Graphics Programs Reference
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back. In short the students created an object that
looked like a trampoline, acted like a trampoline,
and sounded like a trampoline. Once they finished
the build the students were asked to walk across
their new toy. The excitement this simple project
created lasted for two to three weeks as the stu-
dents continued to comment on how fun it was.
Finally I asked the students to set the permis-
sions for copy, edit, and transfer so that they could
give their trampoline to others. This skill is nec-
essary because the students will eventually need
to produce content inside a prim for class-work.
This class-work must then be given to me and I
need to be able to receive the contents and view
them so the assignment can be graded.
At this point the students had learned the
basic skills required to do the exercises. Rather
than waiting, however, I immediately assigned
the content-related exercise, although I did not
require the students to work on it immediately.
Some students were rather drained after their first
experience building while others immediately
began the exercises. Those that did them im-
mediately had two advantages over the others.
First, I remained there to guide them through the
process and second, the skills they learned were
fresh in their minds and they found it faster to do
the exercises because they didn't have to relearn
these skills. Additionally, some of the students
formed groups and helped each other during the
process of doing their exercises.
the reasoning behind how I created content-based
learning objects.
Some GIS software is based on squares (grid
cells), which, if one thinks only for a moment,
is merely a flat cube (one of the primary prims
available in Second Life). When you represent
elevation values using squares inside a grid cell
based GIS you normally assign a shading pattern
to indicate if it is relatively higher or lower than
the cell next to it. But, because the cells (blocks)
in Second Life are 3-D, the student can actually
convert a small portion of a topographic surface
using these blocks (Figure 6). The only building
skills needed were those regarding how to create,
size (with the grid), and color the grids (blocks)
and finally how to link them so they were linked
as a single object. As before, this exercise was
assigned immediately after teaching them the
skills they needed.
To do this I had to have the students first re-
trieve their trampoline and add a prim as a sort
of border on the outside and give it a texture. At
this point the students needed to learn how to link
multiple prims by using the tools menu. Because
the students were merely modifying the trampo-
line they had just built this new skill was just a
single addition to those they already possessed.
As with all my exercises, they moved immedi-
ately from the skill learning task to the labora-
tory exercise.
Besides providing the students with an exer-
cise, I also provided them with a set of instructions
using a Second Life tool called a notecard. I pro-
vided them with explicit learning objectives and
related behavioral indicators and grading rubrics.
The learning objectives were not Second Life ob-
jectives but rather content-related learning objects
that employed the tools for their achievement.
As with the learning objectives the behavioral
indicators were content based not Second Life
based. Below are a few examples of behavioral
indicators related to using Second Life cubes to
represent topographic surfaces.
THe exeRCISeS
Over a period of one semester I was able to develop
ten Second Life exercises that roughly paralleled
the content of the course textbook. It is the conver-
sion of content to Second Life implementation that
is at the heart of using Second Life for meaningful
education. To do this requires understanding both
your disciplinary content and the tools and abili-
ties of Second Life. Below I demonstrate some of
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