EduTechie.com

Recently I posted an article questioning the usefulness of Second Life in education, to which I received mixed feedback. Last week I had the opportunity to see Dr. Julian Lombardi and Dr. Marilyn Lombardi of Duke University demonstrate a open-source peer-to-peer virtual world application called Croquet. Croquet is basically Second Life, but much more.

This article looks at 7 ways Croquet is better than Second Life. I also explore some of the con’s of this alternative virtual world and some questions I still have.

Note: This product does not have a distributable application at this point. This article is one of two things: a call for help, or a glimpse in the future. If you have the skills to help out with the development, please do so, otherwise you should see a downloadable application this coming fall.

Pros:
1. Scalelable – Peer to Peer Network
Only 15-25 people can get on a second life server at a time. After that you have to use multiple servers to handle it all and it consumes an enormous amount of energy (as much as a real person by some measures). Croquet on the other had uses a Peer-to-Peer network. The low bandwidth requirement does well on wireless networks and the bigger the better. Those who have spent time in Second Life know that it is prone to sudden failures… often.

2. Private Network
I have heard talk on several occasions about how Second Life violates FERPA by require students to give their information to third party sources (first from Charlie Morris over at Blern). Croquet is a private network that integrates with schools. Only those you want in your space can get in there… no weirdo’s. (More on this in Con’s)

3. Multi-Touch interaction with objects
Multiple avatars can touch an object and manipulate it at the same time! Wow!

4-5. Easy (right-click) object creation and Infinite Space
During the presentation Julian created another virtual environment by right clicking and selecting ‘New Place.’ It was that easy. He was then able to move his avatar right into that virtual world. There is no limit to the amount of virtual worlds you can create. Imagine creating a classroom with multiple links to other worlds. These links are called 3D Hyperlinks.

A user could also easily create a internet browser. Imagine students all doing research in life size browsers and teachers walking around looking at what they are all looking at and researching.

Perhaps the most impressing was the ability to easily create 3D objects. Julian drew a crude 2D shark in an aquatic environment with a paint like program. He then clicked a button and it was instantly made into 3d Shark complete with shading. Impressive!

6. In world Applications and OS’s
Any application can be played in a portal and manipulated by anyone and everyone in the virtual world. There was a cool visual spreadsheet set up in one place that 3Dified (is that a word) the data on the sheet.

The ability also exists to run a virtual computer in a portal in the virtual environment. As a techie this appealed to me. Imagine all the Windows OS’s, Mac OS’s and Linux OS’s running in portals in a techie room where you could go and troubleshoot and test out installations for each one. Neato!

7. Live Snapshots
This is probably more eye candy than anything else, but there were live snapshots of other virtual environments. This is the equivalent of bookmarks, but live pictures of what was going on at those other places. Great for keeping track of students, or seeing if people are somewhere without having to go there.

Similarities
- VoIP built-in
- Sound is in relationship to proximity (including applications, video and so forth that is used)

Cons:
1. People
Although it would be nice to keep some weirdo’s out of your educational space, sometimes that is what you really need. Second Life has a huge base with anywhere between 40K-60K real people on at a time. This really allows a base for that questioning and exposure that is so important in education.

2. Access to other Worlds
Although work is being done on importing worlds from Second Life, there are countless other environments in Second Life that would be unaccessible in Croquet. NOAA’s Weather Island comes to mind.

3. Bugs
This program is still a long way from ready for a large number of people to use. At one point the there were some errors that popped up and he had to completely restart the virtual world. Nice thing was though, it only had to be restarted for that user (thanks to peer-to-peer network).

Questions:

• I am worried about the ease of use? Yes, the people who designed it could navigate and get around, but it looked a bit more complicated than Second Life… yes, no? What kind of learning curve are we looking at?
• How to we get others into the environment?
• Are there logs of everything that happens? What about the ability to lock down certain aspects of the world. If every user can manipulate and change an environment can a student accidentally/deliberately delete a world a teacher creates?
• Space? The question was asked how much storage each space takes, and it wasn’t really answered. I know Croquet is small to download, but what about the virtual worlds they create? How much space are we looking at. Is this really feasible without a server?

So what other questions do you have? What have I missed or messed up? I have spend some time in Second Life, but I clearly am not immersed in it like some people? Are some of these pro’s totally off? For those at the presentation or familiar with Croquet, what did I miss?

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