LinuxFest Networking

[Greg Rehm]

At the LinuxFest Party, I had an opportunity to talk with Rob Lamphier and Niall King from Linden Lab, the makers of Second Life. Niall is the Recruiting Manager for Linden. It was a great opportunity for my students to hear from a technology employer about the traits they are looking for. No surprise here - communication and group collaboration skills are mandatory. "But what about the tech skills?", my students asked. "Yes, those are needed, but not without the other.", was the answer.

Niall and I talked about communication and collaboration at Linden Lab. They do a great deal of their work "In World." That's SL code for inside the Second Live virtual world. Some schools are now holding synchronous sessions using SL as the conferencing tool. Niall is currently taking a college course in Business Administration from a major public university that meets in Second Life. He had fantastic perspective on the possibilities and challenges of learning and working "in world."

Using a tool like Elluminate Live! for class sessions is great, but the user interface is an artificial construct and new skills are needed to recreate the classroom m anagement objectives for a session. In Second Life, the user interface looks like the real world. If you want your class to meet, you all get together in a place. You have the illusion of physical proximity as the way to associate - like the real world. If you want to divide your class in to groups, there's no electronic management interface, you simply have them group together like they would in your real classroom. Their "virtual proximity" creates the association where students can talk to each other and use gestures for sub-verbal communication. This environment could provide an online classroom that is more natural-feeling and easy to use for our students.

One of the challenges is the openness of the environment. The instructor has a relatively easy way to control access and moderate the students in a web-collaboration tool. In SL, the ease for the user is created by sophisticated back-end design of the virtual space where the class will take place. Niall gave the example of keeping "griefers" (folks that disrupt your activities in SL) wearing inappropriate avatars from running around in the middle of your meeting space. He also mentioned, needing moderating students' giant flaming avatars in order to prevent them from becoming and impediment to running the session. This can all be done, but it takes some fancy finagling. For the course Niall is taking, the college has IT pros that create spaces in SL with the necessary programming to handle this automatically. While that's great, it takes some institutional will and money that's probably beyond the individual instructor of program.

I'm hoping I can find a course that I can sit in on or audit to see how instructors in SL are facilitating effective sessions.

[Jen]

Sounds like a great topic for the next Play to Learn sessions!

[Dawn Hawley]

I would love to attend a campus SL demo or workshop (hint hint)! I have heard that there are quite a few virtual libraries with all sorts of resources in SL. A couple of weeks ago, I created an avatar and set out to find Evergreen Island, a place Jane Blume told me about, which is owned by or in some way associated with Washington State Library. I found myself pretty much at a loss when I "arrived"-- I basically just flew around in my blue jeans bumping into things (it's okay to laugh, I did). I did manage to join a library group and discuss a book (sorta) with a big stone guy, but I had no luck figuring out how to get to Evergreen Island.

[jeff4082]

Maybe you could do a demo sometime Jen.

I am still grappling with how I could use SL as a tool for student learning.

[Greg Rehm]

Thanks Jen,
A week or two ago I created a new avatar for work (didn't want use my existing play avatar), joined the group, and visited the island. If you hear of any ongoing classes that would mind a one session audit, let me know.

[Jen]

Greg, it's so exciting you got to spend time with them! The SBCTC has purchased an island in SL and we're working on figuring out ways to use it. We don't have funding for development, but we're trying to work together. Several institutions are already using SL for instruction and we have run a few training sessions. I haven't really pushed it on campus because our systems and infrastructure don't currently support it. I also have done research in SL and want to make sure when we use it, we're using it to enhance the learning experience and not just because it's the latest thing. Here's a link to the SBCTC wiki if you are interested in more info. http://ctcinsl.wikispaces.com/ It has the info on how to access the island. I would be happy to share more info with you and invite you to meetings we have in SL. I'm also more than happy to meet you in world and take you (and/or students) on a tour and show you some of the academic resources. My avatar is Mommy Mip.