Changing the Idea for the Media Panels

Meanwhile back at the ranch...I rethought the whole interaction with the media panels paradigm. The panels were just not appearing fast enough with the whole detect avatar sensor. So I decided that we would place some type of object in and around the village (something that is commonly seen in El Cerrito that wouldn't detract from the appearance of the village) that would indicate to visiting avatars that these are learning opportunities that they could be activated by touch (which is a left click in Second Life). For now these objects are white pylons, later they may be chili peppers or something else that is somewhat common in El Cerrito. When touched, the media panels resize and become visible.

With the help of Emin, Steve and Tony, we authored some web pages with the embedded video and some links for further exploration on various topics featured in the video. In order to activate the panels, the avatar must now answer a question (the answers can be found by exploring the village and accessing the media panels).

We used the quiz tool in TRACs to generate the question, and discovered that by doing it this way we could theoretically track a student's progress on the sim by having TRACs record the answers. This is really cool because it means we can collect data about usage, etc. And, students could be graded on their work, automatically.

So basically, an avatar touches the sensor object whose script tells the media panel to appear and launch the web URL in the parent (sensor) object's description. The panel appears and the student sees the question web page in TRACs. After answering correctly, the URL with the embedded video is launched. The script allows for the avatar to touch the sensor to make the media panel disappear, or it detects that the avatar has walked away and disappears on its own.

If you want to see what this looks like, you can access the html from this URL:
http://tiny.cc/5lvb8

The following are screen shots of what it looks like in Second Life: