Open Wonderland Development ( Java )

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Open Wonderland Development ( Java )

Course organiser: Josmas Flores

About the Course Organiser:

Josmas Flores is an avatar. He has been researching the use of virtual environments and gaming for education for the last 4 years, focusing on software development and computer science education.
In real life my name is José Domínguez, and I have been developing software for more than a decade. I am also a part time PhD student with Trinity College Dublin, in Ireland. After a couple of case studies based on platforms such as Second Life and Opensim, I discovered Open Wonderland and realised that it was exactly what I needed. Being written in Java, and being open source, allows for the creation of learning experiences set in real and authentic contexts, without limiting the study to a rather simplistic scripting language (as in the case of the previous platforms used) but opening the possibilities to whatever is in reach of a major language. Added to this, the scripting engine within the toolkit allows users to create content using many other languages such as Javascript or PHP, which can only enrich the experience.

No of Seats:

Course Status:

Completed

Members

admin Josma	Xiaol	Anne	batie	Brian
Bosco	Baba	Jami	Alexi	Marlo
Miche	Morri	Nicol	Nina	Phili
Richa	Saad

Fancy learning how to develop 2D/3D content for Open Wonderland? #openwonderland

Summary

About the course
Open Wonderland is a toolkit that allows for the custom creation of virtual environments focused on Education and Collaboration.
The course will focus on how to develop content using the toolkit, as well as extending the toolkit itself.

There is an existing community around this open source project, who are willing to collaborate with the course members. This will hopefully provide for a more real context to the experience, making it more relevant.

Although this is a course focused on software development, other topics that will likely emerge would be the use of virtual environments in education, and the use of certain software 'best practices' such as pair programming or test driven development, within a geographically distributed environment.

The Peer to Peer way
This is a Peer to Peer experience, which means that we will all be learning from each other. Please do not expect a course lead by a teacher or lecturer, but a collaborative experience in which you, as a participant, will be responsible for your own learning and for identifying your learning objectives.
As a facilitator and organiser, I commit to take care of the logistics of the course, find open content to work on, identify high level learning objectives, and provide a syllabus for the 6 weeks of the experience. As a facilitator I will not be chasing people down to get assignments done.

Basic learning objectives:
- Familiarisation with the System.
- Extending the toolkit: Developing 2D and 3D content for the immersive environment.
- Other related topics (Swing development, jME, MTGame, darkstar server, and so on).

Communication tools and schedule
We will be using one of the community servers to meet on a weekly basis.
Most of the development work is done in the local servers, but we will schedule some pairing sessions and group discussions in the public servers.
The schedule will depend on availability by the participants. The organiser lives in Dublin, Ireland (GMT). We will discuss this after registration.

Learning objectives

- Familiarisation with the System
The participants will be able to run their own servers locally and configure them to be available on the net.

- Extending the toolkit: Creating 2D/3D content
   - Creation of Wonderland modules and plugins.
   - Using the scripting engine to create content.
   The participants will be able to create content for the immersive environment, as well as decide which creation way suits better a particular task.

- Other related topics
  - Best practices of Swing programming
  - Basic concepts of 3D programming with jME
   The participants will have to familiarise with all the third party libraries and projects that Open Wonderland uses.

Schedule/Syllabus

Syllabus for Open Wonderland Development

Comments

Hi all, still working on the

Josmas Flores

Fri, 2010-12-17 14:18

Hi all, still working on the course draft... Just noticed there is no URL for wonderland so far so here it goes: http://openwonderland.org
Cheers!

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Have you had much interest in

Robert Hanson

Fri, 2011-01-14 19:15

Have you had much interest in this class yet? I definitely have an interest, but still deciding if I have the time for it. I've been programming for fun and profit for 25 years (gasp), using Java full time for about 8 years now. I am primarily a web developer, but always wanted to get into 3D/virtual world development.

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Hi Robert, I've a bunch of

Josmas Flores

Fri, 2011-01-14 20:16

Hi Robert, I've a bunch of applications so far but still seats left. You can have a feel for the involvement needed by giving a go at the sign-up task. If you've been doing Java for that long you shouldn't have any trouble with it. Your application would be very welcome!

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Is there a basic system

Bosco A

Wed, 2011-01-19 05:48

Is there a basic system requirement? Also, is there a preference for doing the sign-up task in Windows or Linux? I've a Vista laptop but I also have VirtualBox with Oracle Enterprise Linux on it. I've run OWL under Vista but in VBox I got a blank screen . I've seen others have similar issues. So, basic system requirements may be something to think about as well.

Thanks

Bosco

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Hi Bosco, there is no

Josmas Flores

Wed, 2011-01-19 13:04

Hi Bosco, there is no preference for platform. Most developers use Linux and Mac, but the system should work in all platforms. Sometimes is good to have more Windows users cause it helps to catch bugs that are platform specific. The problems with black screens are generally due to network configuration, and are particular to a setup (firewalls, network cards, etc.), not a platform. Let me know if I can help with getting your system working (if it's not yet!).

Cheers,
Jos

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Jos, the setup worked great

Bosco A

Wed, 2011-01-19 21:24

Jos, the setup worked great for the most part. I worked on this late evening and didn't get time to debug why the bean-shell didn't show up in OWL. But, otherwise the process was pretty straight forward. Thanks.