Virtual world to extend real life event

[Annette]

I am interested in how a virtual world can extend a real life event designed to both entertain and educate children.

Does anyone have any examples of events which are taking place which have either been extended into a virtual world, or have had a virtual world specifically designed for them.

[Catherine Wyman]

Have you checked out the work being done by Barry Joseph and the folks at Global Kids? I am not familiar with a specific event off the top of my head, but I think they do this all the time. Check out www.holymeatballs.org

[Katerine]

We were using this several times and have good experiences with „Mixed-Reality Events“. One Example is the “Trendtag” - a yearly Conference. Sometimes we are broadening our event-auditorium, which is in Second Life most of the time, with real world attendances. But in general extending a real world event is the more familiar intention to mix the realities.

I think most of the time people are attending at conferences, exhibitions and meetings in virtual worlds/real world events. It’s all about hearing, talking, discussing, chatting. Could be a bit boring for kids. You really have to think about the activities you want to combine in both realities.

We organized sometimes quizzes (in combination with the use of whiteboards), races around the center (running and flying) for getting familiar with the functionalities in Second Life-Trainings.

You can find a lot of possibilities like sky diving etc. which could be funny for kids at a lot of places in Second Life and also the other VWs.

I don’t know examples for mixed reality events for children so far. But you shouldn’t forget that the kids should be able to handle the virtual world – otherwise it wouldn’t be fun for them. Unless your goal is teaching how to use virtual worlds ;-)

[Emil Stoyanov]

Hi, Annette. I managed to find a blog post by one of the developers of Croquet Project, which I read some years ago.

http://propella.blogspot.com/2005/08/tvml-crouqet-exhibition.html

It shows an interesting experimental installation of Croquet for children which combines real world spaces with virtual spaces in a way that makes them play/learn. I hope this will be helpful to you.

Regards,
Emil

[iSLa Planet]

Take a look at what Cinemax is doing. Granted that educating children it's not their implicit goal ... but if you simply change the "video content" .. you can steer your program towards children education ..

Let's say ... "Sesame Street" for example ...

http://secondlife.reuters.com/stories/2008/05/14/cinemax-documentar...

[vrdweller]

Hi,

These are not "events" per se but they are established 3D VR universes (using the Active Worlds 3D Technology) that cater to children's education:

3DLearn (grades 7 to 12 can earn real world classroom credits):

http://www.3dlearn.com

Quest Atlantis (grades 3 to 7...no classroom credits but are used by grade schools as supplemental learning):

http://atlantis.crlt.indiana.edu

[AWM Mars]

From my experience... children would learn a lot about the Earth in Second Life. The builds that represent other countries are astounding and very rich with content. Some of the marine life and parks are great places to visit and learn.
There are fantasy sims, with unicorns, fairies, rainbows, wishing wells. Sims that go back in history with castles, knights, armour. It is like you can almost sense what it was like.
Imagine a disabled child being able to 'ride' a VR horse, drive a car, sail a boat, climb to the top of a volcano and watch a sunset, hand glide, surf. It is not real, but the experience is perhaps more than they may ever get in RL.
They can visit a VR Africa, Paris, Dublin the list goes on.

[Riddle]

As mentioned before Croquet (http://www.opencroquet.org) does some amazing edusim stuff. Specifically, see the movies of the interactice white board and the news.