Ancient History Ramblings

Sudden Realization

The countdown to my leaving for Cyprus stands at 5 days. I realized today that I need to work hard if I am going to be ready to leave next Tuesday. This morning I talked to Bill on the phone, called David, and then met my students to divide up supplies. Fortunately this year, between my students and David's students, we have 7 students who can help carry supplies to Cyprus. I then had lunch with a colleague who is coming to Cyprus for a week to visit family and checkout our project. This afternoon I spent some time scanning in stuff I will need in Cyprus and tonite I worked on logistics. The week before leaving for Cyprus is always so busy and then the first few days in Cyprus (before everybody arrives) seem to be very calm.

On the Second Life front, a few minor things to report. First, I was given an IUP Senate grant to facilitate the construction of ancient Greek and Roman buildings on Archaeology Island. Second, Archaeology Island is nearing completion and should be open to the public soon. Finally, there was an interesting article in the Chronicle of Higher Education's The Wired Campus that addresses Second Life - "Co-Founder of Second Life Says Academics Are Biggest Trailblazers in Virtual Worlds."

RSM

Work on SL Display

Work on IUP's Archaeology Island has been a bit slow this semester. Most of this is my fault, I have not had as much free time this semester as I had hoped, even though I am teaching a reduced load since I taught an overload in the fall. My lack of free time means that I haven't been able to help build structures or hunt up images for the design guys from the Applied Media and Simulation Game Center. I am hoping that I will be able to catch up over spring break, but we will see if that happens.

Since I haven't been keeping up with my SL work, the students from the AMSGC have been working with Dr. Sara Neusius, a faculty member in IUP's department of Anthropology. They have been building a Second Life exhibit based on a real world exhibit "Indiana County Archaeology: Revealing the Native American Past" that was shown at IUP's University Museum back in January. I am going to help with the text panels when they finish the village display, so I better catch up on all my other work.

If you get a chance and are looking for something to read, I ran across an interesting article on-line about an ancient Greek tomb discovered on the island of Lefkada.

RSM

Digital History SL Intro

Today I gave a demo on Second Life to the Monday section of my Digital History class. I thought this would be a good break for the class from working in the lab, and they have a midterm this week they need to take on-line. It actually went quite well, the class had lots of questions and seemed impressed. I showed them Vassar's Island, NASA, Crimson Island, and the items we are working on for Archaeology Island. They did ask me how many other historians in my department have tried SL - I told them that I wasn't sure, but I only knew of one other person in my department. I did give them one assignment for our next meeting, which is 2 weeks away - Spring Break is finally. They have to navigate into SL, find Crimson Island, and offer friendship to me. I was pleased to see that two students actually accomplished this task within a few hours of the class.

Tomorrow I am scheduled to give a SL demo to another faculty/staff committee on campus. It seems like I have given a SL demo to every group on campus. I expect people to start fleeing from me when they see me coming into their meeting with my laptop. Oh, and to save someone from emailing me with it, yes, I am sure they have many other reasons for not wanting to be in a committee meeting with me.

RSM

SL Exploration

I had a CHSS (College of Humanities and Social Sciences) Tech Committee Meeting today. At the meeting we voted to ask our Dean to purchase an island for our college. The Dean has indicated in the past that he would look favorably on this request and if it goes through, this would be IUP's 5th island. Since this got me thinking about SL, I realized that it had been a while since I had searched SL for historical sites and I decided to see what I could find. I started out looking for medieval sites and there are a lot of SL sites that are medieval themed, but I did not see any that were historical. I then found a site devoted to Vikings - Viking Times. The site described itself as a "study in Viking architecture and culture." While not very large, it was interesting to walk around and look at. It had a small outside area

with a small trading vessel and some basic implements. The majority of the site was a museum designed to look like a long house with numerous artifacts inside. This was nicely done and enjoyable to walk around. My only complaint was that it would have been helpful to have some signs or notecards explaining the different artifacts.

RSM

PKAP Planning and SL

So, we held another PKAP meeting in Second Life today. I am always impressed by how well these meetings go, we never really argue about anything and are almost always on the same page. The result of the meeting is that we have settled most of our planning issues and are really moving forward towards our field season. I feel very good about this upcoming season. I believe that we are in the best shape planning-wise that we have ever been in (knock on wood). Whether this translates to a successful fieldseason or not, we will see. My next goal is to organize the equipment and find a way to get it all safely to Cyprus. Currently, I am in charge of bringing over a Trimble R8, several Trimble GeoXHs, a transit, a 3-D scanner, several laptops, 2 digital cameras, and a digital camcorder. I need to speak to British Air and see if I can have this equipment shipped over, at a reasonable charge.

On another SL issue, my honors core class is really sticking it to me SL-wise. A group of them turned in a journal entry on a NY Times article - "The Job Interview, Starring Your Avatar." Their opening line to their journal entry was "While some people think that Second Life is for losers who have nothing better to do on a Friday night." Ouch. I intend to change their next two assignments and force them to at least visit SL and see what they think - it will probably make them worse, but we'll see.

RSM

Odds and Ends

I don't have a single idea to talk about today, but instead have a series of points.....well, more like random thoughts.

• I am still amazed that IUP was selected by Forbes Magazine as one of the 25 most wired campuses in 2003. I certainly don't mean to belittle IUP's efforts in this arena, and the computer guys on campus are constantly working hard to improve computing technologies across the campus, but 1 of the top 25? On days like today, when it was one technological problem after another, it certainly seems hard to believe. For example, a colleague was trying to hook his laptop to an instructor workstation to show his "Intro to History" class some software (and the reason he was using his laptop is that we can't get permissions set right on the workstation to install software) and we couldn't get it to recognize his laptop. He then moved to another classroom, but that classroom's workstation was missing the laptop connector. It was only when he moved to the 3rd classroom that he had success.
• While my Digital History class was practicing with FrontPage today, I installed FireFox and Second Life on the History Lab computers that weren't being used. I then tried to use SL to see if it worked, and it did.......for about 4 minutes and then the video driver died in a horrible fashion and locked the computer up. Looks like we will need to order some new video cards for 7 of the 8 machines, provided we can find the money.
• IUP is in the process of switching its old website to a new, improved website. I have to admit that the new color scheme makes more sense, since it now matches the school colors, but other than that I am underwhelmed by the website and the process. They did not improve the website's navigation and we have to use a content management system to create the webpages. I am responsible for the history department's and the University Senate webpages and have experimented with the new CMS system and am not happy at all.  It is going to take a lot of time and effort to recreate many of the webpages. When I met with the computer staff in charge of the process I asked about using javascripts and feeds on our pages, and they said that javascript was too dangerous and that nobody used feeds.
• PKAP is holding another planning meeting in SL tomorrow. I need to try to talk Bill and David into using SL's voice capabilities to see how well that works. It is weird, but I am not as worried about this fieldseason as I am usually am. Maybe it will hit me later, or maybe it isn't my turn - Bill and I usually take turns freaking out over the season.

RSM

More Egyptology in Second Life

While browsing the Internet today, I ran across a webpage talking about the recreation of Egyptian buildings from the island of Philae. I quickly dropped into SL and clicked on the SLURL listed for it. I have to admit that it was impressive in its colors and detail work. It clearly required a lot work and the creator of the site had put in a lot of time and effort on their part. Looking at it from a historical point of view, however, I was disappointed by the lack of information readily available to the visitor. I did not find anything that told me about the site or why it was created and if I had not read about the site before visiting it, I would have been lost - and I realize that I am most likely judging the recreation on a set of criteria that the creator did not have in mind when they were working on it. It is certainly worth visiting, but a class would need some overview to the site before visiting it. Since my core class made some snide SL comments again today and seemed to imply I was a geek with no life, I might make them visit this site and write a journal on it. The colors and spatial interaction to the recreation are quite nice and would fit in well with our discussion of history and art.

RSM

End of the Week

Today's digital history went well, no major hitches or issues. In my Honors College freshmen core class today, however, we wound up on the subject of Second Life and had an interesting discussion. Interesting in that, according to them, I am evidently a geek with no life or at least that is exactly how they characterize people who are involved with SL. I tried to point out that a 3D Internet environment allowed for a different surfing experience, in that you could visit and interact with sites around the world without leaving your house. The response to that was that if you want to see a site, you should actually go there and not rely on a 3D recreation. I said, but what if this wasn't possible, due to high cost, work, etc. I was sort of surprised when they said that if you really wanted to go somewhere, you can always find a way. While I admire this can-do spirit, it seemed a bit impractical. I really was surprised that nearly the entire class felt this way. It was at this point in the discussion that I finally asked them how many of the 18 actually had been in SL - and it turns out that only 1 has tried it, and he has only spent about 10 minutes in it so far. I was stunned that they were so negative about SL and hadn't even tried it. It made me realize that I sometimes think that young people (and I include college students in this category since I am an old person) eagerly embrace new technologies, but that clearly isn't the case. I decided later today that one of their assignments next week will involve them going into SL - that should be an interesting discussion when I give it out. Anyway, this encouraged me to go back to surfing SL for ancient history or archaeology sites. The one I visited tonite was "The Spartan Empire." It was as advertised, a combat sim and its advertisement looked like it was based on the movie 300. I did not see any combat there tonite and did not really find anything that would be good for a history class to visit. I'll look again tomorrow.

RSM

Archaeology Island Moving Forward

Today we met to talk about the progress on IUP's Archaeology Island. Dr. Partridge has a new set of students working on the project and he wanted us (Dr. Chiarulli and me) to meet them. Just as last semester, his students are amazing in their ability. According to Dr. Partridge the construction on the site is coming along and he will begin scripting the interactive elements of the site soon.

We are also planning to create an Anthropology exhibit on Crimson Island. Dr. Sara Neusius, a faculty member in IUP's department of Anthropology, is currently curating an exhibit "Indiana County Archaeology: Revealing the Native American Past" at IUP's University Museum. The press release on IUP's website says that:

• The exhibition includes a model village and a life-size segment of a circular house interior. The exhibit also demonstrates how archaeologists work and learn about the past through excavation and the study of artifacts. This exhibition also will introduce the standard archaeological periods (Paleoindian, Archaic, and Woodland) for Eastern North America along with the artifacts that are representative of each time period; illustrate the painstaking nature of archaeological excavation and laboratory analysis; model what villages and structures built by the native inhabitants of Indiana County between AD 1000 and European contact appear to have been like; explain that native people of this era used cultivated corn, beans, squash as well as wild plants and animals; discuss the archaeologically defined Monongahela culture known from southwestern Pennsylvania at the end of Pre-Columbian times as well as the emerging probability that Indiana County marks a boundary between these people and other poorly known cultural groups to the north, and encourage responsible stewardship of Indiana County’s archaeological heritage so that we all can continue to learn about the native heritage in this area.

We are hoping to create a virtual exhibit in SL based on her work currently on display. We are going to work on it next week and hope to have it available to the public in about two weeks.

RSM

Digital History and SL

As part of my Digital History class, I am planning on having my students experiment with Second Life. In fact, I am planning on teaching the class in SL a couple of times. I also wanted to see how well Sloodle worked with SL. During the first week of class, I asked my students to see if they could create an account, choose an avatar, log in to SL, and then make it to IUP's Crimson Island. I have to admit to being disappointed in the results so far - only 4 students have been able to accomplish this and one of those was already very proficient in SL before the class started. The problems facing the students are unfortunately varied in nature so it isn't simply fixing one thing, but several things.

On the bright side, I learned at my SL coordination committee meeting today that several departments/colleges at IUP are in the process of purchasing more SL islands. As IUP expands its presence in SL, this will allow us to do much more than we are currently doing. Our main island is very full and limits faculty who are interested in trying out SL from building or experimenting with scripts. I am meeting with the folks who are working on Archaeology Island tomorrow and will give you an update on how things are progressing.

RSM