Tag Archives: classroommanagement

Nov 15

How to communicate in Second Life

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There are many different ways in which avatars can communicate in Second Life. We can distinguish between:

  • public and private
  • text and voice
  • all vs groups versus one-to-one
  • SL groups versus ad hoc groups
  • features that are part of the SL regular communication features or other tools and settings (parcel settings, sky tables, etc)

It is important to know which possibilities exists and when to use them whether you hold staff meetings in SL, do training or give lessons.

In order to be able to easily communicate with others, it is good (and sometimes necessary) to befriend them first so that they are in your friends list. It is also possible to IM (instant message) or call avatars who are not in your friends list by searching for them but there are limitations when it comes to group chat as an example.

How to add someone as a friend:

Here is a series of video tutorials on the different ways that avatars can communicate in Second Life.

I know there are already many Second Life video tutorials but often they don’t show exactly what I want, so I have started to create my own. I have created these for a teacher training course which I am doing at the moment.

I usually don’t use a script when doing these tutorials, so you might here the occasional “er” and other mistakes. Live with it! 🙂 I am not going to record them again so soon.

SL Communication 1 – Public Text & Voice Chat:

SL Communication 2 – Private Text Chat:

SL Communication 3 – Private Voice Chat:

SL Communication 4 – Group Chat:

SL Communcation 5 – Ad Hoc Group Creation & Friends Conference:

SL Communication 6 – Parcel Voice Settings:

SL Communication 7 – Sky Tables:

You can buy the Sky Tables online here or in the in-world shop.

Dec 11

Communication breakdown

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muvenation logoIn one of the meetings in SL that I regularly attend, there was a partial communication breakdown that let to a lot of confusion, misunderstandings and even hurt feelings the latter of which I wasn’t even aware of during the meeting.

As far as I can reconstruct what happened after looking through the chatlog and talking to the participants, the following seemed to have been some of the reasons for the communication breakdown:

  1. Some participants used voice some text
  2. Some of those using voice missed what was being written in text
  3. Some participants were not aware of the fact that the normal chat range is 19 m and what there actual distance to the others was. 
  4. Participants might have been confused about the roles and the agenda (Who is leading the session? What is the agenda?)

Because of number 2 and 3, some participants thought they or what they were saying was being ignored by the others.

Communication in SL, especially with larger groups, different members participating in the meetings, changing roles and agenda can be a challenge. Besides the issues mentioned above,

  • information overload,
  • non-linear discourse and
  • lack of body language

can cause disruption of a conversation.

Coincidentally, one of the new activities for section 3 is about collecting tools and building a guide for them (HUD, interactive book, bot, …) using the playfulness approach. Among the themes suggested is also one about tools for Communication and interaction. I’ve already been thinking of looking for ways of how to make group discussions more effective after having attended several (chaotic and ineffective) discussion with larger groups. Now, seeing what negative effects such communication breakdown can have on the rapport of a group, I want to look for tools and procedures that can help make such group conversations more pleasant and effective.

If anyone reading this knows of such tools or procedures in Second Life, I’d be more than happy if you left a comment and let me know. 

Tools

One tool I can already add to my list and can recommend to everybody in SL is 

  1. A chat range indicator (included in the Sloddle and Mysti tool) that shows a list of avatars within the chat range so that the speaker knows who can hear them.

 

Procedure’s that can help

  1. Explicitly mentioning/showing

a) who the moderator of the current meeting is

b) what the agenda is and in which order they topics will be dealt with.

(to be continued)

Nov 21

Sloodle: Second Life + Moodle

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Since I had heard of Sloodle for the first time at SLanguages2008, I had wanted to learn more about it and integrate it with my Moodle® (an open-source Learning Management System). It is very interesting for me because I used Moodle for my Second Life English course last summer.

http://slisweb.sjsu.edu/sl/index.php/Sloodle

Some weeks ago, I came across a message by Daniel Livingston in an e-mail list about Virtual Worlds saying that he had created a self-paced tutorial exercise taught in Moodle and in Second Life to learn about Sloodle’s features.

I went through the tutorial, which I can highly recommend, and learned about all the features of Sloodle version 0.3. The tutorial was fun, although it would have been even more fun to test chatting and some other tasks with a partner or a group (which Daniel recommends). I new about the chatting and blooging features but I was positively surprised to find out that there is much more that Sloodle makes possible. Here is a list from a Sloodle cheatsheet:

• Web-intercom. A chat-room that brings Moodle chatroom and Second Life chats

together. Students can participate in chats in Second Life using the accessible

Moodle chatroom. Discussions can be archived securely in a Moodle database.

• Registration booth. Identity management for Second Life and Moodle. Link students’

avatars to their Moodle user accounts.

• Quiz tool and 3D Drop Box. Assess in Second Life – grade in Moodle. Set quizzes

or 3D modelling tasks in an engaging 3D environment. Review grades quickly and

easily in the standard Moodle gradebook.

• Choice tool. Allow students to vote (and see results) in Second Life as well as in

Moodle.

• Multi-function SLOODLE Toolbar. Enhances the Second Life user interface. Use a

range of classroom gestures, quickly get a list of the Moodle user names of the

avatars around or write notes directly into to your Moodle blog from Second Life.

• Presenter (in development). Quickly author Second Life presentations of slides and/

or web-pages on Moodle. Present in Second Life without having go through lengthy

processes to convert or upload images.

• … and more. More tools are being prototyped on a regular basis.

So, yesterday, I went ahead and finally upgraded my Moodle website and installed the Sloodle module. Then, I went in-world and bought the latest version of the in-world Sloodle tool set and the toolbar HUD (heads up display). Configuration was easier than I thought. As a test, I sent two blog posts from SL directly to the Moodle blog.

Now, I am looking forward to learning more about it’s uses and using it in my next Moodle+Second Life course.

Update, 24 Nov 2008

The free Moodle host Ninehub has Sloodle installed. You can sign up for free to start a course right away. The host supports itself with adds that are shown at the bottom of the pages as far as I can see.

Update, 15 May 2009

Another free Moodle host that has Sloodle already installed and this one is without ads!!! http://www.keytoschool.com/