Second Life Pros

(you can watch the VIDEO OF THE VIRTUAL VISIT OF THE BASILICA)

Last friday, I had the pleasure to host Andrea Benassi (from Florence, Italy), and five students from New York City, in my “masterpiece”, the Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi (here the SLURL, if you know what a SLURL is).

We were in company of Costanza, an italian official tour guide, which usually accompanies real people in the real Basilica, and this time had the opportunity and pleasure to do so in Second Life.

You can watch the VIDEO OF THE VIRTUAL VISIT OF THE BASILICA, and take a look at the pictures here.

The experience was very intriguing: I’m sure this is one of the best way to use Second Life (as an educational / cultural tool), and the Basilica is a perfect place to do so, since it’s perfectly reproduced from the original “real” one (I personally studied and coded maps, pictures, georeferences and such).
If you’re curious, this is the origin of the Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi.

Explaining things to a virtual audience is sometimes very cool: pointing out paintings with a red cone, for example, is much more involving than simply staring at pictures.

Also, students interacted a lot with the guide, using vocal chat, despite the recorded result shows some background noise (e.g. cats, dogs, kitchen noises) that you’d never find in a real visit

Together with Andrea, we are trying to plan more virtual visits, possibly on a regular basis (I’ll be pretty busy in the near future, so I’m delegating to someone else).
The “logistic” is not easy, since the virtual guide performs better when he/she moves the avatar without my intervention. We’ll figure out something.

If you can, digg this post; I think that the beauty of these paintings deserves something!
And… let me know if you liked the video, and feel free to contact me for any question (commenting the post)!
Thanks!

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