{"id":1387,"date":"2012-02-22T12:48:29","date_gmt":"2012-02-22T11:48:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/?p=1387"},"modified":"2012-02-22T12:51:32","modified_gmt":"2012-02-22T11:51:32","slug":"bring-on-the-metaverse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/2012\/02\/bring-on-the-metaverse\/","title":{"rendered":"CETIS Conference: Bring on the metaverse"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ian Hughes (@epredator<\/a>) from Feeding Edge ltd<\/a>. Ian describes himself as a ‘metaverse<\/a> evangelist’. Ended up presenting a section on ‘Cool Stuff’ on CITV <\/a>– and finding he was talking about exactly the same stuff to talk to children as he’d been talking to the commercial sector\/large corps about. Tries to include mentions of open source, and show that children can get involve and affect stuff … in the way he did when he was young.<\/p>\n

A lot of the stuff Ian talks about comes back to games – perhaps because about playing and about building – he went into computing because he wanted to build games. Not just about writing games – but using toolkits to mod characters, game play etc.<\/p>\n

Also interest in animation (involved in a BCS group about animation) – and this is about art and technical skill – you need to bring together people with these different skill sets, and each needs to understand what the other has to offer. Things like http:\/\/unity3d.com<\/a> and http:\/\/opensimulator.org<\/a> allow you to write stuff yourself . Tools like http:\/\/evolver.com<\/a> give you easy ways into building characters etc. Also platforms are available\u00a0http:\/\/smartfoxserver.com<\/a> – used to delivered Club Penguin<\/a> – and if you have <100 people connecting it is free to run.<\/p>\n

Forza<\/a> – racing game\/driving sim – that allows you to mod the car – including paintwork etc. – and then when you race against someone they see your <\/em>car. Can include things like logos etc…<\/p>\n

Ian now demonstrating how he can run OpenSim<\/a> on his laptop – his customised avatar wears digital version of the leather jacket he is currently wearing – identity and links between virtual and real. Can create virtual objects immediately – and all viewers of shared space see it immediately – you’ve distributed just be creating it. Ian talking about how he finds virtual objects as useful cues for talking – using ‘3 dimensional’ cues for what he is going to say (reminds me of ‘palace of memories’ type stuff).<\/p>\n

Ian says, a shared ‘space’ when presenting gives different effects and works well for some people – you can share presentations in the space, and also place discussion in the space.<\/p>\n

Now moving onto Minecraft<\/a> – much more game based, but lots of similarity with virtual worlds. You can run a Minecraft<\/a> server yourself, or on the web. Starting to see some use of this in schools – mentions “Minecraft Teacher”\u00a0http:\/\/minecraftteacher.net\/<\/a>. Ian describing how his children used Minecraft together for the first time – collaboration, exploration, building etc. Minecraft also allows building of mechanical devices – using things like trip switches, trains, etc.<\/p>\n

Ian mentions Arduino and 3D printing as things he’s got onto the Cool Stuff program. Ian is especially enthusiastic about 3d printing – highlighting possibilities of moving between environments like Skylander – you could print out your own figures, with RFID chips in them….<\/p>\n

Finally Ian closes by talking about how engaging children is about presenting this stuff in fun\/interesting ways – but perhaps also about trusting children \u00a0will be interested and will learn, if you make it interesting.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ian Hughes (@epredator) from Feeding Edge ltd. Ian describes himself as a ‘metaverse evangelist’. Ended up presenting a section on ‘Cool Stuff’ on CITV – and finding he was talking about exactly the same stuff to talk to children as he’d been talking to the commercial sector\/large corps about. Tries to include mentions of open […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1387"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1390,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1387\/revisions\/1390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}