The Loss of the Teen Grid to Education

So now its official and time is moving by quickly. Second Life's Teen Grid will be shutting down at the end of this year, so if you have an island there then you will be moved to the main grid and your kids will most likely be thrown out.

Not shedding a tear

Alas I am not. The UK was always stuck with the problem that our kids mostly stay in at School until they are 18 then go straight to university. Many of the Schools we look after are 6th Form Colleges and virtual worlds gave them the possibilities to have fashion shows, art shows, all showing off their students skills. But most 6th formers are 16-19 and as such couldn't use the teen grid (well some could, some couldn't).

So we would always encourage our schools to use OpenSim. Lets be honest they things we can configure for OpenSim (Swear word filter, Timed uptime, logs of every conversation) are all now a basic minimum for kids using the internet.

Also thanks to the wonderful people at OpenSim Development Team and our own In House team I would like to announce the launch of two new packages, much reduced in price and for Education Establishments ONLY!


The Content Grid - Village/Town/City (foreign and home)
The Content Grid is a web front end that plugs into your OpenSim Virtual World. It will allow you to not only host your own world but it allows you to dynamically add islands (via the web page marketplace) when you require. And not just islands you have created yourself, you can create islands and upload them for other schools to use (either for free or charge them through our web market place).

So you could have a class studying GCSE English Literature so you enable the World War 1 English Lit. Island and allow your kids to instantly walk around the trenches of the Western Front, or you could create your own island and pack it away when your finished.

So imagine 6 classes each with their own island and you just open and close them when required, so you don't have to worry about hosting 6 islands all at once.

The Content Grid can also be configured to work within your already present VLE (we have integrated it with GLOW and Moodle) so the kids and teachers have 1 login for all systems.

Our 3 Servers are detailed below:-

Village
25Gb HD
1024RAM (burstable to 2048)
unmetered Traffic
100Mb Bandwidth

Town
50Gb HD
2048 RAM (burstable to 4096)
unmetered Traffic
100Mb Bandwidth

City
50Gb HD
3072 RAM (burstable to 6144)
unmetered Traffic
100Mb Bandwidth

All come with OpenSim version 0.7.x
OpenSimManager (so you log in via a web page)
ContentGrid Manager (so you can dynamiclly add and remove islands)
Branded Client Software (based upon Second Life Version 2 viewer)
Your own Domain either transferred or a Brand New Domain created for you.

Foreign and Home relates to the servers hosting location. Some schools require to host the server themselves due to security concerns with firewalls etc. Our system will still allow you to upload and download islands as per normal but everything hosted behind your own firewall (HOME). Normally we host the servers ourselves for our clients at a state of the art data centre in London, UK (Foreign).

Until the end of 2010 the prices for these packages are:-

Village £2,292.87
Town £2,402.87
City £2,512.87
Per annum.
(for a calendar monthly cost divide the above by 11). All Servers hosted by Second Places (if you wish to host the servers localily please contact us directly).


OpenSim in a BOX
This is a simple installation of OpenSim version 0.7.x with a non branded Second Life Version 2 software client and web interface for adding user, removing users, forum and log in.

Like The Content Grid it comes in the 3 flavours depending on the same specification as per the content grid hardware.
Village £600
Town £900
City £1300
Per annum.
(for a calendar monthly cost divide the above by 11).


If any of these prices are of interest, or if you need to configure your server slightly different then drop me a mail @ info@secondplaces.net

Please note these prices are for EDUCATION establishments only. All prices exclude UK VAT (which goes up at the end of the year as well).

Why we don't do grids or Hyperlinking

Its not a choice - Its a demand

The internet is only over a couple of decades old. So people in the top jobs likely started their careers without the use of wiki, IMing and email. So its understandable their reluctance to embrace even newer technologies like virtual worlds.

And in Education they have even greater concerns. The anonymity of the internet brings in even more problems than the solution the technology gives.

When Second Places started over 2 years ago we worked in Second Life, and had 5 or so schools operating in the teen grid. It wasn't easy to get schools to use Second Life in the first place. Kids could not use their own names, teachers had to jump through hoops to gain access and all in all it was a rather terrible space.

But it wasn't the technical problems that stopped most schools. It was the legal problems. These are actually comments made to me when promoting a virtual world to education:-

• We need the kids to have their own name so we can see what is happening
• We are liable if the kids use the computers to communicate with each other. Like organizing a bullying event through a communication tool like IM or Virtual World.
• There is no way to stop them typing in swear words
• We will never allow them to speak (voice or text) to anyone anywhere, anytime who is not approved by the school to be talking to kids.
• We can't have kids parents in world with the ability to talk to other kids (see above)
  
• We need a record of every word ever said to anyone
• They can not change their avatar
• They should only be able to use avatars, clothes approved by the school

The list was endless. I'm sure there is a world somewhere that kids are trusted, but more importantly the kids don't need trusting and adults see kids as innocents and would never dream doing anything to child that shouldn't be done.

However we don't live in that world. Kids will be kids, and as a parent, I would expect the school to make sure that when i hand my son over they will do EVERYTHING to make sure he's safe physically as well as emotionally.

I always pointed out that I could never see a child log into a virtual world to meet his friend (he is likely sitting beside in class) to arrange a bullying event. However I understood the problem.

Schools have a responsibility and with this anything new that could weaken their way of protecting the child was looked upon as a danger.

We understood this but as Second Life was not ours, there was nothing we could do.

Again we were saved by OpenSim.

We could answer their questions all in the affirmative.

Kids could use their own names, in fact with OpenSim we could have the kids logging in with the same username and password as they used for other in school systems. Wasn't easy for some, shibboleth became a dirty word for us here in Second Places, but it did mean a much easier access for the school.

Schools could turn off and on text and audio chat through a web interface. So if there was a teacher present in world, they could flip a switch and kids could verbally or text chat.

This allowed kids to show their parents their work and the school not worried that the parent could speak to anyone (you don't know if wee Jimmys dad is a good guy or not I guess).

We had a swear word filter, even better it was dynamic, so as a "new" word came out the school could just type it into a web page and that word would be displayed as hashes and an alarm would be sent to the school to say "Jimmy X said XYZ @ 10:52 location 123,142,30". No one around him would hear the word.

Every chat, verbal or text could be recorded and stored.

We modified the client so the kids client would not allow them to "take off" clothing, or upload images or create any clothes. So we locked down the world, but if they school wanted the kids to build and make stuff, they had access (in school only) to the normal client that did everything normally, but only used when a teacher was present.


It was done, all the worry from Schools was answered. It wasn't easy and we spent a lot of time on it. But it was a locked down, secure and customizable world that schools could be happy in the knowledge their children were as safe as possible, even safer than real world.


So the question, why we don't do grid or hyperlinking? Its all said above. For education in the UK (and I assume everywhere else) it has to be locked down, and that means cut off from the rest of the world.

But alas that is a heck of a shame. We want content to be shared. Its expensive to create content for virtual worlds and not share it (even charge back for it).

So we created the content grid, a web based virtual world island market when schools could create islands and upload them to marketplace. Sell or give them away to other schools.

These islands could be anything, Looking at the market place now we have trenches of world war 1 for GCSE English Lit., we have a working hydro dam, a replica of a radio telescope and much more, walking through a mayan temple, an art gallery, a cat walk.

Any school signed up to The Content Grid can access and upload the market place. So you can still share content, approve it before your kids can see it. And its still all locked down tight.

BETT 2010 - London

Its always a worry for small companies that spend most of your marketing budget on one event. However BETT 2010 was very successful for Second Places.

We have channeled most of our R&D into our new system, "The Content Grid (TCG)" over the past 3 months. And this was our chance to launch it. Without fanfare or ticker tape we launched on the Wednesday at a very quiet BETT (due to snow in London). But by the Saturday word of mouth had gotten out and people were entering the stand to look at TCG without us standing on the main route dragging them in.

It was exactly what I had hoped. Teachers and Principles were saying the exact same thing, "We want to work in a virtual world, we want the fun in education, the collaboration, project planning, the chance to break stuff without massive costs. But public virtual worlds was no use for UK (or euro) schools as the PC (political correctness) brigade and media would have a field day with the idea of kids and adults "sharing" a world. Where there would be no traceability, the old problem of animity and the problem of kids going where they shouldn't.

Someone one showed me a quote from Twitter where someone had posted on visiting of a public virtual grid "Just watched a class of 10 year olds being shown around an island their school had just purchased. I asked them how they liked it and was told they loved it!", next tweet was along the lines of "This shows how virtual worlds and schools can work together".

Now the last part is bang on, Schools and Students can have a whale of a time in a virtual world while learning at the same time. However the first statement is enough for every head teacher, every director of learning at a LA (local authority) to put the shutters up and use it as a way never to look at Virtual Worlds.... "Who was this person?", "Talking to kids? You have got to be kidding", etc etc etc.

I am not saying these people are not blowing a massive storm out of a coastal breeze but on the other hand, how do I know this person on Twitter (who has some silly name I can't remember) but had a picture of a middle age male was not a pedophile? By laws of probability I can be fairly sure he isn't but those in positions of responsibility know that probability now is not an excuse.

It would only take one story and that grid would have the media down on it like a tonne of bricks, making things up, seeing things that were not there. Remember Second Life? The Children being "groomed" even though you required a credit card to access, not many 10 years olds have credit cards (although may explain the credit crunch).

TCG takes away that problem. Its hosted in the school or in our own data center. Only those given access by the school can access the school grid. All our staff have been through the disclosure systems in both Scotland and England (Scotland is allot more strict). Its not a lot of money (£60) however even with that we have to give the school notice we are going to be in world and staff are on strict instructions to say nothing to anyone. The "BUSY" sign helps.

So every teacher who we spoke to, demoed and let loose in TCG knew we had by passed this problem.

Breaking another barrier between Students and Virtual Worlds.