31
Dec 07

Twitter Updates for 2007-12-31

  • Sim crossings seem particularly dangerous this evening. #

31
Dec 07

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!


30
Dec 07

Twitter Updates for 2007-12-30

  • Vowed to start the new year with all these stacks of paper filed, but still procrastinating. #
  • Avoid the grocery store if you can, it is a wild zoo with crazy women fighting over corned beef. #
  • Reading @spin’s 3-way post about social networking http://tinyurl.com/2yezyp #
  • Have begun to feel that 70% of twitter is swimming in syrup. Sticky sweet empty calories. #
  • @rubaiyat True, but I don’t even know half of the ppl I follow anymore. Being polite = diluted benefit maybe? #
  • @geosteph Good point, we’re prob all much "nicer" over the holidays, in the spirit of things. #
  • Just worry that what initially felt like building real, strong connections is feeling more tenuous of late. #

29
Dec 07

Twitter Updates for 2007-12-29


28
Dec 07

Twitter Updates for 2007-12-28

  • back online after long holiday hiatus, missed you twitz. =) #

26
Dec 07

Twitter Updates for 2007-12-26

  • Catching up on email, hope everyone had a great holiday. #
  • Opening Christmas presents in SL, wow I have some great and talented friends. 🙂 #
  • @aithene It really is! I am having a very Warm Fuzzy Moment. I’ve met so many wonderful people. 🙂 #
  • @hotspur laugh! Looks like the Chilbo plaza, full of goodness! #

23
Dec 07

Twitter Updates for 2007-12-23

  • Ouch. Giving items manually to hundreds of people in SL is painful. I think I broke my mouse clicking finger. #
  • Off Dad’s for the holidays, not sure when I’ll be back online. If I don’t see you, happy holidays. 🙂 #
  • @codebastard Muahaha!! Now THATs a christmas card. 🙂 #
  • @iAlja You too! 🙂 #

22
Dec 07

Twitter Updates for 2007-12-22

  • If you’re ever in a Scottish mood "Glenmalambo" by Mac Umba #
  • Yay Megaprims will stay! http://tinyurl.com/2conma #
  • Wow, this video is great, where has it been hiding? http://www.storyofstuff.com/video/ #
  • @newmediajim I read that tweet and my stomach went "BRGGRGGGLGLGE" #
  • @lordfly Love the 1000 avatar pictures idea, can’t wait to see it! #
  • @newmediajim Hunger and pavlovian response, Chipotle burritos are like crack – addictive. 🙂 #
  • Checking out sample chapters of http://www.socialmediaready.com/ #
  • @injenuity Thanks for comment, I must have missed your link! The stuff video SHOULD be generating conversation. #

22
Dec 07

The Story of Stuff

Where does stuff come from, how does it get made, where did all this CONSUME CONSUME CONSUME madness come from?

This might be the best online video I’ve seen all year.

http://www.storyofstuff.com/video/


22
Dec 07

Tech Tools that Changed My Life in 2007

I’ll try to get to the 2008 Virtual Worlds predictions here in the next couple days, but I can’t move on to 2008 until I’ve given some thought to the grand ole year of 2007. As I mentioned earlier, in 2006 I set a goal to figure out this blogging business and I think I’m doing ok in that regard. But there were a number of tools that profoundly influenced the way I experience the web, Second Life, and even have changed how I think about people and communities and society in general. So here they are, my Top 10 Tech Tools of 2007:

10. Ning and AirSet and Google Groups – All three allow you to connect with communities of interest and provide a suite of tools to keep in touch, share resources, and network with one another. All three have some features I like, none of the three do it ALL for me, but one way or another, I’ve connected with a bunch of good people through these sites.

9. StumbleUpon – I hate the name, forget to submit stuff, and don’t have any friends there, BUT! When I’m in mega procrastination mode and want the internet to entertain me, StumbleUpon is like channel surfing with the the TV remote, but on the internet instead. Flip, hmm interesting, flip, that’s stupid, flip, neat video! Caution, stumbling videos can be addictive at 3AM.

8. HUDDLES Landmark Pal – Second Life residents, if you don’t already have a landmark HUD solution for your most visited locations, this little HUD is simple, easy, and fabulous. It minimizes (TRUE minimize, not phantom) to take up less screen real estate and I love not digging in inventory to go to frequently visited places.

7. Google Web History – I avoided this tool for a while because I thought ew how creepy, a history of everything I browse! Then as I kept losing links or forgetting to tag stuff or needing to find that one website I saw that one day.. it turned into oh how neat, a history of everything I browse! I figure, google already has the data, I might as well have it too. Also neat to see my surfing trends.

6. ScriptMe! – This Second Life scripting tool is the cat’s pajamas for newbies or those with no programming experience. Hilary Mason aka Ann Enigma coded this tool to make simple scripts for those who have no programming experience. It’s simple, intuitive, and opens up worlds of possibilities for those who have never explored scripting their own objects in SL. Thanks Hilary!

5. Scobleizer – Scobleizer isn’t a website or a web app or a tagging service but he does all those things, and no I am not calling Scoble a tool. Robert Scoble is a human processor of amazingly enormous amounts of information. I think he has a real job too, but he digests a lot of info and shares the good stuff on a number of platforms and I think has such a large following that he becomes a high-end-user test case for a lot of webapps that don’t scale well, so he can point out shortcoming and flaws that other people might not notice until it’s too late. I’ve become a big fan and thanks to @Spin/Eric Rice for introducing me to @Scobleizer.

4. WordPress – I tried a zillion blog packages and after all of the trial and error came to a simple conclusion: If you’re blogging and not using WordPress, you’re nuts. WordPress has zillions of themes, zillions of widgets, EVERY webapp with a blog tie in is WordPress compatible, if you host your own, upgrading is simple.. I <3 WordPress. Bye bye Livejournal, Blogger, Typepad and others. Oh, and if you aren’t blogging but want to, it’s free. Go do it.

3. Google Feed Reader – Google’s Feed Reader makes subscribing to blogs easy and portable. I was using Sage, then I tried Flock’s built in reader, but all of those are dependent on a local machine and I need to be mobile. It’s not perfect yet (get rid of duplicates pls!), but with the addition of sharing with your Gtalk friends just a few days ago, it beats the competition hands down. It also proves that Scoble really does read all those feeds. Impressive!

2. BlogHUD – My favorite Second Life tool of the year is without a doubt BlogHUD. I just can’t tell you how much easier it has made posting images and information from in-world to out. If you need examples, just check the BlogHUD category on this site. I think this is a terrific tool for educators in Second Life as well as anyone who keeps a travel log, reports on SL news, or just wants to share the cool stuff their doing. BlogHUD Pro has a bunch of other features, but the only one I use is the cross-post images to blogs and it is SO worth $900L. It is fabulous.

1. Twitter – Twitter is the glue that holds everything together. Twitter is a steady stream of information, help, and camaraderie. Twitter is better than Jaiku or Pownce. Twitter has changed my web surfing habits, my conception of online communities, my Second Life experience, and my blogging habits. Twitter is the ultimate “just in time” information source. Twitter. How I Love Thee. Ok enough gushing! I think Twitter works best when you find a combination of Twitter add-ons that work for you. I personally use it in conjunction with GTalk, Twittermail, TwitterTools for WordPress, and SLTweets in Second Life.


Honorable Mention: Flock
– Flock is a Mozilla based web browser that integrates a number of tools to make social networking and browsing media online even easier. It’s pretty slick looking and has some great ideas, but it still seems really top heavy and a little crash prone when you get a zillion tabs going. But I’ll keep an eye on it in 2008 because it does some things really well.

Dishonorable Mention: Facebook – Facebook feels like evil to me. Maybe it’s because it sounds like the “creator” stole the idea. Maybe it’s because if you don’t pick a gender it assumes you’re a guy. Maybe it’s all the privacy breaching going on. Maybe it’s the cloudy chain of who all owns it and invests in it. Maybe it’s all the stupid spammy groups. I am there and I’ll add you, but I won’t accept any of your third party super poking super whatever invites, because I am not a Facebook fan.

And that’s it! Thanks to all who brought these great tools to my attention and thanks to the people who make them possible! So what did I miss? What tools make your top 10 list for the year?