yes, i know – Kate Booth is not offically a teacher because she is working on her degree down under – nevertheless, Kate is a teacher in the truest sense!
if you have no idea who Kate Booth is and why she is a Officially Certified Enerific, here’s a post on her and what she is doing with OpenSim at a primary (elementary) school in the land of Oz (actually in New South Wales where Babe was filmed!) =)
her class went nuts for sim-on-a-stick with some students wanting to continue building through their lunch and recess!
she has totally geeked out and has gone bananas loading up new sim-on-a-sticks, complete with kid’s avatars (see a post on that here). i believe she was probably a geek before OpenSim judging by her reading of Nobel prize winning American authors and she is certainly a bona fide geek with her usb drives below!
she’s the kind of geek that makes a positive impact on the world (both real and virtual) and that any school and student would benefit from having. keep your passion fueled Ms Booth and keep making a difference!
hats off and a pip-pip to Ms Booth and her innovation in the classroom! she’s the kind of person that truly impacts students!
Kate's Worlds ready to help kids imagine!
Go Kate!
Sarge Misfit
23 Feb 12 at 8:29 am
you’re not kidding Sarge! i sure wished i had a teacher like that when i was in school!
Ener Hax
23 Feb 12 at 8:32 am
I’m thinking about putting the thought in the heads of our local teachers
Sarge Misfit
23 Feb 12 at 12:37 pm
if you do Sarge, let me know, maybe you and i can package up an “ed version” of sim-on-a-stick with things like kids’ avatars and maybe some useful builds
the universal campus that Nebadon has is pretty cool but you probably only need a part of that
hmm, you just sparked a blog post – what would be good to have on a k-12 student version of sim-on-a-stick? it might include some other tools like Gimp or Open Office
it seems like some built-in tutorials would be good – on how to build. picture tutorial areas where a student goes to “1″ and learns how to rez a cube and then change it to all the different shapes and maybe how to manipulate it (like the Ivory Tower of Prims inSL), maybe station “2″ would have how to import and apply a texture, and so on
certainly not a small task all in all!
no worries though, something like this would be your baby! but i’d be glad to host it and it would be a neat offering to teachers =)
Ener Hax
23 Feb 12 at 12:45 pm
It’s a little old now but the global kids curriculum has a CC licence and might be repurposable.
http://rezedhub.ning.com/group/GKslcurriculum
http://simteach.com/wiki/index.php?title=GKCx/Table_of_Contents
Graham Mills
23 Feb 12 at 2:45 pm
oh cool Graham! there is a Kevin bacon connection with Global Kids for me – i started inSL because of the virtual aloft. the aloft was built in-world for the boutique hotel brand of aloft as a way to get user input for overall design. it was easier to change paint colours in-world and then apply that to the architectural specs of the real hotel that was going to be built
after Starwood and aloft were done with their sim, they donated it for a year to Global Kids!
thanks for the links, i will snatch that up right now! =)
Ener Hax
23 Feb 12 at 3:15 pm
dang Graham! that is some serious content! i think i’m going to try and simplify it but what an awesome framewrok! thanks!
doh! some of the wiki has been hacked =(
Ener Hax
23 Feb 12 at 3:24 pm
Sorry to hear about the wiki — but not surprised as Simteach has also been targeted. Bear in mind that there are pdf files for each of the nine levels — links at the bottom of each issu-containing page. Might be able to recover some content that way.
Graham Mills
23 Feb 12 at 4:09 pm
Maybe a place with letters of results from people like Kate and you, Ener, who work in the education field. Then, the rest ofo us can email those to our school boards asking them to look into it.
Sarge Misfit
23 Feb 12 at 10:04 pm
Do you guys sleep?? I’m feeling a little shy with all these great comments but I think that it is people like you that are clever enough to develop sim-on-a-stick and then offer it free to the world who deserve a HUGE thankyou. I was lucky to have (and still have) a great tutor/mentor Lisa Jacka from Southern Cross University who introduced me to the possibilities of using virtual worlds in education.I am in a way the end product of a collection of brilliant people that collectively made a world of difference to a regional school with not a lot of spare resources and hellish firewalls! There was no chance in the near future that this school would be able to access OpenSim through the Department of Education so SOAS was a godsend. There is still a whole Australian school year to go but it will be fantastic to see where the journey takes us. Mel, the class teacher who just says yes to everything,and I are being very creative:D
I have to say I love, love and really love the idea of a student version of sim-on-a-stick as I have a whole school staff presentation next Tuesday and many of the teachers will be keen to use it. What I did when creating Class 5M’s worlds was import Linda’s Kids into the sim and then change the avatar. I then copied and pasted this sim onto every usb stick…it was tedious but quicker than I thought. It would be great to have a few extras in there though as they all love the tree and grass..lol..The one nice thing when creating the student sims was when Linda’s Kids came through it flattened one island but the other 3 remained in their original state. The kids love this as they really like going underwater to build/walk/fly and their terraforming skills are still developing. Having those 3 nice little islands with ocean separating and one large flat space works very well.
So you can see it really does take a village to raise, or should I say educate, a child…
Cheers
Kate :)
Kate Booth
24 Feb 12 at 6:27 am
well, you are the carpenter – at best i put the hammer, that others created, on the shelf to make it easier for a master carpenter like you to find
besides, you and i share a very deep and profound connection – we are both members of the Commonwealth and love the Queen deeply =D
and now the bad news – oh noes!!! – you did what? onto every stick?
yikes, i clearly did not spell it out very well in http://iliveisl.com/making-sim-on-a-stick-your-own/ on how to make one master copy and then imply copy it from stick to stick =(
so did you fire up each stick and then do the load OAR in every stick’s OpenSim console?
if so, i have failed as a teacher and apologise
and on top of that you lost your terrain? gee, i did not cover exporting the terrain which would have saved you a huge amount of time
well, there’s another post for me to write! (there’s been a blog post every day since may 25th, 2010!)
Ener Hax
24 Feb 12 at 7:39 am
“Do you guys sleep?? …”
Ummm …. nope! :-D
Sarge Misfit
24 Feb 12 at 8:36 am
Pixel avatars never sleep although it has to be said that occasionally they err more on the dim than the bright.
Maybe there should be a FAQ for eduSoaS? I blogged a few thoughts here: http://tidalblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/stem-on-stick.html (further thoughts in comments). Note that, like Kate, we also uploaded our OAR subsequently although that was, alas, force of circumstance.
Graham Mills
24 Feb 12 at 12:01 pm
@Graham – I shared your link and when checked this page on level 1 avatars, there was some seriously warped inclusion going on – not sure who admins the wiki there but they might want to fix that!
http://simteach.com/wiki/index.php?title=GKCx/Level_1/Avatar:_Appearance
Virtual Clover
26 Feb 12 at 10:21 pm