SL Educator Creates Free Game Development Kit in a Box

What you're looking at below is a step-by-step demonstration of the Preso-Matic Game Kit (online documentation here), a free toolset for building adventure games in SL. It's the creation of DoctorPartridge Allen, an educator who developed it for his PHd students at University of Pennsylvania to create learning simulations in SL:

While the kit was intended for educators, it's easy to see it re-purposed for games of all kinds. Partridge's students used it to develop "The Pilgrim Experience", a game designed to teach early American history. Demo video after the break:

You can get a free copy of the kit on Adobe's island in Second Life: SLurl teleport here. Partridge is also a technology evangelist with the software giant, though his educational work in SL isn't directly related. It has however enabled him to see numerous virtual simulation projects around the world, and think about two of the key challenges for educators today. As he puts it to me, "How will we as tool providers meet the expanding creative and practical needs of our consumers? And second, what are the implicit changes to the accepted Instructional design and eLearning methodologies necessitated by a shift from flat two dimensional eLearning to immersed, three dimensional learning environments."

Check out his answers to both by exploring the Pilgrim game for yourself in SL: Direct SLurl at this link.

Comments

[Thaumata Strangelove]

I think this is excellent. As someone who builds sims for educational entities all the time, I have been saying forever that the trouble with schools in SL is that teachers are expected not only to teach, but to develop massive amounts of 3D content that many of them are simply not capable of doing, especially when they first enter the platform. It's like expecting a history teacher to write every textbook they're going to use in their class before they can get started.

I love to see that people are starting to understand this and are thinking about creating primsets that will serve as 3D lesson plans. I really do think there's a market for it.

[Neptune Rebel]

While I am normally ecstatic to read about the amazing feats of my alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, I must point out that this is Indiana University of Pennsylvania (in Indiana, PA) and is not the University of Pennsylvania (in Philadelphia, PA)

[Loki]

This Kind of thing is vital to giving residents the tools they need to make worth while SL experiences. I will be looking at this with some enthusiasm

[Vooper Werribee]

This looks really great. I can see how it's very applicable to teaching history. Perhaps also other subjects, but the roleplay paradigm starts to fall apart pretty quickly with some subjects I guess.

80% of the work in the early Amercan history sim shown is probably making content such as costumes, furniture, houses etc. rather than the game kit.

It's a great idea to make this game kit exportable but I don't think it needed to be aimed at the lower-end SL user because anyone wanting to customise and use it will need to know quite a bit about SL content creation anyway. Perhaps a bit more sophistication could have been included in the kit at the expense an 'automagic' working right out of the box experience.

I can see some Educators being tempted and customising the game kit, only to get a little stuck trying to assemble all the other content they then need for an immersive learning experience using the game.