Force avatars to wear clothing or edit the default avatar

[Graham Mills]

From a strategy perspective, providing students with high quality clothes that mirror their group or institutional identity (colour-coding by team, crests, logos, etc) might make them less likely to swap but you do, of course, have to get the students into them in the first place. I believe Dreamland Metaverse has a backend system whereby teachers can assign a class of students (via a simple text file?) an avatar name, default appearance and in-world location at which they first rez. That doesn't preclude messing around subsequently, of course, but it helps. Incidentally, some "messing around" is generally deemed "a good thing" in terms of adapting to the environment.

[Sully Sullivan]

I really appreciate all the responses. Like other educators, I would like to use Kitely simply because it has much less adult content than Second Life. Plus students and faculty can access it anywhere,at any time. I realize that the viewer can be edited to remove these options also. However, I will not have access to everyone's computer/viewer.

The default naked avatar in Kitely is much more approriate than the naked "Ruth" avatar in Opensim. I am extremely close to being able to deploy Kitely system wide. Just a little concerned about students being able to walk around "naked" in our world. Is it possible to replace the default avatar that renders in a world with a script?

I did find a link discussing something similar(http://opensim-creations.com/forums/top ... underwear/). It appears, other educators have had luck editing a "shadow" component of the avatar. However, it appears they are editing the viewer instead of the avatar.

Thanks again,

Pat

[Sully Sullivan]

As with most schools, I have to get this approved before it can be deployed. With the possibility of nudity, I know my Principal will not let it go forward. I think this is one of those things holding alot of schools from deploying virtual worlds. Especially at the k-8 level. The most frustrating part is, I am so close with Kitely! You guys have way less adult content and I can limit who can access the world.

I realize editing the default avatar may take away from some of the "individualistic" nature of the students avatars. However, I am just looking to put underwear or some type of shorts on them. After that, they can put whatever clothes on they like. Will keep searching. Thanks again for all the replies.

[Dot Matrix]

Linda Kellie made some child avatars with integrated underwear. Would they be a useful starting point?

They are available, for example, in the Kids Place OAR: http://zadaroo.com/?page_id=1675

[Sherrie Melody]

I'm not sure. Some students may find it irksome, disrespectful or silly to be told how they should present themselves and that's probably mirrored in a spectrum of staff attitudes as well. Moreover, many staff cope with the existing situation after a fashion (of course, those that don't effectively disappear) and, if it is an insuperable problem, there is always recourse to sim-on-a-stick.

This request to be able to force wearing of G-rated skin is pretty common for educators, isn't it?

I wonder how difficult it would be to add a couple functions, something like osForceWearClothing(string inventoryItemName, integer clothingType) and osGetClothingWorn(key av, integer clothingType), to OpenSim. Wonder if there is a request for something like that already?

Perhaps some students, staff, people in general would find it silly and disrespectful. I would personally, but I am over 18 and not in an educational environment. However, in a k-8 environment, it is reasonable to expect a requirement for the guarantee of no nudity. The functions I described would be quite valuable (even essential), IMO, in that environment. They don't have to be used to restrict individuality either. osForceWearClothing could be used to only force wear underclothing and nothing more. In worlds where the functions were abused, people would just choose not to visit them. The functions could be restricted, like a lot of others, to be available only to the world owner.

[Sherrie Melody]

As with most schools, I have to get this approved before it can be deployed. With the possibility of nudity, I know my Principal will not let it go forward. I think this is one of those things holding alot of schools from deploying virtual worlds. Especially at the k-8 level. The most frustrating part is, I am so close with Kitely! You guys have way less adult content and I can limit who can access the world.

I realize editing the default avatar may take away from some of the "individualistic" nature of the students avatars. However, I am just looking to put underwear or some type of shorts on them. After that, they can put whatever clothes on they like. Will keep searching. Thanks again for all the replies.

The problem is that even if the default avatars were edited as you desired, that would only guarantee that they will enter your world properly attired. There isn't a way, that I know of, to stop them from getting and wearing another avatar skin, clothing, etc. to wear from freebie shops here, or on other grids, or from web sites that provide those things. Unless you have your own grid, and a way to require a particular viewer to connect to your grid, you currently can't restrict behavior of visitors to your world in such a way as to guarantee no nudity. Even if the only avatar skins on a grid are G-rated, if the viewer allows students to upload textures, they can upload realistic skin textures they've found somewhere and choose to wear them. Even if the default avatars come with underclothing layers, students can choose to take them off.

[Dot Matrix]

A bit of history: When the current Kitely Welcome Center was being developed during the weeks of August and early September, there was talk of replacing the default Kitely avatars with new ones, all with built-in underwear. These avatars were also to be available in the Welcome Center.

Unfortunately, for various reasons it was not possible to do this. Because time was pressing, the decision was taken to use the LK business avatars from her Conference Center OAR, which don't have baked-on undies, in the Welcome Center.

Has the time come to revisit these avatars, to better meet the needs of business and education?

Other Kitely users are likely to be able to sort out an avatar more to their liking via the Market or freebie malls.

[Ilan Tochner]

Hi Dot,

Let's discuss this in the next Kitely Mentors Group meeting.

[Sherrie Melody]

Hi Sully,

Even with a forced attachment of a skin layer with baked underwear students can still wear a clothing layer that uses a naked skin texture. Unless you're preventing texture uploads (and transferring such textures from other users) students will be able to appear naked if they put their minds to it.

We could upgrade our system to prevent avatars form wearing, attaching or even having in their inventory anything that wasn't created by a whitelist of creators (and maybe a minimum item maturity rating). That way teachers could preapprove certain creators students could get/buy items from.

But even if we problematically prevent kids from wearing, attaching or even owning inappropriate content they'll just create that content ad hock and float it in front of them so those items look attached. It doesn't take too much ingenuity for a kid to join two spheres and a cylinder to create basic male genitalia and then position that inworld so it looks like it's attached to their groin while they're stationary.

As long as students can build inworld they can create inappropriate content for their age / school. The way to combat that is education and active supervision. AFAIK, many teachers are using Minecraft in schools and it is very simple for kids to build inappropriate content using blocks. The question is where do you draw the line and decide that the solution is good enough for a school environment?

[Sherrie Melody]

We could upgrade our system to prevent avatars form wearing, attaching or even having in their inventory anything that wasn't created by a whitelist of creators (and maybe a minimum item maturity rating). That way teachers could preapprove certain creators students could get/buy items from.

I think that is a brilliant solution. Especially a combination of whitelist + maturity rating. Does the teacher create the student avatar profiles, and then tag them somehow as being restricted to the inventory limitations?

As long as students can build inworld they can create inappropriate content

IMO, somewhere you just have to draw a line beyond which you hold the students responsible for their behavior. Real world classrooms have rules and codes of conduct. So should virtual ones.