Studio Wikitecture 4.0 has delivered. Nearly four months after the first announcement, a virtual classroom (SLURL) has been placed on the Second Life® campus of the University of Alabama. Finishing touches continued to the last, even on the morning ofl Keystone Bouchard’s’s presentation to the university.

Studio Wikitecture 4.0’s Virtual Classroom, Final Design

Wikitecture facilitates collaboration in virtual world architectural design. Participants submit virtual models by dragging objects from inventory to the Wiki-Tree (image below). Each design is represented by a colored sphere and can be viewed by clicking on that “leaf.” You can see this in action at the U of A site (link above), or at the award winning Wikitecture 3.0 site [slurl]. Just look for a tall white column with bonsai branching, and touch any of the multi-colored balls. (Betcha can’t touch just one!)

The Wiki-Tree

Once a design is submitted, members can rez it from the tree, and they are encouraged to submit comments about the design at a companion website. Many ideas were kicked around in the website’s forum; not all of those made the cut. The role of the website may not have been clear to everyone, at least at the start, and some folks did not even know it was there.

Occasionally, members vote on each other’s contributions. Designs with the most votes are carried forward, and new design elements are folded in. The final design emerges (hopefully) as an collection of all the best features.

Cream, rising to the top.

As essential as the Wiki-Tree was the management of the group by Jon Brouchoud. During many a chat, members became critical of the process, the designs, and even other members. I was doing some of the talking, too. Jon always seemed to field our gripes with the calm of a zen master.

Writing about it now, I am reminded of something an educator said about working with groups in SL…something about herding cats.

The Wiki-tree tree has potential. It helps a group to juggle ideas. Sure, it was down at times; but was probably as reliable as SL itself. And, there are other “holodeck” styled rezzing tools in SL. However, the Wiki-tree is not meant to simply present multiple builds, one after another. You can review many designs in a short time, take a copy and riff on that design, even roll back to earlier versions. The tree also preserves the relationship among diverging strands of development (the branching of limbs reflects those relationships). Everybody adds their bits, patching together the best design possible.

This may be the closest I ever get to Granny’s quilting circle.

The Interactive Classroom
(image by keystone1111 [Flickr])

My own contribution focused on interactive features meant to simplify some activities (i.e., distributing handouts and URL selection). Several elements from my Interactive Classroom were included in the final design, and I will write about those in another post. First, I wanted to explore here the Wikitecture Way.

The Wikitecture project had its share of hiccups. But the Wiki-tree and the Wikitecture process are both evolving, according to Studio Wikitecture co-founder Ryan Schultz (Theory Shaw in SL). New ideas will be implemented with the 5.0 project (yet to be announced). And, finally, the the Alabama faculty will have to judge the worth of the virtual classroom design. But, there can be no question about the educational value and success of this project, because…

I learned plenty.