Worlds Real & Virtual

Virtual Harlem (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Virtual%20Harlem/132/128/30) is a Second Life educational sim representing Harlem, NY, as it existed during the Jazz Age of the 1920s and early 30s.  Walk down its streets and imagine what Harlem was like in its heyday.

Or you can jump on the tour trolley to view Harlem highlights.  At each stop, the tour guide scrolls information on the screen. You may hear period music as you pass the Apollo Theater, view African-American art in the Virtual Harlem Gallery of the Arts, stand in the Abyssinian Baptist Church, listen to poetry in Harlem Memorial Park or conversations in the street.  In the Harlem Branch Public Library, click on the portraits on the wall to learn about the person pictured.   The Virtual Harlem Bookstore displays books by and about African-Americans and their culture.  Click on a a book of interest, and a link will take you to Amazon.com to learn more about the book and, if you wish, buy the book with ease.

Virtual Harlem’s builders encourage interaction between students, business owners specializing in items related to the period, educators and researchers working on a team to add educational and experiential content to the environment, developers working to make the environment more efficient while offering entertainers exposure to an audience interested in early 20th century Jazz Culture, particularlyf American, African American and Parisian Jazz  culture.

The project was conceived in 1998 by Bryan Carter at Central Missouri State University and the first prototype was initiated in collaboration with Bill Plummer at the Advanced Technology Center at the University of Missouri

In August of 1999, the University of Illinois at translated the Harlem experience to a fully immersive environment- the CAVE. Now, on Second Life, Virtual Harlem has been an experimental testbed for a diverse group of educators and researchers.  Learn more by visiting the group’s website at http://www.evl.uic.edu/cavern/harlem/

The gallery below can be viewed in two ways.  View as Slideshow will simply display each image in its turn.  For a larger and more informational display, choose View with PicLens, which will show images with their titles and sometimes notes on the scene.  In addition, it will display for most images A SLurl (Second Life URL) web address that when copied and pasted into your browser will open up Second Life and transport you directly to or nearby the site when the image was captured.

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

Enter China’s famed Forbidden City as one of its citizens. Explore the buildings, experience daily life, chat with other residents, The Forbidden City: Beyond Space and Time is a partnership between the Palace Museum and IBM. The project aims to provide the means for a world-wide audience to celebrate and explore Chinese culture and history.

To recreate the Forbidden City and its environs on your computer. visit the web site at http://www.virtualforbiddencity.org to learn more and download the free software . Versions for Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux are available. You can then enter the city as a guest or register to join the project’s Beyond Space and Time community and participate in forum discussions, save and send snapshots to document your travels, change your role. Popup windows give the history. 

Here the visitor is invited to choose, feed, and train a fighting cricket–and select its opponent.  Running text commentary talks about the crickets’ diet and the practice of cricket fighting. Other activities, events, and historic views beckon to take you back in time.  

Unlike Second Life, you cannot customize your avatar or clothing or fly.  But that helps keep visitors in character and to blend into the period scene.  No floating furries or other beasties here.  I do miss Second Life’s Option+ capability to zoom in on signs and views, though.  It may have been the state of my overtaxed Mac, but the program crashed more than once while I was using it.

But the scenery is vast and beautiful and there is much to see and likely more to come as the project corganizers continue building and populating this city.  An interactive map gets you around quickly and efficiently.  Virtual tour guides are on hand to help.  I have only begun to explore this ambitious site.  But I will soon return.

To customize your Google Map, click the Link link at upper right of the Google My Maps screen.   At the bottom of the small pop up window offering code snippets, click on the Customize and preview embedded map.  Choose the desired map size or set a custom size.  Set  the zoom and placement the way you want it to display.  Real time features such as Traffic and other layers such as Weather do not appear to be able to be embedded, so try first with a fairly straightforward map.  When you have completed your customization, select and copy the code shown in the  window labeled “Copy and paste this HTML to embed in your website.”  Paste the code into your Wordpress HTML window.

View Larger Map

This sample map shows how we can use several of Google Maps’ markup features. It marks a route from Lafayette College to Walters Park, where the festival is held, and back another way. It also incorporates images and videos. Note: To my knowledge there are actually no alligators in the Delaware River.  This interactive map was easily embedded in this page by clicking on the Link link at the top right of the Google Map screen.  Copy the code in the second box: Paste HTML to embed in website.  Note that this map’s actual center of interest shows up at the bottom of the map.  To present the map in your desired view and focus, see my post on Customizing and Embedding a Google Map.

View Larger Map

Today is very, very cold, windy, and one big cloud.  All the very smart ground hogs are cuddled down in their holes, munching roots and laughing at us boot-wearing, scarf-wrapping job-slogging humans. But it is Friday. And spring will come. It always does. 

The fog warms the ground, the geese fly north, crows caw in the treetops.  Daffodil spears peek through the frozen crust.  The woolens, though warm, seem old and tired.  And spring will come, as always.

To build in the sky, search for, latch on to a free flight feather and wear it  in case you have to fly about at high altitudes.   On a sandbox of other patch of land on which you are allowed to build (the Build button will be visible below your screen) rez a cube.  Size it at about x=3.000, y=3.000, z=0.050.  Have your avatar sit securely on the cube.  Take note of the object’s x-y-z location coordinates.  These are the red, green, and blue numbers that appear at the top of the screen.  Write them down.  You’ll need then in a bit.  Then enter a new z position such as 200.000 meters.  Before you know it, the platform and your avatar are floating up in the sky.  If you don’t see much right away, press the Esc key to reset your camera view.  Note your new location.  To make it easier to travel between the sky platform and land, create teleports with the coordinates you saved, if your privileges in the region allow you to.  Create one one on the platform to take you back to land, another on land to transport you back to the sky platform.  Then start building!  For a thrilling experience, and necessary if you are building on someone else’s air, select your skyborn handiwork, take it into them into your inventory.  Then select and take into Inventory the platform itself–and fly (or tumble) down to earth.  

Franchella Milena (foreground) and workshop classmates learning to build in the sky

Google Earth’s new 5.0 release takes you to Mars–up close and personal.  You can also delve into and study earth’s oceans, compare today’s earth features with historical images.  To update to 5.0 from Google Earth, click on Help/Check for updates online.  If you don’t have Google Earth installed, download the free software from http://earth.google.com.  Then start exploring!

Up close look at a Mars ice cap

Hawaiian Islands and the nearby ocean floor

From earth to Google Earth, from maps to GIS, from 2D to 3D, from real life to Second Life, from here and now to wherever and whenever, this blog will explore how we can learn from and teach in the many worlds we live in, both real and virtual.