Education

Education in Virtual Worlds: Predictions for 2008

The Virtual Worlds Management Industry Forecast 2008 report spawned a host of predictions from other bloggers, and several commenters suggested I do the same when I reviewed the report. I think the general predictions have been pretty well covered so I’ll stick to the topic nearest and dearest to my heart: Education in Virtual Worlds.

Following the report’s question format..

What are your top 3 trend predictions for 2008?

1. Second Life will continue to be the virtual world platform of choice for educators in 2008. While competing platforms are coming online in droves, university and college administrators are conservative about investing in new and poorly understood technologies. In countless committee meetings, early adopter faculty and IT staff will have to show hard data to skeptical department heads and Second Life is the only virtual world platform with a critical mass of educators, institutions, grant dollars, and burgeoning research to provide that data. What the administrators don’t know and nearly as important as the data, however, is that Second Life is also the only platform with a large enough and diverse resource base to provide freely-given documentation, training, websites, and technical support that educators need to deliver results – a level of support that isn’t currently provided by the host institutions or Linden Lab themselves (though the power of the 4,000 some educators on the Linden Lab hostedSL Educators email list can’t be underestimated).

2. Traditional Course/Content/Learning Management Systems will belatedly establish project teams to explore how they can cross-over into virtual world territory. The big players like Blackboard and Desire2Learn will look at the ground-breaking work of the SLoodle project and the continued spread of the open-source Moodle CMS and wonder where the heck their heads were in 2007. Though there won’t be any major implementations of virtual world technology in these other platforms, internally there will be a lot of head scratching, planning, and development, which will be poorly implemented in 2009.

3. College presidents will demand proof of ROI more vigorously than any CEO in 2008. Though the cost of entry to stick an institutional sign in the virtual world yard is still relatively low, as more educational institutions develop virtual presences and programs, the cost in both time and money to build, document, and deliver courses in these environments will explode. Early adopters will be forced to defend their work in a climate of tightening budgets and the increasing corporatization of edu culture, which will yield better metrics and research study designs that will be utilized to better effect by the private sector in late 2008 and into 2009.

What goals have you set for 2008?

The University of Cincinnati Second Life Learning Community has grown from a handful of members to over 30 faculty and staff from nearly every college, and in 2007 we hosted 7 classes on our island. Beyond increasing growth of the learning community and the number of courses that explore Second Life as some component of the course, my 2008 goals include:

1. Research: Complete and publish results of a second study of educational institutions in Second Life to build upon the initial benchmark. The second time around, I hope to explore not just “who” and “what kinds of spaces are being built”, but also take a more comprehensive look at the type of educational activities that are being conducted. Are educators just delivering traditional PowerPoint slides and lectures in the virtual world, or are they doing something else?

2. Sustainability: Funding, funding, upgrade computer labs, funding, more support staff, funding, better documentation and support infrastructure, and did I mention funding? I suspect I’m not the only one working 60 or 70 hour weeks to make education in virtual worlds a reality, and if we don’t find a way to make these nascent programs sustainable, we’ll all suffer massive burn-out. In return for more institutional support, we’ll be expected to deliver on the promise, but we can’t deliver on the promise without more institutional support, so solving this chicken-egg dilemma is a high priority in 2008.

3. Collaboration: Identify and challenge departmental and institutional barriers that hinder opportunities for collaboration. Virtual worlds knock down more than just geographical barriers, they also facilitate the holy grail of interdisciplinary curriculum – digital design students can help create models and learning spaces that are programmed for interactivity by computer science students to facilitate social science research, and there’s nothing to stop this from happening across institutions as faculty find researchers from other disciplines who share similar interests from different perspectives. The technology makes it possible, it’s just a matter of discovering what cultural and procedural barriers are standing in the way.

What challenges do you expect 2008 to bring for education and the virtual worlds industry?

1. Throwing off the “games” label: 2008 will be the last year that educators have to explain that virtual worlds are not games, not because the perception disappears, but because mass media will do the job instead. Virtual world applications for other serious purposes will be discussed in newspapers and tv shows and other traditional media ad nauseum, and by the end of 2008, anyone who still thinks any animated simulation on a computer is just a game was living under a rock.

2. Integration: Educational institutions have spent millions of tax payer dollars integrating student information systems, HR systems, grant and research funding systems, payment processing systems, and more. All of this data and infrastructure exists to automate the day-to-day business processes previously done manually, and yet with closed virtual world systems, we’re back to manually creating accounts, enrolling students in groups, giving curriculum and items by hand.. Virtual world platforms that intend to be adopted by institutions will have to enable integration with institutional systems and infrastructure or be outdone by competitors who do. This is a key barrier to widespread adoption, and newcomers to the virtual world playing field will begin to address this need in 2008.

3. Scalability: The interface must be user friendly. The initial experience must be idiot-proofed (even a PhD won’t get you off of Second Life’s orientation island, and that is ridiculous.) The documentation must be free, easily accessible, and clear. The tools for teaching must be easy to find and plentiful to accommodate different teaching styles. The platform must be stable, reliable, and allow more than 2 or 3 concurrent classes in the same space. Virtual world platforms that get the basics wrong will lose educational users in droves in favor of the platforms that get them right. Second Life in particular is on the hotseat in this regard, educators are itching for a way to test their theories on a platform that makes it possible without it feeling like a root canal, and 2008 may be the make or break year.

A number of new platforms are launching in 2008. What are the biggest impacts this will have on education and virtual worlds?

1. The education separatists will get their wish and discover that closed, sterile, disinfected virtual worlds are boring as hell, but they’ll persist in using them because it’s safer and easier to defend to administrators. Their students will see the experience as one more horrible institutional misuse of a cool technology and adopt open virtual worlds in ever greater numbers.

2. New degree programs will begin to emerge that focus on the interdisciplinary cross-section of organizational leadership in online environments, virtual worlds, and pedagogy. Ok, I’m hoping to find a program like that in 2008, so let me know if you find one. 😉

3. The most highly paid “instructional designer” positions will require experience with 3D modeling, social networking, and virtual worlds. Nascent departments and sub-units with expertise in virtual world platforms will begin to develop in IT departments at educational institutions across the United States, and in some other nations where virtual world technologies are being aggressively pursued.

How will all of this change education in 2008?

It won’t change anything except on the margins. A few students in a few courses in a few institutions will get a revolutionary educational experience that radically changes their view of the world and their place in it, but the vast majority of institutional resources, staff time, and equipment purchases will be continue to be spent on flat web technologies and endeavors. Enormous amounts of resources will continue to be poured into crappy course management and e-portfolio systems that don’t properly utilize Web 2.0 technologies yet, let alone incorporate virtual world tech. Pockets of innovation, under-funded and under-supported, will continue to grow, however, and faculty will lead the charge as they become aware of grant and research opportunities that they can’t take advantage of because of this lack of institutional support. National and professional associations will develop virtual world Special Interest Groups and these will show rapid growth among young faculty and early adopters across disciplines, but it will be several years before virtual worlds in education begins to approach anything like mainstream adoption.

So there you have it, just in under the wire! I’ll look forward to seeing how off the mark I am at the end of 2008, but until then, a Very Happy New Year to all – especially the educational community!

Community / Deep Thoughts / Education / Media / Second Life / Technology / Twitter / University of Cincinnati / Virtual Worlds / Web 2.0 — 1 Comment
15
Dec 07

Digital Immigrant Bookworm Goes Native Butterfly

Perpetually behind on my blog reading, but today I caught up with Intellagirl’s Ubernoggin and got sucked into her Response to Jenkins, Prenskey Regarding Digital Natives post.

Intellagirl’s analysis points to two key phenomena that differentiates the Digital Native from the Digital Immigrant – exigency (need) and medial hauntings (previous experience with earlier technologies that lingers on). Now “medial hauntings” doesn’t quite roll off the tongue and until I read further, evoked images of severed limbs screaming BOO! from dark closets (oh MEDIAL not MEDICAL), but I think she’s onto something there. Certainly she addresses the kind of fear that I’ve seen in so-called digital immigrants, who already have a community of people to share thoughts with at church or the bowling league or whatever, and who are afraid to press a button in case it breaks or click a link in case there’s no way to go back, that sort of thing. And it brings to mind my own complete aversion to all things web based for years – my command line BBS works just fine thanks, I don’t need any of this newfangled blog crap! I BBSed from 1994 to 2006 and largely ignored blogs and blog culture because I had an interface that I was comfortable with and a community to share my thoughts with and what _need_ was there to change? So in that example, Intellagirl’s analysis hits it right on the head – I had no need and the few attempts I’d made at blogging were painful because I didn’t know what the heck I was doing and I kept saying to myself, “Pushing the spacebar to get new content is so much easier!”

This Digital Native/Immigrant dichotomy has been sticking in my craw because it doesn’t quite explain ME. By age demographic, I should be an immigrant. By socio-economic background and access to technology and gadgets, I should be an immigrant. By all sorts of measures and characteristics used to describe the two groups, it seems as if I should fit squarely in the immigrant category, but clearly I do not. Intellagirl’s post is the first I’ve seen that begins to get at an explanation that makes sense, not just on a macro level, but on a personal level. My adoption and wholesale immersion into the BBS/MUD community in the mid 90s was born out of great need, I was away from home, poor as a church mouse, out of my social element, and desperately seeking to connect with other people, and that technology provided something that my limited social and financial circumstances could not – COMMUNITY. I was moving constantly, like a bag lady, from apartment to apartment and state to state, but with the magic of the intarnets, my friends traveled with me wherever I went. Further, limited experience with previous technologies left me with no old habits to break, at the time I discovered email and UNIX talk and telnet, I was a fairly clean slate and picked it up quickly.

OK, so finally an explanation that begins to make sense.. Hm.

But there’s something else about my own personal experience that has been ricocheting around in my head and always comes to the forefront when I listen to one of Philip Rosedale’s speeches about how navigating 3D virtual worlds is innately more intuitive than navigating word-laden webpages. I think there’s truth to that and it seems to me that we’re entering a new .. phase, era, whatever word you prefer. But let me go back for a moment to the ricocheting thought, which is that I think my digital native behavior was/is extremely influenced by my lifelong addiction to reading. I was the kind of kid that would rather read a book than do just about anything else. If I was in the middle of a good story, nothing short of prolonged shouting could break the spell, to the annoyance of friends and parents alike. Somehow I transcended mere “literacy” and I’m sure there’s some academic term for those of us who become immersed in the written word and visualize it with such clarity that the “real world” ceases to exist while we’re in it. (I bet Henry Jenkins knows that word.)

So, being such a reader, the world of BBSs and MUDs and entirely text based virtual worlds wasn’t just an easy transition to make, it was like the holy grail – an interactive story that I was part of, that I wrote and changed and played a role and wow, what a dream come true. Webpages didn’t interest me quite as much, except as an information source, because they were like magazine stories, way too short and eventually full of too many pictures, when what I prefer is a nice big meaty novel that will take at least two or three days to read. And so I stayed in my text based virtual worlds for a very long time. Long after other BBS friends adopted LiveJournal and Blogger and reveled in posting pictures and links and video clips that could never appear in the old telnet window.

Until EverQuest, that is. MMO + RPG + 3D = love at first sight. I still remember the thrill of it: the beautiful scenery, the long walks across unexplored territory, the adrenaline rushes, the late nights, the empty Mt. Dew cans. Then DAoC and WoW and various single player games in-between (NWN, Deus Ex, Sims, etc.). And somehow, between 1994 and 2006, I transformed into a Native butterfly, an advocate for technology in education, a creator of digital content, a camera, mp3-player, cell phone carrying junkie, a 1337 translator with some old skool credibility, tivo equipped and subscribed to so many blogs, and now tweeting my life away for all to see. Indistinguishable from a so-called Native, except that my text messaging thumb dexterity is woefully inadequate.

I hate these terms, Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants, because they imply all sorts of connotations that do more harm than good, and because my Women’s Studies 101 classes taught me to _always_ be suspicious of false dichotomies. It is not an either/or choice, rather there are continuums of related skill-sets and proclivities and if you look deeper under the skin of a Digital Native, you will find more complexity than a single word can possibly describe. Sure the 17 year old chained to his cell phone can text message while eating, driving, and talking, and sure his ipod seems to have grown fully formed out of his skull, but can he use a search engine effectively? Can he write a coherent paragraph with correct spelling and grammar to save his life? Increasingly, I think that answer is NO and that is worrisome.

Jenkins writes:

At one time, the digital immigrant metaphor might have been helpful if it forced at least some adults to acknowledge their uncertainties, step out of their comfort zone, and adjust their thinking to respond to a generation growing up in a very different context than the realm of their own childhood. As Prensky concludes, “if Digital Immigrant educators really want to reach Digital Natives – i.e. all their students – they will have to change.” Yet, I worry that the metaphor may be having the opposite effect now — implying that young people are better off without us and thus justifying decisions not to adjust educational practices to create a space where young and old might be able to learn from each other.

So, what would digital multi-culturalism look like? Can we come up with a different set of metaphors to talk about these issues?

I say we MUST come up with a different set of metaphors, because to circle back to Philip Rosedale’s point about the intuitive navigability of 3D virtual spaces, if we don’t figure out a better way to talk about these concepts, the so-called natives will run so far ahead into the virtual world, that the wisdom of the text-based and physical world might be lost altogether. Don’t believe me? Take a look at this chilling report from the National Endowment for the Arts about current literacy rates. It strikes fear into the heart of this digital [whatever], because the power of all of this technology is tremendous, and while those who have accepted the term “digital immigrant” feel cut off or dismissive or frightened or too old or whatever it is are sitting around reading newspapers and drinking coffee at church and thinking that things like Second Life is just a game, the world is going to change around them, so fast it will make their heads spin if they’re still around to see it, and the certainty that this is coming fills me with such urgency, I just can’t shake it.

It keeps me burning the candle at both ends, and now we’re at the end of 2007 and my resolution in 2006 to figure out this blog crap, to bring Second Life to my campus, to work even harder to be the translator between the “immigrant” and “native” camps has been one of the most exhausting and stressful, yet wonderfully fulfilling years of my life. I’ll save the reminiscing for a different long rambly disorganized thinking-out-loud post, but at the end of all of this, I’m thinking we have a lot of work to do and we can’t do it fast enough. I don’t know if Digital Multi-Culturalism will cut the mustard, either, because that implies some acceptance of the status-quo that I don’t want to accept. I want to be intolerant of intolerance in the digital sense. I don’t want to just talk about it, I want to smack the hand that reaches for the phone book instead of a search engine. As I reach the ripe old age of my early 30s, I finally have come to understand that not all old people are wise, but there is wisdom in age and experience, and frankly, I fear we’ll lose that wisdom when the “natives” put down their video games and start harnessing this technology to change the world around them.

I think, moving forward, that we need to challenge those words wherever we see or hear them, because they are perpetuating a concept that we can’t afford to continue.

Deep Thoughts / Education / Second Life / Technology / Twitter / Virtual Worlds — Comments Off
10
Dec 07

Pausch’s Last Lecture, Dreams and Dying

I wrote a bunch of things, but I think I’ve shared enough about me today. Thanks to whomever sent this over twitter, it was very timely.

Community / Deep Thoughts / Education / Politics / Second Life / Technology / University of Cincinnati — Comments Off
08
Dec 07

Virtual Worlds/Walled Gardens, SL-Dev, and UC State of the University

[Edit: Good grief, it’s the State of the University, not State of the Union. (!!) Recovering political junkie reflex.]

Interesting article in the Christian Science Monitor about big business and Second Life. Tackles the interoperability-slash-walled garden issue, and quotes Metanomics series host Professor Robert Bloomfield of Cornell University, who I recently met during the discussion on Higher Education in Second Life for the program.

The article states that 20 major technology firms, including IBM and Microsoft, have agreed to explore ways to connect virtual worlds. My thought, is Google on that list?

On another note, I was talking with a couple of long time SL residents who didn’t know about the existence of the SL-DEV listserv. Now I am not a scripter or a coder or any label that would imply I could program my way out of a paper bag, but if you want to know where the technology behind Second Life is heading, there’s no better source for info. Sure half to two thirds of the posts zoom right over my head, but even scanning the subject lines tells me what’s the Hot New Topic with the opensource/dev community, and that’s good to know.

President Nancy Zimpher delivers the 2007 State of the University address

Next up, I finally got a chance to view University of Cincinnati President Nancy Zimpher’s State of the University 2007 address. Since she came to UC, her focus on how the university integrates with the local and regional community has resonated with my own sense of priorities, and I am pleased to see that continue to be her focus, in addition to the Master Plan and UC|21 goals for academic achievement. I lived in Clifton for 6 years, and while I miss the convenience of walking to work very much, I don’t miss the noise, the crime, and the grit nearby. As long as economic redevelopment doesn’t just mean shifting vulnerable populations further away from a walled-garden campus, then I am all for finding real, sustainable solutions. She also mentioned the Strive project, which aims to create an educational pipeline to ensure that students complete the _entire_ educational process, from pre-school through to college degree. Good stuff!

Also from President Zimpher’s speech, the Brookings Institute: Blueprint for American Prosperity: Unlceaning the Potential of a Metropolitan Nation. I confess, I haven’t read it yet, but her talk seemed quite apropos considering the recent conversations I and others have been having about what makes a community work in the virtual world, and I think there is much to be learned from real world examples too.

Finally, any SL residents, I beg of you to please vote for the JIRA issue to increase the 25 group limit in Second Life. Even if you haven’t hit that ceiling yet, it is a major major obstacle for those of us who have, and I can’t believe it has less than 400 votes. Sheesh.

BlogHUD / Deep Thoughts / Education / Media / Second Life / Twitter / Web 2.0 — 2 Comments
04
Dec 07

Need Second Life News?

I get obsessive with my reading of Second Life related news. I want to know what is happening in every sector, every topic, every hobby or interest, because at the end of every presentation I give about Second Life, I face an audience from a random assortment of disciplines and the question I dread most is the one I can’t answer. I want to be able to provide an example that relates to any subject matter, I want to be able to say, “Oh yes! There is an example of how Second Life is being used for such-and-such,” and I want to pop right over to that location or pull up that news story and link the audience member’s interest to a real virtual world example.

The only way to do that is to read everything you can get your hands on about Second Life. Events, experiments, new builds, new organizations, progress reports for projects that have been happening for some time – and the Second Life world only continues to grow and become more complex over time, and so do the number of websites, blogs, and even in-world news feeds that send a steady stream of info about in-world happenings. Even a speed reader can’t quite keep up with it all!

But there are some shortcuts, and some sources are better at ferreting out the “good stuff” better than others. Most Second Lifers know about the mainstream news outlets – Second Life News Network, Second Life Herald, Second Thoughts, New World Notes, and the magazines like the Konstrukt, Metaverse Messenger, and Avastar, but there are some other sources of news that you should add to your list if you haven’t already, and if I’m missing some of your must read sources, let me know that too.

Read The Grid Live. I’m not sure when this site started, it gradually creeped up the Fleep’s Favorite Sites list over the past few weeks and I recently moved it to the tippy top of my must read list on the feed reader. The magical Aribella Lafleur writes in-depth travel reports, and the site’s daily summary (here’s an example) condenses half the blogs I used to read and finds sources that weren’t even on my list. That’s impressive.

Follow Malburns on Twitter. Malburns Writer seems to be in touch with all of the socio-cultural-economic-music-art scene happenings and he must have one of the most extensive SL related reading lists out there. He sends a steady stream of tweets about the grid, slurls to live events, and even if he doesn’t write for any of the major news sites, he’s my favorite reporter on the ground and a good friend to boot.

Follow BlogHUD on Twitter. I’ve posted previously about how terrific the BlogHUD is for posting reports from in-world to your blog, but creator Koz Farina keeps adding to the tool in ways that make it easier and better all the time to report on Second Life happenings, and the steady stream of real time in-world reports includes pictures, slurls, and often text descriptions that have often alerted me to things I didn’t know were happening. Fans of Torley Linden will like this too, as he is a frequent BlogHud contributor.

Don't Just Watch TV, Make it with SLCN.tv Graphic

Check SLCN.tv every single day. Think of this as the CNN Headlines TV channel for Second Life news junkies. Whatever great in-world event you missed because you had to go to a meeting or because it was happening in a different time zone, there’s a good chance SLCN.tv covered it and you can go view the archive. They also webcast events live so you can get access to great in-world events even when you can’t be in-world. Nevermind the fact that the staff are absolutely wonderful people. [Disclosure: SLCN.tv has covered many events I’ve organized or participated in and they do all of this for absolutely no charge, so I am indebted to them for many reasons, but that’s all the more reason you should add them to your must-see list!]

Read MUVE Forward and The Story of My “Second Life”, two of the best education focused SL blogs out there. Even if you aren’t an educator, you should know about the great things educators are doing and these two sites are not just on top of the current events, they also provide analysis that helps place what’s happening into a bigger context. Very good stuff.

There are tons of other great sites, great people, and great tools to keep you up on Second Life events, but these are the ones I’ve come to rely on. Thanks to the people who make them work, I can almost always reach into my bag of tricks in front of an audience of educators, no matter what college or department they’re from, and show a relevant example. Hopefully it will help you too.

Deep Thoughts / Education / Family / Media / Second Life — 3 Comments
19
Nov 07

Crazy productive week

Thank you to everyone who has sent well wishes regarding my grandpa’s health, we’re all holding up ok for the moment and I appreciate all of the kind words and support you’ve sent my way. For me, the best distraction when I can’t be there is to throw myself into work, and this week has been pretty busy.

Ohio Learning Network SL Monthly Event

OLN Second Life Newbie Q&A Session

On Tuesday, I held the second Newbie Q&A session for members of the Ohio Learning Network. We covered the communication window, inventory management, opening and unpacking boxes, and tested the voice client. If you work in a member institution of the Ohio Learning Network, please check out the OLN Second Life resources that we’re working hard to provide. I’ve been graced with the honorary title of Second Life Ambassador for the Ohio Learning Network, and I hope to do my best to facilitate exploration of the medium around the state. Let me know how I can help!

UCSLLC Meeting

UCSLLC Members in front of the new library

For the first time, the UC Second Life Learning Community meeting was so large we didn’t have enough chairs, let alone computers. I’ll take that as a good problem to have! Meeting notes for those who missed it are here.

National Distance Learning Week Panel in SL

NDLW Panel at ISTE in SL

The “Distance Education on the ‘MUVE'” panel at ISTE on Wednesday was a terrific success. I was very excited to moderate the event, and was impressed yet again by Peggy Sheehy, Lindy McKeown, and Sarah Robbins as they discussed using SL for education. Also kind of cool to see it covered on CNN‘s news about SL site.

Philip Rosedale Speaks

Philip's Snazzy Suit

Managed to catch Philip Rosedale’s presentation to the Managing Virtual Distance conference held by the Institute for International Research. Metaversed did a great job summarizing the presentation, and though nothing terribly earth shattering was discussed, I was really tickled to have Philip speaking right into my ear through the voice client.

“We are IT” Day

We are IT logo

I was very pleased to participate again this year in the “We are IT” day campaign, a project of the State of Ohio aimed at recruiting more women and girls into Information Technology professions. I had lunch with a table of middle school girls at Cincinnati State and talked to them about my job and the importance of IT in their education. The hot topic: Their parents forbid them to have a MySpace page and they feel left out. Hmm.

Presentation to Construction Management freshman

On Friday, I gave a presentation to freshmen in the Construction Management program at the University of Cincinnati College of Applied Science about how Second Life might be used in their studies. We visited the UC Island of course, and also the Gallery of Reflexive Architecture in-world, created by Keystone Bouchard and my friend Fumon Kubo. The students had a lot of great questions and several of their faculty are now interested in exploring SL, too.

First Peer Reviewed Article

And finally, I got notice late Friday night that an article I wrote with colleague Nancy Jennings had been published in the International Journal of Social Science. It’s the first thing I’ve had published in a peer reviewed journal and I’m really excited to have reached this milestone!

Virtual or Virtually U: Educational Institutions in Second Life

Abstract: Educational institutions are increasingly exploring the affordances of 3D virtual worlds for instruction and research, but few studies have been done to document current practices and uses of this emerging technology. This observational survey examines the virtual presences of 170 accredited educational institutions found in one such 3D virtual world called Second Life, created by San Francisco based Linden Lab. The study focuses on what educational institutions look like in this virtual environment, the types of spaces educational institutions are creating or simulating, and what types of activities are being conducted.

Keywords: educational technology, emerging technology, metaverse, Second Life, virtual worlds

Jennings, Nancy, and Chris Collins. (2007) “Virtual or Virtually U:Educational Institutions in Second Life.” International Journal of Social Sciences, 2(3), 180-187. http://www.waset.org/ijss/v2/v2-3-28.pdf

Phew, what a week!

Deep Thoughts / Education / Legal Issues / Second Life — Comments Off
18
Nov 07

Legal Liability of SL for Institutions

I meant to properly blog this the other day, but hopefully some saw it through a brief tweet.

In this video, an Iowa State University panel of faculty, staff, and administrators consider the implications of using Second Life from an institutional perspective. Both the pros and cons are debated, and I would recommend it not just to educators, but those representing an institution of any sort. When discussing legal liability issues, the focus is necessarily on US law, but the.. ethical and philosophical questions inherent in the presentations really will apply globally.

I’ve been to many panels and presentations and conference sessions about Second Life, but this one gets to some questions that I haven’t seen addressed elsewhere, and despite the fact that most of the participants seems to have done some homework on Second Life, with many having accounts and demonstrating competence in-world, many of the participants are what I’d consider laymen in SL terms. Not newbs, but not residents. And their concerns are ones that I imagine will be shared by many of our bosses and administrators and legal departments and HR departments.

Worth the time investment to watch the whole panel, the Q&A can be skipped.

View the Iowa State University Second Life Panel video here.

BlogHUD / Education / Second Life — 1 Comment
13
Nov 07

National Distance Learning Week Event in SL

Veteran Second Life Educators Share Virtual World Vision at National Distance Learning Week Event

“Distance Education on the ‘MUVE’ : A place to go to learn together without leaving home” is scheduled for Wednedsay, November 14th at 6:00 pm SLT/PST at ISTE Island Auditorium in Second Life.

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/ISTE%20Island/201/46/23.

ISTE Island, Second Life (PRWEB) November 8, 2007 — Think virtual worlds are just for fun, games and whimsical escapism? Think again. Innovative educators are developing sophisticated educational environments and conducting serious academic research into the use of virtual worlds in K-20 education. They are “making a difference at a distance.” The International Society for Technology in Education is proud to host a Second Life panel presentation highlighting the work, vision and achievements of three talented educators:

Peggy Sheehy (SL: Maggie Marat) is an ITF/Media Specialist at Suffern Middle School in Suffern, NY. Very active in the district’s teacher technology training program, she is a fierce advocate for the meaningful infusion of technology in education and in 2006 established the first public middle school educational presence in Teen Second Life: Ramapo Islands. After great success with the first group of 400 eighth grade students, Ramapo will serve 1,200 students in 2007. She has presented her work at NECC, EdNet, Tech Expo, NYSCATE, and Tech Forum and will be presenting this July at the Building Learning Communities Conference ’08.

Sarah Robbins (SL: Intellagirl Tully) is a PhD candidate in Rhetoric at Ball State University, the Director of Emerging Technologies for Media Sauce Inc., and the coauthor of Second Life for Dummies. Sarah has been teaching university courses in Second Life for two years. Her research centers on communication mechanics in virtual environments and has been featured in the New York Times, USAToday, and the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Lindy McKeown (SL: Decka Mah) has been developing online learning communities for professional development and curriculum projects for schools across the world since 1994. She specializes in the application of online technologies for professional learning and uses Action Learning extensively in both face-to-face and online settings. Lindy is currently completing a Ph.D. at the University of Southern Queensland where she is conducting research into 3D online virtual environments for use in professional development. She is the recipient of a Queensland Government ‘Growing the Smart State’ PhD Grant. Her work has been recognized via numerous awards from organizations like the Australian Council for Computers in Education (ACCE), the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) and the Queensland Society for Information Technology (QSITE).

This event will be moderated by Chris Collins (SL: Fleep Tuque), Second Life Ambassador for the Ohio Learning Network and IT Analyst at the University of Cincinnati, and begin with a welcome from Jennifer Ragan-Fore (SL: Kittygloom Cassady), Director, General Membership Program, ISTE. Speakers will each give a brief presentation using voice chat which will be followed by a general Q&A session, concluding with a more personal “meet the presenter” campfire chat (using text) at the beach area adjacent to the ISTE Island auditorium.

For additional information about the event, contact:

RavenPhoenix Zenovka (SL)
ISTE Island Co-Manager

Kittygloom Cassady (SL)
Director, General Membership Program, ISTE

KJ Hax (SL)
ISTE Second Life Docent Program Co-Manager
posted by Fleep Tuque on ISTE Island using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]

BlogHUD / Education / Second Life / Web 2.0 — 3 Comments
09
Nov 07

Blog Posts with Photos from Second Life

As the discussion continues about using Second Life effectively for classes, I am reminded to post about a terrific tool I recently discovered that may be useful in your courses.

Many faculty are asking students to report on their experiences in Second Life, either by writing essays or blog posts, and it can be very tricky and time consuming to take a snapshot, save it to disk, re-size it and convert it to JPG, upload it to Flickr, and then create a blog post about whatever it was that you saw or experienced. If you also want to include a SLurl or link to the location, that’s another step that requires you to flip back into SL to copy and paste the SLurl, etc.

The BlogHUD does all of these steps for the user once it is setup and configured properly. I estimate it saves me maybe 20 to 30 minutes every time I use it, and it makes it very, very simple to keep a “travel log” of your Second Life journeys. I have contacted the creator to see if we might be able to get an educational discount, but have not yet heard back – at the moment the “Pro BlogHUD” costs $900L for each user, but I personally think it is well worth it.

To use the BlogHUD effectively as a travel log tool requires:

– Register for and create a free blog using a supported service – WordPress, Blogger, Typepad, Friendster, LiveJournal blogs are all supported, I personally prefer WordPress – http://wordpress.com

– Register for and create a free Flickr account – http://flickr.com

– Pick up the BlogHUD in-world at:
secondlife://Nooribeom/181.57761/186.27246/23.40998/

– Follow the configuration instructions for the BlogHUD at http://bloghud.com/

The initial set up process is a little time consuming, but once you get it working, you can create a post on your blog with a photo snapshot and a SLurl link to the location in about 30 seconds (not including the time it takes to write the text, of course!) and in one single step.

In Second Life, you frame and take the snapshot – choose to send it as a postcard to pix@bloghud.com – and then enter the title and text of your post right within the postcard window in Second Life. Within a few moments, the post appears on your blog and the picture is neatly trimmed and added to your Flickr account for future use.

To see an example of a blog post created this way: http://fleeep.net/blog/?p=85

An instructor could set up a single blog and Flickr account for everyone in the course to use, or each student could set up their own site/account. The blog could also be linked from the CMS/LMS and might be a good tool to record student engagement/use.

We haven’t yet implemented this in a course at UC or in our faculty/staff learning community, but I intend to bring it up at our next meeting. I hope to try it out with our learning community first and if it’s successful for group use, then perhaps one of our faculty can try it in a course next quarter. I’ll be sure to let you know how it goes..

BlogHUD / Education / Second Life — 3 Comments
23
Oct 07

Event: EDUCAUSE 2007 – Hot Topic Discussion: Virtual World…

Just finished setting up the signage and help materials at the venue in preparation for the live-audio event coming up this Thursday, October 25th, at 12:45PM SLT. AJ Kelton (SL: AJ Brooks) from Montclair State University will be moderating a mixed-reality discussion on the future of virtual worlds in education.