Vue Regional Planning Authority (VRPA) Meeting 6 - 14-Apr-2008 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Attendees: ---------- Aghlab Al-Attili (Edinburgh Stanford Link & Entrepreneurship MSc) Dawn Ellis (Corporate Communications & PR) Ian Graham (Management School) Fiona Littleton (E-Learning, Higher & Community Education) Naomi Nunn (Development & Alumni) David Richardson (Informatics) Austin Tate (Informatics & AIAI) Apologies: ---------- Sian Bayne (E-Learning, Higher & Community Education) Mike Clouser (Edinburgh Stanford Link & Entrepreneurship MSc) Rose Dewar (Corporate Services Group) Hamish Macleod (Centre for Teaching, Learning & Assessment, Education) Jessie Paterson (Divinity) James Stewart (Research Centre for Social Sciences) Morag Watson (Information Services) Minutes of meeting on 3-Dec-2007 -------------------------------- Available at http://vue.ed.ac.uk/sl/vrpa/vrpa-meeting-2007-12-03-minutes.txt Approved. Current Status -------------- There are 100 members on the vue@lists.ed.ac.uk (alias vue@ed.ac.uk) mailing list as at 10-Apr-2008. Austin Tate should be contacted to add names to the list. Initial annual renewals for Linden labs region maintenance costs have just started to come in as we have been running approximately one year. These will be handled by each island owner who will reclaim from the approved funding group as previously agreed. All regions are to be maintained for 3 years in the first instance. The Wiki can now be viewed by anyone, and can be amended by anyone with an EASE login and password. Future non-University members will be able to edit if they are accredited via the proposed e-Visitor scheme. Fiona Littleton is now employed 2 days a week by the University (through Jeff Haywood in Information Services) to offer support to schools, colleges and units in the University of Edinburgh wishing to establish their presence on Vue. Please contact Fiona Littleton directly on fiona.littleton@education.ed.ac.uk for more information. VATAR ----- There has been regular activity on the VATAR programme with weekly events taking place on a range of specialist and general interest topics. There has been a drop-off in attendance over the previous weeks although this may be due to the Easter holidays. A survey has gone out to all members of the Vue mailing list asking them what they want from VATAR and when it is best for the sessions to take place. The VATAR program will be tailored based on the results of the brief survey. Once the final results are in they will be shared with members of the VRPA. Plans for the Vue Region ------------------------ All outstanding plot request have been handled. Further requests should be made to Austin Tate initially. No outstanding island/region purchases are pending. Vue Response to Freedom of Information Request ---------------------------------------------- A request was made in March 2008 for the University to provide invoices for all regions purchased from Linden Labs. While all information on Vue use of Second Life regions is public and standard educational pricing applies, the University did feel it needed to produce the invoices, which it collected together from the various units and schools which has paid for region initial costs and maintenance. The following text was provided by Austin Tate to the University FoI office on 5-Mar-2008 to act as a description of the Vue activities in Second Life... Response to freedom of information request about university payments for facilities in Second Life.... University of Edinburgh uses of Second Life 1) Various groups in the University of Edinburgh have been using simulations and virtual world technology for over 2 decades. Recently in early 2007 an informal group came together to encourage collaboration in this area for teaching, research and outreach uses. A number of virtual worlds are being used including Second Life. Full details of this informal, cross-university group and its work are available via http://vue.ed.ac.uk 2) Followings several years of uses of small educational plots in Second Life mainland regions, in early 2007, a plan to coordinate activities and share resources was drawn up by the Vue group. Funding from various projects and sources sought to implement this. To date, various groups across the University have purchased five 'islands' all together. These are Vue, Edinburgh University (formerly Vue East), Edinburgh Uplands, a collection of four 'open spaces' (Vue North, Vue South, Edinburgh North and Edinburgh East - which together constitute the equivalent of one full 'island'), and Informatics (purchased by the School of Informatics). A further region called Vue NW is used by the Management School and is associated with the Vue region but was not purchased through the University. The Vue region as at March 2008 is shown at http://vue.ed.ac.uk/sl/plan/vue-map-current.jpg 3) Many uses are being made of these areas by parts of the University. A summary can be found in a handout and presentations available on http://vue.ed.ac.uk. 4) Pricing for Second Life regions involved an initial purchase price to set up the simulators and a monthly fee to run the services. A 50% discount is given to the University as the uses are educational. All Vue regions purchased and maintained to date have been at the published educational prices. Pricing is given at http://secondlife.com/community/land-islands.php 5) Free avatar accounts are mostly used by the university for staff and students since we have the regions mentioned above to provide most necessary resources. Depending on their projects, other individuals and projects may provide funding to the avatars which are used by staff, students and visitors to the Vue regions. Typically this will be in the form of the purchase of Linden dollars, or payment of annual subscriptions (typically $72 per annum) which also attract a weekly stipend for an avatar. See rates at http://secondlife.com/whatis/plans.php Democratisation Process ----------------------- Further discussion of the democratisation process for Vue and the VRPA led to the suggestion that all Vue members be invited to request to attend any VRPA meeting where they want to raise and issue or be present for discussion on some item. This was agreed and will be put in place from the next VRPA meeting onwards. This will be tried for a few meetings before changing the process and representation further. Opensimulator Use ----------------- AIAI in Informatics have been running Opensim (http://opensimulator.org) since September 2007 as an alternative to Second Life and they have recently given the School of Education an area to experiment on through their virtual.aiai.ed.ac.uk service.. It can be accessed through the already open source SL Viewer, but can be hosted on self managed servers. A Vue web area and wiki page for the initial work is available via http://vue.ed.ac.uk/openvue/ Second Life Teen Grid --------------------- Rose Dewar had asked about possible use of the Second Life Teen Grid to reach especially 16 and 17 year olds for recruiting, and to show them typical halls of residences, etc. Others have asked about the Teen Grid in the last 12 months especially for recruitment and for Schools Liaison Officer activities. We have discussed the Teen Grid once or twice informally between us, Austin Tate asked Linden labs how to set up a "clone" of one of our regions easily as a starter position on the teen grid. Linden advised that we could take any region and make an exact copy on the teen grid, and move a copy of any avatars setup across to the teen grid for approved avatars. But they are then distinct and go their own paths. Remerging at some future time is not possible at present. Use of the Teen grid would require some group/team/individual committed to managing and making sure the Teen Grid island was staffed and well used. Schools recruitment folks across the university might be interested if someone took this on as a project. The other issue is that the population of the Teen Grid is very much smaller than the main grid. One possibility to consider might be to have an area on the Teen Grid on a region run another educational establishment, e.g. the NMC or the Open University regions. That could probably be hired at much lower costs than buying and managing an island of one's own. Another possibility looking 12 months down the line, might be to use university server hosted regions on our own educational grid using Opensim to have areas for such uses.. and make some "guest" avatars that anyone can use to visit. Other universities are looking at Opensim as a way to host large numbers of regions that can be kept private or can be open. See our initial experiments at http://vue.ed.ac.uk/openvue/ Next Steps ---------- It was suggested that a Point of Contact be added to the list of Vue locations on the Vue web site and wiki to make the destinations table more useful. Action Austin Tate. Date of Next Meeting -------------------- To be arranged by e-mail in June 2008.