From Education

Initial Notes and Thoughts about Metaverses and SC Education

Order

• What is a metaverse
• Why do we care about metaverses
• What metaverses exists now
• Second Life demo
• Croquet and Qwaq and why this is where we are starting
• Limitations of metaverses in general
• Demonstrate Qwaq
• Experience Qwaq

How can this be used?

• Attractor
• Virtual Rounds support
• Deliver education, outreach, and training

Who is going to use this?

• Classroom environment
• Exposition of information
• Asyncronous support/education

What can you do in the metaverse?

• Static content
  • Already developed materials from e.g. CSERD from a variety of disciplines
  • Organized by discipline and level, defined paths

• Interactive science
  • Create an island and provide a weather simulation (WRF) with effects
  • Visualized molecular dynamics
  • Visualized galaxy creation
  • One more really good, simple, powerful idea here

Which metaverses to use?

• Qwaq
• Second Life
• Toolkits - Croquet
• Strengths and weaknesses of each
• What kinds of interfaces can be built in which worlds?

Open items

• Access to metaverses from behind firewalls is difficult
• Good bandwidth required for video and/or audio (both of which richen the experience greatly)
• Interoperability between worlds, avatars, science, content

Where to go from here?

• Proofs of concept - implement a subset of the static content and interactive science
• Develop an attractor application/experience, probably Second Life
  • Puzzle Hunt
• Virtual Rounds via Croquet

Ideas for Second Life space

• Put up information from workshops
• Quizzes unlock puzzles
• Finishing puzzles wins prizes
• Ideas for games moving around blocks or solving puzzles to get from point A to point B