Sandbox phase continues in CTIN 482
The 'sandbox' phase is continuing for CTIN 482 on IML2. In last night's class, we broke up into three design and development teams to begin concrete planning of projects to populate the SCA virtual campus. To begin establishing group dynamics and workflow, each group was tasked with completing a simple lab exercise: create a simple learning object that makes use of all the basic affordances of objects in Second Life (sound and animation scripts, particle effects, textures; notecard, landmark and URL attachments, etc.).
Bjorn created sample cubes to demonstrate these basic functions and deliver the exercise parameters. Part of the exercise also involved simultaneous group construction, with multiple avatars performing modifications on the same object as a way to ingrain principles of collective authoring and to begin figuring out possible distributions of labor within the groups.
The three projects that the class decided to undertake represent a range of the kinds of learning environments and objects that we have discussed in lecture and in readings. One group will focus on designing a toolkit for teaching various principles of film production using embedded video and the interactive delivery platform of Second Life.
Another group is focusing on sound design and the potentials of designing a creative space for dynamically generating combinations of sound and visuals. Although this project veers the farthest away from the "virtual campus" mandate, the full potentials of sound in Second Life are rarely exploited and this project offers an opportunity to experiment with combinations of environmental effects, music, and event sounds embedded in a responsive environment.
The last group will research the subject of media censorship and design an analytical space for performing transmedial comparisons. The space will be architected to support media analysis based on different critical lenses, with the potential to substitute various media sets and modes of criticism.