Virtual World, Real Education in Second Life

Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education 2010 conference.  That’s the official name.  Dates, 12-13 Mar. 2010.    

Call for Proposals: Paper and Poster Sessions.  Submissions are due by Monday, February 15th 2010

The Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education (VW-BPE) is a community-based conference to let  participants of virtual worlds  share current teaching, learning and research experience and practices in 3D virtual environments.  Conference presentations focus on teaching/learning, scholarly work, projects, events, activities and innovative tools for education in virtual worlds.  Conference presenters’ focus on the identification of ‘best practices in education’ designed for 3D virtual world technology.

The conference will be held in several Second Life estates:

• Rockcliffe University Consortium
• St Leo University
• Cookie estate,
• Monash University 2

No flights, no security, no taxis, no luggage.  Just demonstrations, displays, and discussions about how to provide effective education in a virtual environment.    Since the conference will be in a virtual environment, it will be a self-demonstrating display of communication in a virtual environment.  

Another item on the VR enabler list.  Conferences.  The drinks are not near as good as at Las Vegas.   The girls are not as exciting as (I hear) they are in Chicago.  And the delight of the people who handle the travel budget will probably not make up for that.  

But you get down to business the minute you start.  Whether that is an advantage depends on how much you like your work.

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Bring newcomers directly to your place

To help newcomers coming into Second Life for this conference and other meetings, I worked out a notecard with complete (I hope) instructions and material to support newcomer entry.  The complete notecard, with embedded notecards and other materials is in the Hobo Kit dated 1/02/2010 or later.  The kit is available (free) from a poster-giver at the RUC Mentor center. 

I wonder how intimidating the instructions will appear to potential newcomers.  The potential newcomers to this conference are probably somewhere in the educational/professional system.  They will have survived such challenges as applying for college, applying for graduate school, applying for professional certification, and following the driving instructions to a meeting in a nearby city.  They may even have set up a VCR and made it show the correct time.  I believe they can follow these instructions.  

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Below is a summary of the notecard contents.

You would only want to bring newcomers to your place if you are going to provide personal help and specialized entry instruction.   A likely scenario calling for minimal entry instruction is a class or meeting held in a location you control.  You will set up the site to minimize instruction needs.  Here are suggestions on site prep, learning objectives, and instructional materials for this scenario.

Site prep: 

Use chairs with a simple sit script.  Be sure the parcel does not have a forced TP point.

Take a slurl at the point where you want newcomers to arrive.  Since newcomers may take time to rez, put the rez point behind the seated group.  Put the slurl on your website or blog.  It works much like any other web link except that newcomers will get a notice that they need to download/install software, register, and select a name.  It may be convenient to have them use their first and last names (run together) as the first name in Second Life. 

Put a pyramid or cone at the rez point.  The objective of this is to slide newcomers away from the rez point so they don't pile up on each other.   

Event prep:

Plan for the time it will take to bring people in.  A good plan would be to bring in a few people a day or so in advance.  That will give you an estimate of how long the entry process will take for the kind of people you are bringing in.  It will also provide an advance team with entry experience--people who could help new arrivals. 

If the participants will need to talk more than occasionally, recommend that they have a headset (headset and boom microphone; they can buy one for about $20 or less where electronics goods are sold.)    Also recommend that they test the headset before coming into SL.  For example, they could usefully test it by talking with you on Skype.

Don't expect voice to work for all people at the beginning.  If possible, you and/or your advance team should establish Skype contact with the newcomers before they start the entry process.  That way, someone can talk them through the process and keep voice contact until Second Life voice is working reliably.  

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The Visitor's Guide to Second Life 

Instructions to newcomers (Prior to entry)

As soon as you can see people around you, look for an empty chair and click on it.  You will sit automatically.  If possible you should remain in the seat for the entire session.  If you do need to move, however, click the "Stand up" button (bottom center of your window).  Then click on another chair.

Here are the tasks you need to be able to do in order to participate effectively in the meeting/class.  Practice these after you are in Second Life.

Task 1: Notecards

• Receive and keep a notecard
• locate a notecard in your inventory
• open and read a notecard

Newcomers will probably NOT arrive with the settings to automatically accept and display notecards.  Instructions on how to set that option are in the instructional materials.

Instructional materials:  Main item is the start panel we use at Rockcliffe Gateway.  On click ther panel chats instructions for doing task 1 and gives a notecard  to be read.  You can modify this notecard and any other content here to suit your objective.    I also provide a graphic showing the three steps in Task 1.

Task 2: Voice

• enable voice
• open active speaker window
• adjust individual volumes
• mute speakers
• adjust your microphone volume
• set push-to-talk
• control microphone to avoid feedback

Instructional materials:  Notecard from Hobo Kit, Hobo-Voice Help

Task 3: Activate and use typed communications methods

• local chat
• individual IM (local contact)
• set logs for local chat and individual IM
• use chat and IM history
• open web browser from chat or IM history
• move web link to user's main browser

Instructional materials:  Notecard from Hobo Kit, Hobo-Communicate, mute

Task 4: Zoom and roam camera. 

• tag point of interest 
• zoom in and out on it
• orbit view around it
• reset view.

Instructional materials:  Notecard from Hobo Kit, Hobo-See, zoom, roam, tag

Task 5: (As needed).  Media streams

• Turn on audio and/or media stream.

Instructional materials:  Notecard from Hobo Kit, Hobo-Musical Notes

Task 6 (As needed): Common SL terms and actions

Understand/execute common terms and actions in SL, such as

• click on object
• rez
• landmark
• drag
• slurl
• toggle voice
• perms

The specific terms and actions neede will depend on what willl happen at the class or meeting.

Instructional materials:  Notecard from Hobo Kit, Hobo-Guide to SL terms & tricks

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*These tasks will probably be required of participants in a class or meeting.  Participants will probably NOT learn to perform the tasks merely by reading notecards.  Some practice exercises may be valuable at the beginning of the first session.   Any inadequate learning will show up as calls for assistance, probably interrupting the session.   You may want to keep notes on these and see if you can improve your start up content or your practice sessions.

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Second Life is for making musical videos

A DIY enabler for musical artists.

Pookymedia just released a new video: "Every Day" by Alissa Moreno a Second Life Video"

In the video, Alissa Moreno performs her Grammy nominated song "Every Day" recorded by Rascal Flatts.  The song was requested by and presented to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  This video is now in this world famous museum in Ohio.

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Arman Finesmith playin an singin about a mischievous rascal.  Streaming live to the Hobos in an event that was on for the holidays at Hobo Island.

Sponsors -

• igotalk.com
• thinkerer.org
• hobojunction.org

How do you make videos in Second Life?   Vidder Maker Workshop -- The Six Gates