An Overview of Opportunities for Science Education in Second Life

Perplexity Peccable, a colleague of mine in Second Life sent me a great link to a machinima she’s put together showcasing opportunities for science education in Second Life. Check out Science Learning Opportunities in Second Life below:

Congrats and thanks Lexi! A fabulous first masterpiece and a great overview.

Perplexity and her colleague Vitesse Vella have also released some fantastic Slideshares well worth checking out. See: Why Work & Teach With Second Life? and Getting Started in Second Life.

Learning about Genetics in Second Life

I’ve been working on our Educational Uses of Second Life wiki resource this evening - a huge task that’s only getting bigger as the fabulous examples of education in Second Life keep on coming!

Anyway, I visited a bunch of places, but tonight’s stand-out was definitely Genome Island (SLurl) .

genetics1.jpg

Developed by Professor Mary Anne Clark aka Max Chatnoir, a Professor at Texas Wesleyan University, the Island is focussed on using Second Life to teach genetics. Using the building and scripting tools in Second Life, Max has created laboratories where her students can take part in virtual experiments that produce analyzable data.

Here I am checking out the results of a experiment that was first done by Thomas Hunt Morgan in 1910 on the genetics of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster.

genetics2.jpg

The Island is also designed as a place where students and other residents can meet and talk with professional geneticists. It includes a range of interesting areas, including:

Here I am inside the Eukaryatoic Cell, trying desperately to click on the Excytotic Versicle so I can escape! ;)

genetics3.jpg

Here I am hanging out with the mixollamas - a crazy bunch of virtual creatures that are very handy for learning about genomes and how the recombination of genetic traits determined by different pairs of alleles is a powerful mechanism for generating diversity in a population.

genetics4.jpg

One more interesting discovery - Dr. Clark also produces music based on protein sequences, which she has presented in Second Life.

If Science had been this cool when I was at school I would have paid way more attention! ;)

Busy in Real Life & Second Life!

It’s been a busy month, both in Second Life and in the real world… but I haven’t forgotten this blog! ;) Time to catch up on a few things - including some stuff that I really should have linked to weeks ago!

eNetworks and the Australasian Second Life Showcase

showcase1.jpg

We delivered 2 presentations presentations for the Australian Flexible Learning Framework’s E-Learning Network’s e-Trends Online Conference. Check out the proceedings and recordings on the conference website - including Sean’s fantastic presentation on Virtual Worlds which you can listen to here (recorded Elluminate session).

We also presented an In-world Event: Showcasing Australasian Educational Projects in Second Life - which was a hoot. Representatives from a range of educational projects came and shared their ideas and expertise and we have a great crowd of educators with us at the event. Sean’s written a great blog post about the event here, and also done a great job of putting together the event documentation. View the slides from the event below:

The slides can also be viewed in-world at Jo and Sean’s Virtual Meeting Space: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Wasp/74/31/86/

The generosity of our presenters was amazing and I think the crowd enjoyed hearing about the projects they are working on. It was certainly a thrill to ‘max out our sim’ with 40 participants at our space in Wasp for much of the event. A great learning curve for us too - which has given me lots of ideas about how we can explore running mixed-reality events and conferences in Second Life.

Relaxing at the Learnscope Lounge

Yesterday we held the first of two workshops for NSW LearnScope - focussed on helping people find their feet and get started in Second Life.

showcase2.jpg

The sessions went well I think, and we managed to move a group of 15 newbies around to a few spaces in Second Life including our space in Second Life - Jo and Sean’s Virtual Meeting Space, Terra Incognita (SLurl) - Decka Mah’s fantastic action learning Island, the Heart Murmur Sim (SLurl) - where we saw a great example fo training in Second Life and Prim Hearts Amusement Park (SLurl) - which has some fantastic rides.

As part of supporting these events, I’ve established the LearnScope Lounge in-world.

showcase3.jpg

It provides a base for the participants from our workshops to use during their explorations. The Lounge is an example of how easy it is to setup a simple space the group to use as a meeting point, and includes a bunch of tools and resources including notecards for newbies, our slides and resources and some examples of cool tools including Angrybeth’s Whiteboards, a Podcaster and free virtual Learnscope t-shirts (Virtual Schwag!)

All NSW LearnScope particpants are welcome to visit and use the resources. I’ll be maintaining the space until the end of August. Visit @ http://slurl.com/secondlife/Wasp/10/90/89.

An Island?…..

In the last month or so we’ve been busily working on some new plans in-world…. including exploring options for purchasing and establishing our very own virtual Island. I can’t decide what to call it though….. Suggestions in the comments greatly appreciated! ;)

I’ll reveal more in the very near future, and am excited by the prospect of a new challenge in Second Life - planning and implementing my very own Island is an exciting prospect! I’m especially interested in developing some more extensive orientation resources for our participants in-world, as well as spaces for arts, community and educational projects.

Coming Up…

The next few weeks are likely to be busy too - with Session 2 of our Getting Started in Second Life workshops for NSW Learnscope Team Members, a session for the NMC TeacherBuzz group, an eNetworks 2007 Tour, a Knowledge Tree podcast and the kick-off of the Sydney Institute’s Second Life project…… so I better get back to work! ;)

Second Life DigiStory 2

Yet another Digital Story/Slideshow on Second Life.

I’ll be using this one as part of a CD-rom I’ve put together for the TAFE NSW Helping Young People at Risk (HYPAR) program.

Yet again, I’ve used the assets to create multiple versions. See a Slideshare version and a Flickr version too! ;)

Digital Story: Second Life Newbie Tips

Sean and I have been working on a collection of Newbie Tips for users who are new to Second Life. This is an important resource for many of our participants at workshops and presentations in-world, as it takes some users a bit of time and effort to make sense of the Second Life User Interface.

So, in the interest of creating better resources, I’ve finally finished a new collection of slides, which covers more of the important skills, and decided to make a little digital story out of it. Check it out below.

This is an example of one way that Second Life can be used to generate multimedia resources. It’s a little simpler that machinima, but still lots of fun.

The process for making these digi stories is pretty easy:

Step 1. Collect some snapshots in Second Life which illustrate the points you’d like to make in your digital story.

Step 2. Edit the images with your favourite image editing tool. In this case I used Photoshop, but you could also use The Gimp or Picasa.

Step 3. Put together your slide sequence. There are a range of tools you can use for that - I used Photoshop Elements 5 in this case…. But there’s a great list of software for digital story making on the Digitales Wiki which provides some good options. You could even do this with an online tool like Jumpcut! ;)

Step 4. Record your audio and choose some background music. I used the inbuilt tools in Photoshop Elements 5 to record my narration. It was simple and quick and allows me to add new slides later if I want to without too much trouble. However Audacity is a great for recording and mixing your audio too.

Step 5. Compress if you can - I use Sorenson Squeeze to optimize my videos for sharing online. Another great option for compressing videos and digital stories is Super. Compresing is especially important if you also want to use your video on a videoplayer in Second Life, where you will need it in .Mov format and uploaded to a server.

That’s it - digital story complete using Second Life as the platform to generate the raw artwork. ;)

And the great thing is, the assets I’ve created can be used in other ways as well. I’ve uploaded the images I created to Flickr to create a Photoset and Slideshow, and I’ve also dropped those images into a Powerpoint Presentation and uploaded it to Slideshare here. I’ve also uploaded the slides to Second Life, so users can view them at our Virtual Meeting Space. Teleport here to check it out.

Lots of different formats for all sorts of users to access….. Come to think of it, I could even use Super to create a version to send to someone’s mobile phone!

Interviewed: eLearning Insights

insights1.jpg

Many weeks ago, I had the pleasure of hanging out in Second Life with Kerry Johnson from education.au, whilst she interviewed me for a podcast which has just been published in their E-learning Insights Blog.

Check out E-learning Insights - Episode 9: Second Life as an educational tool.

The podcast also includes the fabulous Lindy McKeown aka Decka Mah, who gives an overview of her work in Second Life, and the action learning strategies she is using; along with some info from me on the work that Sean and I have been doing in Second Life.

HYPAR Hands-On in Second Life!

hypar1.jpg

Sean and I had the pleasure of presenting some workshops at the HYPAR Hands-On Workshop last Friday.

For those who don’t know ‘TAFE-speak’, the HYPAR program is a focussed on working with young people aged 15 to 19, and is designed to help the most disadvantaged young people in the community to engage in education and build pathways to further education or employment. For further info about HYPAR, check out their Hyparpaedia on Wikispaces or visit the EngageMe website.

Anyway, during the presentation, we provided an overview of some of the educational uses of Second Life, showed some videos, talked about both the Teen and Adult Grids and attempted to get everyone in world for a bit of an explore.

Despite some technical difficulties, I think most participants got an idea of how Second Life could be used. It was definitely exciting for us to hear how teachers working with youth at risk from a range of subject areas including construction, IT, communications, general education and many more are contemplating using virtual worlds with their students.

You can download the workshop material below:

You may also be interested in some of the online resources we shared during the workshop including:

We didn’t manage to get to all of them - but some of the places and spaces we recommended to participants included:

And I still can’t resist this video as a good overview of Second Life (you gotta love ‘the voice’!)

Coming Up Soon…..

Our next online event is coming up - check out the E-Learning Network’s Online Conference website for more info! ;)

Watching Stephen Downes via Second Life

downsey1.jpg

I stayed up till 1am to attend the Eduserv Foundation Symposium 2007 at Cybrary City in Second Life and saw Stephen Downes presenting “Virtual Worlds in Context” in real life and streamed into Second Life.

Unfortunately, as fantastic as some of Stephen’s observations are on other topics, I was disappointed. Maybe if he engaged in Second Life with a more open-mind and developed some understanding of the various projects that are being undertaken by the community, his presentation would have been more interesting.

downsey2.jpg

The thing is…. I agree with many of the limitations that Stephen has identified. Most of us who are experimenting in Second Life are well-aware of the many issues that it does present. Free and open-source would be better, there are problems with the grid and scalability, economic issues, the lack of democracy etc. Believe me - I have cursed the Lindens on more than one occasion! Arrgh… LAG!

However, having acknowledged those limitations, I believe that some of the projects happening in Second Life are educationally and socially valuable, innovative, engaging and fun! The potentials of Second Life are definitely not worth disregarding simply because the ideas are not entirely new, or that some of the educational ideas being explored in Second Life have previously been explored in MUDs and MOOs or Active Worlds.

3D virtual worlds offer unique opportunities for shared experience, for creating immersive environments and interactive objects, for role-playing and communicating. Second Life can be clunky and frustrating to use at times- but it gives us a glimpse of where some of these possibilities are headed in the future.

There is work to be done to better illustrate the educational uses, to address the technical restraints and to find ways to draw attention to the really amazing things that you can do inside a virtual world. We need to develop facilitation skills, we need better tools for information sharing… and yes, the best scenario would be a completely free and open source virtual world.

But I’m not going back to MUDs and MOOs, nor SimCity….. Second Life takes it so much further! The educational potentials of immersive, experiential learning are so exciting, and the work being done in Second Life to explore the uses of virtual worlds will heavily influence the virtual worlds we engage with in the future - both for educational and social purposes.

And I don’t care what Stephen says… it’s not a game and it’s not “like Star Trek… with casinos”!

posted by jokay Wollongong on Cybrary City using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]

Simlish Singers

I discovered this via kottke.org and couldn’t resist recording it here, as I used to be a The Sims player prior to discovering Second Life.

Lily Allen (who is definitely growing on me - have you seen her videos!) has recently recorded a version of one of her songs in Simlish - the language spoken by Sims characters.

I can’t decide if this is weird or cool. Will we all be speaking Simlish or it’s equivalent in the 3D worlds of the future… and who long does it take to learn??…LOL!

Nevertheless, whoever did the machinima for Lily’s Sims2 video has done a great job! ;)

And who knew… after a little bit of research, I discovered that a whole bunch of artitsts have recorded in Simlish.

Discussing Virtual Worlds with the Networks Community Forum

There’s an interesting discussion going on over at the AFLF 2007 Networks Community Forum focussed on virtual worlds, and after a nice plug from Anne Paterson, I had to jump in and add my two cents.

As the message I posted is pretty relevent to the discussions I’ve been having with others about Second Life and it’s educational uses, I’ve decided to post it here too. (After all - we all know how easily comments in forums can get lost, deleted or otherwise disappeared!)

Soo.. here goes. Originally posted here - and republished below….

Re: Second Life and other Virtual Worlds

by Joanna Kay - Friday, 2 March 2007, 05:00 PM

Thanks for the kind feedback Anne! Great to hear you enjoyed the tours we did last year for ENetworks! ;)

enetworks3.jpg

Image: Second Life Tour - eNetworks Event, Sept 2006.

There are some additional resources, including presentation notes, comics and slides developed by Sean FitzGerald and myself on our Second Life in Education wiki.

I’d like to chime in with Aaron and agree that Second Life allows us all access to a thriving community of educators who are exploring the use of 3D virtual environments. For further information on the Second Life education community visit the SimTeach Second Life Education wiki.

Over the last 12mths I have made some fantastic contacts and explored a range of techniques for using the Second Life platform. I’ve also learnt to build and create 3D environments and objects for various purposes - including educational uses, from a fantastic bunch of Second Life ‘residents’ willing to share their skills with the community. It’s been an inspiring time for me, and I do believe that 3D virtual worlds will offer a wealth of opportunity for teaching and learning in the future.

Whether Second Life is the platform that we end up with years down the track is most definitely up for discussion. It cannot be denied that there are some limitations - including bandwidth requirements, firewall limitations, need for high spec hardware and the growing pains being experienced at the moment in terms of concurrent users.

Ultimately, I personally hope that open-source 3D environments continue to gain momentum. C’mon Open Croquet.. and peer-to-peer options like Outback will definitely have exciting applications!

enetworks2.jpg

Image: Sean and Jo drumming in Second Life

However, at the moment the Second Life platform is the most advanced option we have access to, and I believe important to explore, experiment and trial for use in education. The virtual worlds pedagogies, standards for 3D environments, technical solutions and skills in 3D virtual worlds facilitation, which all being explored and developed now by the educational community in Second Life, will definitely inform how the future metaverse might look.

It’s exciting to be a part of that discussion/exploration, and important to note that any facilitation, building or technical skills developed in Second Life will definitely have application in the 3D virtual worlds of the future.

For Jen, and any others interested in exploring Second Life, I wanted to provide a few SLurls for you to consider exploring:

Sean and I also use BlogHUD (a tool for blogging from within SL) to keep track of our travels in-world. Visit here and here for more SLurls to explore.

You can also visit us at our Virtual Meeting Space in Second Life, which we have designed as a space for teachers and students to use to explore Second Life whilst having fun. Drop over and read the virtual books in our library, go for a balloon or boat ride, watch a piece of machinima, play some virtual games or join the virtual drumming circle. Visit: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Wasp/42/78/82/

enetworks1.jpg

Image: Jo and Sean’s Virtual Meeting Space in Second Life.

Looking forward to meeting some of you in Second Life soon,

Regards,

Jo Kay
Email: joannamkay@gmail.com
Second Life: jokay Wollongong
Blog: http://jokay.com.au

PS. For those after some basic instructions to get you started in Second Life, there’s a little guide here that you might find useful.

PPS. We are available to provide inworld tours and Second Life workshops for educators again this year. Drop us an email if you’d like more info.

← Previous Page — Next Page →