This document is licensed under a "Creative Commons Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Austria“ Licence (“Creative Commons Namensnennung-Keine kommerzielle Nutzung-Weitergabe unter gleichen Bedingungen 3.0 Österreich”). Further details see: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/at/

Author: Klaus Hammermüller, Gerhilde Meissl-Egghart, talkademy.org

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

Introduction

This deliverable presents the collection of content that was produced in the AVALON project. This document helps readers to find and use these resources.

By the nature of the project a wide range of content has been produced and is available on different platforms. This content is available after the end of the project as it is intended to maintain the content. However some services that are not under our control might be discontinued at some time in the future. Therefore we feed copies into the repository.

This document consists of 3 parts:

1. An overview of available content and how to find it

2. An overview of some of the key 3D-scenarios

3. A section dealing with content creation, focussing on the needs of a typical user (e.g. a teacher)

Legal Disclaimer

Second Life permissions, terms & conditions of Linden Labs and American and European Intellectual property rights define different levels of usage rights. The AVALON team has tried hard to make created content available as freely as possible. Anyhow as some contents are created by third parties, bought, deeded or user created different legal situations apply. Therefore all contents used are available, but not all contents are available in all components of the repository. E.g. some items could not be exported from Secondlife but remain bound to the platform. Anyhow all key scenarios which are useful for reuse in educational application have been made available to the public.

Available Content from the Avalon project

Here you find a summary of the types of available content and where to find them:

Key 3D scenarios provided by AVALON for reuse by educators

In this section you will find a short overview and illustration about the available key content. It does not describe every detail but shall provide a first impression of the most important 3D scenarios.

Avalon Island

The Avalon island is an entire region, devoted to education. You can access and use it and its contents following this link: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/AVALON%20Learning/23/223/58

Impression	Description
	Overview of the region from the initial meeting point. You will start there if you follow the link above.
	The central AVALON village which served most of the pilot courses very well. It includes the "business barn" and a lot of different locations to explore.
	The meeting room where all the project meetings took place. Accomplished with some whiteboards and media-prims all relevant project information are available when needed.
	The sandbox area where everyone can build and create individual scenarios. It was used for the big conferences like SLanguages, hands-on workshops and when using holodeck scenarios.

Educational Holodeck Scenarious

You can receive the following holodeck scenarios, and some additional pre-packaged scenarios, at the AVALON Island in Second Life following the link: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/AVALON%20Learning/23/223/58

There is also an exported version of these scenarios which can be modified or transferred to other virtual world platforms like opensimulator.org. These packages can be accessed using the open-source portal on http://avalonlearning.eu . (They are stored in the repository, see links above).

Scenario	Description
	3D representation of a team room, which is a multi purpose scene facilitating project work in an informal setting.
	The UKnow stage has been used for the graphical user interface configuration demonstrator which allows people new to virtual worlds to participate. It is a typical TV set stage and may be used for all kind of quizzes.
	The conference room is used for negotiation training, meetings and discussions.
	The exhibition stand or conference both is used in more open presentation situations. In this case it was used to present talkademy as one of the AVALON partners at the online conference SLanguages.
	A multi purpose business office.
	A formal presentation stage. It can be used to present alone or in teams. It is useful in language education at advanced levels and any subject requiring a formal presentation.
	An office situation. It can be used to pitch ideas alone or in teams. It is useful in language education at advanced levels and any project based student work. Well ... it's kind of a special office: We call it "the devil's advocat's office"
	A TV show like stage. The "Avalon 1, 2 or X stage" can be used in different languages for vocabulary, grammer and phrases training. It is especially useful for participants that are new to education in virtual worlds.
	The labyrinth is an attractive environment for different types of language activities and team assignments.
	The marketplace is a small shop with a variety of goods to be used in typical role-play situations.

Teacher Tools

see WP4-2 "2D / 3D integration", especially the following section:

http://avalonlearning.pbworks.com/w/page/7682883/WP4-2+2D+%E2%80%93+3D+Integration#Toolsforrealtimefeedback

Creation and maintenance of content

In order to run a live learning event a lot of different content needs to be in place. This section discusses issues around content creation and re-use of existing content (e.g. from the AVALON project).

We will address basic content (that only needs basic IT skills to be produced) in the first part and go on with advanced topics in the second part. The last part gives a brief overview of using streaming media.

Basic content

If you are a beginner, you will probably get along with those:

Advanced content (requires advanced IT skills!)

If you are an advanced user, you might want to improve your learning scenarios using the following:

Streaming Media

Streaming media is a powerful tool for various types of usage. We want to highlight two of them: It might be created before a course (preparing a learning scenario) or live by capturing a action learning event.

Pre-production of streaming media

Live production of streaming media