Lindy McKeon Masterclass

Lindy McKeown Masterclass - 12/9/2007
Lindy provided a two hour presentation that has got me re-thinking the potential for 3D worlds in education. This comes at a time where I feel I have my head around Web2.0 and comfortably use bits and pieces as i need in my work.

She suggests that I need to learn how to operate in a 3D world like Second Life so that when the time comes to use this technology in class I am comfortable with it.

I gained two immediate and useful ideas that could be fun, educationally relevant and achievable.

1. Google sketchup plugin for Google Earth - I went to the 3D Warehouse where people have contributed Sketchup Drawings for use with Google Earth and there are quite a lot of Adelaide but non for Mount Gambier. Making a contributing drawings of buildings in our town, historical buildings, facilities and so forth would be a great venture for students to undertake. (Side Note - I noticed that I also had blue dots all over the place in Google Earth that I could click on to see pictures taken at that location. Again what a cool thing to be doing.)
2. Lindy pointed to a demo of Photosynth on TED talks. The video lasts for 7 minutes and it is a must see. The scenario could be in the near future - I take my photos and upload them to the likes of Flickr. They are now available for everyone to see but also for machines to include my photo with the others taken of the same thing, from different angles and so on. This amalgamation allows a much richer view of the object where my photo provided my starting point to this view. How cool. Creating a photo gallery of our town would be another great student team project.

The AliveX3D open source project is worth keeping an eye on.

The main objective of AliveX3D is to apply the open source and Web 2.0 ethos to future e-Learning applications. Through the use of the rich internet application, the AliveX3D Scene Editor, both students and academics will be able to collaborate on the creation of 3D environments which will be interoperable with other applications complying with the X3D standard.

Finally a quote from Albert Einstein that she started with
"If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research would it?". I've got some researching to do.