Tute with a view…
First a little machinema I made earlier: wonkoTOUR
…so I am enriching the noob zone where cybernauts come to learn to build, and am up to the tricky stuff, and have used a few approaches to counter the fact that some of our cybernauts may still be trapped in the concrete operational stages (ie. physically unable to think in 3D yet)
Scaling Objects in X, Y and Z
… so am looking at making things visually obvious. Stretching in X, Y and Z are simple enough – but punters need to realize that the axes move as the object moves – sometimes X is up, sometimes pointing to the left and so on. Not sure if I have got it right yet, but have noticed our budding builder buddies are beginning to sensitively size things, so maybe there is just enough theory and plenty of exemplar for them to learn from.
Adding a splash of colour
How to describe colour – especially when you have to tell kids to spell it wrong … neways, Activeworlds uses either named colours or html colour codes, so I thought I would demonstrate both, with some colour swatches, link to the help pages on colour models and also to an active html colour mixer, so they can dial up complimentary colours, think that approach is ok, shall see when the punters start using it.
Texturing, an art-form in itself
So to describe how to apply a texture, skin, appearance … we have hundreds of stock textures, very few of them have names that make sense to anyone (even the people who originally created them i would hazard to guess), so I showcase what the same shape looks like wrapped in a bunch of different skins, and link to the texture library – not sure there is a better way – having a full texture gallery would be ludicrous I think, but I think eventually we will catalogue them in our object database – browsing will still be hideous I suspect.
I dislike the fact that it is so difficult for the punter to add their own objects and textures in an Activeworld, without being given edit access to the master path .. one of a few bugbears I have about this environment (soz, am used to the creative freedom of Secondlife), still I guess there is a place for cookie-cutter construction with some individual tweaks – is easier for little kids also I suspect and after all, they are our clientelle.
Over at Non-Eco School, we planted an idea, well a tree really that was a place kids could post questions to a scientist – worked a treat, so borrowed that idea for a Builders Q&A tree:
Q&A on a grand scale
Will be interesting to see what emerges as building issues – I do not do child psychology so have no real idea how successful these things are until I see kids going nuts using the skills.
…all good fun
Lego for big kids…
…so our punters are over Lego, in a big way, and are ready for challenges that are more real. I guess I over estimated the connection they wold feel with Lego – how quickly we forget the ages that toys are appropriate to kids.
Cybernauts will eventually be building things to solve problems, in the interim they need a challenge that exercises their builders skills, so I thought of a group building challenge – Retropolis, an ancient Roman Villa complex/compound.
Welcome to Retropolis
I cleared the Lego pile (sorry kids, it was bugging me), extended the bay a little, lay down some cobbles, erected signs issuing the challenge – “Build us small a Roman town”, together. I recorded a video (you can see it playing on 3 screens as part of the welcome facade) explaining what was necessary, pointing out what was where and what they had to do. I think it makes sense – what do you think?
I then set about assembling a collection of Roman ruin bits and pieces – scaled so they fit together nicely, accessories and so on, and lay out an object yard – this saves them time searching for period-correct things.
enter the object yard (don't tell them this is the same as Lego)
It occurred to me that I was assuming they had some idea of what a Roman Villa complex might look like, and i have found assumptions to be problematic at best, so decided to provide some inspiration – thank you Google I found plenty of villa-inspired plans and diagrams, of which I constructed billboards to display them.
It will be interesting to see how it develops – scale and scope are something primary kids seem to struggle with – they go large before thinking about practicalities or human-scale. They think large will impress when actually detail and control are more admirable. They see super structure and do not think through the practicailties of gravity, weather, basic physics, terrain etc – this is both wonderful and an issue when trying to construct something that looks convincing.
accessories galore, Persian carpet sale?
…the challenge is issued, with the proviso that untidy/un-Roman building will be demolished. How will they go? I honestly have no idea, but see nothing but potential (particularly in the light of the success of SkyCity). We shall see…
