FIT’s New Home in Second Life

FIT has a new home in Second Life, on Teaching 2. Coordinates: 169, 231, 25.

Several of us met in Second Life last night for our weekly FIT get-together. We were joined by Elaine Polvinen from BufState.

Please join us! If you need help getting an avatar and getting started in Second Life, please email me, beth_harris@fitnyc.edu.

And thanks to Steven Zucker, we have a fabulous, new building designed by Rem Koolhaas. The sad looking flagpole is my first creation…

The 3-D virtual world is coming…

In the past week, I have come across so many 3-d technologies…

On monday at FIT in the CET at 1 we (me, Jeffrey Riman, Karen Pearson, and Eileen Karp) listened to the Metanomics series in Second Life, where Robert Bloomfield hosted David Wortley, Director of the Serious Games Institute, which is associated with Coventry University in the UK. Serious games involve the use of electronic games technologies and methodologies for primary purposes other than entertainment. The purposes include:

• e-Learning
• Simulation
• Team building
• Collaboration
• Social Networking
• Opinion shaping

Obviously, this involves virtual worlds.

Then today, browsing the web, I came across something that the folks at ARTstor had mentioned — Photosynth, which “takes a large collection of photos of a place or an object, analyzes them for similarities, and then displays the photos in a reconstructed three-dimensional space, showing you how each one relates to the next.”

Check out this demo on TED.

I just downloaded the client, and watched the demo that uses images of St. Peter’s Square. Way cool.

Then, I came across this description of a possible future for education in the metaverse roadmap (very cool):

“Games that attempt to educate by recreating fragments of reality, “nonfiction games,” also called serious games, were scarce in gamespace until the early 2010’s, when three of the largest publishing houses…began releasing “gamebook” worlds in conjunction with their top selling nonfiction titles. While limited in scope, these worlds had competition, mystery, and suspense as elements, in addition to the possibility of social interaction among the players, and were designed to teach the inhabitants the basic paradigms of the book through experiential learning. The addition of monetary prizes and social acclaim to those who successfully navigated levels/chapters greatly increased the gamebook’s appeal over traditional audiobooks, print books, and even linear videos. By 2016, nonfiction games (gamebooks and other e-learning environments) had become 15% of the total gaming market, and were projected to keep growing relative to the saturating market for fiction games, up to a projected 40% share, the same share nonfiction holds in the trade book market.”

Then, there’s the new IBM technology that will bring the catwalk into your living room – “changing the face of fashion and retail.” Click here to see the video. Involving our sense of smell too!

AND, last but not least, the virtual reality room in Second Life, which the NMC is making available to educational institutions. I wonder what we can do with that? A photo-based real-3-d experience of a space, experienced by your avatar…hmmm… the Pantheon? St. Peter’s Square? I checked this out last night on Info Island, it was thrilling!

What a wonderful time to be alive…