On the suggestion of Fiona Littleton of Information Services, and a tutor on the MSc in e-Learning, I have had a Wimba Classroom set up for test related to the Open Virtual Collaboration Environment in OpenVCE.net

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.   

The new toolset assumes a viewer that can support shared media a.k.a. media on a prim (MOAP). It currently runs in Second Life, and will soon be ported to OpenSim.  It works with Moodle 1.9.x.  In Moodle 2.x the quizzes may not yet function correctly, but most of the rest of the virtual world side set should.  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.  The 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!

As usual links and resources, and full size versions of these images of the demo meeting, are being gathered at http://openvce.net/sloodle  

This is the 3D model created in the 1990s of Supercar in collaboration between myself and Mick Imrie.  Mick is the expert modeller.  I did some simple Black Rock Lab buildings rather than the core vehicle.  The model has been used in many digital environments since it was created, and now can be imported via the Collada model format into Second Life and OpenSim. The models are available at http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/~bat/GA/supercar-3d.html

Here is Supercar in full flight in OpenSim... My other car is a Toyota :-)

My interests include 3D/CGI modelling (useful backgound for my interests in using Virtual Worlds), and graphic art.  I very much like team projects and collaborative working, and have loved working in teams scattered across the globe on my projects and in my recreational interests.  I hope to share some of these interests with you, and frankly to get an excuse to show some of the resulting artworks, through these blog entries.

In 2008 there was a number of web-based collective artworks created and shows at the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Luce Foundation Center.  One called "ghosts of a chance " invited people to submit representations of eyes... photos, drawings, graphical concepts, etc.  They were composed together and displayed in the final artwork... "All Eyes"...

Click on image for the full picture. See if you can find the one I submitted.

One of my reseaerch interests is in the creation of "intelligent" meeting spaces for interaction between people and systems.  The programme is called the "I-Room".  More details are at: http://openvce.net/iroom

Let Ai Austin take you on a short tour of an I-Room through this YouTube video...

A couple of years back we rigged up a Moodle VLE server (http://moodle.org) and set up some "courses" to support collaborative meetings especially to allow for file resource interchange and sharing, and for questionnaire's and feedback during meetings.  We connected the web site to a meeting space in Second Life (http://secdondlife.com) using the Sloodle set (http://sloodle.org). The server still runs at http://openvce.net/moodle

I am interested again in Moodle 2 and recent work on a much richer in world linkup using the SLoodle kit which can now support rich shared media in Second Life, and important for the future, the open source OpenSimulator (http://opensimulator.org).  We want to tie the questionnaire and shared resource handling more closely to intelligent systems for meeting room support - in our I-Room work (http://openvce.net/iroom).

I plan to use this blog to document progress, trials and tribulations as we go along in the hope others might find it useful.

The first thing was how messy all the information was on what the most recent versions of SLoodle were available and for which versions of Moodle.  As a lot of people still use Moodle 1.9.x rather than the more recent Moodle 2.x.  As usual a short e-mail to one of the core users in such a helpful community got me on the right path.  But even then download links were stale, out of date copies had been archived and their link blogged rather than the original material, etc.  So job number 1 was to start a web page with the up to date information as I found it... trying to show original URLs but also providing convenient URLs (in some cases to locally stored resources).  That page is at http://openvce.net/sloodle and will evolve as things change or corrections are needed.

So to our main openvce.net web and database servers... the requirements for Moodle 2.1 means that a later version of PHP is needed than our computing support team are happy to have running due to security.  This will be fixed, but not in an immediate time frame.  So we use our usual backup experimental arrangement using one of the AIAI servers on which we have XAMPP to provide a convenient and simply managed Apache web server, MySQL database server, PHP and Perl scripting. 

I am an optimist, so I unpack Moodle 2.x install it in the right place in the web server and just start the install script in a web browser.  Ah well.  Not so fast Austin.  It complains the PHP version on XAMPP is JUST one sub release too old. Pity.

A close down of all services, an uninstall of the services, a reboot, a big safe backup of the web area, data base and some local files on the experimental machine, archive and an hour later I can try again. I put on the new version of XAMPP, reinstate the data base and web areas, put back the new Moodle area, etc.  And kick it all back into life.  A BIG PHP not running error in the browser stops me short.  Half an hour of fiddling, no joy. Something in XAMPP upgrade has gone wrong.

Luckily I can roll back.  ALWAYS CREATE A BACKUP BEFORE YOUR UPGRADE.  Half an hour later and I am back to where I started with a slightly too old XAMPP and no Moodle 2.x.  To be tried again another day.  Watch for the next install meet.

Ah well, that's where the weekend went.  I did still manage to see the Italian Grand Prix run at Monza on TV though, and was pleased Jenson Button came through to 2nd.

Let me introduce myself.. Austin Tate ... and my virtual worlds avatar... Ai Austin

Taking MSc modules for Semester 1 of 2011: "Introduction to Digital Environments for Learning", "e-Learning and Digital Cultures" and "Understanding Learning in On-line Environments".

http://www.eusci.org.uk/podcasts/eusci-podcast-extra-conversation-ai-researchers

At the 2011 the Edinburgh International Film Festival, one of the events was a screening of the 1984 scifi classic The Terminator. The event was followed by a discussion with two real-life AI researchers from the University of Edinburgh School of Informatics. We managed to catch the two scientists before the event and talk to them about the past and future of AI, its perception in the media, and whether we should worry about the Robot Apocalypse.

Listen to our conversation with:

• Austin Tate, Professor of Knowledge-Based Systems
• Sethu Vijayakumar, Professor of Robotics