Scilands Video treat

A video recording of the Scilands track is now up at Cruxy.com .... I'm working on the basis that people always look fatter on TV (!).

Tish Shute's weblog of SLCC is interesting, plus I look better in the photograph.

Second Life Community Convention

Courtesy of Fleep Tuque: http://flickr.com/photos/tags/SLCCedu07/interesting/?page=3

James Dearnley falling over his words: l-r: JD with microphone, Dave Taylor (NPL), Jeffrey Corbin (University of Denver), Eric Hackathorn (NOAA), Kat Prawl (International Spaceflight Museum).


I spent a most enjoyable few days at the SLCC in Chicago over the weekend - plus a rather less enjoyable day hanging around in Detroit airport waiting for a connecting flight to Chicago (tornadoes shut the airport, tsk).

SLCC took place at the Chicago Hilton, an imposing venue that was plagued by wi-fi dropouts, a NFL Fantasy Football convention (with rednecks a-plenty), triathletes, and the 800 individuals who made up SLCC. What was immediately obvious from the start was the sense of opportunity that SL has fostered - while the 'Developers meeting' obviously pitted competitors up against each other, the overall sense was that of shortage - of developers, and of experts. Despite the eight million SL users, many of the driving forces were on show in Chicago (variously, NMC, Millions of Us, 'famous Lindens').

As conferences go, this was probably the most interesting I've been to - primarily because the essential fluidity of SL development meant that nearly everything was interesting in its own right - there were odd exceptions (notably, the peevish, self-serving 'media' stream at the end of the conference). Our Scilands panel went off well it seemed, despite my mind going blank during the introductions (being streamed into SL!), and the numerous problems we faced with Internet access. Some useful contacts were made as a result. I also, throughout the weekend, tended to mix up real names and SL names, with odd results in the Scilands panel - luckily, nobody seemed to mind at all....



This was broadly speaking the perfect conference in many ways - slightly chaotic in places, populated by people who were genuinely interested in SL, and on the whole, there were few boundaries and obvious cliques. SL is still in its infancy, and the conference tended to reflect that. Long may it last. Certainly, the ideal place for networking, presenting a paper and making an impact - I'm keen that one of my PhD students writes a paper for inclusion in SLCC 2008 - the venue of which is not known yet. Hopefully, the east coast of the USA.

One thing I certainly will not be doing next year is travelling via Amsterdam, or with KLM. The airline threw my schedule off by cancelling the direct Amsterdam-Chicago flight, and provided an uncomfortable flight back which was livened up with an air hostess telling off another passenger for using the business class toilet...

Finally, I now know Detroit better than I should......

Let's Play Blog-Tag!

In his Blog, Tony Karrer points to an article on Brent Schlenker's Corporate eLearning Strategies and Development blog, which in turn references a You Tube video on using Second Life as a teaching / learning tool.
Tony Karrer's post is interesting about ways he sees Second Life being used for educational purposes on historical sites such as 'a recreation of Plymouth where actors playing the part of Native Americans and Colonists told stories and answered questions about life, religion, history, etc'.

ALT-C next week, anyone?

Eduserv Report on UK FE/HE Developments in Second Life

This report summarises an investigation into the use and uptake of Second Life (SL) by UK Higher and Further Education. The research had four main goals:
1. to determine the “state of play” of SL developments within the Higher and Further Education sector
2. to discover how these developments are supported, in terms of time, funding and other resources
3. to explore the functionality of these developments, i.e. which types of media or interactive service they incorporate
4. to establish how “busy”, or well-used, the developments have been and discover any impacts resulting from their implementation and use.
Initially, the work set out to take a global perspective, as at the outset of the research there were only a small number of UK academic SL developments. However, as the work progressed a considerable number of UK Higher and Further Education SL activities were discovered (see appendix), and this report focuses exclusively on those.

Karl Kapp

Another thoughtful Blogger on uses of Second Life in Education
http://karlkapp.blogspot.com/

Serious Virtual Worlds Conference

First European Conference on the Professional Applications of Virtual Worlds, to be held on 13-14 September at the Serious Games Institute, Coventry.

http://www.seriousvirtualworlds.net/index.php

If you sign up online, you can collect three gold tokens to offer to the Keeper of the Gate on the Island of Cruel Beings, to gain access to the Upper Chambers of Asgaroth and a shot at the title... seriously (not!).

James's avatar watches James on a live feed (via Wirecast). Had problems last night with others seeing this, and I guess that's due to me using my home machine as a steaming server. Not much use on a 128kb upload.

But - it can be done.

Web TV

I've been playing around today trying to get a live videofeed into SL - the one product that would do it OK is the only one that doesn't work on my machine [https://www.veodia.com/beta/]. As a proof of concept, I've set up my own stream on UStream, and did some 'broadcasting'. Very good it is, but obviously the upload speed is important. One for work I think.

Finally, after a seven week wait, the island is up on the grid. As you can see, I've been doing some basic design and playing around ....

http://slurl.com/secondlife/DISland/92/159/30

http://www.publictechnology.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=9631

Eduserv to fund research into eLearning in new Virtual Worlds

Eduserv, the not-for-profit IT services group, has announced that its Foundation has awarded grants totalling £333,000 to fund four research projects, each of which involve investigations into the use of virtual worlds in learning and education. The Foundation’s grant programme is designed to drive the effective application of IT in education.

The projects, conducted by Oxford University, Kings College London, London Knowledge Lab and University of Paisley, will investigate how educators can develop effective means of incorporating 3-D virtual worlds into teaching and learning.

Full article here.

Waiting

The campus was ordered three weeks ago now, but still we wait.

The last I heard ( a week ago) was an email confirming my academic credentials for the University discount.

The Portuguese Angle...

The Second Life Insider Blog references notes on a workshop on SL at the University of Aveiro, Portugal. The notes, entitled 'Surprising Research Results' , offer insights into the use of SL in education that are, apparently, founded on proper scientific research:

"We’re all entitled to “opinions”. However, there is a world of difference between an “opinion” and a qualified opinion by an expert. And there were quite a few experts that came up with their conclusions — backed by scientific research. In some cases, I was astonished to the conclusions they came up with. And I’ll be certainly be much more confident in emitting some of the opinions — now that they’re scientific results."

Some of the headline findings delivered at the workshop:

1. Don't simply replicate Real Life, do things that SL will let you do and add value
2. The informality of SL aids communication
3. SL classes are much better than RL ones
4. Text based interactions level the playing ground for all students to participate and provide better learning
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

Stephen Downes' presentation at Eduserv was indeed interesting, and probably would have been suited as the first of the day rather than the last - primarily, I suspect, because it would have given the other speakers a slightly darker background to 'work with'. Myself and Mark Hepworth spoke to him outside the Congress Centre afterwards, and it was easy to feel some sympathy for him - the contrarian speaker who put a chill on proceedings and was effectively treated then by the panel moderator as a pariah.

His main points - that Linden can't carry on as it is (in regard to maintaining its network/servers), and that the 6 million users mask the realities of actual use, were well made - as was the point that parts of SL are virtual ghosttowns.

Yesterday, I attended a SL session at Coventry University (Sigma - Maths support), and we were shown the University of Hertfordshire's new campus. Beautiful design, but nobody there. Walls, sliding doors, vast open indoor spaces, but empty. During the session, placing resources was dicussed in detail - lecture handouts et al.

I can't help feeling that the educational future of SL is participative, action-based and without RL physical boundaries to contend with. And hopefully not as a place to pick up lecture handouts.

Second Life International Best Practices in Education Conference

More about the Conference, to be held on May 25, 2007 in venues all over the Second Life world, which I advertised below earlier this month.
In the meantime, and on 'the other side of the pond', Kevin Jarret runs an excellent blog entitled The Story of My “Second Life”. He sets out the background to his work like this:

About the Project

Hello and welcome to my Second Life blog! My name is Kevin Jarrett. Let me tell you a little about this project.

In February I received a $10,000 Faculty Excellence Grant from Walden University (where I teach part-time) to study Second Life (SL) and its implications for education at a distance. Thanks to this generous grant, I will be taking a leave of absence from my teaching duties so I can spend at least four to six months exploring, investigating and experimenting in SL. My vision is to essentially immerse myself in SL as an educator, documenting the experience in real time. I know that with the right tools, the right input, the right contacts, the right perspective, and enough time, I can create a practical resource of great value for educators who wish to use SL with their students, and to learn about it for themselves.

There are people who believe (I am one of them) that the 3D world of SL is the future of the web. I want to thank Walden University for giving me the opportunity to explore this technology as a Faculty Excellence Fund scholar. I will know my project has been a success when the value I have created for Walden and for the SL community far exceeds the cost of the grant.

What struck me about Kevin's work was the (apparent) parallels to the work being revealed and discussed in this Blog, and that set me wondering about the value of inviting Kevin into our 'circle'. Any thoughts?

Eduserv Symposium - Virtual Worlds, Real Learning?

Stephen Downes gave a talk at the Eduserve Symposium on 11 May (see post below) and followed it up with a very useful blog entry, commenting on the Symposium and pointing to a number of other blog entries created by people who attended, including Richard Wallis, who provides further links and comment.

Universities discover Second Life - Guardian article

This article by Jessica Shepherd in the Guardian (8 May) picks up on this Friday's (11 May) Eduserv conference at the TUC in London about the educational use of Second Life.

Island

The Department was formally accepted into the Scilands group at their weekly meeting last Thursday, and I ordered the DIS island with Linden Lab this morning. We are to the south of the Scilands group, near to NASA's Co-Lab, and various other University / governmental non-profit organisations.

Getting accepted was a bit more involved than I'd thought, with our application going through Council and Senate approval before the affirmative answer. Anyhow, we are now in a location which I think should be to our benefit in the future.

I've also registered for the Second Life Community Convention , which is being held in Chicago (August 24-26). Scilands are hoping to present a track in the convention, to which I'll either act as Chair or as a contributor. More about that when Scilands get around to planning it out formally.

Second Life International Best Practices in Education Conference

You'll probably have seen this...if not, you'll probably be interested!

Planning is currently underway for the first Second Life International Best Practices in Education Conference!

The conference will be held on May 25, 2007 in venues all over the Second Life world, with exciting presentations, vendors and exhibitors, and everything an educator needs to know to get started exploring the possibilities for teaching, learning, and research in Second Life!

Registration is free of charge and participants will receive in-world goody bags with donations from some of the best content creators in Second Life.

Want to be in on the latest news about the conference? Join the Best Practices in Education Group in Second Life by using the Search tool. Membership is free and you will be able to access Group Notices, vote on proposals, network with interested parties, and stay abreast of Events.

Please note: All times listed anywhere on the site are in PDT.