Alpha Testing Heritage Key

Working in Heritage Key's King Tut exhibit, I began with much enthusiasm but soon found more problems than would allow for the mobility and usability of Second Life. I had high hopes for the program but there were several things that came up immediately. First, the clothes were unfortunately very scattered. My pants enjoyed revisiting the 70's much too often and my sunglasses sometimes forgot they were sunglasses. It was nice to have different outfits at the beginning for some variety in the avatar but some of the of the kinks need to be worked out before this becomes a major educational tool.

The second problem I ran into was much like running into a wall in that I would be suspended and stuck floating in the air waving my arms and legs in all directions. I found this especially annoying because I was using a wired connection, that usually means I have no problems moving through Second Life but Heritage Key could not keep up.

Although I did find these problems in the program, I did find many positive sides to Heritage Key. The First was the interactive nature, providing audio clips with almost every part of the land exhibits and in the museum the virtual artifacts were proportionally correct to my avatar but could be enlarged for a better view.

Another thing I enjoyed was the attention to detail. All of the artwork in the actual tomb was quite photographic, almost to the point that it didn't seem like a copy at all. Not only in the exhibits, but also in the landscape, details could be seen that are very rare in Second Life. Take the Hippos for example, this made me realize that Heritage Key does have one up on Second Life in that the landscape is part of the exhibit. In Second Life, much of the educational material in simply placed in without regard to the surrounding area as the owner of one property cannot control the actions on the island next to him.

Overall, Heritage Key does have what it takes to become an educational site that many educators will be able to use but not yet. There are too many problems making the program cumbersome, but I feel that it will not be long before this catches on.