Getting started

 

Links to recent posts

Links to technical posts

Frequently Asked Questions

How to make teaching in a virtual world easier?
  • Make sure to install the same tools for all students to make teaching easier, we prefer using the FireStorm viewer, because if students later want to design their own 3D learning modules it has some better building and scripting tools.
  • The Chrome browser is not a requirement, but it just makes teaching more simple if all students use the same browser, so the teacher doesn’t have to spend time thinking about it.
  • Students who want to build 3D models with free professional tools can try Blender, Sketchup or Unity3D, but they are much harder to learn and not required for most 3D projects. The advantage of FireStorm viewer is that students can build together with other students in a virtual world, instead of only with people next to them.
What is the teacher facilitation guide

When you start using virtual worlds in education, it is similar to using flipped learning were students watch videos and you later work with the students in class.

 

In virtual worlds co-operative learning and individual learning paths are possible, which requires the teacher to think about facilitation and the teaching styles they use to work with students in class afterwards. If you need help with the teaching style to use in relation to education in virtual worlds, please contact our education consultant (see Contact us).

 

How to host virtual worlds

We have created an example virtual world called Energy Matters, that we used as a prototype to teach students about of different types of energy production affects our climate. If you want students to build their own virtual worlds, they can start by looking at some free OpenSimulator virtual world archives (OAR) on my.oligo.academy.

 

Oligo Academy extends OpenSimulator with a shared region module called AdaptiveLearningSystem, which gives you a teacher dashboard and a students heads up display in the virtual world, that will help student to student learning and allow the teacher to have an overview of student activities.

 

You can easily host virtual worlds at Kitely and find 3D models in the Kitely market place, but if you want to use the Oligo Academy teachers dashboard you need to run the oligo_academy_opensim Docker image on the teachers local machine for in class teaching or have your IT department install OpenSimulator in grid mode on a cloud server to share it with other schools.

 

Students can find many free 3D models online if they want to build their own virtual worlds. To make this easier we provide you with a 3D model render server, that can export to Collada format or STL for 3D print. You need a Windows laptop or server to run the render server. Students can instead of the render server install the free Blender tools and learn how to import and export 3D models to Collada or STL.

 

What does experimental alfa-software and disclaimer of service mean

These services are based on the free experimental OpenSimulator software that has been around for many years and are installed on many servers and used professionally for training US military (MOSES). The Oligo Academy shared region module called AdaptiveLearningSystem used by the teacher control panel called My Dashboard and student heads up display, is now beta-software.

 

How is student safety handled

Students use a login with a unique Firstname and no Lastname (meaning the default Resident is used). For example Danish students use their Uni-login and a password given to them by their teacher. Only teachers can reset their students password, if the students forget it.

 

Students are not registrered with any identifying information like e-mail and the Firstname they use to login will be something like eska1254, which can not be used to identify the student.

 

Therefore all contact to students will go through their teacher, so if a student does not behave properly towards another student, then the Oligo Academy support team can choose to disable that students login and contact the students teacher, to ask them have a talk with the student about proper behavior.