Sixes and Sevens

Six Hats is a thinking technique developed by Edward de Bono of lateral thinking fame. The general idea is that a group metaphorically dons a particular colour hat during a meeting, each hat representing a particular perspective. The red hat, for example, is for emotion, the white for information gathering and black for critical analysis. The hats are worn in a predefined sequence according to the aim of the meeting.

I developed an animation player for a recent tutorial. The animation itself is developed in the commercial tool Puppeteer (freebie version available) -- all my player does is playback a particular arrangement of prims for a specified length of time and chat a brief sentence. All this is determined in a notecard that can be edited by staff or student.

The animation in this case moves a particular hat to the centre of the display and announces the role of the hat and the time allocated to this phase (de Bono typically allows 2 min per participant + 2 min thinking time if appropriate).

The benefit of using SL is that the general transcript is captured via a chat recorder for subsequent analysis.

Will students feel coerced by the animation or, indeed, the concept? I think the aim is as much to give them an opportunity to critique the method and the sequence as to generate a useful outcome first time. Hopefully they will adapt the approach if they find it useful.


Again, looking for useful generic approaches, I've been playing with the SCONUL Seven Pillars of Information Literacy. This is a strategy for encouraging students to take a more reflective and systematic approach when searching for information. Sheila Webber/Yoshikawa (U Sheffield) has used it extensively in SL and has exemplars on InfoLit iSchool. This highlights the scope for sharing of good practice in SL and the availability of student-generated builds that illustrate what can be realistically achieved.

My variant is simpler in some ways in that it is based mainly on notecards. The columns contain explanatory notecards and students can add their own simply by dragging from Inventory (effectively their file store). Notecards can be retrieved by touching the column. A dialog listing a maximum of 12 notecards is presented to the avatar. If you touch the white area, the notecard text is output as public chat. Touching the lower shaded area gives the actual notecard. This uses the recently introduced llDetectedTouchPos function.

Notecards are in some ways very basic. For example, there is no formatting. You can, however, embed images (textures in SL-speak), landmarks, objects and even other notecards. Web URLs are inactive unless output as chat in which case they are hyperlinked in the chat history.

I've extended the build a little subsequently by adding an index of usage (number of notecards, date of last addition). This underlines the fact that, with a little knowledge, builds can be customised on an incremental basis.

You could, of course, do this on a wiki and Sheila's students have far more elaborate displays. However, I am interested in the shared presence aspect and integration with other SL thinking tools.

Getting animated

I finished the second of my two tutorials on prim animation on Second Nature. Although we looked at a number of approaches, the focus was on the excellent Puppeteer and the notecard text is available in docx and PDF formats. I will hopefully get round to packaging the other resources in due course. As of the time of writing, a copy/mod version of one of the items is on the stage at Elucian Omega.

The image shows a player for Puppeteer scripted in LSL and using its llMessageLinked interface. The code reads a notecard, each line specifying a snapshot (i.e. prim arrangement), duration and text to be chatted. The dynamic posters, pointer and overlays are semi-visible rather than hidden, making it easier to modify the animation. The idea with the editable notecard is that students should be able to focus on the "story" rather than the prim-handling. The protein, of course, is one of Hiro Sheridan's sculpties, the lysozyme 1rez to be exact.

Flu gets a Second Life

CDC seem to be offering a prize in moderately serious real dollars for development of a public service film on influenza treatment and/or prevention. Details on the sign at the landing point. I've no idea whether it has expired or not so caveat lector.

Meanwhile, the University of New Mexico has developed a 30 min training activity for those needing to organise a mass preventative clinic during the pandemic.

Q-Translator

I am keen to find applications of SL that demonstrate its wider utility to students and the world in general. One very nice aspect is the automated translation of chat between languages. I've been aware of this facility for a while but recently noticed that one of the best translators, Q-Translator, is available for L$10 provided you're willing to list the author's company, Imitation of Life, in your picks. I already have (and like) IoL's CAMSync so this was hardly a burden.

This technology doubtless has limitations of which I am naively unaware. All I can say is that the HUD-based system is very fast in translating and seemed to do a reasonable job with technical terms. In short, I was impressed.

Graham Mills: There are 4 bases in DNA, adenine, guanine, cytosine and thymine
Graham Mills (Q-Translator en->fr): Il existe 4 bases de l'ADN, l'adénine, la guanine, la cytosine et la thymine

Graham Mills: Whooping cough is an infection
Graham Mills (Q-Translator en->fr): La coqueluche est une infection

Graham Mills: Bordetella pertussis causes whooping cough
Graham Mills (Q-Translator en->fr): Bordetella pertussis responsable de la coqueluche

(For some reason the last of these only worked after a fashion on a second iteration).

While I haven't explored all the functionality or 50+ languages, the only aspect I have thus far failed with are the "fun" translations into languages such as Pirate and Daffy Duck. These use a separate channel which resolutely failed to work for me. On the upside, there is a separate Pirate HUD that is completely free provided you include the shop in your picks. Sadly there's a delay before the picks take effect so you can't converse instantly and the HUD is no-trans so students would have to go to the rather grungy shop in an M sim (SLURL below). Whether speaking Pirate is as impressive as speaking Welsh or Chinese is another matter...

Organising some multi-lingual "brief encounter" between classes in approximately the same time zone would be an intriguing possibility.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Bunzi/157/192/85

A2Z HUD camera system

One of the issues identified during classes last year was the problem of my being in multiple places inworld and in real life simultaneously. There is no easy solution for that except to get expert assistance for one or other function and to let things take their course, i.e. let students work out their own problems collectively and independantly in the first instance.

As I am stressing the use of SL for team-working, I intend organising students into groups and bringing them inworld to their appropriate group base using SLURLs. Each base will have its own orientation and work area and is hence quite large. The areas need to be kept separate to avoid text chat overlap so moving my avatar around would be time-consuming and remove me from circulation.

An alternative is to use something like the A2Z Labs HUD Camera System. This allows you to position cameras in multiple locations and monitor them from a central location. The cameras allow you to see, chat and listen to the students next to the selected camera. The system can also list the names of the students at each location and teleport your avatar there if required. None of this goes beyond the bounds of what SL does "out of the box" with a little scripting but L$999 provides a lot of convenience for those not wanting a customised solution.

The box contains a single HUD. This rezzes the cameras as well as controlling their operations. I was a little perplexed at the absence of documentation initially but there is a nice HUD help overlay (above) that got me started until such time as I found the documentation in the tools menu. You also need to enable Disable Camera Constraints on the SL Advanced menu and, if possible, crank up the draw distance under Preferences.

To date the system has worked very nicely. The main limitation has been the draw distance so that not everything rezzes in all locations. Occasionally the system failed to respond initially when the avatar camera was detached before the system started. You also need to remember to switch the system off before moving your avatar. The documentation warns that your chat can carry 50 m -- I assume this refers to the 20 m talk distance applied in a notional sphere around the camera. On that basis it might be better to go for vertical overhead views to avoid inadvertent chat leakage to other groups. The 20 m issue, of course, is the stimulus for platform-based solutions such as Deckah's Decks.

I'm a little uneasy about using such quasi-surveillance cameras as I don't want to inhibit the students. CamSync is more overt but less readily used, I suspect, with a large inexperienced group. It would be nice if there was a "summon the teacher" option though that should be easy enough to implement. Does this mean I will be more inworld and less available in the lab? We shall see...