the future of a technology that supports the natural curiosity and creativity of our youth

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My background
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- Many of you know me from Second Life. Today I'm known there as Robin Harper or Taliesin Protagonist. Or you may have known me as Robin Linden.
- I left Linden Lab in February and am now working with two more recent entries into the VW space: Metaplace and Frenzoo
- I'm also working with the AARP to build a community driven website to teach financial literacy to young adults

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Virtual Worlds
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- have been around in different forms for decades
- appeal lies in many areas
-- creation of something new with apparently significant potential
-- opportunity to explore who we are
-- community

- although not the first with 3D, the advent of Second Life was the first to bring together unfettered user driven creation, real-time collaboration, and the immersion of 3D. The addition of fully customizable avatars brought the exploration of identity to new levels.

- educators have taken full advantage of the tools in Second Life
-- experiential learning
-- data visualization
-- physics experiments
-- 3D everything -- even a wiki

So is there room for other virtual experiences? What new ideas will they spark among educators? And most important, how will today's youth benefit from the opportunities these digital worlds open up?

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Second Life
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- Launched 2002
- potential for creating experiences in the virtual world that enhanced or expanded what is possible in the real world
-- physics
-- creation tools
-- simulation
- new society, a better place -> unfettered imagination

this is where Your world, your imagination came from

- first educator entered in the summer of 2002 while still in alpha when Anne Beamish brought her urban planning class in to explore how a new society forms itself

- Anne's class looked at the economy, made recommendations about transportation and explored the social implications of starting a new world from scratch. From that beginning grew the Campus: Second Life program, which eventually became SLED, which itself has spawned new groups such as RezEd.

Along with the creation tools, perhaps one of the most salient aspects of Second Life is the incredible variety of ways you can explore identity: gender shifting, alien life forms, age-defying. The opportunity to design an avatar to suit your mood or your innermost fantasy opens doors for exploring who you are. For young people just trying on their new lives, this is an amazing opportunity as they explore who they are and take that learning back to the real world.

Of course anyone who has designed an environment within Second Life knows the power of 3D, graphics and scripting to create an immersive experience that can be used to teach, explore, experiment. Immersion is a core part of the Second Life experience and another reason that young people find it compelling.

Of the virtual worlds that I want to look at today Second Life is the most mature.

Land metaphor: the basis of SL is the large contiguous land space. It gives SL it's sense of Placeness. When combined with the economy, the world of SL becomes a fully realized society, with the primary characteristics of collaboration among a global audience, experimenting with new types of social learning and culture, based in self-expression.

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Metaplace
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launched in 2008 in closed beta, and opened last month
- as with Second Life some of the earliest users are educators

- Founded by Raph Koster
- web-based platform where users can create their own worlds unconstrained by the ideas or design of the platform providers.
- Metaplace becomes a network of loosely joined worlds that are very reflective of their individual creator.

Metaplace shares the goal of creativity with Second Life. It has building tools, scripting and texture options. It works in real time allowing for collaborative experiences. Metaplace puts the world in the hands of the user. blogs -> creativity -> worlds

Ownership - Based on the Avatar Bill of Rights, the Metaplace Terms of Service spell out the responsibility of the world owners, as well as of world users. Analogous to a website, down to the URL

world metaphor, and world centric.
Your world can look very much like a garden, a house, or a town, or it can be a simple plain-text world such as this one, called Educhat.

- unlike SL, Metaplace takes its context from the web, and is fully integrated with the Internet.
- it is accessible from any browser, on any computer. It can easily connect to any information or data that resides on the Internet.
- And shortly you'll be able to embed your world on your blog page, your school's community site, or on your Intranet giving you and your school the power of Second Life and the ease of The Sims.

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Frenzoo
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I want to touch on Frenzoo because it shares something in common with Second Life and Metaplace, and that's the focus on creativity and user generated content.

Still in beta, Frenzoo is based in Hong Kong, although its user base is largely in the US.

-Frenzoo opens up the world of fashion creation to youth.
-It gives them the ability to design their own clothing, using templates or by creating their own, and then to show off their creations with fully customizable avatars in a setting of their choice. Fashions and animations can be gifted or sold, and there is an active and growing shopping activity.

There is an active, global community of young adults. Today they are sharing their designs, holding fashion shows, and starting a fashion magazine. Their communication takes place in an active forum. Plans include extending the current shopping into a full cash economy, allowing aspiring designers to start their own businesses. Like Metaplace, Frenzoo is fully web-based, and accessible to anyone with a computer and a browser.


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Intermission
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Barry Joseph: scaffolding

- virtual worlds that allow for user generated content contain core elements that correlate closely with educational goals
-- builder ladder matches skill model and achievement ladder of progressive learning
-- platform that allows students to prototype their ideas
-- collaboration enhanced by the shared sense of place and the embodiment of their ideas in a world they can call their own

incorporating new technologies: virtual worlds, blogs, IM, search, imagery, video into curricula
- encourage creativity and give them opportunities and freedom to express themselves and engage in the learning process

Two cases, one in Second Life and one in Metaplace, where innovators have built programs using virtual worlds in combination with other digital media to realize a digital learning experience that's in sync with the outside world.

What I think is most interesting about both these cases is how the youth have been drawn into contextual situations that encourage global citizenship through the acquisition of digital skills --

using the virtual as a gateway to the real. In a changing global world and economy, understanding diversity, other cultures, and collaborative creation is a critical skill.

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Skoolaborate - Linden Prize finalist
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An example of Global connection.

Goal
"...the transformation of working relationships within schools, within faculties, across sectors of education and across national and international borders"

Learn and play at the same time.

partnering across the globe. The PacRim Exchange includes a group from Modesto CA and one from Japan. They meet in Second Life, and they've also met in real life. Mentoring a large part of the program, as students from different cultures and communities come together and teach each other about their lives.

Technical integration: in addition to Second Life, the students are using wikis, blogs, online learning. Teachers are working with each other and with the students to design the curriculum and to help each other work collaboratively in a digital world.

Challenge: "Instill confidence in the minds of teachers and their communities that virtual worlds have much to offer education."

What they're finding is they are transforming the way people work together, in their schools, their communities and across the world. They're also giving students an opportunity to participate on a level playing field where real world perceptions can be put aside.

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3DSquared
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Joe Castille and Spencer Zuzolo

Technology
- the mission is part of an initiative in the state of LA to develop a digital workforce that can serve as the foundation for state industry
-- modeling, simulation, games
-- national educational tech standards being adopted by LA. Grade level expectations for fluency and digital literacy. VWs help this.

Spencer Zuzolo, president of 3D Squared
- young people have a natural affinity for these workforce skills
- they need academic programs that help them more formally transform their interest in games and immersive virtual environments into realistic career and education paths.

Raph: Citizenship is the same whether it exists in the real world or within a digital framework. Even in a cartoony world, you can be speaking about important, real issues like health care, coastal restoration, and the legislative process.

Forty middle school and high school students spent their entire spring break at the Digital Workforce Intensive, working 12 hours per day on games and virtual worlds where the focus was on Louisiana's core social problems of education, health care, coastal restoration, and pollution

- Second Life not as easy to build in; more comfortable with model that each world is its own environment where each world owner establishes the rules (dew drops on a field of grass); art style more comfortable for parents -- friendlier environment for young people

- also use Ning for students to blog, upload ideas, share files. Gave them the possibility to work together, prototype ideas, and then presented to industry people

using digital media for social benefit

work in teams provides learning about teamwork, collaboration
presented to state legislature and state superintendent of education

Parents excited about the program. Parents are already concerned about the role games play in the lives of the kids. They like that kids are being told they need to understand science and math in order to be a game programmer, and literature and history to be a game designer.

The Intensive was followed up with a Stakeholder's Capstone Conference that included panel discussions and a three-hour marathon keynote by education futurist James Brazell. Carnegie Council Senior Fellow Joshua Fouts and I presented on the applied value of digital workforce skills across the fields of journalism, international affairs, and economics, in an effort to demonstrate the local, national, and global implications of the initiative. We highlighted the importance of integrating creativity into the framework of science and technology education.

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Creating a network of worlds
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Somewhat like island campuses in Second Life, but accessible to individual students
Full control of access, culture, look and feel
Web integration
Parent world serves as a hub, with teleport doors to student worlds

Charlie, 14, spoke like a showman about his team’s game, “War of the Wetlands,” that centers on preventing coastal erosion through educating people in an immersive environment.

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Sharing values
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Exciting thing about these worlds and these projects is how the values they represent come together to create an experience that isn't secondary to the content, but is surrounded by the content.

Whether it's the grand society imagined by Philip Rosedale, or the creative explosion envisioned by Raph Koster, from my outside looking in I see an opportunity to truly build a global, engaged citizenry who know how to work together and shape their environment.

Clarification

Last week I participated in a panel discussion for FountainBlue.

A blog written by someone in the audience quotes me as saying that someone made US$1.7Million selling virtual shoes. In fact what I said was that there were nearly 60K accounts that are making enough money in Second Life to cover their costs.

In addition, several people/accounts are cashing out US$ amounts in excess of $1M per year (with the highest amount estimated at $1.7M), based on annualizing one quarter of data. Most of the top 10 are in the real estate business, but the group also includes a company that does events and one that designs virtual goods including shoes.

My apologies for any misunderstandings that may have arisen from my statements.

Leaving Linden, but not Second Life

I had the most amazing experience on Friday morning, when I attended a going-away party that Sitearm Madonna and Ham Rambler hosted for me in Second Life. It was humbling and gratifying, as so many people stopped in to wish me well. Of course it wasn't without its crashes, but all in all it was wonderful. I want to thank Sitearm and Ham, and also the people who provided the live music: Dizzy Banjo, Frogg Marlowe, Grace McDunnough and Cylindrian Rutabaga.

Here's what I said to all the party-goers...

Thanks to Sitearm and Ham and their team

It's so awe-inspiring to see so many people who have been so important to me for such a long time. I can't thank you all enough for making the time to stop by. I know you all have busy RLs in addition to your SL.

I want you all to know how much I admire what you've done. We gave you a foundation and some tools, but you've made SL the diverse and beautiful place it is. It's in the things you've built and the people you are, and the friends we've all become.

I'll be sorry to leave you all as Robin Linden, but I'll still be here as Taliesin Protagonist and I hope you'll all continue to be with me in my new journey, wherever it takes me.

Change is a good thing

I posted the news that I'm leaving to the Linden Lab blog today. Such a hard decision, but I'm excited at the possibilities. Seven years is a long time, and it's been a great ride. But time to move on and refresh.