Understanding Virtual Worlds » education

Introduction to Second Life for GEO 493

admin — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 18:02:34 +0000

Below are the presentation and links mentioned in my visit to John Bailey’s GEO 493 class:

The Presentation Images
http://9scape.com/slpres/demo.html

A Few Destinations:
Orange:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Orange%204/21/227/46
Vernian Sea (Airship Tower):
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Vernian%20Sea/204/65/106/
Sweden’s Virtual Embassy:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/swedish%20institute/70/212/30
GeoGlobe:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Commonwealth%20Island/193/83/315
Sculptie Earth:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Areumdeuli/111/121/214/
Top 20 List of Educational Locations in Second Life:
http://www.simteach.com/wiki/index.php?title=Top_20_Educational_Locations_in_Second_Life

Learn To Build and Script:
Torley’s Video Tutorials:
http://www.youtube.com/user/Torley
Linden Scripting Language (LSL) Wiki:
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LSL_Portal
Learn to Do Stuff in Second Life With Tutorials:
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Video_Tutorials

Links & Inspired Reading
The Congressional Committee Meeting on Virtual Worlds:
http://energycommerce.house.gov/cmte_mtgs/110-ti-hrg.040108.VirtualWorlds.shtml
Digital Urban Blog:
http://digitalurban.blogspot.com/
UgoTrade Blog:
http://www.ugotrade.com
Not Possible in Real Life Blog:
http://npirl.blogspot.com

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MMO for Kids Teaches Environmental Strategies?

admin — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 17:44:42 +0000

Leigh Alexander of Worlds in Motion writes about an MMO IBM is launching the first quarter of this year, which will have kids staving off planetary ecological disaster by employing wind, solar, and water power strategies.

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Open Learning: Podcasts

admin — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 04:04:10 +0000

Want to learn about the Foundations of American Cyberculture, Existentialism in Literature and Film, Brain Structure and its Origins, or Quantum Entanglement? OpenCulture has linked to collections of open course material from a number of institutions including MIT, Berkley, Stanford, Oxford, University of Glasgow, Johns Hopkins, UCLA, University of Wisconsin, Notre Dame, Harvard and Carnegie Mellon.

If you haven’t checked it out yet, OpenCulture is a site that explores cultural and educational media freely available on the web.

education, learning, podcasts

Webcasts from the MIT Media Lab

admin — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 01:10:33 +0000

There are links on Bob Sutor’s blog to the webcasts from the Virtual Worlds: Where Business, Society, Technology & Policy Converge Conference, presented by IBM and the MIT Media Lab in June of this year. There are some interesting thoughts on how virtual worlds will change how we think of identity in the future.

While digging around on the Media Lab site I also discovered webcasts from the h2.0: new minds, new bodies, new identities symposium held on 09 May. There hasn’t been time yet to listen to them but I’m very intrigued by the description:

“A one-day symposium exploring the innovative research focused on human 2.0—the new science of human adaptability, hosted by John Hockenberry.”

community, education, identity, learning, muve, secondlife, virtual, webcast, world

Learn a Second Language in Second Life

admin — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 09:09:18 +0000

LanguageLab.com is now open for beta testing. Students will be able to sign up for language classes that meet entirely in Second Life.

Classes are small, generally 6 to 8 students, and run for 50 minutes. Events are larger scale learning experiences that allow students the opportunity to practice their new language in realistic settings, with teachers and native speakers on hand to act out the events and help students to both observe and participate.

Although I don’t know anything about this project outside of the information provided on their website, I think it is a fascinating proposition for teaching a language by distance. The students can join the class from wherever they are and interact with each other and the instructor in real time. The class is delivered in a malleable, highly customizable environment which allows the instructor to place students in any number of possible environments - a train station, grocery store, you name it - for various types of activities.

I can imagine a class to feel more like an immersion experience for the student than sitting in a class reading text from a book and memorizing vocabulary on flashcards. Instead they can be moving through a space together as if they were on a field trip sharing the same visual and environmental cues. Don’t get me wrong - I learned a great deal of Russian doing just that - sitting around a table with my classmates for 8 hours a day reading text and doing speaking drills, but the challenge of reaching the same outcomes in a distance-delivered class requires a re-thinking of traditional delivery and I’m excited to see this sort application of SL for language learning.

education, language, learning, secondlife

AIO Fall 2007 Business Communication Class in SL

admin — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 22:28:43 +0000

The Art Institute Online has announced that they will be offering a Business Communication class in Second Life for the Fall 2007 semester. Their in-world island, AI Pittsburgh, will be open to the public soon. More here, and on YouTube (below).

art, course, education, islands, secondlife

The Future Doesn’t Stop at a 3D Web

admin — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 00:29:19 +0000

CoolCat blogger Vicki Davis posted a few of her thoughts on SL and education and the implications for learning with the advent of a 3D web that is getting attention here and here. While she builds a heroic argument for why 3D worlds are important for the future of education, I believe this idea needs to be carried farther.

It is true that 3D virtual worlds are growing in number, but I don’t necessarily believe that this growth will culminate in the development in a Stephenson-style metaverse. Negotiation of 3D virtual spaces as they have developed so far leaves too much to be desired as far as interface and mechanism for how humans interact with the data in these spaces - it is still painfully cumbersome. It will remain this way until the convention of the “window” is surpassed.

I believe the virtual worlds in which we interact with today are the first steps in developing a vernacular for accessing information and interacting with each other in 3D spaces - not just virtual spaces. The 3D virtual worlds of today are where we are refining access to data and communication. With the exponential development of technologies we see today (ie. Moore’s Law, photonics, ubiqitous computing, and wearable devices) it will not be long before the virtual landscape transcends its own “virtuality” to become our own augmented reality. Where data is able to overlay our every day reality to provide us with information about the world around us and where we refine the concept of HUDs - turning them into powerful pluggable tools instead of the fragmented bits of two-dimensional noise they are today. Vernor Vinge’s book Rainbows End gives an inspired and realistic view of a world in which networking and computing are becoming truly ubiquitous.

3D virtual worlds in the form of MUVEs, MMORPGs, MMORTS, and the like are developing in us the skills that will contribute to our technological literacy in the future.

education, secondlife

Video Tutorials

admin — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 23:01:52 +0000

Claudia Linden has pointed out that there are a number of video tutorials available on the SL wiki. I had forgotten about the wiki and am glad to see it is getting some attention. If you have one of your own, why not add it?

community, education, tutorials

Graduate Film Students in SL

admin — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 01:31:43 +0000

The University of Kansas is offering a graduate-level film class this semester that leans heavily into cyber culture. Students explore production of machinima and the rapidly changing issues of producing in cyberspace. The article in the Kansan goes into more detail about the “New Media and Cyber Culture” class. Though it doesn’t speak much to the sort of interaction they intend to use Second Life for I think it has the potential to be an appropriate platform for students to develop both production and critiquing skills. It will be interesting to follow the progress of this class and hear the thoughts from both the instructors and students at the end of the semester. Hopefully someone will blog its progress.

education, secondlife