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October 2011

October 05, 2011

Where shall we to begin to unravel the drivel in the paper by Roszak.  Let’s start with his use of language... humans have minds and think... with no "quotes" on the words. Computers are "data processors" which "regurgitate" from "memory" with heavy use of quotes.  Their proponents are "data merchants" - you can almost hear him spit as he says it - and they promulgate a "cult of information" - my quotes. Human memory is the "invisible psychic adhesive" - give me a break.

Then we get pages on "ideas" which humans "think" about, and how those differ from what "computers" can "process" - and Rosak helpfully explains that these are generalization mechanisms based on experience of more or fewer instances.  Pity he seems to not know about explanation based generalization systems in computers which have worked for many years to find and refine categories in the taxonomies in many knowledge-based systems, and then used to great effect to advance scientific knowledge in astronomy, genetics and drug discovery. These systems have been around for well over three decades, so if he was speaking about generalisation, you think he could have looked it up (suggested keywords: "computer" "AI" "generalization").  But then again perhaps (neo-)luddites cannot do proper research if it involves using computers.His poor use of the Logo Poetry generator program, which included an element to ensure some randomizing phrases and vocabulary was introduced into the generated poems, was introduced as his example to illustrate the level of computer "simulation" of human "originality". This really is such a poorly related example I could not believe it got through peer review even in a philosophy paper.

He begins to go off into the void with references to the self reflection and how the mind is such a wonderful thing because it cannot fully model itself... but can (of course) completely understand its own creations. He asserts that it is "impossible to invent a machine that will be the mind's equal". Well maybe we can try to go for "mind" rather than mind and we might succeed. He does like his "quotes".

Roszak, T., (1994) "Of Ideas and Data" from Roszak, T., The cult of information : a neo-Luddite treatise on high tech, artificial intelligence, and the true art of thinking pp.87-107, University of California Press.

Keywords: IDEL11

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October 07, 2011

I want to make some observations on the use this week of Twitter for the Edinburgh MSc in e-Learning IDEL11 class discussions about core readings and topics. Obviously one purpose is to test a variety of tools and modalities of interaction for distance education purposes, so I will give my experience as a student in this case. 

Twitter is a valuable "push" short messaging and trending platform.  Due to the volume of material appearing on it, lack of archiving facilities, lack of search over long periods and lack of good clustering methods in most tools it is unsuited to discussions which by their nature are threaded and need linearity in reading posts from multiple participants.  The tweeter should not assume the group members see every (or even most) tweets, and there is no confirmation of what they have and have not seen.

Shortened URLs are frequently applied by tools when tweets are posted, and this loses much valuable context for the citation or reference given.

Public accessibility and possibly permanent online availability and reposting by others of the tweets also may preclude argumentation more suited to a closed audience or group.

Seeking to use Twitter to follow 4 #tags on 3 MSc in e-Learing courses is impractical on most Twitter interfaces, including the official Twitter.com provided web site and mobile apps.  I found only TweetDeck for Desktop as recommended for the Digital Cultures course (but not the mobile versions of TweetDeck)  suitable for such uses... but that is disruptive via its new tweet arrival notification mechanism when trying to concentrate on other work.

My use of Twitter was also on low bandwidth and error prone 3G connections, and using small screen mobile devices, but I think my observations are valid even without that limitation.

I found the threaded discussion forums on WebCT much easier to follow while travelling, and the times at which they can be checked and inputs given can be managed better and more asynchronously.

Keywords: IDEL11

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October 09, 2011

My two OpenSim avatars chatting away together. Part of an exercise for the Digital Cultures EDC11 Digital Artifact exercise: http://atate.org/ai/ai/res/2011-10-09-chat-log-ai-and-be.txt

http://atate.org/ai/ai/img/2011-10-09 Avatar Identity Ai Be Chatting

At least they don't bicker like some recent chatbot to chatbot chat experiments: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnzlbyTZsQY

Keywords: Avatar, Chat, IDEL11

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October 10, 2011

We have been held up for a while in our experimentation with Moodle/SLoodle since the new versions (2.1.2 as at 10-Oct-2011) required a later version of PHP than our servers were set to.  Apache/PHP changes are strictly controlled in the School of Informatics to address securuity issues, so its not something we can change quickly.  Our main servers should be updated within the next month, but meantime, we updated a test server and now have a working Moodle 2.1.2 with a standing "course" for OpenVCE experimentation.

A new PhD student has started with our group, Punyanuch Borwarnginn from Thailand, having just completed the MSc in AI here.  Her work will be in the area of Intelligent Learning  Environments, and she will start with looking at aspects of Moodle, SLoodle and virtual worlds-based I-Room technology. Her blog on initial ideas is at: http://openvce.net/ile-proposal

Keywords: IDEL11, Moodle, SLoodle

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Its tricky to know which is the "real" avatar...

Ai and Be Avatars

Keywords: Avatar, IDEL11

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October 11, 2011

This is a mixed use and mixed institution educational area, with a number of plots used by a range of Universities, coverages and academic groups. There are a number of "classrooms in the sky" on various levels.

On arrival and initial exploration, the area is not well described or signposted.  There is no obvious entry/arrival area and no note cards are offered.  Looking round though it was clear there were specific institution and class areas set up for specific subjects.  A veterinary studies area had sculptures of horses, and posters and displays related to horse anatomy for example. It had some nice teaching and presentation aids. There was a nice interactive "Artboard 2.1" using prims for marked lines.

To find out more about the area and its uses, a Google search on "EduNation Second Life" leads to http://heyjude.wordpress.com/2007/02/05/edunation-secondlife/ which has next to no content and no one has posted comments... it's full contents are:

The Consultants-E are proud to launch the first private island simulator in Second Life dedicated to online training seminars and conferences, and the use of Second Life in Education. EduNation is a 65,000m2 island in the Second Life virtual world with seminar, powerpoint, audio and videocast facilities. Use of the seminar facilities is free. More information at EduNation (http://www.theconsultants-e.com/edunation/edunation.asp)

That URL leads only to "Server Error - 404 - File or directory not found. The resource you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.

This is rather typical of educational regions that are not well managed or owned by specific stake-holders.  The area should be considered as one that lets people set up individual classrooms and areas and is not meant to have a cohesive design or allow for random exploration and discovery.

SLoodle 2.0 Demo on EduNation in Second Life

A good example of it in productive use by educators, and the reason I chose this region to explore, was a recent demonstration of a new version of the SLoodle module for the Moodle Victual Learning Environment.  The demonstration organisers set up a new area well up in the sky and rafter landing at a simple initial meeting space, they dynamically rezzed large platforms nearby to show  the facilities. and even rezzed a bridge to let the visitors walk over to that newly created facility. I attended a briefing about the new SLoodle 2 toolset on the EduNation III region of Second Life on Sunday 18-Sep-2011 by Paul Priebsch (avatar name: Fire Centaur). About 30 other educators were there. A feature of SLoodle 2 is the ability to set up "scenes" an rapidly rezz them in and around a classroom for a lesson, and then tidy them away so the ability can be re-used. This was demonstrated live on the EduNation regions. The SLoodle quiz chair can be set up to give rewards to students, or "penalise" them for failure... including dumping them in a shark filled pool with realistic screams!

A blog report of that demonstration is at http://holyroodpark.net/atate/weblog/6149.html. Full size versions of some images of the demo meeting are gathered at http://openvce.net/sloodle

Keywords: EduNation, IDEL11

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MSc in e-Learning IDEL11 Module - Virtual Worlds in Education section... tutorial for new avatars and to get used to the facilities on Virtual University of Edinburgh (Vue) given by Frank Lassard and Pancha Enzyme...

Holyrood Park IDEL11 Tutorial

 

Holyrood Park IDEL11 Tutorial

 

Holyrood Park IDEL11 Tutorial

Keywords: IDEL11, Second Life

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October 12, 2011

Attended tutorial on Holyrood Park in "The Grove" campfire tutorial space on Vue facilities in Second Life.  This is Ai arriving from above looking down over the Vue regions, and then in the meeting.

IDEL11 Arrival over Vue IDEL11 Tutorial

Keywords: IDEL11, Second Life

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October 13, 2011

Browser incompatibility with served web pages and web content has been an issue for some time since multiple browsers and platforms have become available.  HTML itself was designed to allow for multiple possible renderings to allow for differences of display device, etc.  But as web pages have used proprietary content (e.g. Flash) and used progressively more complex scripting (e.g. JavaScript), style sheet variants (e.g. CSS) and other platform dependant content, and as specialized versions of web pages for mobile devices have appeared, the things have recently become much worse. 

We often get pages partially rendered, but see the message "Done, but with errors on page" showing in the browser status bar.  This is often due to JavaScript or other underling errors... an example, taken from the Holyrood Park Blog site itself, might look like this if you open the diagnostics window...

User Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.0; Trident/4.0;
chromeframe; SLCC1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; Media Center PC 5.0; InfoPath.1;
.NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; .NET4.0C)
Timestamp: Mon, 10 Oct 2011 19:18:06 UTC

Message: Object expected
Line: 2 Char: 1 Code: 0
URI: http://edc11.education.ed.ac.uk/.../northern-web-coders/js/dropmenu.js
A serious problem is that pages are getting richer in content, but page developers are failing to test in multiple browsers, consider different bandwidth devices, different size screen failing to provide fall back styles where they sue advanced facilities, etc. 

White Screen of Death by waiting...

Another issue is that page developers, and most content management systems and social network style web pages are laid out in ways that mean the page does not render until most of the content has been downloaded to the browser.  Where the page contains many thumbnails, images, and other large volume content this can mean the user sees a blank screen for a long time on slower links before the whole page is shown.  Progressive rendering of downloaded content is not possible if the style typical of social network web pages is adopted.  The developers of those web pages and styles often fail to set image and table/element pre-size indicators which means the content has to be loaded before the browser can decide on the layout position.

Keywords: IDEL11

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October 17, 2011

I am sitting in on the distance learning MSc Introduction to AI Class at Stanford - http://www.ai-class.com/ - to observe the way they use technolgy for distance education. They seem to make very good use of short multiple choice answers and "click over the options" type quizzes after each brief video segment to make sure people are understanding.  I also see they will be using "badges" to show progress in the class and its assignments.

For those of you that have not heard of this... its believed to be the largest distance learning class ever - with 150,000 registered students.

Keywords: IDEL11

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Avatar Identity

Avatar Identity exercise - are the avatar clones me, us or them? See http://atate.org/ai/ai/ for more...

Keywords: IDEL11

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Second Life Building Tutorial

Second Life Building Tutorial

Keywords: IDEL11

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October 18, 2011

Keywords: IDEL11

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October 19, 2011

As part of my "Learning Challenge" for the Understanding Learning in the On-line Environment module, I have now had my first lesson... it was exciting going to class again and in a totally different environment. Reminds of the the great buzz I always sense at the start of each new academic year amongst students and staff!

There was a LOT to take in.. but Karen Temple who is training me took things step by step. She was keen not to over do the theory and looking at books, so I got introduced right away to my "model" for the day... a disembodied head on a tripod.. but with a lovely head of hair on her to work on. It was washed and left tousled to let me learn on it.

But first we went through the various brush types... and parts of the comb. See http://atate.org/mscel/hair/. Then onto how the hair is "sectioned" to allow it to be worked on in parts and layers. It was very tricky to know where to place your hands and fingers to get best grip on the hair... and I was not separating the parts very well. I realised I was thinking about it a bit too much and when I did it a bit sloppier (at first) I got the rhythm more I think.

It took some two hours to fix my model's hair this first time. That would be a LONG appointment. Anyway she has come home with me now for homework. So I am asked to go in next week and show Karen how I can do the whole job. And the plan is that I will then be let loose on a live model. Now that will be a thrilling experience for me... and I bet for her - hopefully not in the horror film sense!

Keywords: Hair, IDEL11, ULOE11

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Reading Boellstorff (2008) and his stories of virtual world encounters.... I have some related observations. This may get a bit deep and multi-layered.. I like layers of storytelling and meaning :-)

Some of you may (or may not) have noticed that my avatar changed appearance during the Second Life building tutorial this week. My normal bearded avatar and flight suit outfit (there is a whole history behind that too) .. changed to be a little red round ball. Why?

When "I" (Austin) am "he" (Ai) he normally shows attention and is responsive to what is happening around. I do not like "busy" and "afk" indicators and prefer to log out - or go elsewhere in world. I am not happy to leave my avatar unattended and feel it would be rude to do so... though I have no problem with others adopting that style of use of virtual worlds.

For a few years I used some text only and mobile device or low bandwidth non-graphical clients like Radegast and iPad's Pocket Metaverse. I was always unhappy that I had no idea what my avatar would look like, how it would be positioned, that it might face wrongly to those I interacted with, and it was difficult to make the avatar appear such that it was clear I was on a text chat/IM only client.

So I put some effort into designing an avatar that reflected this state of affairs. This was a Personal Satellite Assistant (PSA)... a real device NASA is working on for the Space Station that uses AI technology. It acts as an assistant to relay messages, give instructions and help, and record via camera things going on in experiments in the Space Station. It hovers near astronauts to help them, or can be sent to perform tasks. It has a screen on its front to show astronauts images, video, messages, etc. I have explicit permission from NASA Ames Research Lab to use the image of the skin of this device in my work and in virtual worlds .

 

I have used a sphere with this PSA skin for a number of AI driven and autonomous devices in Second Life for several years. Enter any I-Room (http://openvce.net/iroom) and there will usually be one at the entrance to act as a greeter or sensor sending back visitor and status information to our intelligent system over the web.

So I created the Ai PSA Avatar with the PSA shape, size and skin, and showed on the screen a portrait image of "Ai" to show its him that is watching as if over a video teleconference link - i.e. not immersive and "in world" fully.

Even though not on a low bandwidth or text client at the SL building tutorial, my attention was elsewhere. In fact my camera was not even in the same region as the tutorial space. I was looking at an object in a distant region that had the properties I wanted to copy to replicate a complex object I did not know how to build. But I did not feel comfortable just leaving "Ai" unattended... and did not want to fly away to get the information. I have the same issue when I am looking at web pages, or using other applications alongside the Second Life viewer. This was a case when it felt exactly right to use the Ai PSA avatar.

I see this as "Ai" looking through the "PSA" robot floating in the meeting space... "I" am behind "Ai" but its "Ai" that is disconnected from the meeting space.

Boellstorff, T. (2008). Personhood. In Coming of Age in Second Life (pp. 118-150). Oxford: Princeton University Press.

[First posted on IDEL11 Discussion Forum, 19-Oct-2011]

Keywords: IDEL11

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October 20, 2011

Discussion on avatar identity and "personhood" using papers by Tom Boellstorff and James Paul Gee as a basis...  in the Cloud Space discussion area over Holyrood Park in the Vue South region in Second Life.

Keywords: IDEL11

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Keywords: IDEL11, ULOE11

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Keywords: IDEL11

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October 21, 2011

I am reading some papers by Don Norman, and one on "Distributed Cognition" (Norman, 1993) makes some very nice points about the value of large situation rooms and operations centres for providing a joint view of the current situation and actions being taken in complex environments such as power station control rooms and emergency response centres.  I have been in such centres for real and training situations, for natural disaster response in Tokyo, for a nuclear power station in the UK and for search and rescue coordination in the UK and the USA.  They are all set up to allow for people to gather round or have a view of screens and see information in a shared environment.. the operators and responders are not all looking at their own screen separately... though of course they do that to use specialised tools, information and communications which they bring to the shared space.

In our work we have sought to replicate this sort of shared situation space, as a basis for human centric decision support.  When we started to embody our technology in virtual worlds we wanted to replicate some of the benefits of this, and indeed provide a shared space for distributed participants, as is often the need in complex multinational emergencies.  We are sometimes asked why we want to replicate rooms with walls when we are in virtual worlds, and I respond that we want the wall space for displays and distinct functional areas that everyone can remember and use.

In our I-Rooms (http://openvce.net/iroom) we have a shared central space in which participants gather and communicate, and from which viewpoint they can direct their attention to any of four functional areas set in a cyclic pattern to allow for situation assessment, option exploration, briefing and external communications.  It supports the OODA Loop (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop) as an underlying approach and lets us place human and intelligent systems support into a meaningful whole which all the participants can involve themselves in as appropriate.

Reference: Norman (1993) Things that make us smart : defending human attributes in the age of the machine . Reading, Mass., Addison-Wesley Pub. Co. Chapter 6; Distributed Cognition (139 – 154).

Keywords: IDEL11, ULOE11

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The PebblePad ePortfolio system is used to support personal learning spaces in the University of Edinburgh

If on EASE, you can log in via http://www.pebblepad.co.uk/edinburgh/pebblepad.aspx or launch from a button on MyEd with EASE login as student (MyEd - under Studies tab) or staff (MyEd - under Teaching tab).

My first experience indicated that creation of a trivial note with a few pasted web links was a very time consuming process, far beyond its value... and the resulting links note was poorly accessible with many steps to retrieve it or edit it.  The system seems designed for a very small number of assets rather than many tyhousands of assets in complex structures that would be needed in a serious personal learning environment for the future.

Keywords: IDEL11, PebblePad, PLE

Posted by Austin Tate | 1 comment(s)

I like to create a web page when I start a new project... to add in the useful web links, pointers to information, notes, etc.  Then I gradually structure that as more content is created.  Most recently I have been doing that in the Drupal content management system on http://openvce.net which provides convenient additional facilities such as column layout, blocks in to which content can be placed, mash-up capabilities right down to adding custom HTML and PHP code, and ancillary blogging, image handling, etc.

But for the MSc activities I chose to do some of this in my own web area at http://atate.org which initially just had my work on the "bat Life Wall" and where I wanted to collect together assets that would be long lived.  I have more recently added extra areas there for my course blogs and Lifestream, my Junior Hairdressing experience for the ULOE11 module, and the virtual ethnography study for the Digital Cultures EDEDC11 module. There is also a password protected personal work area.

For work in week 6 of the IDEL11 course we will be exploring personal learning spaces and mash-ups, and so I have tried to look to do something new... something I have been meaning to explore for a while.  I wanted to use a much more flexible layout that is cleaner, and adapts to the width of anyone's viewer. And into which I can drop elements without causing problems of rendering in the wide range of browsers.

I am experimenting at http://atate.org/space/ which such a personal working space. It is based on a freely available and nice simple CSS style sheet from http://matthewjamestaylor.com/. I have customised it somewhat for my sans serif font preference and colour choices.   I added initial content that I had been collecting at http://openvce,.net./mscel and put in quick access tabs for my current MSc work and blogs.

Keywords: IDEL11

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MOSES: Military Open Simulator Enterprise Strategy ( http://openvce.net/moses ) - is an OpenSim grid used for research purposes by educators and a range of organisation exploring simulation technology for training.  I am owner of a region on the grid for Open Virtual Collaboration Environment work with the US Army, and am a member of the Board of Directors who guide the development of MOSES.

The image is of one of the Office Hours meetings between estate owners...

Keywords: IDEL11

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October 22, 2011

I have begun to create my Personal Learning Space... for which I prefer a flexible web site in an area that can outlive specific technologies and institutional changes. If I invest time in creating things like this I want to feel they can be preserved for use in future. Using proprietary products frustrates me as I know they will be lost or become unavailable sooner rather than later usually. The space uses a new (to me) flexible width flowing layout in CSS that should be useful in future projects. I have been meaning to try such a layout for a while, and this was the perfect excuse. It should work on most browsers and mobile platforms.  Tests to date are positive in that respect. The site uses my usually folder structure to keep things neat, with all style elements in one directory (inc), images in another (img), further resources (res), and a password protected area for items that cannot be made public, but which I want to gather into  the space for convenience. The site also uses, as is normal for my projects, relative URLs throughout so it can be rehosted easily, parts reused in other projects, or the whole site cut to a DVD/CD for archive.

For now the Personal Learning Space just gives quick access tabs to work already done on the MSc in e-Learning, a few blocks of embedded Twitter and the WallWisher for the IDEL11 course, and some useful links for the courses I am on which I previously had scattered across http://openvce.net/mscel and in desktop shortcuts across a number of desktops, a laptop and several mobile devices. The initial space is at http://atate.org/space/.

Keywords: IDEL11

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I believe that in future students when they first join a good educational institution should be given access to an e-mail address or equivalent, individual blog and a resources space which they can use for life. It will support them while a student, and later in their professional lives and into retirement.  It will allow for alumni and continuing educational engagement. But it will be primarily centred on being a service and benefit to the individual, not as a marketing mechanism for the hosting institution. It must be secure and not allowed to be sold to some external hosting company for data mining. It must use open standards and allow for ease of movement across to a new institution in whole or in part.  It should allow the user to create and store assets they can use via a single stable URL or URI for life... images, documents, assignments, artifacts or various kinds. And reliably embed them in

The current mode of using proprietary products that lack standards, and are poor at import and export, militates against this.

Keywords: IDEL11

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I am enrolled on the on-line Stanford AI Class... http://ai-class.com - along with 150,000 others - to watch how they present and deliver the "Introduction to AI" course, to see how the on-line assessment and quizzes work, and to see how student interaction with tutors and each other is arranged.  Its been an interesting experience so far. Everyone seems to be enjoying the course and the community.  The short video segments for each lecture are broken up with quizzes to check understanding as you go along.  Often with check boxes and type in areas overlaid with the video material itself.

 

Keywords: AI, IDEL11, Stanford

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To add to some of the history of MUD/MOO/MUVEs given by Warburton (2009), I will add here an information panel from one of my papers in IEEE Intelligent Systems (Tate et al., 2010) as it shows the history is not rooted only in game interests.

Tate, A., Chen-Burger, Y-H., Dalton, J., Potter, S., Richardson, D., Stader, J., Wickler, G., Bankier, I., Walton, C. and Williams, P.G. (2010) I-Room: A Virtual Space for Intelligent Interaction, IEEE Intelligent Systems, Vol. 25, No. 4, pp 62-71, July-August 2010, IEEE Computer Society.
http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/project/ix/documents/2010/2010-ieee-is-tate-iroom-as-published.pdf

A Brief History of Virtual Collaboration

While strongly influenced in recent years by advances in computer game technology, the origins of virtual worlds and their social networking aspects can be traced to research into multi-user persistent spaces that began in the late 1970s and explored object sharing and chat for collaborative systems, especially in the field of artificial intelligence. Adding object oriented programming to script or control the objects in the shared space expanded the possibilities. Dating from 1990, LambdaMOO (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LambdaMOO) is one well known example of this type of multiuser, object-oriented virtual space.

Work in this area has continued, with the environments now being used alongside teleconferencing, videoconferencing, and instant messaging with agent presence and status information. A good example is the Collaborative Virtual Workspace (http://cvw.sourceforge.net/), originally built by MITRE between 1994 and 1999, that used a buildings-and-rooms metaphor for persistent storage of the documents and shared assets used in collaborations. Many videoconference support systems use the idea of setting up a virtual workspace "room" to give context to a particular presentation or meeting.

The foundations of the I-Room project, within the context of the wider I-X Research Program, lie in extensions to this idea to make use of intelligent planning and collaboration aids alongside CVW. These represent just a handful of the proposals that have appeared over the last decade that describe a room for intelligent team-based interaction or a room that could itself act as a knowledge-based asset for a group. Some of these concepts were explored in the Collaborative Advanced Knowledge Technologies in the Grid (CoAKTinG) project.

References
  • R.A. Bartle, “Early MUD History,”1990; http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/mudhist.htm
  • S. Buckingham Shum et al., “CoAKTinG: Collaborative Advanced Knowledge Technologies in the Grid,” Proc. 2nd Workshop Advanced Collaborative Environments, Advanced Knowledge Technologies (AKT), 2002; http://www.aktors.org/coakting/
  • Warbuton, S. (2009). Second Life in higher education" Assessing the potential for and the barriers to deploying virtual worlds in learning and teaching. British Journal of Educational Technology, 40(3), 414-426.

I very much like the persistence aspect of Second Life/OpenSim and other virtual worlds meeting spaces/classrooms/operations centres. I don't think this is captured at all by teleconference and video teleconferencing systems on their own, and even Adobe Connect with its resources, chat room and app sharing, etc. Though some systems like Mitre's CVW did set up the rooms/buildings metaphor for that persistence of shared resources while layering video teleconferencing on top. CVW was used heavily by the US military for their distributed ops centres teleconferening. It also included IMPs.

So, to add to this note, I would specifically draw your attention to the Mitre CVW idea of IMPs (Intelligent Multimodal Participants) that could reside in CVW functional "rooms" to monitor activity, give assistance in the room, or relay information to users whose attention was elsewhere.

Reference:

Michael Krutsch  (1999) "IMPs Enhance Virtual Collaboration Enmvironments", The Edge, Mitre Corporation, Intelligent Human-Computer Interface, December 1999, Volume 3 Number 4.

http://www.mitre.org/news/the_edge/december_99/fourth.html

Keywords: IDEL11

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I have now used the admin account to set my self with a role of "course creator".  Logging back on as myself I had the extra site administration menu to create a course.  The setup was pretty easy and I set up a sample "IDEL11 Moodle" course... adding in a few initial "blocks" for a course collaborative Wiki (choosing simple visual NWiki editing style), a survey element, and a simple radio button style quiz showing everyone the answers to date before and after the vote.

The site uses the latest stable Moodle 2.1.1.  It is not set up to scale or be properly managed so we will just add students manually for our testing. But after I get some of the basics I would be happy to let anyone on the IDEL11 course join a sample "IDEL11 Moodle" course as a student if they want to look round or have not used Moodle before.

When I have things working reasonably, I would be happy to manually add users accounts with role "Student" for other IDEL11 participants who wish to explore Moodle a little.

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October 23, 2011

I have been in contact with the SLoodle development and test community in the last few week, as they are preparing a release that can work with the latest Moodle 2.1+.  The time now seems right to try the alpha code version they have prepared, and after a brief exchange this week updated to 2.0.10 alpha.  This could be near to being set as the first Moodle 2.0+ and 2.1+ SLoodle release. Previous versions only worked with the older Moodle 1.9+ reelases.

I have also been in touch with the SLoodle web site folks to point make suggestions on improving the descriptions of how to obtain and build a SLoodle setup.  These changes were made to http://sloodle.org on 23-Oct-2011.

I now have the 2.0.10 alpha Moodle modules zip distribution and in world SLoodle rezzer object from the "Fragile" systems dispenser in Second Life on the Chilbo region:

So, these are ready to start testing a SLoodle classroom in Second Life with our Moodle 2.1.2 setup. I have made notes and given links to assist people intererested in Moodle and SLoodle at http://openvce.net/sloodle

Addendum: Cron job now set to run every 5 minutes to handle messaging and other matters.  Set up as scheduled task on the server.  See http://docs.moodle.org/20/en/Cron

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October 24, 2011

After a small change in a login method made by Edmund Edgar, one of the SLoodle developers, to one file at mod/set-1.0/shared_media/index.php the 2.0.10-alpha release of SLoodle works in the SLoodle classroom on the VCE region in Second Life connected to Moodle 2.1.2.

This change will be in the next build.The experimental classroom is at http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/VCE/223/226/23

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October 25, 2011

For a full photo diary and report on my ULOE11 Learning Challenge see http://atate.org/mscel/hair/

Keywords: Hairdresser, ULOE11

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October 26, 2011

Emma very patiently let me do her hair today during my training session:

I now have access to the Hairdressing Foundations e-Teaching course at http://eteachhairdressing.co.uk along with some exercises to complete there.  I have also been given Hairdressing Trainee Model Sheets showing my experience and an assessment of my progress.  They will appear in my Hairdresser Training Photo Log at http://atate.org/mscel/hair/ and are available via a link on my new Personal Learning Space at http://atate.org/space/

Keywords: Hairdresser, ULOE11

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Here is my assessment as a trainee hairdresser on blow drying... from the first go to my final attempt on a live model today.

Keywords: Hairdresser, ULOE11

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October 27, 2011

You may have heard that John McCarthy died this week. See 

John was an early pioneer of AI, inventor of Lisp, and indeed originator of the term "AI" in 1956. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McCarthy_(computer_scientist). It is good to see how broad and expansive John McCarthy's vision for computing was:

From Wikipedia: In 1961, he was the first to publicly suggest (in a speech given to celebrate MIT's centennial) that computer time-sharing technology might lead to a future in which computing power and even specific applications could be sold through the utility business model (like water or electricity).

Take a look also at his short sci-fi story "The Robot and the Baby" for some great fiction (or is it?) about future robotics. See

I worked with John both before and after his formal retirement, and it was a very enjoyable experience. His interest in formalising the notion of "context" was his most recent work which I spoke to him about. The ability to "assert that the proposition p is true in the context c" is a key to much of what we do in planning... and my own work some 30 years ago was involved with something I called "functions in context" that had similar aims.

Keywords: Context, IDEL11, McCarthy, ULOE11

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October 28, 2011

I have been testing elements of the SLoodle Second Life toolkit version 2.0.10 alpha alongside Moodle 2.1.2 and the SLoodle module 2.0.10 alpha with a few revisions being made by Edmund Elgar, a SLoodle developer and one of the owners of Avatar Classroom (http://avatarclassroom.com). The testing is throwing up some minor issues and a couple of PHP scripts have been changed as a result.  They will appear in the next alpha test build of SLoodle as the developers move towards the first beta version suitable for Moodle 2.

To date the tests have included:

  1. chat link up between a Second Life classroom and the Moodle chat tool, and logging of authorised by individual avatars in world
  2. in-world assessment delivery drop box
  3. presentation screen using shared media web based image, video and web page URL assets
  4. multiple choice voting and presentation display

 

Keywords: IDEL11, Moodle, SLoodle

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There is an iPhone/iPod/iPad app called "My Moodle" which provides mobile device access to Moodle 2.1+. See http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/my-moodle/id461289000

The experimental Moodle 2.1.2 site at AIAI now has mobile web services enabled as required to support this app - they are off by default. See http://docs.moodle.org/20/en/Enable_mobile_web_services

My initial attempts to snap a screen shot image with an iPod and upload it via the My Moodle app indicated the file exceeded the maximum upload file size, yet the PNG file involved was only 44KB... and our site is set for upload file limits of 8MB to 128MB depending on what layer is filtering.

 A future road map for development of the My Mobile app is available. See http://docs.moodle.org/dev/Mobile_app

Keywords: IDEL11, Mobile, Moodle, SLoodle

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October 30, 2011

Its Halloween, and the Zombies have attacked!

There has been a bit of a  struggle to get the "cron" job running on the Moodle setup.  cron.php is an admin routine that is run every few minutes to do a number of maintenance things, like pulling in information feeds, external blogs, clearing away pending messages, etc.  It need a bit of setting up and a couple of different mechanisms using the Windows Task Manager had not been working correctly.

I had settled on a way to initiate the cron.php script by calling it from a job every few minutes which launched the Firefox/Mozilla browser run the job, and then should have terminated.  I got that suggestion off blog postings by others who has similar problems getting cron to run.  It seemed to work after I set it up on testing, so I left it for a day or so...  But when I came back... spookily... there were many "Zombie" processes running.  My colleague experienced in these matters tells me that happens when you launch a browser to run a script in a web page and he had seen this issue before.

We are also still working to get the outward bound e-mail going on our Moodle 2.1.2 setup on Windows.  This is way more complicated than it should be with many layers involved.  Settings are all over the place in Apache, PHP, Moodle and beyond your machine in the SMTP server you use, as well as perhaps in multiple firewalls and out bound messaging spam filters on the way.  We have been gradually picking our way through these layers.  Our University will not allow e-mail out with a "from" address that is not validated as a legitimate University address - sensibly.  So we are having to use a "Moodle Admin" address personally tied to a staff member at the moment, which is not ideal. We have established a "noreply" address that will validate now too. More layers to work out before its working properly I am afraid.

In general, I also am finding a lot of Moodle settings are hidden away a bit or are in several places or in multiple layers whic all need to coordinate. Things like e-mail setup is under Site Administration -> Plugins -> Message Outputs -> E-mail.  The site admin/support e-mail addresses also appear there and in Site Administration -> Server -> Site Contact.  Rooting round to change the roles an individual is assigned is also convoluted, rather than just a set of check boxes off the user page you have to edit roles... and not via the edit button but by knowing to click on the role title hyperlink. And some roles are considered "System Roles" which are changed on a different web page.

Keywords: Cron, IDEL11, Moodle, Second Life, SLoodle, Zombies

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