Education has changed since Covid struck. Teachers, students, and everyone inbetween have been required to find online methods for communicating and getting tasks done. One option for educators has been immersing their students in learning situations through virtual world activities. While some teachers are excited by the possibilities, others are overwhelmed by yet another technology being heaped on their already overladen plates. But using virtual worlds and creating the items you might need for lessons there, doesn't need to be intimidating. This presentation is meant to help teachers and students over some of their perceived hurdles while creating many lessons for teaching idioms. Participants at the conference, or people who would like to review or process the information separately, can work through the step-by-step slides outlining best building practices at their own pace. The goal is to turn a daunting task into an enjoyable one. Participants who attend the conference in Kitely in OpenSim will also be given a chance to tour Edutopia 1 and see many other teaching ideas via a car rally. The car rally is meant to showcase additional teaching tactics, and the car rally is also an example of another type of lesson teachers could immediately use with their students. Finally, useful links are given to the presenter, her virtual worlds, and machinima posted on YouTube that further illustrate out-of-the-box teaching ideas.

1. Oh, The
Things You
Can Build!!!
VWBPE 2022 Immersive Experience
April 9, 2022
2:00 PM SLT/PT
Barbara McQueen
(aka Barbara Novelli)
bmcqueen2@gmail.com

2. • Barbara McQueen in the real world
and Barbara Novelli in virtual worlds
• An English teacher in 5 different
countries in the past 30 years
• Builder of thousands of objects in
virtual worlds and in Blender
• Using Second Life and Kitely for
teaching for over a decade
Who am I?

3. Who are you?

4. Our goals
• Networking
• Building basics
• Idiom teaching
ideas
• Idiom building
challenge
• Sim touring of
additional
teaching ideas
via car rally

5. Preparations
Enable nametags and chat bubbles through:
Avatar/Preferences/General and Avatar/Preferences/Chat.
Collect gift boxes:
1. Ideas box: copy of this slideshow in a reusable slideshow presenter and
notecards containing idiom lessons brainstorming and important links.
2. Textures box: some basic textures--blank, gold, silver,
wood, siding, roof tiles, denim, wicker, etc.
3. Photos box--photos of my idiom builds
Friend everyone.
Pair up, especially experienced people with newbies.

6. Start with the basic shapes.
Learn to see everything in terms of cubes, triangles, cones, and the other basic
shapes of your build menu.

7. For example, the dinosaur pictured in this slide show can be built with 7 of
those shapes as pictured below. I’ve color-coded the shapes so it’s clearer what
was used where. By stretching and tapering a few of these shapes, I was able
to accomplish a lot.

8. Demonstrate you know these skills and start building your first idiom example
by rezzing the following objects on a sandbox:
• A cube
• A triangle
• A cylinder
• A sphere
• Click on Build in the
menu bar at the top of
your screen.
• You will automatically be
given a magic wand that
will create a box wherever
your mouse cursor
touches the ground.
• If you want to create one
of the other shapes, click
on it before you touch
your magic wand to the
ground.
How to Rez an Object

9. Move and rotate your objects.
How to Move and Rotate Objects
To move an object:
• Right click on it.
• Click Edit in the pop-up window.
• The Move button is automatically
selected, so your object should now have
colored arrows on it or near it that you
can pull on to move your object.
If you want to rotate an object, click the
Rotate button to surround your object with
colored circles you can pull on to rotate
your object in any direction.

10. For example:
• Center the triangle on top
of the cube as shown.
• Center the sphere on top of
the cylinder.
• Hold Shift and click on both
the sphere and the cylinder,
then rotate them to lay flat
on the ground.

11. Look at everything from many
different angles.
When you do, you might find that what you think was placed well, is actually way
off from what you wanted.
Top View
Side View
= !

12. If you are having trouble getting
objects next to each other, use
the align option to line things up.
You may have to do this several times with different combinations of objects
to get the results you want.

13. Use copy and paste a lot.
There is no value to making the
same object over and over when
you can quickly create duplicates,
like I did with the dinosaur’s teeth
to make a full mouthful.

14. • 2 cubes
• 2 triangles
• 2 cylinders
• 2 spheres
Try this by holding down shift as you move an object to create a duplicate. Do
this until you have:
You can easily duplicate many objects by clicking on one object, clicking on edit,
and drawing a yellow square around all the objects you want to duplicate before
grabbing a move arrow and moving the objects to create a duplicate set.

15. Explore the Build menu tools.
You may have noticed that some of the shapes in my dinosaur don’t resemble the
basic shapes very much. That’s because I liberally stretch, hollow out, and cut
chunks out of the shapes. For example:
=
= =

16. General Tab Object Tab Features Tab Textures Tab Content Tab
Stretch Hollow Animated mesh Full bright Permissions
Rotate Cut path Light Texture scales New script
Align Taper Texture offsets Drop in photos
Dimple Shininess Drop in
animations
You should become very aware of all the easy-to-use options available on the
different tabs of the Build menu. The chart below shows where you can find the
options I use most often.

17. Use some of the tools now to:
• Stretch one cube into a large flat platform for the idiom build to sit on.
• Put the extra triangle back-to-back with the first triangle to make an even larger
triangle on top of the cube.
• In the Object tab, Path Cut one of the spheres in half, and then stretch it into
an oval shape.

18. You’ve probably guessed by now that we’re building an example of the idiom
“in the doghouse.”
• Rotate the cylinders and bring them and the 2 sphere pieces to the
ground to make a jointed leg with a shoe.
• Also, increase the size of the cube to make a better shaped doghouse.

19. Let textures do a lot of the work.
Any simple object can become
so much more when you add
textures. A texture is just a
photo you upload to your world
that can be chosen for the
face(s) of any of your objects.

20. For example:

21. Try it.
To change the color of an object:
• In your Edit menus, click on
the Texture tab.
• Then click on the color
rectangle and choose a color
you like.
To change the texture of an
object:
• In your Edit menus, click on
the Texture tab.
• Then click on the texture box
and search in your inventory for
a texture you like.
If you want to change only one side of your object, click on Select Face and touch the side(s) of the
object you want to change.

22. Your turn:
1. Change the color of the shoe to dark brown.
2. Link the 2 cylinders and the sphere together
and change their texture to the blue denim.
3. Change the texture of the bottom cube of
dog house and the walls below the eaves on
the front and back to white siding.
4. Change the texture of the top surfaces of the
roof to Gray Asphalt Octagon Roof Tiles.
5. Change the texture of the flattened cube that
is the platform for the idiom build to Grass
with Flowers.

23. Scale/re-position
the textures if they
don’t look like you
want them to.
For example, I thought the flowers in the
grass were too big, so I scaled them up
horizontally and vertically to 1.5 to squish
more of them onto the grass.

24. Before
I also didn’t like how the seam in the jeans
texture goes right down the front of the
leg, so I horizontally offset it by -0.3.
After

25. Build large and then shrink
objects for complicated smaller
objects.
You can see the leg and the doghouse
aren’t appropriately sized. I work with
different sizes, especially if something
would be too hard to build the details
on if it was in its tiny form.
For example, I could never have
created all the detail on my “over the
moon” astronaut if he started out as
small as he eventually became.

26. • Link the doghouse
pieces together.
• Also, link the leg and
foot together.
• Now resize them and re-
position them.

27. Just a few finishing touches now.
1. Make a second leg.
2. Add a black, flattened and
elongated sphere to make a
doghouse door.
3. Stretch a white cube into a
thin rectangular shape and
put the Fido texture on one
face to hang over the
doghouse door.
4. Link all the pieces of your
build together.

28. Use your
camera controls
to see inside of
objects.
• Sometimes you need to get inside
a large object to its center to be
able to modify it.
• Sometimes you have lost an
object inside an object
• Sometimes you need to look
inside an object to spot a problem
like unnecessary prims.
Using the Camera Controls
• Click on the camera controls button at the
bottom of your screen.
• Click on the + or – on the pop-up menu to
zoom in or back up.
• Click on the arrows in the square to move your
view up or down or right or left.
• Click on the arrows in the circle to spin your
view around an object.

29. Test your camera control skills by using
them to look inside the stomach of my
textured dinosaur.
If you are successful, you will see an
object you can click on to get a copy.
Find the object in your inventory and wear
it to show that you have completed your
first idioms build!

30. Import and modify.
• blendswap.com
• turbosquid.com
• archive3d.net
• cgtrader.com
Bring in the work of others for free from websites like:

31. Reduce the prim count with
Blender.
Another alternative is:
1. Build a multi-prim object in-world.
2. Export your object as a collada (a dae
file).
3. Import the dae file into Blender.
4. “Join” all your object’s prims.
5. Export your simplified object as a
new collada.
6. Import your prim-reduced dae file
back into your virtual world.
Or Ctrl J

32. Get whimsical.
You do not need to do things perfectly. In fact, people enjoy and remember silly
creations better.

36. Get fancy.
With time, as building becomes easier for you, you will be able to build some
truly beautiful and amazing objects, buildings, scenes, games, and lessons. Let
your imaginations soar.

40. Summary
• Start with simple, basic shapes.
• Look at everything from many different angles.
• Use the Align option to line parts up.
• Use copy and paste a lot.
• Explore all the Build menu tools.
• Let textures do a lot of the work.
• Build large and then shrink complicated objects.
• Import and modify.
• Reduce the prim count with Blender.

41. Useful Links
Need more ideas or too time-stressed to build everything you want to build, visit
these worlds, videos, and stores.
• Edutopia 1 and Edutopia 2 in Kitely. To be allowed to enter these worlds,
simply become a member of the Kitely group SLESL--Start Living English as
a Second Language.
• Check out all the machinima that I and my students have made with objects
we have built in Kitely:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLna7STDz_DyJGZPdPbS4j-
Iv1bhNS-fu9

42. • Visit Educator’s Paradise, my Kitely marketplace store, for hundreds of
inexpensive objects, lessons, and games I have built to help teachers teach in
virtual worlds: https://www.kitely.com/market?store=15037022
• Visit Educator’s Paradise, my Teachers Pay Teachers store, for the
humorous PowerPoints shown today on animal and body part idioms. Save
the file as a png file and upload the slides as pictures to your virtual world.
You will then be able to drop these pictures into the Content tab of any in-
world slideshow presenter. The TPT website also has many other teacher
resources and lesson plans that work well in virtual worlds.
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Educators-Paradise

43. Car Rally
• This is a timed game. The first team that
returns to where we are now will get 5
points; the second team, 4 points; the
third team, 3 points; the fourth team, 2
points; and the fifth team, 1 point.
• Each team will also receive 1 point for
each correctly completed task.
• Go to your team’s bulletin board and
touch it to get a copy of your team’s tasks.

44. • You are to type your answers for 10
of the questions on to the notecard
you got from your team’s bulletin
board.
• You will also be taking 10 pictures
along the way that you will be putting
on your team’s bulletin board when
you return.
• When you take pictures, save them to
your Kitely inventories to make it easy
for you to retrieve them.

45. • The game will end when one team
has finished all their tasks, or I
announce, “Time’s up!”
• Select your team’s car.
• Try to keep your cars on the roads at
all times.
• The game will begin once all your
pre-rally questions are answered. DO
NOT start driving until you are told
to “Begin.”

46. STARTING POINTS
Team 1: the Amusement Park
Team 2: the World Map
Team 3: the Monopoly Board
Team 4: the Conditionals Temple
Team 5: the Furniture for All Store
1
2
4
3
5

47. Debriefing
• Favorite idiom build
• Favorite teaching idea
• Something you wish we had given more time to
• Something we didn’t include that you would have liked to learn more about
&