Team:Calgary/Second Life/Process

When faced with the task of using the Second Life (SL) platform to create a project strong enough to compete with other methods of synthetic biology education there were various hurdles to overcome. First of all, the University of Calgary Second Life team had to discover the possibilities within the SL environment and secondly, how would it be possible to use the tools provided within this virtual world in order to accomplish the goals set for the team. The most basic skills that had to be learned include controls on Orientation Island and changes to avatar appearance, though little time was spent on this. Teleportation was also a useful tool that the team became familiar with quickly, in order to visit other islands it is a necessary ability to know. Once proficient with basic controls, any issues faced were dealt with during our further explorations.

Initially, a main goal we had was to begin to acquaint ourselves to building objects in SL in order to get started on shaping our own project. Once we figured out how to create objects in the Ivory Tower, we amused ourselves by simply making simple 3D shapes like cones and cylinders at the touch of a button. At first, time was spent learning to resize and warp these objects as instructed, then as we saw fit, either having notecards for reference or having another avatar’s exploration project peak our interest, leading us to pursue a way to match them. It felt like a gradual transition from reading through the text-filled notecards to simply trial and error construction from quickly scrolling through any instructions given. Since other avatars were also present we could follow their lead or ask for help (though at this point in time we kept to ourselves a lot – it did give us a glimpse at how avatars could help each other on our own island and was comforting to learn that an interpersonal learning environment was already established and commonly practiced.

After texturing and colouring our primitive creations, we found from the tutorials that we were able to construct a mass of “something” with the functionality of any object in SL; you could sit on it. Objects became much more practical after that, leading to a chair, a staircase until we had gained a basic understanding of how each setting changed each object. Now it was time to make something of our own as we felt we were ready to tackle a sandbox filled with avatars, houses, sculptures, anything brought out of inventory or created right there.

After this initial experience, we created a double-stranded DNA molecule, lab equipment as well as some basic structures planned for when we received modification rights for LINDSAY Island. However, building the objects for our project wasn’t enough. Now, we were faced with the challenge of learning an entirely new language (for some) in order to provide functionality to these objects so that avatars could interact with them in a meaningful way. Learning about scripting basics of the Linden Scripting Language (LSL) was conducted at the College of Scripting and Music, which included posters of basic scripts to set object colour, size, state, etc. There was also another scripting tutorial that introduced more complex, but still basic, scripts and provided them on notecards for an avatar to take with them once the tutorial was completed in order to practice. Both of these tutorials also briefly introduce how to use primitive data types involved in the scripting language (integer, declaring variable and how one would go about building a function).

Although both of these areas proved to be useful as an initial introduction to the language, it was necessary to conduct further research outside of SL to grasp enough of the language to make the functionality of our objects proficient and the LSL wiki proved to be a valuable resource in this case. The wiki provided description of all of the built in functions that could be used and were used extensively in some cases as well as providing some coding example to try and provide some idea of what may be possible with our own scripts. Depending on the student’s background skill set the language proved to be more useful to some, while it seemed building skills became more impressive with others and soon we were at the same skill level as some of the avatars met in the sandboxes, if we were to neglect the appeal of four-story buildings, spacecraft and other such celebrated items. Scripting became useful in all aspects of our island, later named Synthetic Biology Interactive, helping to create a:

• Working’ lab equipment including PCR machine, DNA extraction, gel electrophoresis and bacterial transformation activities
• Visually creative on island tutorials: Bacteria with various functions, tutorial aids/squid As well as
• An impressive level based molecular biology activity where avatars may build their own biological circuits to further their understanding of the background required in order to understand the applications and activities encompassed by synthetic biology.

During this time, we not only developed our new skill set obtained from SL, but also obtained further knowledge about Synthetic Biology as well as discovering how difficult it can be to convey the proper material needed in a successful way in order to create an environment that can contribute to the education of another person.