Comments on: Opensim/Drupal integration for education – proposal and call for help

By: G2 Proto

G2 Proto — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 04:17:25 +0000

I have a new ASP.NET web admin for MSSQL users of OpenSim. It will be tested this week in fact and released to open source when vetted. Details here http://network.associationofvirtualworlds.com/profiles/blog/show?id=2008361%3ABlogPost%3A76449 we have been using the system for months to manage Second Life and OpenSim services.

By: glen

glen — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 02:20:39 +0000

I really like the idea of your course and it is similar to a MEd course I have been delivering. The participants assemble their own set of web-based tools and then collaboratively add value to their own and each others blogs, wiki’s, podcasts and vlogs. The substantive area of interest is Literacy with ICTs.

I thought about using a CMS such as Moodle to organize the course but decided to go completely free range. The course outline and tasks are posted on a blog and a wiki. I’m trying to follow the principle that participants should be able to come to a learning experience, set up their own tools, add value to them and then take them on to their next learning experience. My inputs are added along with the others in the comments sections.

Good luck with your course and I will follow your progress with interest.

By: Felix Huang

Felix Huang — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 23:40:18 +0000

I took a look at the Opensim project after talking to you. This project looks quite promising so far because its development is still very active. If the project goes well, hopefully any web integration can meet the final milestone together with the opensim platform.

By: Justin Clark-Casey

Justin Clark-Casey — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 14:47:26 +0000

Dave, I can’t help directly since I’m horribly time poor right now (and I don’t think IBM would allow me to anyway), but I am keen to see how you get on, since the area of educational applications for OpenSim is one of my interests.

Off the top of my head, is it not possible to adapt one of the grid oriented web interfaces to a standalone? In might require some extra exposure of OpenSim functionality in sandbox standalone, but I think we’d be happy to look at doing that if we can identify what’s required. Of course, it’s also quite possible that the existing web interfaces aren’t suitable for your needs anyway.

By: admin

admin — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 20:30:45 +0000

It’s a good point Tom, but i’m thinking about it being part of a larger web environment including blogging, video posts, images etc… see http://livingarchives.ca and http://openhabitat.org . MUVEs are still pretty exclusive, and most people will only ever see the ‘recordings’ from those environments. Certainly for the next year or three.

By: Tom Hoffman

Tom Hoffman — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 19:56:10 +0000

It doesn’t sound to me like you actually need a content management system at all, but just a web interface for management?

By: Trevor Meister

Trevor Meister — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 18:52:45 +0000

I have been working in OpenSim for the most part on Tribalnet’s p2p implementation. You host a standalone region on your own computer, but you can publish it so you connect to a central grid that is more like a hub. I just signed up for a webhosting package that will allow me to explore Drupal “in the wild” rather than on my own little home network. I can now begin to explore xml-rpc interaction between Drupal and my opensim region. I am not what would qualify as a “good drupal/opensim” programmer and wouldn’t be able to spearhead an operation such as this, but I would be a better than average grunt as I continue to learn. (I have already bought the books PHP5 and C# and am kind of heading in this direction.) I was wondering if you had contacts with any of the Sloodle developers (Integrating Moodle with SL would likely have required the solution of many similar problems).