Second Life and Education

My students always ask me if I go to clubs in SL for fun. Heh. As if I had time to go clubbing! Sir Ken Robinson, in his awesome speech at TED, does a funny little bit about academics dancing off beat at the disco. I don’t see many avatars dancing around in SL, but maybe there is a secret club for all of us? In any case, Sir Robinson’s speech about creativity in schools is wonderful.

How?

We go chair hopping.

What on earth is chair hopping??? Simply stated - it is the BEST way to pick up all sorts of free junk from around the grid. You wear a little HUD ball (0x-DOS HUD - IM me if you want one; they are free). Once you have it on, you tap the center and open your IM history. It shows you where all the chairs are that start with the first letter of your name. So, for me, it will show me all the D chairs. I teleport (using the SLurl in the history), right click, sit on the chair, and get a cool and funky gift. Now, be warned…some gifts stink. But, my assistant, Daliah, SWEARS by this ball. She gathers all sorts of things for Literature Alive! builds. She packages up the good clothing and furniture (the full perm stuff) and adds it to the School Store for students and professors.

The lucky chairs are a free and fun way to travel around the grid with students. If you want to check out all sorts of free stuff AND see some lucky chairs in action (and pick up a HUD), stop by the School Store or IM me. In my free time, I am usually hunting for chairs with Daliah and one or two students!

With all these great new education posts on this über great new blog site, for some reason I decided to aim for something more nuts and bolts to blurt out.

As much as I love the environment of Second Life, the software interface of the client makes me want to tear out my hair and scream, and send someone a pile of Donald Norman and Edward Tufte books. But that’s another blog post.

Although I’ve been in SL for almost 2 years this March, there are still a whole bunch of things in those menus I have no clue what they do. For example, today I was stumped because I was seeing a red tint on every texture that was a video screen… only on my Mac. It was only via some replies on the SL Educators list (they always come through), I noticed I had inadvertently checked Beacons Always On under the View menu.

Oh sure, I know exactly what that is. Yep. Beacons.

But eventually, with practice, poking around, or more likely, someone else telling, you begin to know a few subtle things you can do via the menus that can elevate your SL Intelligence Quotient (well at least among the general populace), and next thing you know, when you tell someone else, they are thinking, “Wow, this CDB Barkley character knows his stuff.”

So here’s two of my favorites. But before I spill the beans, I’m hoping readers will add theirs in via comments. I know you know more than me.

Both of these require activating the Debug and Client menus, the goodie box of menu obscurity. You do this via the four fingered combo - ctrl-alt-shift-d (ctrl-option-shift-d for macs). Just knowing this elevates your interface stature.

The first has to do with taking pictures in Second Life. Of all the things I do, photography is my most favorite! I love the parallels to RL photography (again another blog post). I save 99% of mine to my disk, and like most avatars, I started by using File -> Take Snapshot (or Cmd-Shift-S). The downside is your avatar makes that goofy camera animation and you generate that shutter sound to everyone around you:

and that sounds just says subtly… “noob”. I was doing this at a performance, and my thoughtful and immensely knowledgeable college Ravenelle Zugzwang gave me this tip.

Under the Client menu, activate the option Quiet Snapshots to Disk.

And now, when you want to take a photo, use File -> Snapshot to Disk (or Ctrl-~). Aha! No more silly two armed salutes, no more disturbing the peace with shutter noise. You can take photos and no one but you knows it (But hey, don’t go peeking in private places, ok? Be nice).

And secret menu tip number 2 deals with the annoying slumping over of your avatar when you are not doing anything in SL. This happens all the time in presentations, I’ve seen both speakers and attendees droop over because they are either riveted listeners or they left the computer to make a milkshake or water the plants. But I also needed it for some of our live video streaming, and I need my cameraperson avatar to stay standing awake for an hour.

So here’s how to keep your avatar from slumping and going AFK (unless you do so explicitly). It’s a triple buried menu item. Go to Client -> Character -> Character Tests and make sure Go Away/AFK When Idle is unchecked.

Never slump again. (That tip too came from Rav.)

So tell us- what’s your best secret menu trick? I want to know!

– Alan Levine / CDB Barkley

US News and World reports: “The growing ubiquity of broadband connectivity is helping entertainment, education, and training to incorporate simulations of exciting, often dangerous experiences. For example, virtual patients allow medical students to diagnose and treat without risking a real patient’s life. A new computer game, Spore, allows you to simulate creating a new planet, starting with the first microorganism.”

And isn’t it telling that many folks who read this blog have one of more jobs listed in the Best Careers of 2008? Second Lifers seem to cluster in:

• Curriculum/training specialist
• Editor
• Higher education administrator
• Librarian
• Professor
• Usability/User experience specialist

~ Jeremy Kemp / Jeremy Kabumpo

Today I had one of those moments where several random experiences coalesced into a vision of virtual proportions, an epiphany of sorts about immersive virtual presence.  I was sitting in the Cisco Executive Briefing Center in San Jose, California testing out their Cisco Telepresence system when this occurred. 

The Cisco system uses large flat panel displays to realistically place remote meeting attendees around a real world table.  The rooms and tables are all of the same color scheme, so the effect is quite convincing (see the picture above).  Microphones are mounted in the table in front of each participant, with the sounds projected into each virtual meeting space spatially correct for the seating positions as they are displayed to each participant.  Unless you have experienced this technology it’s difficult to understand just how realistic these meetings feel, right down to the tapping of fingers and occasional coughs of the participants. 

The other day I was reading an interesting article in Scientific American Mind entitled ‘Touching Illusions‘.  The article mentions the concept of ‘visual capture’, also known as the ‘ventrilloquist effect’.  This concept simply states that given a strong visual cue combined with sound, the brain will associate the sound with the visual cue.  When visual inputs conflict with other senses, vision tends to dominate.  This effect can produce some very convincing illusions of perception.  

Over the past 15 years I’ve participated in many video conferences.  This technology continues to improve, and over the years all of the visual stutter and lag has been removed (back when this technology was new this stutter made some people motion sick).  At my school district we have several Polycom conference room video conferencing units that we use in the Pacific Rim Exchange project with Kyoto, Japan.  I’ve always felt that there was something missing in the video conferencing experience using this type of equipment.  Until today, I never knew what that missing element was.  

I now know that the missing element is size.  When I am in a video conference the images of the other participants are usually tiled on a widescreen HDTV.  In this format the meeting participants range in size from a few inches tall to maybe a foot in size.  When I am running around in a virtual world like Second Life, those I am sharing the virtual space with are doll sized at best on my desktop monitor.  Even in a virtual world like There.com, where the avatars lip synch and simulate body language, the realism is lost to the size of the avatars.   

Over the break I had one of our computer labs open at our Technology Center.  Students involved in the PacRimX project came in to work together, and to share building techniques they’ve picked up in their use of Second Life.  We have a large projection screen in this lab.  Inside of an hour one of the students asked to use the “big screen”.  The students traded off using the teacher computer over the rest of the week to teach the others from the large screen.  As educators using Second Life, this is already something we are very familiar with.  Why does this technology have to be limited to instruction?

LCD projectors are now sub-$1,000 devices (many are now approaching the $500 price point).  This is what we were paying for high end desktop monitors only a few years back.  How much more immersive would Second Life be if we were interacting with life sized avatars?  An LCD projector and a white wall is all that’s needed to make this a reality.  We got a peek at this on the recent CSI:NY episode ‘Down the Rabbit Hole‘. 

A short list of other requirements will be necessary before this technique can be fully exploited with Second Life.  First, and most importantly, we need a way to lip synch our voices to our avatars.  The spatial voice support is already there and quite effective with a good set of headphones.  In the CSI:NY episode Gary Sinise appears to be using a 3Dconnexion Space Pilot to control his avatar.  I purchased a Space Navigator and found that with the current drivers it’s only possible to control the Flycam function in Second Life, not your avatar’s movement.  This is great for producing smooth flycam Machinima, but not yet usable for avatar movement as depicted on CSI:NY.

Until my personal experience today with the Cisco Telepresence system I had no idea of how important scale was in the total immersion of a virtual experience.  The Cisco system as pictured above costs approximately $300,000 for both sides of the table (list price including furniture and installation).  There is no reason this model could not be adapted to virtual learning environments in Second Life at a relatively inexpensive cost using off the shelf technologies. 

If you want to get really excited about this, take a look at the Sanyo PLC-XL50 announced in Las Vegas this week at the Consumer Electronics Show. This new projector can project an 80-inch image from only 8 inches away from the wall.  The price is currently cost prohibitive at over $3,000.  But like all technologies, that price will fall over time with economies of scale. 

Adding life sized scale to our virtual worlds can take this technology to the next level for education in the not too distant future.  All we have to do is think outside of the monitor.

~ Stan Trevena / Quidit Oflynn

Update:  Just a few tweaks here and there (learning the whole WordPress thing

Desideria Stockton’s (AKA Beth Ritter-Guth)  Hot List

I am not entirely sure that Virtuasphere is a REAL word, but, hopefully, y’all will grant me poetic license. In building the plots for Literature Alive!, Eloise Pasteur has created most of our builds and scripts (how she does it, I have no idea…she is, indeed, a goddess of such things). Even still, we are always on the hunt for cool tools to use. Here is a list of ten tools I love (and where you can get them):

10. Hiro Sheridan’s Molecule Rezzer (IM Hiro Sheridan) -The only reason this is listed as 10th is because I don’t teach chemistry. If I did, it would be #1. Sadly, I know so very little about chemistry, but I know that cutting-edge chemists like Dr. Jean-Claude Bradley (Drexel University) use it for classes.

9. The Pooping Llama (IM Max Chatnoir) - You wouldn’t think that an English teacher would NEED a pooping Llama, but Max’s creation (used to teach Genetics at Genome) was a HUGE asset in building Dante’s Inferno. If you are familiar with the text, you know that many levels are covered in, um, poo.

8. The Media Hub (Eloise Pasteur) - This is a new product in the Eloise line. It is a ONE PRIM (you heard me!) video screen that can hold like 50 .MOV Urls. It is a little bit like the lovely ACHUB screen (Chris Hambly), but it is less prims and works with any texture. Also, it is boat loads cheaper.

7. SlickrView (AKA The Flickr Thingy)  (Eloise Pasteur) - I am fairly certain that The Flickr Thingy isn’t its true name (note:  it is called SlickrView). I know that you click on it, it gives you a prompt, you type in a tag, and WALA!, pictures from Flickr appear. This is really sweet if you are helping students create projects. They can work off of one on your plot. The Googler (NZTech - Available in The School Store, EduIsland II) works just like the Flickr Thingy, but it searches Google instead. Again, students can Google right from SL.

6. Custom Laptops (Neoznet Watts) - These little wonder machines are custom built for faculty. My students can send and receive email from RL; they can go right to the class blog or wiki; and they can access a whole assortment of links. Best part? They can generate notecards from the laptops.

5. The Eloise Holodeck (Eloise Pasteur) - Literature Alive! received a wonderful supprot grant from The Foundation for Rich Content for the Holodeck Project. Eloise created a sweet Holodeck to use for the rezzing of small Literature Alive! projects. This is nice because it means we can go on the road with builds, OR we can pass out builds to people who wish to use them.

4. Salamander SLoog HUD (Wainbrave Bernal) - I love this cool new tool for archiving wicked cool stuff. I wear it all the time, and when I am somewhere worthy of recognition, I simply have to click on the HUD. The directions are really easy and walk you through exactly what to do. It is a great tool for student scavenger hunts, too!

3. The VIT Mind Mapping Tool (IM Butch Dae) - I LOVE THIS TOOL! I have used it many times for research on SL , and my students have used it, too. You simply click on each level to get the information you want or need. It is really simple to use.

2. Puzzle HUDS (Eloise Pasteur) - Eloise creates custom HUDS for various scavenger hunts. My favorite? She has created one for the Rime of the Ancient Mariner. As students find pieces of the text, an albatross appears on their HUDs. At the end, students receive a special key that unlocks a treasure chest with a prize in it.

1. The Spidergram Planner (Eloise Pasteur) - This things is sooooooooooooo cool. It is like a mind map, but I use it to teach outlining for papers. It is colorful and easy to use, and students LOVE it!

There you have it! Eloise’s materials can be purchased directly from her, at her shop, or at the School Store on EduIsland (or the sub station at Drexel).

Hey SLED dogs! (and cats - of course, yes, we embrace all types here –

How exciting to kick off the new year in virtual teaching and learning with this new community blog! Thanks to the tireless efforts of Sarah Robbins for getting this going - yeah! The need to have leaders in the community is palpable as new educators discover and add their own incredible creative energies and cumulative impacts. Sarah certainly fills a much needed niche in the rapidly transforming ecology of Second Life…. Indeed, it’s about niches that I’d like to make my first post:

I think 2008 will be a watershed year for 3D Virtual Worlds on the practical and potential applications for improving the world. This, based on the trend and other authors’ impressions. I would like to highlight the idea that while the continuous technical innovations in Second Life and other virtual world apps (River City, There.com, DarkStar, etc.) are breathtaking - the social adaptation and use of these innovations is also getting to be a real eye opener (insert list of awesome things going on in education across the metaverse here - or, uh, see Desi’s neat list above THIS entry). The challenge is - and will continue to be - for us to keep abreast of the rapid technological advances and stay informed of how the community is applying these innovations. We have a real need for forums such as this to keep us informed of changes on the horizon that will make for real differences in the way tomorrow looks for us. Aggregating and interpreting the news, informing us of changes within and across the increasing number of virtual worlds, and - what I see as paramount - creating a common language for educators in 3D Virtual Worlds to articulate efficiently what they mean, who it works best for, and how these learning environments may transfer (or not) to real-world settings is a complex and not well-defined task. Even while it’s so very important.

Within Second Life, there are a lot of niches within the education community being filled by visionary and hard-working professional educators - like Sarah - and by organizations (like NMC and ISTE) to build capacity for us to utilize these 3D worlds for teaching and learning. We have here, like the dot.com era of online learning, a need for experimentation and leadership to collaborate, even loosely, toward developing the appropriate DNA to occupy this new ecology. Someone to invent applications and tools (e.g. Eloise Pasteur and Jeremy Kemp), someone to model inspiring applications of teaching and learning (e.g. Desideria Stockton), someone to figure out how to induct newbies with grace, style, and innovation (e.g. Fleep Tuque), etc., etc. I’m not intending to make a list of who’s who (that would take a loooong time and would still be rather incomplete) - but rather, I mean to point out these examples in that there seems a set of niches that needs to be filled within this larger ecosystem for us all to evolve in a transformative way along with the assumed speed at which these 3D Virtual Worlds are changing, innovating, and interconnecting. Each “SLED Niche” being identified and occupied by a hard-working, technology wielding and visionary educator - working on the faith of their vision and without the clearest picture possible of what everyone else is doing.

The SaLamander Project - which we’re coordinating at The Center for Advanced Technology in Education at The University of Oregon - is a project that I hope will fill one of the niches needed by the SLED Community:

a) What ARE the best examples of teaching / learning builds in Second Life? — by what criteria?

b) Where do you FIND these examples?

SaLamander is a project that aims to create a community of Second Life educators - ALL of them, hopefully! - to identify WHAT is useful in Second Life for teaching and learning and to place them into categories that other educators may find most relevant. To do this, we have four interconnected elements:

1. The SaLamander Sloog HUD: a free HUD that SLED community members may use to identify and describe learning materials.
2. Sloog website: The HUD provides you each with a personal list of your own SL Education sites and tags
3. SaLamander Community Wiki: The Sloog website feeds the Community Wiki - which provides a growing database of SLED places for people to check out, discuss, and vote on…
4. MERLOT: the SaLamander Community members that vote the “best” SLED materials (ranking votes allowed one time per registrant for each SaLamander entry).

Here’s a 1st version of our video demonstrating the SaLamander Process…. Hope you like it! and we REALLY want your feedback!

~ Jonathon Richter / Wainbrave Bernal

The students in Beth Ritter-Guth’s (Desideria Stockton’s) CMN 112 class will be doing something a little different this winter. Instead of simply building speeches, they will crack secret codes and learn about the art of Cryptology. Partnered with Dr. Andy Lang (Hiro Sheridan) and his Cryptology students at Oral Roberts University, students will learn about how the world has used coded communication to succeed in war, politics, and terrorism.

Visit the Wiki!

Are you teaching a course using Second Life this semester? If so, we’d love to see your syllabus. Please leave in link in the comments along with the title of the course and the campus which is offering it.

NYT Article about MTV’s Virtual Lower East Side (VLES).  VLES is MTV’s newest foray in virtual worlds. It functions a bit like MySpace used to, promoting new bands, generating fan bases etc and has an accompanying web-based social network with profiles etc. Anyone know what engine its built on?

I took a poke at it and blogged about it over on Ubernoggin since it’s not strictly education related. Time will tell if VLES’s numbers make up for the investment MTVhas put in but it’s worth a look if you’re interested in virtual spaces built for a very specific purpose.

Thanks to Steven Hornik for the link!

It seems the new year has started us all thinking about who we are, both in first life and in Second Life. In the past few days there’s been a flurry of great posts on SLED about educators and their avatars.

• How many avatars do you have?
• Does your avatar look like you? Act like you?
• What role does an avatar play in imagination? learning? teaching persona?

What does an educator look like? Images courtesy of here, here, here, here, and here.
SLEDers have been asking and answering questions about how they choose to represent themselves in Second Life, not just as an educator, but as a person. I proposed that perhaps we’re looking at two camps of people (with lots of gray in between):

1. Extenders: those who use Second Life as a tool with which to extend their first life personality into another space and tool set. These folks will readily identify their avatar with their first life identity
2. Escapists: those who use Second Life as a space in which to reinvent themselves as something other than that which is commonly known of them. These folks will typically tell you that they keep FL and SL separate.

Nola objected a bit to the connotation of “escapist” and preferred “explorer” to describe SL users who use the space for entertainment, role playing etc, to explore other facets of themselves, the space, and the people in it. Rolig added ideas about a user’s level of immersion and suspension of belief and how those factor into one’s use of the space.

Other posters added information about why they use more than one avatar (one is official, one personal in most cases) and how a second avatar can be used to test permissions, access, or as a camera. Certainly the mechanics of SL often cause us to need a second avatar for building, money transactions, demonstration purposes etc but I’m going to step away from that and focus back on the idea of the educational avatar.

Anyone who teaches is no doubt aware that they have a “teaching persona”, a version of themselves that is most effective with students. Perhaps a K-12 teacher finds he/she has to be more parental or more regimented in the classroom. A young teacher might have to distance him/herself from students who might be in a similar generation. You get the idea.

The recent discussion about avatars on SLED reminds me of these personae. Are the avatars that much different than the personae in the classroom? Is an avatar a souped up persona with more possibilities? What can we learn about ourselves as educators when, as in SL, we’re given the opportunity to create a persona without limits?