Monday, June 18, 2007

New Land Owner Looking for a Good Guide

by various contributors

QUESTION: Now that [we have] some islands, I need to get up to speed on setting land use. The SL guide is sadlylacking on specifics. Can someone point me to some useful info?

CHRIS HAMBLY'S ADVICE
  • I have all land on my island group owned.
  • I then turn off everything for strangers, i.e no building, no scripts, no push, for everyone, nada.
  • Then in my group settings I set up roles, and give the people in those roles varying levels of permission to script, build or push.
  • This works very well, and stops random people coming along running intensive scripts and building giant elephants.
  • Just one way of doing it, the group roles are excellent, very comprehensive,
AJ's ADVICE

What I did was to make the portal/telehub area a main area that is open to everyone. That parcel is rather small but its left open so anyone can attend an event or visit, like today's Academic CIO meeting, without having to become part of a group.

A portion of the island is dedicated to experimentation, etc.. So that part of the island, that parcel, albeit a rather big parcel, is restricted to a group that is open to join. The remainder of the island is parceled off for specific projects. Once a project is dedicated to a parcel the project leader is given control of the parcel and can set up access as s/he wishes. The remaining parcels that are currently not assigned have been access controlled to a different group that one can only be invited to and is reserved for those involved in the project.

The set up took some thought and planning, but it seems to be working out so far.

FROM ROSS PERKINS (Milosun Czervik)

Unless there is an instructional need to do it, I would say making it public right away is not in your best interest. Anyway, it's summer - and it's likely that faculty won't be needing it ASAP. It's more likely that your university's public relations engine is more active in mid-August than it is at this time of year.

I would make at least two groups for [your group] - one public (potentially set so anyone could join) and one private (not listed, and by invitation only). You do not need more than this as member roles can be sufficiently controled within each group. Some might argue for only one group, but to me this simplifies things a bit, and it allows the private members to interact on group chat channel without broadcasting to all others.

For the private group, I'd say that this would include all faculty and staff at your university actively involved in sim developement. WIthin this group, there may be just one or two who can invite others, some who can build, some who can edit land, etc. As Chris notes, the permission settings are comprehensive and quite useful.

The public group could be by invitation only (uni students only), or indeed L$0 for anyone to join. The folks there could be limited to ONLY getting group notices, etc.

The management rights at EduIsland were not set up well at the beginning, so we've learned a lot of lessons from this (though the griefing has been limited, fortunately).

Friday, June 15, 2007

Presentation on SL in SL

by Meredith Wesolowski

A 40 min. SL/RL simulcast (with audio) on SL's history and uses in education will be presented at the EduIsland auditorium, Friday 22, 9 am EST (6 am SLT) (SLurl: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Eduisland/156/126/22/).

The presentation will be lead by Meredith Wesolowski (SL: Meredith Snookums) and will occur in-world for SL users & in-real-world for University of Delaware faculty. All are welcome to attend! Please note an RSVP is appreciated, but not at all necessary.

Article about learning possibilities in SL (Spanish)

by Ruth Martinez Lo

This is a first article about learning possibilities in SL, as administrator of a virtual community in Spanish about learning activities in SL (http://www.neurona.com/second-life-educativa_1.html)
I have received a lot of questions about the real possibilities of learning in 3-D virtual world, so I compiled those examples aren't like translating the RL to SL: a classroom with its blackboard where avatars just listening...

SL Research

by Aleks Krotoski

A few colleagues and I are holding a discussion about SL/virtual world research ethics at the Social Simulation Research Lab in conjunction with the London Games Research group
(http://playhouse.wordpress.com/london-game-research-group/).

Kick-off is 12:30pm GMT (4:30am SLT).

All are welcome! Please RSVP Mynci Gorky in-world so I know how many chairs to rez. Thanks!

Details here:

Ethics and Internet Research
Time and place: 12.30 pm UK time, Monday June 18th in
Second Life

For our June meeting, Aleks Krotoski (http://socialsim.wordpress.com) will lead a discussion on the theme of 'Ethics in Online/Social World research'. We are meeting at Aleks' place in Second Life (social simulation research lab - there are chairs!). Please dust off your SL avatar, and put that date in your diary. You can get there directly (if you've got an SL account) here:
http://tinyurl.com/y3wlat

We thought that this paper might be a good place to begin the discussion: http://aoir.org/reports/ethics.pdf (Ethical decision-making and Internet research: Recommendations from the AoIR ethics working committee) Copyright (c) 2002 by Charles Ess and the Association of Internet Researchers

PhreakEDU information (16 JUNE; 10am - 11 pm SLT)

by Beth Ritter-Guth (from Vengence Opus)

Educators and Researchers:We wanted to let you know about a new radio stream concept that Phreak Radio has initiated, and one that we feel will benefit the non-profit and education crowd. Our goal is to build a radio station wholly devoted to education and research centered around Second Life.

By scheduling free access to a stream for educational institutions and playing pre-recorded content at designated times during the week, we think that this could open up a lot of doors for researchers and institutions. We want to build this stream up until one could tune in at any time and get either a live broadcast of something being held in SL or a pre-recorded session that would provide instruction and also clue that person in on what institutions are providing teaching.

Also, because this stream would have only educational content, it's a concept that we're interested in introducing on the Teen Grid at some point. Giving teens the ability and training to provide and direct content is the next phase of development that we'd like to see in this stream, and we've talked to a few people about the possibilities. Finally, we're also interested in short, 15 second ads for upcoming specific events.

We think that this could assist institutions in raising awareness about the research and training being conducted in SL, and it could provide a method for those new residents interested in these topics with a user-friendly way to tune in and get that information. Eventually, with the Registration API, Phreak Radio hopes to drive traffic from this station outside SL and into directed areas that educators assist us in defining ( i.e. your island).Expand your classroom to the real potential of virtual worlds.If you or anyone you know is interested in using the stream for any educational events, please contact me via one of the methods listed below.

Informational Meeting - There will be an informational meeting held at Phreak Isle on the 16th of June, 2007, between the hours of 11am to 10 pm SLT. This will be a time during which any educators, students or researchers are welcome to drop by with questions about PhreakEdu, Phreak Radio's new endeavor into free educational programming. Myself and Nethermind Bliss will be available throughout the day to address your issues, or, if you'd just like to stop by and check out our facilities on Phreak Isle, feel free! We will be tying this into the AIDS Memorial Quilt Kick-Off Bonfire.

"Light Up The Dark" is an event that is being hosted by Phreak Isle, kicking off a week's worth of events, the culmination of which will be the official ceremony and unveiling of an in-world AIDS Memorial Quilt, spanning many different sims. We will have three hours of live music, four DJs, a bonfire, and a quilting tutorial "bee" hosted in the Warehouse. During this time, we'll have some spoken word presentations and other things that raise awareness about the AIDS Memorial Quilt build going on that next week. Feel free to stop by and join us!

Article about SL & Education in THES (UK Higher Ed Newspaper)

by Emma Duke-Williams / Art Fossett

Black sun rising

Stephen Phillips
Published: 15 June 2007

http://www.thes.co.uk/current_edition/story.aspx?story_id=2037150

NY virtual: A virtual music world

by Chris Hambly

http://www.vles.com/

First Spanish University in Second Life

by Giulio Prisco

Opening of the Universidad Publica de Navarra in SL on Mon 18 12.00 (= 6am EST, 3am PST) with a mixed reality conference on education in SL. I will give the introductory talk on education in the Metaverse, covering SL but also other metaverses such as Open Croquet. They have a quite ambitious program and will open the SL space to other Spanish universities.

http://metafuturing.com/

http://tinyurl.com/3dqp69

http://tinyurl.com/3bch8v

UniversidadSL
El próximo lunes, 18 de junio, a las 12 del mediodía, tendrá lugar el acto de inauguración de la UniversidadSL La Universidad SL será la primera universidad de Hispanoamérica que impartirá clases en el mundo virtual Second Life. Patrocinada por la Universidad Pública de Navarra en colaboración con la empresa Metafuturing.com, la Universidad SL es el proyecto fin de carrera de la estudiante de Ingeniería de Telecomunicación Elisa García Anzano, que ha sido dirigido por David Benito, director del Centro Superior de Innovación Educativa de la UPNA. Los principales objetivos de la Universidad SL son fomentar la utilización de mundos virtuales en la comunidad universitaria española y explorar las múltiples posibilidades que ofrecen.

El Pais: La Upna, primera universidad virtual hispanoamericana: "Giulio Prisco, director de Metafuturing, empresa que trabaja en proyectos de mundos virtuales, impartirá una conferencia sobre realidad virtual en la inauguración de la Upna".

Thursday, June 14, 2007

Professors add life to courses through Second Life

by Milosun Czervik

Article from the DesMoines Register. Quote from the article,

"William Callahan, dean of the University of Northern Iowa College of Education, said Second Life is like a "quantum leap" from what professors in Iowa were starting to do a year and a half ago, uploading lectures online for students to download and listen to on their iPods."

http://tinyurl.com/2qcxjn

2007 OLN Teaching and Learning Expo in Second Life

by Chang Liu (posted to list on 6/14)


Friday 10:30 - 3:00pm Eastern Time

The 2007 Ohio Learning Network Teaching and Learning Expo ( http://www.oln.org/LCI/lci_expo2007.php ) (6/15/2007) will have a presence in Second Life.

If you can't visit the real-world OLN Expo in Newark, Ohio, please feel free to stop by the virtual OLN Expo on the Ohio University Second Life Campus. For more information, visit http://vital.cs.ohiou.edu/index.php/2007_OLN_Expo .

More Handy tutorials for newbies

by Stan Trevena

http://pacificrimx.wordpress.com/learning

There are lots of links and resources on this page. I try to keep it up to date with new stuff. Just added a bunch about a month ago. Just another resource for SL'ers.

Brian Eno’s 77 Million Paintings in SL on Kula

by Jeremy Hunsinger

as seen on dan winkler's blog
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/WritingMyNameInWater/~3/124843017/

Brian Eno's 77 Million Paintings is a generative visual artwork, composed of many overlaid images forming a "slow-changing light painting." You can see a lesser demo version on the official site. On June 29th, 77 Mil will open in Second Life and real life simultaneously, to be seen via streaming video and in-world through a recreated version of the work by Angrybeth Shortbread.

Eno was moved by a desire to get his visual installation work out of the gallery, where few can see it, to a larger audience. (As someone who's studied his work, I would suspect that his thought process went something like: Hmm…people have great big gorgeous HD monitors and TVs now…maybe I should dust off the old screensaver idea…) Head to blueair.tv and longnow.org for SL coordinates and more info. Here's the press release:

The Long Now Foundation, a San Francisco non profit dedicated to fostering long-term responsibility, is pleased to announce the Second Life premiere of Brian Eno's 77 Million Paintings, in partnership with metaverse services company blueair.tv.

The work will be both streamed via video at select locations inside Second Life, while a rendition of 77 Million Paintings has been created by blueair.tv creative partner Annabeth Robinson, known virtually as AngryBeth Shortbread.

Two evenings, June 29th and 30th, are open to the general public at multiple venues across Second Life, with the largest public area provided by Joi Ito (Kula Sims). The final night, July 1st, is a private event that will be held in appreciation for Long Now members worldwide (members.longnow.org) and hosted on the Leeds College of Art and Design's Digital Media Sim. Members of The Long Now Foundation staff and board will also be visiting the Second Life sims
throughout the weekend and during the member event on Sunday evening.

The North American premiere will be hosted by The Long Now Foundation at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. Mr. Eno hopes to be in San Francisco for the event.

Questions regarding the Second Life opening, sponsorship of the event, Second Life-based artwork and blueair.tv itself should be directed to Bryan Campen at 312.799.1329 or via email at blueair.tvATgmail.com. Any questions or requests for interviews regarding the artist, installation and membership to The Long Now Foundation should be directed to Danielle Engelman at 415.561.6582 or via email at danielle -AT- longnow -DOT- org.

TeamWork Tester Tests

by Alex Heiphetz

I need your help, and in the process you can get something you need for SL classes.

To make long things short:

We just completed major modifications to the Teamwork Tester ( http://www.ahg.com/Second_Life/training_simulations/teamwork_tester_1.htm)
This is a tool that allows you to assess performance of a team and individual members, train members of the team to work together, find the optimal composition of the team, assess individual characteristics of the team members, such as: speed, effectiveness, participation in the task, ability to finish assigned part of the work, helping others if needed, etc.

The only problem now is extensive testing to clean out every single quirck both in functionality and usability.

Now, I can't pay you for the effort, however, I can share our movie/slideshow screens or furniture we (let me say successfully) sell for L$300-500. So, any team of three people that complets Teamwork Tester puzzle will get a choice of medium-size screen or classroom furrniture set, or three chairs. Any team of four will get a choice of Large screen or note-taker/note-distributor set, team of five will get their choice of two items in the store (Do I sound like a fast-talking salesman yet? :-)

Oh, and btw you will get a pretty good assesment on your team and your personal leadership and teamwork qualities.

Location of the test: Education Island
( http://slurl.com/secondlife/Education%20Island )
- just about 30 meters from the teleport hub.

Journal of Electronic Commerce Research: Special Issue on Virtual Worlds

by Marc Fetscherin

JOURNAL OF ELECTRONIC COMMERCE RESEARCH:
SPECIAL ISSUE ON VIRTUAL WORLDS

CALL FOR PAPERS
Special Issue on Virtual Worlds
Submissions due: November 1, 2007
Scheduled Publication date: August 2008

Overview:
The emergence of virtual worlds and Web 3.D change the way of
doing business. Web 3.D is the synonym for Internet-based virtual
worlds, where people can create own 3-D *virtual*
personalities. Virtual Worlds such as Second Life and others are
undergoing an evolution similar to that of the Internet in the
mid nineties and might impact profoundly the way people
cooperate, communicate, collaborate, and conduct business. The
recent entering of companies such as Toyota, American Apparel,
Nissan, or Adidas indicate the upcoming role of this platform for
the next generation of conducting electronic business. This call
for papers is intended to cover a wide range of business and
research topics that fall within the broad description of
activities, challenges, opportunities, applications, innovations
and implications associated with Virtual Worlds as the emerging
new online business landscape.

Purpose of the Special Issue:
The purpose of this special issue is to encourage discussion and
communication of important research issues that underpin Virtual
Worlds as an important aspect of e-commerce and to showcase
interesting and significant research work in this critical area.
Specifically this issues is focusing on business and legal issues
of doing business in Virtual Worlds. Of particular relevance to
the described focus are papers about business models, marketing,
promotion, pricing, customer integration, consumer behavior,
legal, cultural and cross-cultural research. The issue, however,
will not be restricted to these topics; rather, it welcomes
reports of theoretical or empirical research that examines
pertinent business issues related to Virtual Worlds e-commerce.
This special issue will be of interest to researchers,
governments, small and large businesses, marketing and PR
companies among others.

List of possible topics are:
* Product Development and Testing in Virtual Worlds
* Image, Branding, Advertising in Virtual Worlds
* Marketing in Virtual World
* Avatar-based Marketing
* Promotion of Virtual Goods in Virtual Worlds
* Pricing of Virtual Goods in Virtual Worlds
* Selling, Cross-Selling Real and Virtual Worlds
* Business Planning for Non-profits in Virtual Worlds
* Fundraising and Virtual Worlds
* Convergence of Real and Virtual Worlds
* Customer Integration and Virtual Worlds
* Technology, Business, Strategy in Virtual Worlds
* Financial Systems, Investments, Currency Exchange Real
and Virtual Worlds
* Emerging Media Presence in Virtual Worlds
* Consumer Behavior, Consumer Acceptance and Virtual
Worlds
* Trust, Cross-Cultural Studies and Virtual Worlds
* Intellectual Property, Copyright, Trademarks and Virtual
Worlds

Submission of Manustcript:
JECR publishes original empirical research, theoretical and
methodological articles, evaluative and integrative reviews,
field research, business surveys, and application papers of
interest to a general readership. A submission based on a paper
appearing elsewhere (such as conference proceedings or
newsletters) must have major value-added extensions to the
earlier version. For conference papers, it should have at least
30% new material. The submitted manuscripts should follow the
format as suggested in the Submission Guideline found in the
journal website: http://www.csulb.edu/journals/jecr/s_guide.htm.
Of particular note is that the manuscript should be prepared in
Microsoft Word format. The names, affiliations, and contact
information (i.e., phone, fax, email addresses) of all authors
should be provided only on the cover page. The submitted paper
will undergo a double-blind review. Contributing authors may be
asked to serve as reviewers for the special issue. Authors may
submit completed manuscripts electronically at any time prior to
November 1st 2007 deadline.

Manuscripts and questions send to
mfetscherin - at - rollins -dot- edu

Handy tutorials for newbies

by Jenny Delasalle

If you're looking for information on how to get on in Second Life, do a search on YouTube as there are some quick and informative clips in there that can help you to get started in Second Life:

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=second+life+learning&search=Search

Invitation to Virtual World Event on Philanthropy

by Barry Joseph
Invitation to Virtual World Event on Philanthropy

Save the date (22 June, 9am PST) for an historic conversation on the role of philanthropy in virtual worlds featuring MacArthur Foundation President Jonathan Fanton and Second Life CEO Philip Rosedale.

I write to invite you to join me in the virtual world of Second Life on Friday, June 22, 2007 at 9am PST (noon EST). With my avatar and a live audio feed, I will be joined by Second Life CEO Philip Rosedale and residents for a discussion on the role of philanthropy in virtual worlds.

The MacArthur Foundation is a private, independent grantmaking institution dedicated to helping groups and individuals foster lasting improvement in the human condition. We support organizations working on human rights and international justice, conservation and sustainable development, housing, juvenile justice, and independent media. Last year, we launched a $50 million initiative to help determine how digital technologies are changing the way young people learn, play, socialize, and participate in civic life. Answers are critical to developing educational and other social institutions that can meet the needs of this and future generations.

Recently, we have been introduced to virtual worlds such as Second Life and
There.com. I believe that the importance of virtual worlds may be less about their growth as economies, and more about their capacity for collaboration and human development. Activities in virtual worlds already are supported by MacArthur and other foundations, but we have much to discover about the right role for philanthropy itself in virtual worlds.

We are interested in learning about virtual worlds and how to operate within them. We look to the residents to help us determine how to be helpful and are eager to share our on-going work in such areas as affordable housing, urban renewal, and human rights and international justice.

Please join me on June 22nd, when, for the first time, my avatar will step into the virtual world to host a discussion with Philip Rosedale exploring the potential of these new platforms for philanthropic activity. It should be a wide-ranging and thought-provoking conversation, and I hope you can attend and participate.

As further details emerge they will be posted on the event information page:

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

SL Article from Japan Journal

by Stan Trevena

An article was recently published in the Japan Journal on Second Life. It includes parts of an interview that we did on the Pacific Rim Exchange project (with my partner in Japan, Chris Flesuras). Here's the English version of the article:

http://tinyurl.com/32ke56

Another article from this interview is scheduled to be published next week in the Japan Times. I'll pass a link on when I get it.

Here's a blog entry about the interview back in March:

http://tinyurl.com/2xyjyr

And now for the cool part of this post, the Kyoto students finally have tweaked out the avatars enough to take a class picture on the island. Here's a full sized image of that screenshot.

http://tinyurl.com/39omcc

They are getting pretty creative in with their avatars, especially that short one up front with the force field around him. He must have some personal space issues.

A tool for organizing group conversations

by Barry Joseph

The GK lighbulb and server.

The GK Light Bulb System is a great tool for moderating discussion in Second Life, initially created for the Global Kids Camp 2006 project. You can easily see who's waiting for their turn to speak when the light bulb attachment above their head is turned on. The GK Light Bulb System Discussion Server (just one prim!) displays the chat queue, so everyone can see whose turn is next. With one click, it offers administrators a dialog box with buttons for removing specific names -- or all names -- from the speakers list. And it just takes a click for a wearer to turn off their own GK Light Bulb, if they change their mind and decide they don't want to speak. Adding administrators to the system is as simple as editing a notecard.

GK Light Bulbs are distributed with both copy and transfer permissions, so you'll never run short of them, and the Discussion Server is transferrable, so you can give it to someone else in your organization to use or lend it to a friend. But, at only L$ 1000, it's affordable enough to buy more than one. Brought to you by The Magicians and Global Kids, the GK Light Bulb System is a fun way to manage group discussions AND engage participants.

Be the first on your sim and get one today!
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Teaching/207/147/22

Blackboard/Second Life Developers Meet-up in Boston

by Theodore Ubhaus

Boston Second Life Meetup Group will be hosting
Drinks and Chat with Blackboard/Second Life Developers at Vox!

Since the Blackboard Developers' Conference has day sessions on July 12th and July 13th, the Second Life meet-up is scheduled conveniently after the first day's sessions on Thursday, July 12, 2007 at 6:00 PM at the Vox. The Vox is just a few minutes walk from the Sheraton Hotel in Boston.

Pathfinder Linden has said that he definitely plans to attend. He is likely also to speak at the Boston SL Meetup event.

Consquentially, for those who are attending the Blackboard Developers' Conference, Second Life will be discussed during one of the sessions on July 13th.

For those who develop using the Blackboard learning system, and many others, the Boston SL Meetup shall be quite an event indeed. E-learning has been expanding into and as a virtual learning environment.

You may find out more details and RSVP for the 7/12/07 Boston SL Meetup at http://secondlife.meetup.com/10/

Study: User Acceptance of Virtual Worlds: An Explorative Study about Second Life

by Marc Fetscherin

Study: User Acceptance of Virtual Worlds: An Explorative Study about Second Life

Our report assesses the user acceptance of Virtual Worlds, specifically Second Life. By means of a survey with almost 250 respondents this report provides first empirical results of the user acceptance of Second Life. The data has been gathered during spring 2007. Our results show that 90% of respondents have less than a year experience, 70% access Second Life from home and 54% with a desktop. There are 67% of respondents who are not afraid of giving personal information. Almost 60% are very likely to buy virtual goods from Second Life, and 42% are willing to use their credit card to purchase on Second Life. About 70% perceive Second Life improves collaboration and communication, and more than 60% perceive that it improves cooperation between people. 56% of respondents perceive Second life as easy to use. Finally, our results indicate that people are using Second Life not to change their identity, but rather to explore and visit new places and meet people.

If users accept Virtual Worlds as a new way and channel to communicate, collaborate, and cooperation and if institutions arrive to provide value to users, Virtual Worlds might become then next generation platform for Internet users. However, in order to become mainstream, Virtual Worlds like Second Life have many challenges to overcome and where user acceptance is probably the most important one.

Get the report on http://secondliferesearch.blogspot.com/2007/06/study-about-user-acceptance-of-virtual.html

236 Free Open Courseware Collections, Podcasts, and Videos

by Jimmy Atkinson

Just dropping a line to see if you and your readers at Drexel CoAS talks mp3 podcast might want to have a look at the newest article here at OEDb: "Take Any College Class for Free: 236 Open Courseware Collections, Podcasts, and Videos" -- http://oedb.org/library/features/236-open-courseware-collections . Let me know what you think if you have a moment.

Action Learning

by Lindy McKeown

My entire island of Terra incognita is an online 3D environment based on Reg Revans style Action Learning. I also worked before Second Life with a colleague in a US university setting up Action Learning in his ActiveWorlds implementation.
.
Come visit my Action Learning island at SLURL
.
It is the basis for my PhD research into the social and technical affordances of 3D worlds for online Action Learning. This project is supported by a Queensland Government (Australian state) Smart State PhD research grant as at least 8 government departments here use Action Learning in a face-to-face mode.
.
Just starting this week a 12 week Action Learning program called "Teaching in Second Life" with a group of 32 new recruits.
.
Just finished a program that ran form February to the end of May with a celebration on the weekend of the projects of the 12 participants. This was a point-in-time snapshot of the exciting range of workplace or professional life projects developed (and continuing) by participants including:
.
  • A series of workshops about Second Life leading to online events on topics of interest for a teacher professional association.
  • The establishment of a state-wide consortium to purchase SL islands for schools to use.
  • A series of SL tours as awareness raising for school district personnel that led to the use of SL as an online meeting space (amongst other things).
  • The building of an interactive narrative from a book in SL, MUD and MOO to compare the environments as learning spaces.
  • The establishment of national forums (in Australia) about the implementation of Second Life by the Education Network of Australia (EdNA)
  • A comparative analysis of Virtual Worlds for K-12 education for a state education department.
  • The mapping of the nOOb non-gamer experience in SL with a view to the developmnent of support resources.

Please make contact by IM in SL (Decka Mah) if you would like more information.

Moodle's glossary connects with SL

by Jeremy Kemp

I have a very simple Sloodle tool to sample for you. It listens for a request like "/def grid", queries a Moodle glossary and chats the definition. The cool thing is that you can edit terms on the web.

See two glossaries here:
http://www.sloodle.com/course/view.php?id=9

Second Life terms here:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/sjsu%20slis/142/216
Examples: grid, griefer, dwell, afk (57 and counting)

Foreign Language terms here:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/sjsu%20slis/107/213
Example: Ni Hao

I'm especially keen to see if anyone can use this glossary for use in S.T.E.M. or language learning. And will Japanese/Chinese/Arabic work?

You could conceivably build out a pathway like Orientation Island with the chatting glossary to interact with.

FYI: This is just proof of concept stuff and not released.

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Information for Brand New SLEDders

by Ed Lamoreux

Archive of Educational Possibilities Webinar

by Pietro Maracas

We had a great turn-out for our webinar on Second Life: The Educational Possibilities of a Massively Multiplayer Virtual World, about 150 people attended. Also, thanks to the people who helped answer questions in the chat.

You can view the archived webinar at
http://sas.elluminate.com/site/external/event/description?instance_id=7498.

Links to info on Second Life at Games For Change

by Barry Joseph

We're all tired. More later. But Second Life was all over two panels today, both main and teen grid.
Check it out:
Thanks to Beth and Rik for their tireless blogging.

Monday, June 11, 2007

Accessibility Help

FWD by Ed Lamoureux
Libraries on the MUVE: HealthInfo Island to Provide Accessibility Resource Center in Second Life Alliance Library System(ALS) and iViNNiE.com are pleased to announce new services tobe offered on HealthInfo Island in the 3d virtual world of Second Life. Alliance received a grant from the National Library of Medicine Greater Midwest Region to build upon the consumer health outreach currentlydone on HealthInfo Island. HealthInfo Island is part of the Alliance Info Archipelago, a group of islands collaborating to provide library and educational services. Through this project, ALS will offer exhibits, programs, and awareness about accessibility and assistive technology and about virtual world ac

Documentary about Activism in SL

by Joshua Levy

I just finished up a short documentary about activism in Second Life , called A Better World in Second Life. The film looks at the ways a handful of activists are using SL to promote awareness for Darfur, organize groups, protest the war in Iraq, and more. I learned a lot about the positives and negatives of using SL to promote social change. While I didn't directly address using SL for education, I think a lot of the lessons learned apply to it as well.

You can watch it here: www.levjoy.com/betterworld

I'm interested in showing it publicly and in SL, and welcome ideas and suggestions.

A new collaborative project

by Barry Spencer

I have decided to expand the scope of material at my place, which at the moment include presentations, personalised learning and social activites to include an opportunity for collaboration.


In keeping with the general computing theme, I have setup a museum of computing. The content takes the form of learning objects; and while on the subject of learning objects, thanks to all those who fed back to me on the Eniac resource, very much appreciated. In the museum, some of the objects are populated with content, though most are not, and that's where the opportunity for collaboration comes in.


The actual facility itself is in the form of a Skybox, 300m above Shimmer Island. There are two levels, on the lower you will find a collection of computers from the 70s, 80s and 90s and as you will see at the moment, the only one with content is the Sinclair ZX80, all others are waiting for contributions. The actual machines featured have either been constructed by myself or obtained from within SL. On the second level you will find some fully populated resources that include Eniac, the Altair and the TRS80.


The museum can be accessed from a teleport on the ground floor of the Beach house. If you would like to contribute to the existing resources or create some new ones just drop me an IM, otherwise you may just like to come for a browse and chat about computing things, while enjoying the uninterupted views of perfect sunsets and sunrises from almost a 1000ft above the virtual sea level of Second life.


IM Skipper Abel for more information.

Sunday, June 10, 2007

NMC Sessions Posted

by Alan Levine

Hastily done as I am on my way to 9 days off the grids, we have posted audio from the recent sessions at the NMC summer conference where we captured audio and other content.

Late Night Chat form NMC

Pleasure, Play, Participation, and Promise - Anya Ixchel At NMC

Leveraging the Affordances, Minimizing the Barriers of Virtual Worlds (panel discussion)

A View from the Trenches: Are you a Pioneer or a Settler? (Cynthia Calongne)

Accessibility in the 3-D Environment: Virtual Worlds and People with Disabilities

by Bruce Sommerville

The above event has been added to the "SLEDevents in SL" public Google calendar, which may be viewed in your web browser at:

This site shows the event times in SL time.

Google subscribers who add the SLEDevents in SL calendar to their calendar list will see the event times converted automatically to their own local time zone.

Face book group created: Second Life for Educators

by Fire Centaur

I just created a second life for educators group on the Social networking site called Facebook.

IF you would like to join, upload sl pictures and network with other educators follow this link:

Second Life for Educators:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2370947641

Star News runs story about SL Ed

by Sarah Robbins

http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070610/COLUMNISTS23/706100318

Invitation to U.S. Department of State and University of Southern California Second Life Event

The U.S. Department of State Bureau of International Information Programs (IIP), in cooperation with the University of Southern California (USC) Annenberg School for Communication, cordially invite members of Second Life Educators (SLED) to the second IIP-USC Speaker Program: "Accessibility in the 3-D Environment: Virtual Worlds and People with Disabilities"

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

11:00 SLT (PDT)

USC Public Diplomacy Island

Teleport: 203, 64, 29


Our guest speakers for the event are

Judy Brewer
Bruce Bailey


IIP is exploring the possibilities present in 3-D virtual world platforms, such as Second Life, for showcasing and hosting Public Diplomacy events, products and services. This session will focus on potential accessibility issues for people with disabilities in virtual environments, and resources and approaches for ensuring a barrier-free virtual experience.

The State Department Bureau of International Information Programs engages international audiences on issues of foreign policy, society and values to create an environment that can be receptive to U.S. national interests. IIP communicates with foreign opinion makers and other publics through a wide range of print and electronic outreach materials published in seven world languages. IIP also provides information outreach support to U.S. embassies and consulates in more than 140 countries worldwide. For more information visit our websites www.usinfo.gov and www.state.gov.

Friday, June 8, 2007

From NMC 2007: Please, Play, Participation, Promise

by Alan Levine

Angela Thomas aka Anya Ixchel provided a stellar presentation today at the 2007 NMC Summer Conference- thanks to those who showed up in world to catch the show via (somewhat) streaming audio. Here slides are available on slideshare, and we have just posted our audio recording of the session:

Apologies for any confusion over the location and some issues we had with some hiccups in the audio.

We also had a great evening discussion from here beamed to an audience who gathered on NMC Campus. Tomorrow, Cynthia Calogne presents "View from the SL Trenches: Are you a Pioneer or a Settler), again from NMC Campus at Research Park (39,18,45) http://slurl.com/secondlife/Research%20Park/39/18/45

-- again with slides and video available within SL. We hope the audio behaves, but just in case, we will eventually post an audio link from the NMC Campus Observer ( http://sl.nmc.org/).

Thursday, June 7, 2007

New Media Consortium (NMC) joins Immersive Education initiative to advance virtual learning

by Aaron Walsh

This was released on the Media Grid earlier today at the same time that Larry Johnson made the announcement at the NMC Summer Conference. The full (HTML & PDF format) release is available at both

http://MediaGrid.org/index.html#NEWS and http://ImmersiveEducation.org

Virtual worlds, real learning, revisited

by Art Fossett

Virtual worlds, real learning, revisited

Tuesday 19th June 2007, 16.00 - 17.30pm (UK time)

Virtual Congress Centre, Eduserv Island

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Eduserv%20Island/154/31/30

Following on from our recent and successful Eduserv Foundation Symposium 2007, "Virtual worlds, real learning?" we are very pleased to announce an in-world discussion session with the speakers from the symposium. This session will be an opportunity to ask questions of the symposium speakers and to discuss the current state of Second Life more generally, with a particular emphasis on how Second Life can and should be used in practice to deliver and support learning and research.

The panel session will take an open, free format, approach although we will chair the meeting to try and ensure that only one person is speaking at a time. There will be no presentations as such, though you are strongly encouraged to view the symposium presentations before the event to help inform the discussion - they are all available in the viewing booths alongside the Virtual Congress Centre on Eduserv Island.

Registration is not required but attendance on the day will be limited to about 40 avatars. Bring your questions, thoughts and comments with you. We look forward to seeing you in-world.

Further information about the symposium (including the presentations and streaming) is available from our Web site:

http://www.eduserv.org.uk/foundation/symposium/2007

RL in SL (opinion by Barbara Payne)

by Barbara Payne

Editor's note: The topic of identity has heated up (again) on the listserv, provoking many thoughtful responses. I do not agree with them all, but I wanted to try to post a couple different perspectives to give a feel for the conversation. - Ross/Milo

I've been following this discussion about providing real life information in SL. While I have some of the normal concerns about security and privacy, we must also tackle the problem of credibility. If we are working with educational objects/sims, we need to provide some reassurance to users that we have the credentials to back up what we are doing.

A cornerstone of information literacy, is "who" is behind this information on a webpage or in a virtual simulation. Is it biased, accurate, etc..?

I frankly don't see how we can totally protect privacy in Second Life and still provide the credibility necessary to give users sufficient confidence to trust what we are providing in the virtual environment.

I don't want to watch an inworld presentation on a screen, take notes and then find out it was a project created by an undergraduate student who's plagiarized the content and only had 4 weeks of training in that field/course--whatever it is. I want to know WHO the author is of content, simulations, activities, and anything else in SL. Is the purpose of this activity completely commercial? Is it intended for undergraduates? graduates? Was it created by someone with vast experience? no experience? Who's going to police educational objects and activities for accuracy? How will a user make a judgment about the quality of a sim?

Credibility wins over privacy and security regrading educational activities and objects in Second Life-- especially as long as this is open for anyone without any scholarly evaluation measures.

Are there any immersionists here? (opinion by Jonathon Richter)

by Jonathon Richter

Editor's note: Another thoughtful response I wanted to share on the blog. - Ross (Milo)

Identity and projection; Disclosure and protection. The "purpose" of Second Life and the repurposing of identity for the sake of Learning Objectives. oh yeah!

The flexibility of this environment is one of it's greatest assets and, paradoxically, one of its great challenges. Like any paradox, we cannot draw a straight line of cause - effect to define and articulate it - but can, at best, surround it with examples and descriptions. This is a truth that emerges out of context, like Nola says.

I think there are many variables that people distinguish amongst in order to make their choice about whether their Real Life name and identity be used.

I venture that some folks, in order to propel their imaginations into the 3D Virtual World, need to hide their true identity to effectively capitalize on their chosen "task" (to take on a role). Hiding their true identity helps them stay in character and keeps, as Jerry Seinfeld calls it "worlds from colliding". A friend of mine plays ArthurConan Doyle inworld... he IS Sir Arthur. He's in a Caledon-like sim called "New Babbage" and he has derived much great educational and personal valence from playing this part to the hilt. He doesn't like to share his RL name and that's cool. He has taken on a role that requires him (by his own devising) to keep RL and SL separate. His role in SL is different than mine - a proselytizer and advocate for education in virtual worlds. I didn't let folks know my real name for some time but, like Ross/Milosun, found it better in sum than not to after consideration.

I think it depends on the nature of the (a) learner/user; (b) the nature of the environment, sim, or build ; and (c) the nature of the task -- each of these have variable dimensions within them that necessitate various levels of need for projection or "immersiveness" into SL:

I see here indicated two dimensions of the quality or degree to which the designers/teachers of Immersive 3D Worlds intend students/users to invest in developing an ecological understanding (how complex, fibrous and interconnected the build is, relative to what they need to do and learn) and the relative alignment to which students/users themselves project their own sense of self into that world.

Dimension = Activity Immersiveness Requirement

Roleplay and historical inquiry activities undoubtedly require a "deep" investment on the parts of designer/teacher/student. I think everyone in the GaLiSL group is interested in this "Immersionist" type of learning.
Going inworld and participating in a dance or primtionary game requires some investment, but not as much contextual, contingent interaction and knowledge as roleplay or historical inquiry (for example). Here there's a "shallow" investment on the designer and teacher and a "medium" level of investment on the part of the student/participant is required - no?
Attending a presentation or wandering through things that are already there (art shows, watching movies, etc.) "inworld" requires a "shallow" investment, relatively speaking.

The degree of Immersiveness is dependent on the purpose, as illustrated above, and also on the relative capacity of the participant to project their sense of self into the 3D environment and the task, itself:

Dimension = Participant Immersiveness Capacity



The degree to which participants in 3D Virtual Environments pick up the contextual cues and immerse themselves in the 3D world such that they understand and appropriately develop the degree of cognitive complexity and contingency required to learn what the teacher / designer intends.

Participants can "under immerse": not go deep enough into character, leave one foot in Real Life (talk about things inappropriately (Nintendo DS in Caledon!), be disconnected with the imaginative projection required (and thus, not engaged).

Participants can "over immerse": pushing the environment to be more than what the designer or teacher intended ("no, we are not actually IN a movie here, little Johnny")

Participants can (hopefully) align their degree of immersiveness JUST RIGHT for the task and environment.
I would think that this is an aspect of research that has already received some attention.

What I wonder - is whether it would be useful for people to understand how teaching and learning in SL works (best practices) - if they could see different SLED Projects placed on this first scale (Activity Immersiveness Requirement)?

We may then be better prepared to have a conversation about what the features of these various SLED Projects have that engaged students appropriately in some situations, but not others (scale two: Participant Immersiveness Capacity).

... as a result of this discussion, I would like to include "Activity Immersiveness Requirement" as a scale in the SaLamander Project ratings for learning objects in Second Life.

Would this be useful?

RL in SL (opinion by Owen Kelly)

by Owen Kelly

Editor's note: Two thoughtful posts by our Finnish colleague, Owen.

JUNE 7
I followed the RL in SL thread with mounting interest, because it beganto occur to me that almost everyone who answered appeared to beinterested in using SL as a way of augmenting their current RL teachingpractices. "Why can't we just be ourselves? People should be chargedextra for using it as a fantasy world! And so on"

This approach seems to me to see SL as a better version of WebCT orWhiteboard: a neater, trendier way to capture students' interests. Hence the need, in a recent thread, to ask how people justify using SL: a very pertinent question since IMHO SL has very dubious added value for this approach.

I would make an analogy with the introduction of television into schoolsas an "educational medium". There was a period when people thought thatyoung people were interested in television and therefore it should beintroduced into the classroom. So the educational policy makerspersuaded the BBC and others to create sensible "educational TV" that students were unaccountably uninterested in. Other people immersedthemselves in the medium and realised that you could learn/teach a lotby taking it as it already was, even by asking about what HuckleberryHound could show us about perception, and so on.

Are we (at Arcada in Helsinki, Finland) the only people here who aretrying to develop immersive educational uses for SL - trying to use itto develop teaching approaches that WebCT is simply not made to do orunable to do?

I ask because if other people are pursuing immersive pedagogical goals here then I would very much like to swap information (here or offlist,or a mixture of both).

We have been engaged in a long term attempt to create a coherent virtual culture, and Caledon (which someone mentioned in the RL -> SL thread) might well be an example of the kind of thing we have been talking about.

It is a conceptual space with an internal consistency that renders some behaviours appropriate, and rewards such behaviour by increased immersion.

To parallel a question posed in the previous thread: does anyone here know who Ordinal Malaprop is in "real life"? I suspect not, because she too is an immersionist. Her contributions to SL, which are many, do not derive their authority from her RL credentials, and I see no reason why they should. To wonder what she has to hide is just plain silly. She has found a way of playing creatively that does not get intertwined with her personal and professional issues, and she has used this opportunity well. Her abilities speak for themselves. How would I benefit by knowing whether she was a kindergarden teacher, a chemistry researcher or a professional wrestler?

Another example of this approach would be Edward Castrovalva's Shakespeare World, where people will be required to *be* characters in aworld that lives by natural laws derived from Shakespeare's world view.

This kind of approach seems to me to offer astounding opportunities to explore potential new pedagogical areas well beyond traditional classroom role playing. From this perspective Linden Labs have not got it backwards at all.

I could be wrong, but I feel that it is important to find out and I don't see how I can do that by using SL "sensibly".

JUNE 6

...I don't think giving out personal information is a question of being rude or not being rude; nor do I think it is a question of being safe or not being safe. It is a question of whether you are an immersionist or an augmenter.

When we joined in 2005 SL was primarily an immersivist environment. People entered the "world" and adopted a persona of some kind that might or might not have a direct correlation to their everyday real personality. People built up friendships in the world with the characters they found there, on the basis of how they felt about them. Some people (for whatever reason) adopted furry personae, and whether they were treated well or treated badly they were treated like furries. Nobody was interested in who or what they "really" were.

In this way people became well-known in SL for the things they brought to the party: building or scripting skills; a willingness to host parties every night; the size of their personal networks, and so on.

This approach (which we have tended to continue with) means that students adopt personae and work with other students in SL without knowing who (in real life) they are working with. They may also pick up strangers who help them, without knowing who they "really" are. I have a student at the moment - Kittie Ellison - who has been taught a lot of scripting and advanced building skills by someone whose real world identity is unknown to her or to me. She is now using them in her coursework, without having talked to her benefactor about being a student or needing to do course work.

In this approach (which was I believe how SL started) people agree to immerse themselves in a collective fantasy by playing pretend charactersin a communally created ongoing narrative.

More and more though SL is moving towards an augmental approach, where SL is used as a tool by real life people to augment their real life activities, by providing another communications channel. I describe this as Skype-with-puppets, and I suspect that the introduction of voice, and the new id requirements, will rapidly increase the number of people joining SL to use it in this way. For these people their SL name is merely a "handle" of the sort that have existed for years on bulletin boards and in discussion forums.

Handles (like angryBOY or cakelover) are not supposed to be identities. They are shortcuts that might tangentially say something allegedly amusing about the people adopting them. They are transient conveniences, and can be dropped or changed at any time. Unlike the immersionist approach these handles do not gain a personal history and a personal status.

I met my first full-strength augmenter in SL last week. He said, "Hi I am [some name]. I used to be [different name] but that account doesn't work any more". For him apparently, "he" (the real life he) was in SL, and the name he used was just a handle. He was, of course, not just happy but positively eager to tell me what the weather was like on the East Coast just then. This is in stark contrast to many older residents for whom their character had a separate (albeit parallel) existence, and was not at all interested in the weather in New York, but focused entirely on the world inside Second Life.

When I first joined I was told that giving out personal information spoiled the fantasy, and should be avoided for that reason. That is only of any importance, though, if there is a reason to think that the fantasy itself is important. Personally I do think that there are very interesting pedagogical avenues to explore in an immersionist world, but this approach may not suit many people; and may not even be possible in many institutions. It may not even be possible in Second Life much longer, and we have begun to think of ways of modifying our approach in the light of the changes in the SL environment.

Wednesday, June 6, 2007

SL Real Estate Educators Meeting

by Corey Leong

Held our first SL Real Estate Educator's Group meeting last nite (5 JUNE).

Some of the future topics/ideas to be discussed will be:

Developing Case Studies
Land Rentals
Land Management
Field Trips
SL Economics
Instructional Methodologies
SL Educational Tools

Meetings are biweekly and the next meeting is June 19th at 6pm slt.

Flickr photos have been posted: http://flickr.com/photos/openmls

If interested please join the Real Estate Educators Group in SL and bring a friend to our next meeting!

School and University Web Pages for SL

by Karen Brooks

I am compiling a list of all schools K-12 and colleges and Universities that have SL webpages for their students as an information page, as well as any SL policies, such as Acceptable Use Policy, they might have made and list on the webpage. If your school has a web page with any SL information, links or policies, I would greatly appreciate if you could please share and post the link on here for review.

http://www.puritansguidetosecondlife.blogspot.com

Flickr photos of IBM's Education and Learning session in SL

by Corey Leong

Earlier today, I attended the Education & Learning session delivered by IBM in SL. It was a private session for IBM Partnerworld businesses and offered a speed dating type session for business partners to partner with services and products in RL.

Here are snapshots I took during the session:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/openmls/

Tuesday, June 5, 2007

Top 10 List Why (another take)

by Jeremy Kemp

Here is a starter list:

  • Increases student engagement
  • Allows rapid prototyping of learning objects
  • Offers a flexible narrative
  • Gives exposure with public relations and marketing
  • Replaces place-based schooling with place-like settings
  • Positions your school for next-generation media use
  • Suits the needs of autism-spectrum learners
  • Connects you with a vibrant community of educators already involved
  • Provides a setting for experiential learning
  • Helps teams gain skills with life-like activities

I started a wiki page if anyone wants to add/edit:
http://simteach.com/wiki/index.php?title=Why_Second_Life

Jeremy Kemp, M.Ed., M.S.J.
Assistant Director, SL Campus
School of Library & Information Science
San Jose State University

Serious Virtual Worlds '07 (Coventry, UK)

by Dick Davies

Serious Virtual Worlds '07 : First European Conference on the Professional Applications of Virtual Worlds.
13 – 14 September 2007 @ The Serious Games Institute, Coventry, UK
The Serious Games Institute and Ambient Performance announce the first Serious Virtual Worlds conference.

The Programme

The extraordinary success of virtual worlds such as 'Second Life' as virtual social spaces for play leads to the question 'What is the potential for the serious uses of these worlds?' The theme for this first Serious Virtual Worlds conference is 'The Reality of the Virtual World' and takes a close look at how virtual worlds are now being used for serious professional purposes. Many organisations are now actively researching and deploying virtual worlds. Serious Virtual Worlds is your introduction to the serious uses of virtual worlds.

Who should attend?

Professionals with interests in using technology for communication and collaboration, for education and training, scenario planning and for commercial activities, from corporates, the Media, multimedia development organisations, public sector organisations, consultancies, technology solution providers, researchers….

The Conference

Day 1 – Introducing Virtual Worlds: presentations and conversations introducing virtual worlds and the 3D web from Cisco, HP, Forterra, Giunti, Daden, Ambient, Visual 3D, Anticyp,..closing with the launch of the Serious Games Institute's 'Second Life' Island

Day 2 - Serious Virtual Worlds: Action & Potential: live virtual world presentations and conversations from PA Consulting, IBM, Reuters, BP, Trusim, Forterra.

Archiving chat sessions in SL

by Ross Perkins

My response to a question posted on the Second Life Researcher's Listserv:

Does anyone know if there is a way to archive chat sessions from SL? Also, are there any types of tracking methods in SL that can be used to gather data for research?

One easy way to do [collect chat transcripts] (if you are in the conversation) is bring up the chat history (CTRL+H), then hit select all (CTRL+A) and then copy (CTRL+C) and paste (CTRL+P) to a document. However... the bad part about this is that all conversation - even whispers - get recorded. The other issue is that EVERYONE who talks must give consent to you 'recording' their chat - otherwise you have to delete it in later editing.

A tool that has been around a while is the NoteTaker 2.0 by Eloise Pasteur (sold for L$500 through the ICT Shop in the ICT Library on Info Island, and can be found in other places). This device only records the chat of people who touch it... so therefore the consent aspect is taken care of. Further, it only records chat - and not open channel general chatter. The transcripts are mailed to an email address that you put on a notecard.

There are both close-ended (multiple choice) scripts available, as well as open-ended tools. The MC format script is free and at the ICT Library - it is also "in use" - as there is a short survey to the left when you walk in that uses it. The open-ended device is a tool made/sold by Luc Aubretec (I think that spelling is correct). It looks like a clipboard, and people type in a channel command before entering their answers. This confuses newbies a little, but the instructions are clear enough should people choose to read them.

I'm sure there are other tools - like SLOODLE - that can capture chat. If you learn of more, please let me know so I can make other researchers/educators aware of them!

I'm sure you are well aware of all the consent issues that you need to take care of before collecting actual data, so I won't get on a soap box here.

Monday, June 4, 2007

Top 10 reasons to use SL

Forward by Ed Lamoureux. Original post by Chris Swaine) (May 07)

Reasons to use Second Life in education

Learning Environment

As an alternative learning environment, it provides:

  • an alternative and potentially neutral space away from the 'traditional' classroom, which can be socially inclusive for those learners which the formal establishment has woefully failed.
  • enables real time interactions and global alliances which are not constrained by traditional 'location' based environments .
  • In 20 years time, we will laugh at what we now call a VLE [Blackboard, WebCT, Moodle etc etc] as being very quaint and 2D!

Support Networks

  • Formal and informal, multiple support networks - from peer to peer through to trusted intermediaries - through to synchronous and asynchronus communication channels
  • Collaborative space. One of SL's huge benefits is the collaboration - both for learners and educational practitioners

Learning & Teaching Dynamic

  • Enable all learners to experience a greater variety of teaching and learning styles - fab for kinesthetic and audio visual styles!
  • Can help to blur the distinction between the role of the teacher and learner.
  • Different opportunty for greater range of interactions with the teacher
  • The traditional role of the teacher and the learner can become blurred, which potentially puts the learner more in control of their own learning [andragogic /heutagogic approaches]
  • Allows different learning styles to be deployed and adopted - especially for kinesthetic and audio visual learning styles.

Assessment

  • Alternative environment to support formative and summative assessment - from RARPA [recognising and recording progress and achievement in non accredited learning - http://www.aclearn.net/display.cfm?page=1290] through to virtual portfolios
  • Fabulous opportunity to showcase work in an interactive 3D environment rather than a 2D website, or though paper portfolios
  • Help learners to become more actively involved in designing and carrying out their own assessments.

Personalised Content

  • Enables a 3D environment for curriculum areas from marketing and PR to fashion and design, languages to retail.
  • Allows another technology solution to be deployed [working on the premise that the technology should support the learning and teaching and not the other way around!] It is also 'just another tool' that a teacher [or learner] can deploy as part of any learning episode.

Flexible Curriculum

  • Enable the curriculum to be more bite sized and delivered anytime - anyplace - rather than the institutional and non flexible 9-5 Monday to Friday.
  • Can link home/school – home / college
  • Help to provide flexible learning pathways
  • Enable learners to co-design, manage and access the curriculum in different ways

Downsides

Responsive Infrastructure

  • Technical specifications for running SL are still very high for many users to effectively use SL to support learning and teaching. Therefore, there is a risk of supporting the 'digital divide' - those that have - and those that have not.
  • E-safety - this is more about education that setting up yet more barriers [which I.T. departments revel in "How can we make it not happen"!] - but for organisations it is still a real issue from firewalls to learner safety.
  • Connectivity - not all places have a decent broadband connection

Evidence and Evaluation

  • I would very much doubt there is much robust [robust = key word] evidence yet that virtual worlds DO support learner retention, achievement or attainment. However, I also have no doubt that it is only a matter of time before that starts to filter through. The fact that the community is now over 6.2 million worldwide and at any one time over 20k are in-world suggests that something is good - and it isn't just sex!

Inspection Frameworks

  • Certainly the UK, Educational inspectors through OfSTED just couldn't cope with Second Life - they can barely cope with the concept of email! Therefore, there will continue being a struggle using this technology as inspection is a major driver [along with funding]

Immersive Education and VLE's: Call for Participation

by Aaron E. Walsh

I am a faculty member in the Woods College of Advancing Studies at Boston College and direct the Media Grid standards group that today released the following Immersive Education call for participation (to educators, students and professionals):

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Media Grid call for participation: Immersive Education and Virtual
Learning Environments
---------------------------------------------------------------------
High quality PDF and Web versions: http://MediaGrid.org/#NEWS
---------------------------------------------------------------------

BOSTON, MA - June 04, 2007 - MediaGrid.org launches Immersive Education initiative with an open call to educators, students, and professionals who have experience using virtual learning environments or video game technologies (such as Second Life, Croquet, Extensible 3D [X3D], Panda3D, Quake, Unreal, Torque Game Engine, and so forth). Individuals and organizations can visit ImmersiveEducation.org to select the next-generation Immersive Education platform, contribute to best practices, and establish standards for virtual learning environments and game-based learning platforms...

Full release at http://mediagrid.org/news/2007-06_immersive_education.html
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

I'd like to personally invite faculty and students who have experience teaching and learning in Second Life to participate. Second Life wasn't a viable platform for Immersive Education the last time (2003) we selected a platform, but it's a serious contender today. Details on how to participate are provided in the news release above, or directly at http://immersiveeducation.org/ (see "Participate in the Immersive Education standardization process").

Free Conference Opportunity

by Beth Ritter-Guth

If you are not yet a member of Innovate, please join. They are an excellent free resource. Read below about their newest issue and upcoming web conference! - BRG

Innovate is an open-access, refereed, bimonthly, electronic journal focusing on creative ways to use information technology to enhance education in all sectors. This announcement is a one-time only mailing that you will receive unless you subscribe to the journal. Subscriptions are free, but we do need for you to complete the demographic information on the subscription form that will pop up when you click on an article's URL.

We open the June/July issue of with two articles that resume the discussion of the Net Generation from our previous issue—but with very different assessments of the educational playing field. In addressing the needs of this population, Donald Philip proposes a model of education that acknowledges the sociocultural changes wrought by new technological tools, taps into the virtualization of knowledge arising from such tools, and fashions learning environments based on small, flexible groups that resemble the small teams currently used by institutions in the business world. (See http://innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=368 )

However, Sarah Lohnes and Charles Kinzer caution that our assumptions about the Net Generation may often be based on generalizations that do not sufficiently address contextual differences from one population to the next. Their ethnographic study found that while liberal arts students relied extensively on technology in their everyday lives, they remained resistant to in-class technology use and instead endorsed a traditional model of education based on interpersonal contact with the instructor. (See http://innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=431 )

While debates about the Net Generation will continue, instructors are also addressing these questions through innovative forms of pedagogical practice. Helen Sword and Michelle Leggott discuss how their students used online tools to preserve literary texts from university archives while also exploring the potential of such tools to support new, collaborative forms of creative expression in cyberspace. (See http://innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=389)

Edward Gehringer, Luke Ehresman, Susan G. Conger, and Prasad Wagle offer an account of how a custom-designed software product was used in computer science courses to support the construction of peer-reviewed learning objects by the students themselves, which can in turn be assessed, modified, or supplemented by future students in the same course, thereby allowing students to take ownership of their learning to an entirely new level. (See http://innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=365 )

Bill Gibbs and Erik Larson illustrate the use of a videoconferencing system to deliver highly detailed forms of instruction in courses focusing on multimedia design and software design for online and hybrid courses. (See http://innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=388 )

Meanwhile, future innovations in pedagogy and instructional design will continue to rely upon effective, well-planned faculty development and teacher training programs. In his account of faculty development efforts at Bronx Community College, Howard Wach outlines how these efforts evolved through three major formats—two-hour technology workshops, semester-long workshops, and a one-week summer program—and he describes the respective challenges and advantages afforded by each format. (See http://innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=424 )

We close this issue with an article by Kathleen Roney and MaryAnn Davies, who describe how they employed a Web-based communications tool to promote standards-based instruction, foster reflective practice and focused mentoring, and facilitate the development of electronic portfolios to help teacher education interns bridge the gap between their training and their
classroom practice. (See http://innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=294 )

Finally, please do not forget the Innovate-Live Seminar Series beginning Tuesday, June 5 through Friday, June 8, 2007. The seminar program and registration (free) is available at our Innovate-Live portal at http://www.uliveandlearn.com/PortalInnovate/

Please forward this announcement to appropriate mailing lists and to colleagues who want to use IT tools to advance their work. Ask your organizational librarian to link to Innovate in their resource section for open-access e-journals.

James L. Morrison
Editor-in-Chief, Innovate
http://www.innovateonline.info/
Professor Emeritus of Educational Leadership
UNC-Chapel Hill
http://horizon.unc.edu/

Finding SLURLs

by Alan Levine

A recent question to the list...

I've also read about a way of sending SULRs to del.icio.us - however, I'm not that familiar with del.icio.us - and searching for "SURL" as a tag gets you the Usability lab at Wichita (which has very useful resources & I use a lot ... only I didn't want them right now!)

A combo tag may help-
http://del.icio.us/tag/slurl+education

And Sean had an excellent set of reference sites. For more of the "almanac" approach you described, try Aggiornamento II: http://aggiornamento-ii.blogspot.com/

Gartner announcement on 3D world trends

by Lindy McKeown

Thought this press release form Gartner would be useful for some...

Gartner Says 80 Percent of Active Internet Users Will Have A "Second Life"
in the Virtual World by the End of 2011

Analysts Identify the Five Laws for Virtual Worlds During Gartner
Symposium/ITxpo 2007 Emerging Trends, Analysts Say IT Leaders Must Take the
Initiative to Innovate


STAMFORD, Conn., April 24, 2007 - By the end of 2011, 80 percent of active
Internet users (and Fortune 500 enterprises) will have a "second life", but
not necessarily in Second Life, according to Gartner, Inc.

More at

http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=503861