Our first installment of Virtual Worlds Expeditions took place yesterday and was undoubtedly a huge success – nearly 70 avatars joined us for our tour of two Yale projects. We were also fortunate enough to be joined by Ken Panko and Themba Flowers of Yale to provide some excellent behind the scenes information on planning the virtual world projects and answer the many enthusiastic questions from our participants.
Our first stop on the expedition brought us to the virtual version of the Seeley Mudd Library, which was built by CJ Carnot (Chris Holden) from NMC Virtual Worlds as a vehicle for collaboration between Librarians and other staff that share the real world space. By using a number of scripted interior elements, Chris created a place in which the individuals that would use the building after the remodel could participate in the redesign process through a simple, menu driven dialogue.
For more information on this project, check out the information for Ken and Themba’s session at the 2009 NMC Summer Conference in June.
or
Our recently published case study about the Mudd Library project in Second Life on the NMC Virtual Worlds portfolio site.
If you missed the expedition, you can still check out the space at this SLURL.
Our next stop brought us to the Elihu Paper Mill, which was built as a cost effective and safer alternative to visiting a real Paper Mill while still highlighting the different processes involved in making paper on a scale that can be related to. According to our participants, the only thing missing from the experience is the smell (which apparently is not especially pleasant, anyway!)
For more on the Elihu Paper Mill, check out the information from the aptly named Summer Conference session:
or
Our own Elihu Paper Mill case study, including a link to a machinima piece of one of the faculty lead field trips:
Also, visit the project inworld at this SLURL.
If you have any questions for Themba Flowers or Ken Panko about their projects, you can contact them at themba.flowers at yale.edu and ken.panko at yale.edu, respectively.
As always, questions, comments, and additional insights are welcome in the comments of this post or to NMC Virtual Worlds directly at chris at nmc.org or beth at nmc.org.
If you captured an images during the event, please tag them with “VWEx”! We hope to see you for future VWEx sessions on the first Wednesday of every month!
If you are interested in obtaining a chat transcript of the event, you can do so with the link below:
July VWEx Chat Transcript