Project Description

Project Virtual NorthStar was started at Saint Paul to use Sun Microsystem's Project Wonderland to:

Investigate the use of gaming technology as a teaching platform for Java technology.

Determine the extent to which virtual worlds can be used to deliver high quality educational experiences to a distance learner.

Develop easy to use documentation for a beginner to get started with development around the Wonderland platform

Develop a number of implementations of Wonderland for a variety of applications

Provide a repository for anyone wishing to get up to speed quickly in this technology

The project is hosted at the Computer Science Department of Saint Paul College but is according to our model, "Open Source and Open to the World".

We also look forward to working with the MIRTLE project and see it as a leader in the innovative application of this technology.

The project has been very well received and has helped identify a series of projects which we are either going to lead in or assist others with. These are listed with descriptions below.

We are happy to help and you are invited to join us!

Virtual Northstar Projects

Redeploy MnSCU Island

This project involves the recreation of MnSCU Island on the Second Life platform to the Wonderland platform provided by Sun.

We plan to accurately maintain records of time required to do it so that we can compare relative costs both in terms of manpowers and time-to-deployment. We hope this gives the potential developer a metric to use when selecting a platform for their virtual world.

International Virtual Case Study for Technical Education in Computer Networking

This project involves the recreation of a building which will be used to as a case study for an international team of students to develop plans for carrying out a networking

Virtual Tutoring Facility

This project involves the creation of a facility for students in the Saint Paul Public Schools to be tutored virtually by students at Saint Paul College. We see this as an opportunity for Saint Paul students to do service learning and help high school students and their parents get help on subjects without needing to hire or go to a remote location for tutoring assistance.

Implement the MIRTLE Project

Saint Paul College has always been active in implementing leading edge technologies in our curriculum and as a teaching platform. We are extremely excited at the prospect of implementing the work being done on the MIRTLE project at our college. We are currently designing a classroom and hope to begin offering courses utilizing MIRTLE technology

Open Source and Open to the World

All of the work done on any of the projects and all of our artwork is available for download to anyone interested in using it. We only request compliance with the GPL 2.0.