How my childhood environments shaped me

The above is a googlemap picture of the neighborhood in Chicago where I grew up. I was a couple of blocks north of the Museum of Science and Industry, where the World's Fair in the late 1800s took place. I called it "the Museum of Science and Interesting". A beautiful place to grow up!

Howdy y'all! To get things started and get to know each of us better, I suggest we start our discussion thread by telling each other how we came to inhabit the environment we now reside in! When you finish assignment one we will hopefully get to see views of the environments you inhabit that affect your behavior and which your behavior affects. When you finish assignment two we will hopefully get to see the kind of virtual environments you are exploring. But it would be nice to get some background, and that is what this thread is for. Let me start it off:

My phenotype-forming environments were, ancestrally, the Middle East and Northern Europe. My mother comes from Assyrian Iraqi and Phoenician Lebanese (Greek Orthodox) roots in arid montane and coastal environments. The thousands and thousands of years our people spent there contributed to genetic characteristics that now give me my larger nose, bushy eyebrows, dark hair and olive skin that make me racially identifiable as a "Middle Easterner". My father, however, comes from Irish and Alsatian (French/German) roots, with a predominance of Irish island environment effects shaping the genes that got passed on. Consequently I have green eyes and ruddy cheeks and the possibility of having fair skinned red-headed children if the recessive genes I've inherited from those ancestors of northern climates combine with similar genes from my wife.

I was born in a cold northern temperate zone environment in what is now the United States of America, in the city of Chicago, Illinois. I was born in a noisy part of the city, not far from lake Michigan, at a time when racial tensions and idealism were both high in America. My mother worked in the inner city at Headstart and my father was a reporter for the Chicago Daily News.

As a consequence of these physical and social environments I became very interested in finding ways to improve both the built environment and the social environment, deciding at a very young age to devote my life to "making the world a better place". Growing up by Lake Michigan, which is large enough to have waves and appear as an ocean to a child, made me fond of seashores, while the nearbye Museum of Science and Industry and Shedd Aquarium gave me a fascination with technology and biology.

At the age of 8 we moved to Dobbs Ferry, New York, into apartments next to the Mercy College Woods, a riparian forest valley that led to the Hudson river. This environment made me fall in love with wildlife and tree filled wilderness, and led me years later to do field research in the rainforests of Borneo and Guatemala.

My middle and high school environments were, for the most part, dismal collections of sterile classrooms and meaningless exams, and taught me that the worst environment for a human mind to grow in is a traditional classroom. This is why I enjoy on-line education!

My undergraduate experiences at Harvard University's "elite ivory tower environment" taught me that there are no people smarter or better than anybody else, just people with more money or privilege who like to act superior. This led to me to be a crusader for educational reform who believed that if we change the environment in which learning occurs (or is constrained) and change the behavior of teachers, we can make the world a much much better place. Yes... I blame the school environment for many of our social ills and world problems!

My years of experience in the "gang" environments of impoverished inner city South Central Los Angeles, and in poor villages and slums of Central America and the Middle East, taught me that there is great dignity and skill and ambition in the world of the less fortunate and that we must improve the physical and economic environments of the poor if we want a world in which everybody can reach their highest potential.

Briefly then, those are the environments that shaped me.

How about you?

You-are-here Maps

These are all Google Map pictures of the places where I live and work (note to Big Brother: you can direct your ICBMs, SCUDs and "Smart Bombs" there, I suppose, if you don't like my vision of a just and sustainable solar powered environment!)

In our textbook (Environmental Psychology, Paul Bell ed. 2005), Chapter 3, from pages 68 - 95, the authors discuss Cognitive Maps and Way-Finding. Google Maps produces a good type of "Bird's Eye View" Spatial Maps, otherwise known as "Survey Maps".

Second Life island of Artificial Life

This is my first Machinima test, using Snapz Pro X on the Mac Probook to capture the visit of Innoventor Fassnacht (my avatar) to a place in the metaverse where artificial life is evolving. I will be taking my students in Environmental Psychology to this location as a virtual "field trip".

The Slurl is found here: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Terminus/146/210/27/

The Wiki is found here: http://www.magnificentwreckage.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

Places of interest in Second Life for Environmental Psychology Students

The following is from a kiosk in Second Life:

"Real Life Education Places in Second Life

Here's a list of publically accessible places in Second Life where educators and students are working together as part of a real life class or educational research project. If you would like your place listed here and want a directory kiosk on your own land, please contact Pathfinder Linden.

This notecard is frequently updated, so please check back at this kiosk in the near future for an updated list.

LAST UPDATE: 01.05.07 (newest additions will now be added at the top of this notecard)


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Interested in artificial life? Check out the Second Life Ecosystem on Terminus, which features a working ecosystem with different species created by various Resident developers. You'll see many natural wonders, elusive "gridlouse" scurrying about, and beautiful swimming jellypods in the ocean. It's a fascinating collaborative experiment. Learn more including how to contribute to the project by visiting their wiki (http://tinyurl.com/t7w7t).

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At the Second Life Science Center you'll find a 3D visualization of live national weather (http://tinyurl.com/yfajns), an exhibit on 3D carbon nanotubes (http://tinyurl.com/vvew4), and more! They are also working to help those interested in creating science content in Second Life, as well as organizing a directory of in-world science content.

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The US government's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Earth System Research Laboratory (http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/) has set up a simulation space in Second Life to teach folks about the earth's weather and oceans. Ride a plane inside a hurricane, experience a tsunami, take a trip in a submarine and more. Hackshaven Harford is the driving force behind this amazing space, and you can read more here (http://tinyurl.com/hgf3w).

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The SLED Picayune is a publication created to cover topics related to education, training, and library sciences in Second Life. Its format is a 'notecard' that readers can get by touching any SLED Picayune kiosk. Should you wish to receive a copy automatically (in-world), consider joining the group, "Picayune SLEDheads." Our intention is to publish a new issue each Wednesday afternoon. The publication and joining the group are free to all.

Sections in the publication include: news, events, opinions & ideas, product reviews, people, links & landmarks, as well as an "Info Island Update." For those wishing to advertise "Help Wanted" or "Help Offered," there is also a classifieds section.

To contribute a news item, event, article or classified ad, or to get a kiosk placed at your location, email: sledpicayune@gmail.com

Archives of older issues will be stored at the SLED Picayune office on Info Island. Some of the information will also be repeated at the website.

Founder and Executive Editor: Milosun Czervik
Managing Editor: Intellagirl Tully

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Nearly all of the plant-life in this area of the sim is part of a beta test for a fully functional artificial ecology system for Second Life. Everything is actually growing and replicating by itself, complete with a simulated weather system. For more information, please contact Laukosargas Svarog and read this notecard: 􀀨

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An amazing museum featuring lifesized models of real life spacecraft and rockets. Lots of interactive exhibits and educational material covering astronomy, space exploration, and astrophysics. There's also a viewing area where you can watch a live feed of NASA TV, and there are frequently live educational events and discussions. This museum covers an entire region (16-acres), so plan on spending a day exploring! For more information please contact Troy McLuhan.

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The Social Simulation Research Lab is a public hub of cyber-research resources in Second Life. The Lab's library brings together over 50 publications on the social science of internet research, computer-mediated communication and online studies, plus many links to researchers' homepages, other online resources and online cyber-research journals.

Contributions are welcome! If you have a paper/resource you'd like to add to the SSRL's shelves or would like to suggest one, email secondlife@surrey.ac.uk

The SSRL is a non-partisan project, but is the home of University of Surrey PhD student Mynci Gorky (aka Aleks Krotoski). It's also the base for the Second Life Social Network research project, which aims to map the social relationships of SL residents in order to understand how information flows through social virtual worlds like Second Life. More information on the research is available at http://www.surrey.ac.uk/~psp1ak

You can contribute! Everyone with an account is welcome to take part and help us fill in the gaps in the SL social network! Participating is easy - simply go to the online survey at http://www.psy.surrey.ac.uk/survey21 and fill in your SL friends. Further questions help to determine where they're placed in your immediate social network. This information will be added to the SL network to generate a meta-map of interaction.

The associated SocialSim blog also tracks changes in the project and makes announcements of interest to cyber-research and online culture. Check it out at http://socialsim.blogspot.com

Finally, the SSRL is also host to events, including in-world discussions and lectures with leading cyber-researchers from around the world. If you would like to participate in this exciting lecture series or would like to suggest a researcher, please contact the SSRL at secondlife@surrey.ac.uk!

Look forward to seeing you here.

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Visit Info Island! Come to the Alliance Second Life Library to get information, attend programs of interest including book discussions and authors, find out about great books to read, and more. The Island also has a Medical Library where you can get information and programs on health, a history gallery garden where you can get to know people from the past, a scifipod in the sky where different science fiction writers will be featured each month, and a beautiful rock pond garden where you can relax. Alliance Library System is spearheading this project, but librarians and others from around the world are involved to create a library presence in Second Life.

Info Island also has a Writing/Performance Center, the ICT Library, Techsoup.org, and World Bridges.

Please contact Lorelei Junot with ideas and suggestions.

For more information, visit http://www.infoisland.org

If you'd like to participate in the RL discussion about Second Life Library 2.0, please also consider joining the Google group: http://groups.google.com/group/alliancesecondlife

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BetterWorlds.com introduces virtual solutions to real world adaptive learning education with our new line of products, the Better Worlds VIEW System. (The Virtual Interactive Educational Workshop System).

Better Worlds VIEWs brings technology based immersive learning to the classroom. Using adaptave learning concepts in a virtual world environment will enable educators to offer nearly any sort of first hand learning experience that they can imagine. With Better Worlds VIEWs virtually any life experience can be simulated in a realistic and immersive environment.

Of course, we realize that an animated virtual Zebra is no substitute for the sights and smells of a trip to a real zoo, but we believe that combined with one or two such real life trips, virtual worlds offer a way to continue these types of lessons back in the classroom. In fact, some studies researching the use of virtual reality for concept reinforcement and adaptive learning, along with real world exposure to the lesson content show that such combined experiences are often competely successful. We have lots of supporting evidence and we'd be thrilled to share it with you. Some of this information will be made available via our web site at BetterWorlds.com and some will be made available through video, notecard and live presentations made here at Better Worlds Center. See one of our in-world staff members for more concrete evidence about the success rates of using virtual worlds for real world education today.

News Flash: Better Worlds is considering non-profit status allowing us to provide low cost or free educational opportunities to disabled and disadvantaged students. If you are interested in helping to sponsor our activities, contact us for more information on how you can help out.

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The ICT Library is a not-for-profit endeavor formed to reach out to members of the educational community working within Second Life. Funds received from sponsors will be used to expand the knowledge of SL members who are interested in using this virtual environment as a way to mediate classes or training.

It is based on a premise of taking information that exists on websites (ex., www.simteach.com, www.secondlife.com/education, various blogs, etc.) and putting it in SL for display and demonstration. The library hopefull will help solve the difficulty many new educators have in finding useful tools and ideas (rather than leave it to serendipity). Central to the Library's goals is the tenet that outreach to educators is essential in helping expand understanding and knowlege of media tools. Specifically, the ICT Library will:

- serve as a repository of tools and scripts that would be useful for instruction (both commercial and "free" tools)
- give hints and tips about how to best use the virtual environment to promote higher levels of thinking and constructivist approaches to learning
- provide case studies of how educators are using tools
- show pictures/descriptions of innovative educational projects
- offer small grants to spur innovation in educational implementation

For more details, or if you are interested in sponsoring the ICT Library, please contact Milosun Czervik.

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Our vision for USC Annenberg Island is that it be an international virtual worlds portal for public diplomacy. Our goals are to explore how virtual worlds can be used as effective tools to bridge cultural gaps, to foster new ways to resolve conflict, and to learn and teach new skills in communicating with each other to build a better world.

Click here for a detailed description: 􀀊

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A public space to share information about real life education in Second Life as well as to hold meetings of the "Real Life Education in Second Life" group. Be sure to visit the kiosk in the photo and click on it to learn more about education opportunities, our Campus:Second Life program, and how you can participate!

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Most of the Campus: Second Life classes are held right on a region named "Campus" (easy to remember, eh?). If you look around this region, you'll see different classes working on various projects on their individual plots of land. There's also have a public meeting area, a sandbox for temporary building, a public pictureboard for sharing fun photos, a sculpture garden for relaxing between classes, and a campfire for late-nite fireside chats. For more infomation, please see this notecard:
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Glidden Campus
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Glidden Campus is a replica of a real life campus in midwest USA. Altgeld Hall is the main structure on the Glidden Campus and was originally built in 1895 by the Architect Charles Eliphalet Brush of Chicago. This 130,000 square foot building was then renovated in 2004 and built in the virtual world in 2006. In order to preserve the immersive quality of the Glidden Campus landscape our virtual classrooms are 600m in the sky. To access them use the bus stop/teleport.

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Virtual Hallucinations
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The virtual hallucinations project seeks to educate people about the mental illness schizophrenia. About 1% of the population will develop schizophrenia during their lifetimes. It usually strikes in the late teens or early twenties, and is very debilitating.

People with schizophrenia have "disordered thought" or difficulty maintaining thought processes. They develop delusions, like the belief that the police are after them. They also experience auditory hallucinations, typically one or more voices speaking to or about them. About 25% of people with schizophrenia also experience visual hallucinations, typically distortions of the environment around them.

This clinic building is based on the hallucinations of two specific people with schizophrenia. They were interviewed in detail and gave feedback on early designs for the hallucinations. While the hallucinations are not glamorous, they fairly accurately reproduce these patients' experiences. You should get a sense of just how intrusive the voices of schizophrenia really are.

The virtual hallucinations environment is best experienced in mouselook. One person should go through at a time. Also, at the end, please click on the "Click to take survey" object. We're interested in feedback on the experience.

- Nash Baldwin, aka James Cook, MD MS

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Heart Murmur Sim - Cardiac Auscultation Training Concept
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Tour a virtual clinic and test your skills at identifying the sounds of different types of heart murmurs.
Concept and sound editing - Jeremy Kabumpto
Scripting - Eloise Pasteur
Architect - Moon Adamant
Sound files - McGill University Virtual Stethoscope - http://sprojects.mmi.mcgill.ca/mvs/mvsteth.htm

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The course Production of Architecture at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm examines the history, theory and practice of representation and production of architecture. We will see that projective systems affects our understanding of space through the evolution of media such as painting, photography, film and computer generated imagery.

Fourth year students of architecture has started LOL architects; the worlds largest virtual architecture office. Visit us at our office: The Office or look at PDFs, powerpoints, images and texts on the internet.

For info: www.unrealstockholm.org, IM me or e-mail at tor@llp.se (SL name: Kapital Metropolitan)

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Well, it's not really an education "place" per se, but rather my inworld office. One of my roles at Linden Lab is to help the real life educator community and run the Campus:Second Life program. If you're a student or educator and have any questions about Second Life, please feel free to visit me at my office or send me an IM. I can also be reached at pathfinder@lindenlab.com.

Take care,
-Pathfinder Linden

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The networked kiosk system used to distribute this notecard was developed with scripts by Sasun Steinbeck. If you would like more information about the system, please feel free to contact her directly. Thanks, Sasun!
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Second Life and Environmentally Friendly Technologies

It seems that people are beginning to notice the potential of the metaverse for influencing environmental behavior. Linden labs has not only opened up their Second Life Source Code to the world community to improve the value of the virtual environment (see Second Life to Go Open-Source on CNN) but is encouraging individuals and companies to try out new technologies in virtual reality. Car companies are opening virtual dealerships in Second Life (see Real Cars Drive into Second Life), making it virtually impossible to kill the electric car (since all virtual cars run on electricity!) but green technology is making a splash in the metaverse. (See "Sun Microsystems to Tout Green Products in Second Life") Sun Microsystem's CEO Scott McNealy has anounced his belief that we have transitioned from the industrial age to the "participation age" . If this is so we should be able to use virtual environments to transform the psychology of behavior by giving people greater familiarity with technologies, ideas, and experiences that can be translated into real world environmental benefits. With Linden Scripting Language and Second Life going open source, it is now possible to build your own eutopia in the metaverse and try it on for size!

Capturing video on your PC or Mac for editing and posting to YouTube

Since this class is about Environment and the Psychology of Behavior, and so much of our understanding of our environments comes from visual stimuli, we can use the media sharing opportunities of the on-line environment to let others in the class see representations of the real-life environments we are exploring (or screen and video captures of any artificial environments we explore).

To help get you started if you are not already well versed in these techniques, I will share what I have done (along with my frustrations) to become media savvy.

First off, the very simplest way to do a static screen capture off of your computer is to follow the instructions given here.

For video capture on your PC or Mac, the simplest solution that I have discovered, particularly if you work with laptops and try to carry your world with you around the world in a backpack, is to get a little analog to digital converter such as the Typhoon DVD Maker converter that I picked up in Germany (at Conrad Electronics for 51 Euro (see here for techical specs) but you can also find it at Saturn) . It is lightweight and fits in your pocket, plugs into your USB 2.0 port, and you can plug an SVHS or composite signal (Video yellow jack and Audio Left and Right red and white jacks) into it from a VCR or non-fire-wire camcorder. It comes with software to digitize and record and edit. The U.S. equivalent is probably the KWorld Xpert DVD Maker USB 2.0 Video Capture Device which can be purchased for about 40 bucks (everything is cheaper in the U.S.!) Of course you aren't going to get super high resolution from a composite or SVHS signal, but it is great for converting old VHS tapes to DVDs, and for using old video cameras that don't have fire wire. Since many of you may have computers that don't have firewire, it is also the ideal solution there. Keep in mind, however, that if you are using a PC laptop THE AUDIO WILL NOT WORK WELL IN THE MICROPHONE PORT OF YOUR LAPTOP! It will distort horribly. To get audio into the PC laptop, you will need to use some other audio input device, such as a Fast Track USB recording device from M-Audio (I bought mine at Guitar Center) for about $130 that has line in and microphone jacks and plugs into your second USB port. You will need an adaptor to either go from your dual RCA jacks into the stereo quarter inch line-in jack or from the video capture devices 1/8 jack into the M-Audio quarter inch line-in jack. These audio adaptors can all be found at Radio Shack. Here is an article on audio capture.

I decided to switch over to using my MacBook Pro laptop with its Intel Chip for everything, and installed Bootcamp so that I could put Windows XP on the system and take advantage of doing everything on one laptop. But I had problems with the MacDrivers for Bootcamp (they caused the mouse cursor to disappear when running Windows), so I now run Windows XP on my Mac without the mac drivers. It works fine for programs like Microsoft Office, but as a result I can't get on-line with the wireless airport, nor use bluetooth, and Typhoon DVD makers software will not work with the USB ports.

Consequently I found I had to use my Video capture device with Mac OSX. The problem is that Typhoon and KWorld Expert Video capture devices (and all the others I have seen) have no Mac Drivers. That meant hunting around for a good Mac driver that would support the input device. The one I settled on was Videoglide from EchoFX. The Videoglide software can be downloaded quickly and demoed. It works with my Typhoon videocapture unit from Germany, and is known to work with the KWorld and many others. For USB 1.1 devices EchoFX sells USBVision. Both sell for $30. When you demo them they put the words "EchoFX" in white letters across the top of the screen and they limit you to 10 minutes of capture. When you purchase the software on-line they send you an email within 10 minutes containing the serial number you can use with one device. Then it all works fine.

The advantage of using a Mac laptop, even if you have invested in a PC based USB video capture device, is that you CAN record audio directly from the 1/8th microphone/line-in jack. Then you don't need to buy a separate audio capture device.

Once you have captured your video, you can edit your stuff together, then save as an MP4 file and post it to your Youtube account. You can embed your youtube videos in your blog and we can all see the environments you are discussing.

CAPTURING SECOND LIFE

Second Life has its own easy video capture function. Under "File" you slect "Start/Stop Movie to Disk" (or hit Cmd-Shift-S), set the compression quality you want (for web stuff Mpeg-4 is probably the most parsimonious), and then walk or fly around until you have captured enough, then hit cmd-shift-s again to stop capturing. You will find the file stored on your computer. Second life also has a "Take Snapshot" feature under "File" (command-shift-s) and a "snapshot to disk" command (command-'). The art of making movies from virtual reality game engines is called "Machinima" and there is a good website with tutorials on how to do so here.

For capturing movies from your PC computer screen the program of choice is FRAPS. It is available for free download. Unfortunately is not Mac compatible.

For the Mac I've tried Citrus Software's Screentool 2.0 and found it always turns on my isight camera while it is doing screen capture, so I have video of me looking at my screen while capturing the screen! Annoying and impossible to work with. It has no way to change the preferences, and it doesn't record at a good frame rate, suffering from lots of distortion.

I also tried Movie Grab, but it didn't create smooth clear video. It also doesn't support audio capture.

A MUCH BETTER Mac OSX option seems to be SnapZ Pro from AmbrosiaSW.com . You can try it out for 30 days. After that it costs $69. It has a nice ability to resize or customize the area for screen capture, it records audio, it runs in the background and can be called up whenever you want by clicking on command-shift-3 (this is customizable to whatever keystrokes you want) and you can save in many formats. The hardest thing is controlling the avatar (I use a logitech game controller with USB overdrive and am still figuring out how to program the buttons! Below is my first attempt to capture a movie with it in Second Life and save as an MP4.

By combining SnapZ Pro and the VideoGlide software with the USB video capture device I can now hook up my Sony Playstation 2 or my XBox video and audio outputs to my laptop and capture motion video of my explorations in those environments. In a future post I will show you around the undersea world environment of Ecco the dolphin -- you can decide for yourself if Bell's statements in chapter 4 of our text "We can also show that viewing scenes of natural environments reduces disturbingly high levels of physiological arousal" (p. 105) holds water (so to speak!). Our text says, "The notion of overload is particularly germane to the study of leisure environments and other settings we have called restorative environments" (P. 107). We can now share simulations of these environments and see what their effect is!