Eco City Game

ElectroCity is an interesting online game designed for education. It's based around the SimsCity principle and users have to try to build a financially viable eco city where all the inhabitants can also be happy.

As I said the game was designed for education and there's a very handy teachers section with some downloadable worksheets. The producer put the level of the game at 7 - 9 year olds, but if you were using this with non English speakers for language development I think you could use it with any aga range and there would still be a good deal of motivation to try it.

There's also a downloadable version of the game for those with slower connections and wonder of wonders there is both a PC and a MAC version. It's quite a small download too ( 1 - 2 Mb). You can find these in the teachers' resources section.

You can also have a look at some of the cities other players have created.

If you register you can also enter your students in a competition to win a prize for the best designed city and students can keep track of how well there city is doing.

This looks like a really handy educational game.

Hope you enjoy it.

Best
Nik Read More..

Killer Apps in Second Life

Well anyone who keeps up with this blog on a regular basis will know that last Sunday (26th Oct 08) was my debut as a chat show host in Second Life.

Firstly I have to thank Gavin Dudeney from The Consultants-E for being my first guest and of course for sponsoring the series which will be taking place on his Edunation Island. Here's a quick clip of Gavin telling me about his 'Killer app' in Second Life and how he got pulled into working in Second Life.



The experience of being the show host was actually very enjoyable, even if somewhat surreal, with a native American appearing in loin cloth in the middle of the coffee table and at one point a young girl avatar running through the wall and into the audience!

Gavin was a very informative guest and talked about some of the difficulties and challenges of teaching language in Second Life as well as some of the amazing potential that virtual worlds offer for education.

We hope over the coming few days to be able to make the complete audio available for anyone who missed the event and wants to hear what Gavin had to say. Here are just some of the questions that Gavin answered:

• What goes on at Edunation Islands 1 - 3 and what kind of people / institution are setting up business here?
• Who comes on your TT courses? What’s thee typical profile?
• The course uses Moodle with SL. Why the combination and will SL make Moodle redundant?
• Could you tell us about the free teaching tools you’ve created?
• Do you think SL is a viable place to for commercial language schools to make money from teaching?
• Is communication in virtual worlds a new ‘genre’ of communication? Are the skills needed different?
• It's often said that online learning isn’t suitable for beginners. Can beginners learn languages online in SL?
• How can you over come the sense of coldness and lack of reaction while teaching in SL?
• How should languages be taught in SL? Should schools be replicating classrooms?
• What future developments would you like to see? What would you ask Linden Lab to develop to make language teaching more effective?
• Is there a ‘killer app’ or characteristic that made you want to dedicate so much time to SL?
• Have you thought about SL competitors and which ones would you consider shifting to?

For anyone thinking about getting involved in Second Life Education then check out the information on The Consultants-E website where you can find out about their training courses for teachers. Also worth checking out is Gavin's Blog That'SLife.

Hope you enjoy the clip. More later.

Related links:

• Teaching Speaking in Second Life
• Building in Second Life
• More Second Life Tutorials
• Lip Sync for Second Life
• Photo Assignments for EFL ESL Students in Second Life
• Materials design for Virtual Worlds
• Teaching English in Second Life

Best

Nik Peachey Read More..

A Virtual World for Teens

New 3D virtual worlds seem to be appearing almost everyday at the moment and here's another one. It's called Hangout and is still in private beta at the moment, so if you want to have a look around you'll need to apply for an invitation.

This one claims to be designed for teens and if you watch the video on the homepage, it does look as though it will appeal to that age group.

It looks like each person will be able to have their own room which they will customise. The graphics look nice and there's a good level of customisation of the various rooms. They are boasting both voice and text chat and the ability to create audio playlists and videos in the rooms.

It doesn't say yet if it will be free, but there is mention of credit card payments on the terms of use, though this might not be for membership.

The terms of use also say that user between 13 and 17 need to get their parents approval to register, so hopefully they are taking security seriously.

Anyway, this could be one to watch if you're looking for an alternative to Second Life.

Related links:

• Photo Assignments for EFL ESL Students in Second Life
• Educational Games That Really Are Fun
• Online Water Conservation Game
• Wonderland Virtual World and MMORPG
• Google's Lively Competitor with Second Life?
• 3B Village 3D browser
• Machinima with Moviestorm
• Looking at There.com
• Materials design for Virtual Worlds
• Immersive Image Environments
• Teaching Speaking in Second Life
• Creating multimedia stories

Best

Nik Peachey Read More..

Educational Games That Really Are Fun

It's often been a criticism of many attempts to make MMORPG computer games educational, that when that happens the fun goes. I have to say that it is often the case, but I think Power Up is an exception.

Power up is an educational computer game based around the concept of helping students to understand the need for clean energy. It takes the scenario of a planet ( set in the future) which needs rescuing.
The game looks and feels convincing and has some nice collaborative game play thrown in with some blasting of alien beasts. Students can play it alone or in multi-player mode. They are assigned missions that they have to complete and there is even use of some text to speech.

There are ready made lesson plans for teachers as well as a section for parents with advice on child safety.

The game is free, but you will have to download the software (200Mb!) which takes about 40Mins on a good broadband connection (and lots longer on a bad one)

It's great that the quality of these games is improving so much. This would be a really motivating game for students to play to learn more about clean energy and also good for intermediate + EFL ESL students as they would need to work at understanding the instructions to progress through the game. Also great to base a CLIL lesson around.

Definitely a serious game to be taken seriously. Hope you enjoy it.

Related links:

• Online Water Conservation Game
• Wonderland Virtual World and MMORPG
• Google's Lively Competitor with Second Life?
• 3B Village 3D browser
• Machinima with Moviestorm
• Looking at There.com
• Materials design for Virtual Worlds
• Immersive Image Environments
• Teaching Speaking in Second Life
• Creating multimedia stories
• Encyclopedia of Earth
• Eco City Game
• The Encyclopedia of Life

Best

Nik Peachey Read More..

A Virtual World for Facebook Users

Do you want to show your virtual EFL ESL students images, videos from YouTube or just chat with them all within a 3D environment that runs in your web browser. Well now you can.

I've just been playing with Vivaty a new 3D virtual world that runs from within your web browser with only a minimal download (4.5Mb).



The strange thing about it though is that it runs from within Facebook!

Despite this it's quite good and quite easy to set up and customise. You can also easily add pictures or videos to your own personal room. Within a few mins I had managed to add a TV screen to my room and configure it to play a video from my YouTube channel.

Here's my avatar watching me doing a video presentation!

Once you've downloaded the 4.5Mb program and installed it, you simply log into your face book account and your room appears at the bottom of your profile page and you just click to enter the room.

There are also a selection of other rooms that you can visit if you want to meet other people to chat with.
Vivaty certainly doesn't have the rich graphics and degree of customisation that you can get from something like Second Life, but it is a much smaller download, runs in your browser (Internet Explorer only - Sorry MAC only users!) and or use with EFL ESL students, it is much safer (that's if you trust Facebook to protect your privacy!).

For me though, the strongest thing in its favour is the potential to watch, share and chat about videos whilst in a simple online environment.

Related links:

• Google's Lively Competitor with Second Life?
• 3B Village 3D browser
• Machinima with Moviestorm
• Looking at There.com
• Materials design for Virtual Worlds
• Immersive Image Environments
• Teaching Speaking in Second Life
• Creating multimedia stories

Best

Nik Peachey Read More..

Wonderland Virtual World and MMORPG

Wonderland looks like a great free online role playing game for younger students. The game is based around the story of some travelers who become shipwrecked and have to survive by doing various tasks, quests and challenges. The graphics look like the typical Japanese manga cartoons which are so popular with kids and teens.


What I really like about this is that the 'things to do' type quests and challenges are already there and built in so , unlike virtual worlds like Second Life and There.com you and your students don't have to think up things to do.

I think this is really good motivating game to get students using English to solve problems and work collaboratively. If you can get your students hooked on a game like this they'll do the learning for themselves.

On the negative side, they will need to download the software and that's over 500Mb, so they'll need broadband and a reasonably up to date computer. The game is also quite complex and I can't find any information regarding minimum ages for registration.

That said, if your students are keen gamers and have an intermediate level of English or higher and you want to motivate them to work on their own, this could be a wonderful tool for getting them to do that.

Best

Nik Peachey

Related postings

• Google's Lively Competitor with Second Life?
• 3B Village 3D browser
• Machinima with Moviestorm
• Looking at There.com
• Materials design for Virtual Worlds
• Immersive Image Environments
• Teaching Speaking in Second Life
• Creating multimedia stories

Read More..

A Virtual Language Learning World for Kids

Well what kid wouldn't want to be a language learning panda? Panfu has used this premise as the basis for a new virtual world for kids in which they can play games and learn languages at the same time.

 

They create their own panda avatar, dress the panda and have their own panda tree house to decorate and invite friends round to.

On the whole this looks pretty good and I'm sure my 9 year old daughter will be keen to try this out (she's already a Webkinz fanatic). Panfu are offering two levels of membership; Free and Gold. Gold entitles your kids to get extra customisation for their panda avatar and his lodgings.

Getting your kids involved in virtual worlds or any kind of social networking is always slightly risky, but it does look as though Panfu are taking this seriously.

The service is available in a range of languages. If your kids register as being English, then they get to learn some Spanish, if they register as other nationalities it looks like they get to learn English.

I haven't tried this one out yet myself, but it does look like a serious and well thought out educational effort. Definitely a step in the right direction.

Hope your kids enjoy it.

Best

Nik Peachey Read More..

Google's Lively Competitor with Second Life?

Have Google joined the online 3D virtual world market? Well it looks like they have, but it looks like it's still pretty early days with the Beta release of Lively.

Lively certainly seems to have a lot of potential and a lot of good things going for it, in addition to having the might of a company like Google behind it.

• The 3D rooms run in the browser and only require the download of a very small plugin (about half a MB) as opposed to the huge downloads that Second Life and There.com require.
• Anyone can create their own room, pretty quickly and easily, and embed the room into a web page like the one below.
• The rooms aren't connected so if you want to use this with students, it's less risky as they are less prone to 'wandering' into unsuitable areas.
  
• The amount of customization of both avatars and rooms is limited at the moment, so this might well help to discourage the more 'adult' orientated users who tend to crop up in Second Life so much.
• Word is that you can add and watch YouTube videos within your 3D room, which could make a nice addition to a distance course and enable your students to have film / video night together.
• The 3D comic book type graphics look good and would surely appeal to teens or younger learners.
  
• It's free at the moment at least.

Here is my 3D room embedded into my page

But this is what it should look like!



Before you get too excited though:

• I've had more than a few problems getting this to work for me either in Firefox 3 or IE 7 and you can't run it on a MAC yet.
  
• Lots of the tools for editing the room and avatar that appear in the help instructions, never seem to appear on my screen, so once I've created my room, I don't seem to be able to edit it at all.
• There's no voice chat only text chat.
  
• Because it's only just been launched the actual population is still pretty small, so actually meeting someone to talk to is a bit of a challenge

Anyway, despite all this, I think this is still one to watch, not only because it has Google behind it, but because if it can be made to work well and run in the browser with lower demand on bandwidth and small downloads, this could open up the potential of virtual worlds to many more people and that can't be a bad thing.

Some of my other postings on virtual worlds.

• 3B Village 3D browser
• Machinima with Moviestorm
• Looking at There.com
• Materials design for Virtual Worlds
• Immersive Image Environments
• Teaching Speaking in Second Life
• Creating multimedia stories

Best Nik Peachey Read More..

More Second Life Tutorials

Following on from my posting last month on building in Second Life, here are 4 more video tutorials showing the basics of Inventory management and how to create folders and notecards within the inventory.

The first tutorial looks at how to open the inventory and create a new folder within it.



The second tutorial looks at how to create new notecards for sharing text and activties. This for me is one of the prime sources of deliveing materials to students as the text on Notecards is much clearer easier to read and manipulate than text on textures, so I find this a key function to enable effective teaching within Second Life.



The third tutorial looks at how to find things within the inventory by using the search. This can help to overcome what can be quite a frustrating problem.



The forth and final tutorial in this set looks at how to clear up the inventory and delete some of the multiple instances. Keewping your inventory under control can help make it easier to find things and also speed up your avatar when you log in to Second Life, as there will be less inventory items to download.




If you are new to or haven't tried Second Life yet, then I hope you find these videos useful and they encourage you to try it out. The videos were originally commissioned by The Consultants-E and are part of an introductory course for teachers they deliver on Edunation Island II and are used with their kind consent. You can access all the tutorials on my YouTube channel here:

• http://www.youtube.com/NikPeachey

My other postings on Second Life and virtual worlds

• Materials design for Virtual Worlds
• Teaching English in Second Life
• Second Life Teacher Training Videos
• Looking at There.com
• Machinima with Moviestorm
• 3B Village 3D browser

By all means leave a comment, but all comments aare moderated so it might take a while to show.

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Nik Peachey Read More..

Creating Spore creatures

Well the Spore 'Creature Creator' is now available, and surprise, there is a free edition too (196Mb with only 25% of the creative possibilities), so I downloaded it and decided to give it a try.

The second nice surprise was that there was a free version for MAC too. I have to say it looks pretty good. I browsed through a few creatures and tried altering them and then decided to create my own. Once my creature was created I was able to get it to try various things, like dancing, calling to friends etc. I was also able to take a couple of pictures and create a video of it with its young!!!



Well I know it doesn't look very attractive, but it was fun and I can't wait to see what my daughter makes of this. I'm really looking forward to the release of the complete game in September 08. I'm sure this has huge educational potential. Time to start thinking about some activties for the 'Creature Creator', though I'm not sure how many educational institutions are going to be downloading 196Mb!

Anyway, if you feel like giving it a try, go along to http://www.spore.com and then click on 'get Spore' and it should take you to the page where you can download the free 'Creature Creator'.

Enjoy

Best

Nik Peachey Read More..

Spore Creature Creator

I've just been having a look at the Creature Creator from Spore, the much anticipated game from EA. The Creature Creator should be available for download from Tuesday 17th June from the Spore site, though the game itself won't be released until September I believe.



There's a great article on Webware which describes all the amazing Web2.0 type features that gamers will have access to. These include the ability to create video and images and upload them directly to YouTube (great for machinima projects), as well as the ability to share creations for other gamers to work on and also each creature gamers create will become part of a Wikipedia style collection of information on all the Spore creatures created.

I think for educators, this must be one of the most exciting and potentially useful games ever created, as gamers will have the opportunity to design creatures from the microbial stage and nurture them and control their environment as they develop.

Anyway, I'll be queuing up next week to download (300mb) of Creature Creator and start designing my own creatures. Sadly the Creature Creator part isn't free, but at just under 5 GBP it's certainly not expensive.

Hope to be posting some of my own creations soon.

Best

Nik Peachey Read More..

Building in Second Life

Over the last few weeks I've been creating quite a long series of video tutorials for teachers wishing to use Second Life. These have been created on Edunation Island for the The Consultants-E and are to be used as part of one of their short courses that they run in Second Life.

I'm also in the process of adding these to my YouTube channel which you can find at: http://www.youtube.com/nikpeachey

This week I've started by adding a series of four tutorials on the basics of building and also one on setting up voice for SL. I'll be adding a few more each week.

You can see the first one on setting up voice here.



You can see the playlist of Second Life tutorials here

I've also added all of my WetPaint Wiki tutorials, so hopefully this will make them more accessible and also provide an embed code for anyone who wants to use them elsewhere.

The WetPaint wiki playlist is here.

Hope you find these useful

Best

Nik Peachey Read More..

Working in Second Life

For a few months now I've been thinking about writing an article about why I decided to rent an office in Second Life and how my virtual office there has changed the way I work and the kind of business I do. I booted up the MAC this morning to get started and saw this article from Web Worker Daily. Well I guess this will save me some of the bother.

This is a really interesting article from Aliza Sherman about her usual business day in Second Life. Well worth a read.

• Just another day in Second Life

If at the end of it you are still interested in what i do in my office, here's a quick video slide show created with PhotoStory 3.

• My virtual office

Hope you enjoy this and get some food for though from it.

Best

Nik Read More..

Coca-Cola opens in There.com

I received my copy of There Fun Times today in my email box and was interested to see that Coca-Cola were opening and island in the 3D virtual world of There.com. It's amazing to see how many big brands now have a presence in a virtual world of some kind. It's especially surprising that Coca-Cola are using There.com as it has had none of the high profile publicity that Second Life has attracted. It may well be that There.com as attracted a big proportion of the younger age group that CC want to market to. There.com certainly has a much younger and lighter feel that SL and it does seem to be designed more around the concept of having fun ( in a less adult way).

Anyway it's good to see that Second Life isn't the only player and that big companies are looking beyond that and taking other virtual worlds seriously as a place to promote their brand.

Read There Fun Times article on Coca-Cola partnership
Read my learning technology article on There.com Read More..