Rutgers Day 2010, Virtual Future Livingston Campus

Big news. Rutgers Day is going to be large in the virtual world and the real world. Dr. Ray Caprio has asked us to build out the future Livingston Campus. This is approximately a 10 sim build. The first two sims are going to debut in our Second Life environment. The entire 1:1 scale build will be built in Open Sim, unless their is a cost effective way to bring it into Second Life directly.

So hold the date April 24, for Rutgers Day 2010.

Virtual Rutgers Major Updates

Some significant changes have come to the Rutgers University Virtual world. The Rutgers OIRT Sim is now part of the the Rutgers University sim area. We are now a united Rutgers University in the virtual world. We will be providing the in world support and management for students and instructors in that space. There have been some changes to the map, and naming that we all need to be aware of. If you search for "Rutgers University" in the map you will now be teleported to the visitor center and orientation area for Virtual Rutgers. If want to go directly to the OIRT sim you can search the map for "Rutgers OIRT."

Virtual Livingston Campus

Ron and I just met with the Rutgers Facilities Planning and Development group about virtual Livingston Campus. In the next few weeks we will be generating a project plan that adds two more sims to Virtual Rutgers, and adds some of the current and future buildings that will be part of the Livingston Campus. Our plan is to show the now and future Livingston Campus to the world.

Happy Hollidays

Just wanted to wish everyone out there a safe and happy holidays from all of us at the Division of Continuing Studies here at Rutgers University.

Sacred Art in a Virtual World

The new Museum of Sacred Art (Bieup (207, 42, 106) will open on Monday, December 14, 2009 at 2:00 pm Eastern Time (11:00 am SLT). The museum represents a permanent home for the exhibition "Sacred Art in a Virtual World" that ran from February to October. The purpose of the exhibition was to evaluate the value of virtual buildings for the teaching of art history. The exhibition includes notecards allowing the visitor to tp to buildings, guide them through the building, and then return them to the museum to move on to the next exhibit.

Rutgers students in the Department of Art History worked on the original exhibition as well as the new museum.

Rutgers Day 2010

Rutgers Day 2009 was the first year showing the Rutgers Second Life space to the real world Rutgers community. We had the virtual ringing of the Rutgers Bell at Old Queens, and a Second Life lab space on Voorhees Mall. In the coming event we expect to have the same set up with even more to show, and interact with. Rutgers Day is a great opportunity to experience one unified Rutgers University in real life and in our virtual lives.

Our proposals for the event are officially submitted. The hard work to pull off a great event has officially begun. See you all there in real life and virtual life.

Second Life Community Convention Review

The conference was definitely a valuable experience. Tools, techniques, and mixed realities were shared and blended. We were able to meet the people, and organizations we work with virtually, and quickly share, and generate knowledge. Since Second Life is such a visual world it makes sense to see how we can visualize those relationships between sims. That will be a goal of ours at Rutgers over the next few months.

There is distinctly a gap between the issues we have now in Second Life and where Linden Labs plans Second Life to be a year from now. The new LL Media APIs will add much more interactivity from inside Second Life to the "outside" world. I can move from being able to Twitter from Second Life to being able to work collaboratively on Google Docs in Second, as one example showed from T Lindens presentation.



Lastly, two useful views of perceiving Second Life were formulated. One, Second Life is the 3D Social Browser that fits into any comprehensive social media marketing plan, and enables business and education to reach and interact with a dedicated population. A wonderful "synchronous immersive online environment." Where the results can be tracked, measured, and enhance return on investment can be shown. Second, as Beyers Sellers said about the FASB use of Second Life, they use it for their weekly meetings, and it's just a normal moment in the complex discussion of financial accounting standards.

--Rk Jinn (Rick Anderson)