Recently I noticed a very interesting phenomenon across the Hypergrid.  On regions in areas that allow visitors to build or rez objects, some people are planting flags.

We were here.

An old friend from Finland left this one on Pathlanda many moons ago.

These flags typically have hovertext indicating the person’s home grid, and the image on the flag itself is usually either the flag of the visitor’s home country or a symbol of their home grid.  Groups of flags seem to most commonly spring up next to Hypergates.  And in addition to flags, in some places I’ve noticed graffiti tags left by visitors.

We were also here.

Who started this trend?  Who knows?  But whoever and wherever you are, I salute you.  Now we have people exploring the Hypergrid and leaving little calling cards of their visits for other people to discover.  A fun and fanciful way to let people know “I was here,” to share information about other Hypergrid-connected grids, and to encourage even more exploration.  Simply beautiful.

Here’s my own flag. Have you found it anywhere?

I’ve created my own flags and have started leaving them across the Hypergrid.  And on my home grid of Pathlandia I’ve designated a special area and made it clear that I welcome anyone wishing to leave a flag.

Your flags are welcome here.

Bob Solo recently left his flag on Pathlandia. Great to meet you Bob!

Have you discovered any interesting locations of flags, or do you have a place on your own grid where you would like to encourage people to leave them?  Please let us know in the comments.

Such is how communities truly grow.  Footsteps discovered in the wilderness, voices across worlds, and the making of new friends.

- John “Pathfinder” Lester

The seminar will be held on Wednesday April 25th from 11:00-14:00 CEST, and it’s free and open to both staff and students.  Here’s a summary of speakers and topics:

• Associate prof. Judith Molka-Danielsen, Molde University College, Norway: Educational Use of Virtual Worlds: Review of Current Research and Initiatives for Forming Good Practices
• Prof. Vladimir Uskov, Bradley University, USA: Computer Science and Computer Information Systems Curriculum Innovations
• Prof. Catherine Fulford, University of Hawaii, Manoa, USA: Educational technology and 3D virtual worlds at the University of Hawaii, Manoa
• Associate prof. Mikhail Morozov, Mari State Technical University, Russia: Parallel Time and Space: Capturing Learning in 3D Virtual Worlds
• John “Pathfinder” Lester, Chief Learning Officer, ReactionGrid Inc. (distantly from Canada): Integrated Reality and Next Generation Virtual Worlds

All of the other speakers will be attending and presenting locally, but I’ll be giving my talk online starting at 13:00 CEST (that’s 7:30am EDT).  Attendees in Trondheim will be watching and listening to me on a projection screen in the lecture hall.

If you’d like to watch and listen to my talk live, go to my join.me page and then join the audio conference call.  I won’t be taking any questions by voice, so please use join.me’s text chat.  Here’s my presentation abstract:

Integrated Reality and Next Generation Virtual Worlds: Integrated Reality is the augmentation of our way of communicating and sharing knowledge through the use of all our technological tools in a complementary way. Examples of such tools include virtual worlds, augmented reality, the web and mobile devices. Next Generation virtual worlds will be tightly coupled to many other emerging technologies such as robotics and augmented reality, and will provide platforms for much broader use among teachers and learners. This presentation provides an overview of virtual world platforms, discussing their use as immersive learning environments and future possibilities for both technological and pedagogical innovation. It will include a live tour of ReactionGrid’s Jibe platform.

There are many innovative research and development projects in virtual worlds and education coming out of Scandinavia (you can learn more via the Nordic Virtual Worlds Network), so I’m very excited to be a part of this seminar.  Thanks again to Ekaterina Prasolova-Førland for inviting me to participate.

UPDATE 4/25/12: Here are my slides.

Click to view on SlideShare

-John “Pathfinder” Lester
Chief Learning Officer
ReactionGrid Inc.

The entire area is inspired by Myst and Uru.

About 10 of us made the journey across four different grids, and you can follow in our footsteps by looking at our travel plan.

Our guide was Dot Macchi, who explained the history of the project to create a Myst/Uru inspired world built by many different people.  It’s an amazing collaborative effort.

What we found were places of such stunning artistry and subtle aesthetics that I’m at a loss for words to describe them any further.  So I’ll simply share pictures.

Thank you again, Dot, for spending so much time with us and explaining the beautiful storyline behind it all.

Note: If you visit, be sure to enable Lightshare in your viewer so you can see the customized Windlight settings on each region.

Map of all the regions in the Devokan Trust on OSGrid

-John “Pathfinder” Lester

relaxation training in a virtual world

A fascinating paper was just published on the topic of using virtual worlds to train people in stress reduction techniques.

Read the full paper here: “The Feasibility and Impact of Delivering a Mind-Body Intervention in a Virtual World“

The paper describes a pilot project using a virtual space to bring volunteers through a mind-body medical intervention. The volunteers learned how to elicit the relaxation response, a physical state of deep rest that changes the physical and emotional responses to stress.  Typically, people learn how to do this in physical-world training sessions.  But in this case, they were able to use a 3d simulation in a group learning environment.

Some of the challenges they faced in the course of the project included:

“…although it is indeed feasible to present this type of program in a virtual world, the user interface is problematic. Recruitment was limited to individuals with prior experience in Second Life since the interface was known to be a barrier to entry. Even with such inclusion criteria, some of the less experienced users had problems that likely affected their participation.”

and

“…in the absence of remote sensing technology, it is very difficult to know if the participants are taking part in the exercises or successfully eliciting the relaxation response.”

Our next-generation multiuser virtual world platform Jibe addresses all of these challenges.  When you set up your own Jibe world, you have complete control over the user interface and can customize/simplify it however you wish.  A Jibe world can also be embedded in any web page, which makes it as easy as possible for people to access.  And finally, we’ve build our Jibe platform from the ground up so that it can directly interface with remote sensing technology.

Due to the positive results from this pilot study,  Dr. Daniel B. Hoch and his team are planning to conduct further research.  It will be very exciting to see techniques like this evolve to improve the quality of life of people around the world.  And here at ReactionGrid, we’ll keep building the technological platforms that can help make it all happen.

UPDATE 4/6/2012: Here’s a press release about the research project from Massachusetts General Hospital with additional quotes by Dr. Hoch.

-John “Pathfinder” Lester
Chief Learning Officer
ReactionGrid Inc.

Which is why I was so excited today when I discovered Olle Sköld’s paper “The effects of virtual space on learning: A literature review.”

It’s a fantastic resource full of great references and summaries, and it’s also very timely (was published in Jan 2012).  Best of all, the full paper is freely accessible online.

More about Olle:

Olle Sköld is a doctoral student at the Department of Information Studies, School of Business and Economics, Åbo Akademi University, Finland, and an adjunct in Archival Science at the Department of Arts and Cultural Sciences, Lund University, Sweden.

Great work, my friend!

-John “Pathfinder” Lester
Chief Learning Officer
ReactionGrid Inc.

When assembling a home office, I think it’s critical to have a great chair.  Not “okay.”  Not “good enough.” If you consider the fact that your health literally depends on the ergonomic quality of your chair, you’ll realize you need a GREAT one.

When I moved to Montreal and was setting up my new home office, I needed to buy a new chair.  I wanted something with simple yet very effective embedded ergonomics.  After a lot of research I eventually found the Herman Miller Setu Multipurpose Chair.  Herman Miller furniture is a little pricey, but the Setu (about $500) costs less than many generic office chairs.  And in my experience, Herman Miller products last forever.

In the past I’ve tried dozens of different office chairs with varying levels of success, but my Setu chair is definitely my all time favorite. It’s been 9 months since I started using it and it is still the chair of my dreams.

What’s your Dream Chair?

John's Setu chair in its natural home-office habitat

-John “Pathfinder” Lester
Chief Learning Officer
ReactionGrid Inc.

P.S. This isn’t a sales pitch or marketing attempt, and I have no commercial or vested interest in Herman Miller.  I simply sat down at work today and for some reason immediately thought “Boy, I love my chair!”

She’s teaching a class focused on interpersonal Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) this spring, and recent topics have included avatar-based communication.

Marianne decided to bring her 89 student class on a field trip into my demo Jibe world.  Here’s her detailed report.

I think it’s fantastic when educators share experiences like this.  It helps educators and students learn from each other, and it also helps virtual world platform providers learn how to make their technology as useful to educators as possible.

Thank you, Marianne!

Marianne Riis and her students visit my Jibe world

-John “Pathfinder” Lester
Chief Learning Officer
ReactionGrid Inc.

“Digital Futures Institute, Beyond Distance Research Alliance, Athabasca University, and our commercial partners are proud to provide this year’s 48-hour, online learning festival at no charge to all participants. The theme of this year’s conference moves beyond educational technology to examine knowledge development and exchange across the disciplines.”

I’ll be giving an online presentation on Thursday March 29th at 2:30am EDT (yes, that’s 2:30am).  The topic will be “Integrated Reality and Next Generation Virtual Worlds.”

Here are my slides on SlideShare to give you a preview of what I’ll be talking about, and I’ll update this blog post with a recording of my presentation after the conference is over.

Update 3/29/2012: Here’s the recording of my presentation.

-John “Pathfinder” Lester
Chief Learning Officer
ReactionGrid Inc.

IDIA been commissioned to design and build a virtual presence and artworks for the upcoming Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University.

And they’re building it with ReactionGrid’s Jibe platform!

For more information, check out IDIA’s project website.

The Virtual Enterprise Conference at Glyndŵr University brings together a diverse range of web entrepreneurs, students and academics to discuss the opportunities for e-entrepreneurship offered by virtual worlds and the social web.  It’s hosted each year by the Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning at Glyndŵr University.

On Feb 23 at this year’s conference, I had the pleasure of giving a presentation on Best Practices in Virtual Worlds.  Here’s the full video.

The Right Tool for the Right Job: Best Practices for Virtual Worlds from John Lester on Vimeo.

You can grab a copy of my slides on Google, and you can visit the Jibe world featured in my presentation by going here.

Thanks again to Matthew Draycott from the Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning at Glyndŵr University for inviting me to speak.  It was a great opportunity!

- John “Pathfinder” Lester
Chief Learning Officer
ReactionGrid, Inc.