Hallelujah!

Our team has finished our presentation for IT 6750. It was great working with Alex and Blake to analyze the trend of using virtual worlds, specifically Second Life, in higher education and corporate training.

Audacity and Trend Analysis

I've been learning how to use Audacity, a free audio editor and recorder. I can record an audio track, cut off the extra time at the beginning and end, and insert the file into a PowerPoint slide. I'm doing this for our trend analysis on Second Life.

I had planned to use this blog as a research journal for the project, but we ended up creating a wiki.

Another Prensentation on SL in Higher Ed

Muve'in On Over

From: intellagirl, 3 weeks ago

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Presentation for the 2007 Serious Games Forum at Purdue University


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Presentation on Second Life and Education

I have to confess that I haven't watched the presentation yet, but I'm sure that if Laura was involved, it will be very informative.

From: sorry.afk, 1 day ago

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CSI: New York and Second Life

I finally got around to watching the episode of CSI: New York from last week that was supposed to portray Second Life. One question kept going through my head: Had anyone involved in producing the episode actually ever been in Second Life? It certainly didn't seem so.

The avatars and sims did look like ones that could exist in Second Life. However, the CSI characters' avatars did things that I've certainly never seen avatars do: find out from a white rabbit (or anyone else) where a particular avatar is currently located, walk off in synch while holding hands, teleport together to a different location, assemble a crowd on the spur of the moment for any kind of activity, pick something up with a hand.

I'm afraid this show is only going to make it harder for educators to convince administrators and students that Second Life is different from violent computer games.

Results of Research on Virtual Worlds

This week, I've found the following blog posts and websites about Second Life:

1. Another review of There
2. A review of Gaia Online
3. Virtual Worlds Review--not updated since Feb. 20, 2006, includes list of virtual worlds by category
4. "The Virtual World That Started It All"
5. OnRez Viewer: "OnRez Viewer, First Impression," "Electric Sheep's OnRez viewer - first impressions"

On Wednesday night, CBS aired an episode of CSI: NY featuring Second Life. I recorded it but haven't had the time to watch it yet.

Video: Exploring Virtual Worlds, Part 1

This video was produced by Joe Sanchez and posted on the Sloan-C SL-Net social networking site.


Find more videos like this on Sloan-C SL-NET

Keeping a Research Journal

A couple of my classmates in IT 6750, Alex and Blake, and I are going to analyze the use of virtual worlds, specifically Second Life, in higher ed and corporate training.

Since I read Will Richardson's book, Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, last year, I've been wanting to try having my students use blogs to keep research journals. Unfortunately, I haven't taught a class since then where that would have worked.

So, I'm going to do it myself. I'm going to use this blog as a research journal for our trend analysis.

A few days ago, I ran across a reference by Ray Schroeder to an article on MediaShift a PBS-hosted blog that tracks "how new media—from weblogs to podcasts to citizen journalism—are changing society and culture," by Mark Glaser titled "Your Guide to Virtual Worlds." This article looks like it will be a great resources for our project. Glaser has sections on background and history, Second Life, virtual worlds in the media, a glossary, and resources, including a partial list of virtual worlds.

About the same time, Nik Peachey wrote about There.com, what he likes about it, what isn't so good, and how he can use it.

Help for Educators in Second Life

Right after I joined Second Life back in May, I learned about SLolar Central, "a place where [educators] can experiment with modes of communication, movement, etc., to enhance their SL experiences, offering free temporary 'homes' for people to use as they explore." Yesterday I checked with KJ Hax, one of the founders, who told me that there are still spots available. Anyone who's interested should go to their Google Group page and download, complete, and submit the Temporary Office Space Residency Application.

My Adventures in Second Life

If you'd like to read more about my adventures in Second Life, please go to my main blog.

Presentation on Using Second Life for Higher Education

An overview of Second Life, how it works for education, and examples of SL uses for a selection of subjects.


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SL-NET's First Professional Development Session

On Friday, SL-NET held its first professional development activity. Shaun and the other committee members did a great job pulling it together. CDB Barkley and Max Chatnoir talked about what educators are currently doing in Secondlife. At one point, we had about 35 "people" present.

There are more pictures available at the SL-NET website.

Also posted at 4R x T.

Training in Second Life

In an article published in the August issue of T + D magazine by the American Society of Training & Development (ASTD) and online at Learning Circuits, Anders Gronstedt discussed the use of Second Life (SL) in corporate training. After briefly covering what SL is and how to communicate there, Gronstedt explains how tools in SL "can be used by training professionals to illustrate technical concepts in powerful new ways."

He quotes Chuck Hamilton from IBM, who said: "One of the advantages of Second Life is that you can manipulate the sense of scale and perspective. . . . You can crawl around a big oil rig or fly around a network diagram."

Gronstedt also points out one of the problems with training in SL: "Second Life is creating more virtual classrooms. Unfortunately, most e-learning still looks like a classroom lecture. It takes time for a new medium to develop its own character and unique vernacular."

However, as he points out, there "are signs that some learning organizations are pushing the envelope. IBM has balloons flying in the air that you can enter to explore 360-degree images—a virtual reality within the virtual reality."

Some of the barriers to extensive use of SL in corporate training are

1. consumer focus
2. firewall and security issues
3. system requirements
4. people's time commitment

Gronstedt concludes, "Virtual worlds provide learning organizations with a powerful, unique ability to engage and empower employees in ways that accommodate their digital and mobile lifestyles, adapt to their individual learning needs, and encourage collaboration."

I agree.

Top 100 Tools for Learning?

The Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies has prepared a list of the "Top 100 Tools for Learning" based on responses from 109 "learning professionals." I ran across the list while I was searching for references to AECT and Second Life together and got a hit that took me to the Centre's page for Second Life. I was excited until I looked at it more carefully.

It's hard to take the list seriously when Tool #4 with 37 mentions is Google's search engine. The next "search engine" listed is Dogpile (#98), which is a metasearch engine or metacrawler not a regular search engine, anyway.

Ask.com and Exalead are much better search engines than Google, but I always advise my students to use metacrawlers (like Dogpile, Kartoo, Clusty, and Ixquick) or directories instead. They get much more relevant results that way.

Controversy Close to Home

One of the first people I met in Second Life was Jeff Corbin (his name in real life), a research associate in physics and astronomy at DU. He has built the Science School in Second Life, which DU will be using for classes.

Andy Guess, in an article titled "In Second Life, There's No Fallout" at InsideHigherEd.com, describes Jeff's Island: "Science School is nestled behind a three-dimensional, real-time weather map with pixellated clouds hovering above the ground, near a telescope that can be used to view constellations during the winter, when its real-life counterpart at the University of Denver is inaccessible due to snow-covered mountain roads."

With grant money from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Robert C. Amme, a professor of physics at DU, and some colleagues are going to build a nuclear reactor in Second Life as part of a master's program "in applied science with an emphasis on environmental impact assessment that will feature classes held in Second Life."

The comments on the article indicate what we face in using this technology (Second Life and other MUVEs) for educational purposes.

Educational Uses of Second Life

I saw this video at http://elearndev.blogspot.com/ and thought it did a good job of presenting Second Life's educational potential. It also showed the Globe Theatre on Renaissance Island, where I live in SL.

Education and Second Life

I've been trying to comment on a post by another student in the class, but my comment hasn't shown up. I thought I'd post it here as well:

Second Life (SL) has a lot of potential for education, as many people have recognized, and probably even more for professional development as we figure out how we can use it.

I joined SL last May just in time to attend sessions at the Second Life Best Practices in Education 2007 Conference. Videos of some of the addresses are still available in the video archive.

Last week, the New Media Consortium held a Symposium on Creativity with an education track in SL. I heard some very positive feedback from a friend who attended.

The SLED (Second Life EDucators) listserv has over 3500 subscribers. In addition, a lot of colleges and universities, libraries, and professional organizations have bought sims or created groups in SL, including ISTE, AECT, and the Sloan Consortium.

Even though K-12 teachers can't actually use SL for their classes because of the age limit (though there is a teen grid for 13 to 18 year olds), ISTE is extremely active in SL. They have an island and weekly activities.

AECT has a group in SL, but I haven't found out any more.

The last couple of months, I've been working with the Sloan Consortium to organize networking and professional development activities for college and university educators in SL.

In using SL for educational purposes, we just need to be careful not to try to do things with it that can be done better with other tools.

Blogging for IT 6750

I'm starting this blog to meet the requirements for a class I'm taking at UCD: IT 6750, Current Trends and Issues in Instructional Technology. Lately I've been thinking that I'd like to move into instructional technology and out of teaching because I have the most fun with the technology, so I registered for this class to see if that's what I really want to do.

In January I started my first blog, 4R x T, to record my experiences using technology in my classes. I have a second blog that I use for my classes at Red Rocks Community College.

This summer I've been exploring Second Life trying to figure out how it can be used for education. (I've chronicled my adventures there in my main blog.) Using Second Life and other MUVEs (multi-user virtual environments) is definitely a current issue in instructional technology. For me, the best use of Second Life is networking and professional development.

A couple of months ago, I ran into the executive director of the Sloan Consortium at their site in Second Life. I mentioned to him that it would be nice if Sloan-C had networking events for folks in higher ed the way ISTE was doing for K-12. He told me to go ahead with that idea, and I have.

First we put a questionnaire on the web to find out what people were interested in. Its presence was announced to the Sloan-C and SLED listserves. I created a listserv for the people who responded, gave the group a name (SL-NET, which stands for Second Life - Networking Education and Technology), held an organizing meeting, and set up a social network site. Last Friday night, we had our first activity: a dance. We also have plans for other activities: social, professional development, and training in SL skills. It's a lot of fun, and I've met some great people!