- August 25th, 2009
CANVAS: Scotland’s first schools based virtual world for learning
- Derek Robertson
- Comments: 21 Comments »
As part of the ongoing remit to explore emerging technologies and their potential application within teaching and learning contexts Learning and Teaching Scotland’s Consolarium has been exploring Virtual Worlds. Virtual Worlds present players/learners with a computer-based simulated environment intended for its players/learners to inhabit and interact via avatars. The most famous virtual worlds would include World of Warcraft and Second Life. Although World of Warcraft is of great interest to us we are not yet looking at this due to reasons that include the time required to spend ‘in-world’ and the unprotected nature of the environment in terms of knowing who is engaging with young learners. However, the world of Second Life has been of interest to us and this is an area that we have been considering. Our ongoing discussions with various industry partners led to a meeting with an Aberdeen based company called Second Places. They make bespoke virtual worlds for clients and have worked with organisations as varied as BP, The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, and even the comedian Jimmy Carr! Discussions between us led to the germ of an idea that would make the concept of the virtual world in relation to teaching and learning something that would be attainable, accessible and relevant in the modern Scottish classroom. This idea is CANVAS. (Full presentation of CANVAS’ design and planned implementation will be available at a seminar at SLF’09 & HHL’09)
What is CANVAS?
In essence CANVAS (Children’s Art at the National Virtual Arena of Scotland) is a virtual art space where Scottish pupils can exhibit their still or moving image art. Access to CANVAS will be through Glow (full Shibboleth Authentication) and with this comes the opportunity to exhibit pupils’ work, in a safer and securer environment, to the huge audience of pupils and teachers throughout Scotland. Not only will pupils be able to exhibit their work but they also will be able to appear in-world, represented by a virtual character called an avatar, so that they can talk via a chat facility to gallery visitors who come to visit and view the art works on show in CANVAS. We believe that the participative nature of the design will offer a context in which young learners experiences, thoughts and understanding of their own work and development can be enriched and enhanced by the proposed opportunity for dialogue and discussion that the world offers. The exhibiting pupils will not be able to appear in world all the time so we have also built in the functionality that would allow the artist to record and embed a short video that can be played by gallery visitors when learners/artists are not in-world. This in itself is also another rich learning experience in terms of ICT but also in relation to the drafting and recording of a focused and succinct piece that would tell the viewer all about the artist’s work. To further add to this collaborative environment is the function that enables gallery visitors to leave formative comment about their experience and what they have thought about the art that is on show. Each separate artist will have their own forum where comments can be left for them to consider and reflect on.
What is the technology that is used?
Although the world looks and feels like Second Life it is actually made using an application called Open Sim. This has allowed us to create our own bespoke virtual world that can be hosted on our servers so that we have full control over whom we allow in to view and interact in the world. In order to view the world there are some technical issues that need to addressed. These include
• some ports require to be opened in firewalls before schools can access the world. Local Authority partners have been very helpful in addressing this issue so that the integrity of their networks is not compromised
• A CANVAS client will require to be installed locally to any machine that will be used to view the world. Again, we are working with Local Authority partners in order to find solutions for the delivery of this resource across managed networks
• Quicktime must be installed on any machine to be used to view CANVAS (in order to view videos within the world)
It seems that innovation does not come without its challenges and this project has certainly not found itself short on challenges. We would like to comment on the dedication and ‘stickability’ of Second Places and in particular Mark Duffy who has faced a series of what appeared to be never-ending hilltops! We are almost at the top!
What is the role of local Authorities in making CANVAS work?
Initially the idea behind CANVAS involved the use of only one exhibition space. This space would allow a local authority to exhibit pupils’ work for a three-week period. However, this would have meant that some local authorities would need to wait almost three years before they could participate and showcase pupils’ work from their schools. This was not acceptable to us. Further discussions led to the extension of the world so that there were 32 separate rooms so that all local authorities can choose to maintain and refresh their own gallery in a manageable way. The refresh timescale of the exhibition is down to each local authority. There is also some discussion still to be had in relation to what each gallery would exhibit. We are leaving this open to local authorities so that they may choose to have something along the lines of:
• an exhibition that focuses on a particular theme
• a focus on a school to showcase their pupil’s work
• best of Secondary
• best of Primary/Nursery
• a moving image special
• a focus on a particular style such as Impressionism, modern art, portraiture
We still have the main exhibition space but we are currently in discussion about the role that this will play in the future. Should we make this somewhere that displays the work from a selected local authority as first envisaged or should it exhibit a monthly selection of art from the 32 local authority galleries? Might this main exhibition space showcase art of a particular theme from schools across Scotland or can it also show art from galleries not connected with school or maybe even art teachers work? These are questions that we are currently discussing but at this stage we still envisage using this main space to showcase pupil art from selected local authorities.
Management of the CANVAS environment has been made as accessible as possible for users. We aim to give ‘god’ accounts to the people within each local authority who would be willing/responsible to manage the collation of the artwork and the subsequent uploading of this to CANVAS. They will also need to work with the exhibiting schools/pupils in order to arrange times when the pupil will be available to be ‘in-world’ so that they can interact and engage with visitors to the gallery. LTS are more than willing to support local authorities in the use of CANVAS so that they can take ownership of it at as early a stage as possible.
There will also be some requirement to moderate the comments that are submitted to the formative forum. We do hope that this will not be too onerous a task and as we know the identity of everyone in the world is (via the Shibboleth authentication) then we can trace any inappropriate comment, delete it and then, if appropriate, suspend the offending person from the world. This is an issue that may cause us the occasional headache but we believe that we have the mechanisms in place to address it if it does arise.
Taking this forward
We understand that there are have been some unfortunate stories linked with Second Life over the past year or so. We wish to stress that we are not using Second Life but an application called Open Sim that has enabled us to create out own world that we have complete control over in terms of who can access it. We would also like to stress that this project has been carefully considered with CfE and AifL clearly in mind and has been developed in conjunction with a range of ICT, Expressive Arts, AifL and school partners. It has the potential to be a significant resource and is another example of how we are exploring emerging technologies that have become embedded, for good or bad in contemporary culture, but with a clear focus on teaching and learning. Finally, CANVAS has such a low technology skills threshold that we believe that it will enable the vast majority of teachers to use it without any fear of its technical aspect.
We believe that CANVAS has the potential to be a transformational resource and that it will enrich learning in art & design for Scottish pupils
Categories Virtual Worlds
What’s the scope for having other islands in world? Could there be a location for other subject areas/stages/specialisms in the future?
I for one am really excited by this development.
We are supporting 2 upcoming education projects as well for customers.
In general OpenSim works and can be an xlent platform for communities!
“The Immersive Education Initiative is an international collaboration of universities, colleges, research institutes, consortia and companies that are working together to define and develop open standards, best practices, platforms, and communities of support for virtual reality and game-based learning and training systems. Hundreds of faculty, researchers, staff, administrators and students are members of the Immersive Education Initiative, which is growing at the rate of approximately 2 new members every day.”
Is CANVAS on the Immersive Education grid for other educators and students to access?