Another important function would be to be able to show slide presentations in Second Life. This is often necessary when students practise giving presentations in English.
Here is a short video showing a fully functional Google Docs presentation fullscreen on a prim:
Update 28 February 2010
Today, I tested with a colleague whether it is possible for others to see the slideshow and whether it is synchronous. It turned out that the former is possible what the latter is not. That means, the presenter would have to say which slide he or she is at. That’s not ideal really. So, we will have to look further.
In October, I was invited by a Second Life friend of mine, who teaches a course on Second Life and journalism at the American University of Cairo, to a meeting with his students. Their task was to interview me about education in Second Life, my work and other SL-related topics and to write a report. They were all journalism students.
For most of the students this was their firsts experience with Second Life. Most of them were present with their avatars. At the same time, SL was streamed on a screen in the physical room. They had decided that one student would collect the questions and ask in voice while the other students added additional questions and comments in local chat. I replied in voice but also added comments in text chat.
The students were very curious and asked a lot of good questions but they were skeptical, too, which I thought was good. Now, I am waiting to see their reports.
Last Thursday, I was invited by Andreas Mertens, SLTalk.de to give a presentation on Language Learning in Virtual Worlds to a very diverse audience of around 13 professionals in different fields (3 SLTalk staff, two SL/RL authors, vice director of a school, consultants, a further education office, a culture manager, mfg innovation, and others). The presentation was in German.
I started my presentation with the statement “Language learning in Second Life is possible” and asked my audience to show me their opinions (rather than say or type them) by walking into one of the 5 sections of the Opinonator ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree. I was positively surprised to see everybody in either strongly agree or agree. So, I did not have to persuade anybody of the value of SL for language learning 🙂
I then asked the participants to collaboratively come up with answers to the question why language learning in SL is possible before showing them my slide. I was once again surprised and happy to see all the reasons they came up with:
visual context
every day situation
you can hear native speakers
immersion
compared to a physical classroom, you can show more situations/settings
group pressure similar to a class situation (I asked for clarification here: if you study with a group of people in SL instead of alone, there is a bit of positive group pressure that helps the learner to continue and stay motivated)
learning through experience
fun
After so much enthusiasm and ideas in favour of learning languages in SL, I almost hesitated to ask my next question: “Why might learning a language in SL be not a good idea?” My aim was to have the participants think about what needs to be considered when learning or teaching in SL rather than finding reasons not to use it. Here are their answers:
complicated to use
steep learning curve of SL
struggling to take SL seriously (for those who think it is a game)
you can’t see the speaker’s (teacher or learner) mouth – difficult to show how a word is pronounced
takes a lot of effort to learn to use SL (this person added: I know several people who would even have problems installing it).
needs a powerful PC
lesson preparation probably takes long
age restriction
This showed me that the participants were well aware of the possibilities as well as limitations of Second Life. At this point, I showed a mindmap with an overview of my presentation.
Because they had already mentioned most of the points about the “Why?”, I could quickly move to the second section, the “How?” showing some snapshots of my previous classes and some student feedback. This section was divided into formal and informal learning with many examples for both.
My reason for using the Opinionator at the beginning was not only to make my presentation more interactive and SL-like but also to present some of the tools I use in my classes by using them during this presentation. Other tools I used or demonstrated were
a slide presenter and a pictureboard (both creaeted by Dudeney Ge aka Gavin Dudeney),
the prim pointer that can be positioned in front of any viewer to point at specific areas or information on a slide.
physical cubes with hover text that can be pushed on different field with categories that I made for a matching exercise in a Business English session (see picture below)
The participants asked questions and commented throughout the session and once they had stood up to use the Opinonator, most kept standing with me on the stage, which made it feel like we were all doing the presentation together rather then me speaking alone, which i quite enjoyed.
Special thanks to Tobias WĂĽrtz, SLTalk for providing the snapshots.
Many dismiss holodecks or Builder’s Buddy scenes (see my previous posts here and here) as tools for learning and teaching languages in Second Life thinking they are only good for role-plays (e.g. restaurant scene to practise ordering food). While I personally don’t like role-plays that much, they have their place in language teaching. However, when we started the Holodeck Challenge two months ago, we asked participants to be creative and literary think out of the box when creating scenes for language teaching and learning. And they did!! I am still amazed what they have come up with — those who built scenes and participants who were at the final event and contributed with their ideas. The final event took place on Saturday, 27th June 2009.
Here are snapshots of some of the scenes and some ideas that have come up:
1. Mary Roussel’s gardens
Mary added some free educational tools to her beautiful class spaces which can be used to brainstorm and write words collaboratively and to display notecards.
Her teaching idea:
Send students to a furnished building to collect furniture names. Then, they come back and write the words on the board, which can then be used to for further activities.
If I had been taught in such lovely class spaces, I might have liked school more.
2. Mary’s Venezuelan market
Teaching ideas:
Role-play different tourist/sales-person dialogues (not only for buying/selling souvenirs. Tourist could ask questions about the culture, city, life in Venezuela, etc).
Learn/teach the names of the objects in Spanish
Talk about Venezuela
Talk about markets and customs associated with them in different countries/cultures
Talk about traveling, holidays, souvenirs, shopping, etc.
Talk about handicraft, art, …
Mary created this Souvenir Market because there seems to be nothing about Venezuela in SL.
All participants loved this scene. It is such a lovely scene that it made me want to stay there longer and explore. It also made me want to say something. I wanted to express my feelings and ask questions about the place and objects. I think this is a very important point in language teaching. If emotions and feelings are involved, then students do want express them and they will more readily seek and accept help to formulate what they want to say in the target language.
3. Anna Begonina’s shop scenes
Anna teaches Italian in Second Life and always comes up with creative ideas. She said that although, there are a lot of shops in Second Life, shops and items are mostly named in English even in Italian places. Shops also often move or close so you can never really on using them again when you need them for a class. Also, most items in a shop cost money and are not modifiable. This is why Anna has created two different market/shop scenes in which the objects show typical Italian brands and the names of the objects are in Italian. They are modifiable so that objects can be moved, copied, renamed or retextured (e.g. for teachers who teach other languages).
Learning vocabulary related to kitchen and cooking
Moving objects from one table to another (e.g. those that are needed for a certain recipe)
—> Check out Anna’s Italianiamo blog where, I am sure, she will post more ideas
5. Dennis’s Dogme garden
Dennis has created a garden which can be used as a nice place to sit together and talk about anything that comes up in a language lesson. As it is as a Dome garden, he could obviously not give specific ideas or language points that would be taught there.
One thing that is special about his garden is that the some of the textures that he used (like the walls) are from Real Life, which would well be a starting point for discussions as well as the up-side-down trees, which he wanted to “correct” but we thought he should leave as they are 🙂
6. Carolrb Roux’s garden scenes
The first one is intended as a meeting space (above).
The second one is The Owl and the Pussy Cat garden. It is a beautiful place to explore. There is music, hidden objects in the trees and the garden, a snake ladder game and many other things from the poem. Carol even recited the poem for us as a special treat because some of us didn’t know the poem.
Carol’s reading room with some books in notecard form, notecard giver and dropbox.
This is a nice room to sit together to read and talk about a book. It also makes a nice space for other kinds of meetings and discussions.
Carol also generously helped other participants to build their scenes and troubleshoot them during the two months which this challenge lasted.
Teaching ideas:
I don’t remember whether any were mentioned because I had some technical trouble at this stage but I can imagine the following:
Have students explore the garden and think what this could be about
If students had to memorize the poem, playing in the garden can help them remember the poem. They can walk from place to place and recite the lines connected to the objects.
It can also be simply a fun activity after having worked with the poem as a kind of bonus or reward.
I’m sure Carol and others have more ideas.
7. Nahiram Yakubu’s flea market street scene
Nahiram has created this beautiful flea market scene.
Teaching ideas:
I missed most of this because I had to relog but one idea nahiram mentioned when I was back is the following:
Students take out objects from their inventory and set up there stand or area. Then, they can all walk around and explore the market, ask questions about the objects on sale and haggle over the prices of the objects. If students don’t have enough freebie objects in their inventory, they can either be given different boxes full of objects by the teacher or sent freebie shopping in SL first (depending on the available time). If two students have the same object, it could be interesting because they might have different prices and would have to justify why theirs is more expensive.
Of course, their could be an activity first to learn or review the names of the objects or this could come at the end and only if necessary.
8. Shawn’s maze
Another brilliant idea and very different way of using holodecks for language teaching purposes. Shawn has built this (and other scenes) with the Horizons holodeck.
Teaching idea:
Students work in pairs. One student sits on a chair that automatically lifts them up to a certain hight where they have a good bird’s eye view of the maze. The other student stand in front of the entrance of the maze and waits for instructions. The student on the chair gives directions to the student on the ground and guides him either to certain objects that are distributed in the maze or to the exit.
I can imagine adding extra fun to this activity by having them go to certain objects in the maze to interact with them (e.g. retrieve their content, get a copy) and then find the exit. Several teams could compete with each other using IM voice/text chat so that they wouldn’t be overheard by the other teams.
We have tried this activity with some colleagues and it generated a lot of speaking (giving instructions, clarifying, asking for help, providing help, vocabulary, different tenses and structures).
The Holodeck Challenge is over but this does not mean we don’t accept more scenes 🙂
I know that others wanted to create scenes but couldn’t do so out of lack of time. Maybe some have time during the summer holidays. If so, we are happy to see more scenes and ideas here or in the wiki.
We will find a place where we will deposit the created scenes and language teachers will be able to grab a copy. Whether the creators will offer them all for free to everybody is up to them. As soon as we have agreed on how to make them available, I will post it here.
If you are interested in Holodecks, you might also want to check out what EUROCALL and CALICO are up to at their HQ in Second Life. You can contact Groovy Winkler or Randall Renoir in SL or join one of their in-world groups for more information.
One of our activities in module 2 of the MUVEnation course is to look at different learning or teaching approaches and finding out how they can be implemented in Second Life or in general in a virtual world. I have chosen Project Based Learning because I want to plan a project-based English language course in SL.
What is Project Based Learning?
There are many definitions but here is one from an Asian EFL Journal (underscores added by me):
Project-based language instruction is a flexible methodology allowing multiple skills to be developed in an integrated, meaningful, ongoing activity…. it is “an instructional approach that contextualizes learning by presenting learners with problems to solve or products to develop” (Moss & Van Duzer, 1998, p. 2). Projects are generally thought of “as a long-term (several weeks) activity” (Beckett, 2002, p. 54) which are part of an instructional method which “promote[s] the simultaneous acquisition of language, content, and skills” (Beckett & Slater, 2005, p. 108). A major goal of project-based instruction is comprehensible output (Beckett, 2002), which generally occurs both during the project and as the final product of the project. Link to source
Why is it used?
PBL allows for a more learner-centred “teaching” and thus fosters learner autonomy. Because of this and If the tasks are real-life relevant, it can enhance student motivation and thus improve learning. PBL allows for deep thinking skills. Students also learn soft skills like team work, leading a team, managing a project and interpersonal communication. Combined with web 2.0 tools or 3D virtual worlds like Second Life, students also learn the technical skills which they need or will need in their professional lives. PBL is collaborative and can be interdisciplanary.
It is important that tasks are as authentic as possible and ill-defined (so that students can define the sub tasks necessary to successfully complete a task). The outcomes and perspectives should be varied. There is no one correct solution.
What are the challenges to bring PBL to virtual worlds?
teacher and learners need to have or learn the necessary SL skills
like in RL: time
time zones of learners?
technical requirements for computers (e. g. to run Second Life)
limits of a specific virtual world like prim count when building in SL (the number prims available for a task or on a parcel of land)
Some PBL examples from Second Life (mostly not directly language related)
1. The Theorist Project
Students at Montclair State University work in groups and add theory-specific content to rooms dedicated to certain theorists of psychology like Freud, Jung, Adler and Rogers with the guidance of their tutors Edina and Bob (responsible for content), AJ and Robert (building). Edina came up with this idea of creating an immersive experience in SL in lieu of group presentations for her group councelling class.
They cooperated with Athabasca University in Canada, who provided the Freud bot for this project (see below).
Students had no prior SL experience and were only given two classes, one to learn the basics like moving and camera controls plus 4 short videos (How to sign up, etc), the second about the project itself. They usually worked on campus in the computer lab.
According to Edina, the added values of using SL are:
interactivity
being in the learning envirinment
catering to different learner types
understanding and remembering (putting together the content for the rooms and interacting with them helped students understand and remember the theories better)
students can go through the caes in their own time/pace and as often as they want.
One of the “main attractions” on the SIM (= simulation = island in SL) is the replica of Sigmund Freud’s office and especially the Freud bot (a bot is an avatar controlled by a computer instead of a human). The Freudbod invites one to lie down and have a chat. Here is the SLURL.
Here is the transcript of the chat I had with the Freudbot 🙂 Freudbot Voom: Greetings, Daffodil Fargis. Please have a seat on the couch if you would like to chat with me. Freudbot Voom: Hello. My name is Sigmund Freud. What would you like to talk about? Daffodil Fargis: About you Freudbot Voom: I am Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis and a major proponent of the unconscious as a psychological force. Daffodil Fargis: Interesting Freudbot Voom: I started my career in 1886 as a neurologist in private practice and primarily treated cases of hysteria. I eventually developed my own techniques involving free association and dream analysis to uncover clues about the origin of psychological problems and ways of treating them. Daffodil Fargis: Aha Freudbot Voom: I lost my train of thought. Could you try saying that again but with more context. Daffodil Fargis: I was saying that’s interesting. Can you tell me more? Freudbot Voom: I am responsible for numerous concepts that are now well known both inside and outside of psychology. Some of these include: id, ego, and superego; life and death instincts; ego defense mechanisms; repression; psychosexual stages of development; and the Oedipal complex. My contributions to psychology include the first comprehensive theory of personality, new ways of dealing with mental disorders, expansion of psychology’s influence to other fields (e.g. religion, art, and literature), and synthesizing several disparate conceptions about human nature from the great minds in history (Leibniz, Goethe, Nietzsche, Fechner, Darwin, and Helmholtz) into a comprehensive theory. Daffodil Fargis: Very impressive but still true? Freudbot Voom: What do you think of the Oedipus Complex? Daffodil Fargis: Hm, can’t say much about it. I’m a woman after all. Freudbot Voom: The Oedipus Complex refers to a situation that occurs during the phallic stage of psychosexual development. Daffodil Fargis: Aha? Freudbot Voom: I don’t believe I have an answer for you. Daffodil Fargis: Thought so. Freudbot Voom: I’d rather return to the subject at hand. Shall I continue? Daffodil Fargis: If you will, please. Freudbot Voom: What do you think about ‘Appollion aspect of human nature’. Shall we discuss that? Daffodil Fargis: Why not? Freudbot Voom: For Nietzsche, the Appollion aspect of human nature is the irrational side, characterized by creative chaos, passion, and change. Daffodil Fargis: I see. Freudbot Voom: Friedrich Nietzsche believed there are two sides to human nature: the Appollion (rational) aspect, characterized by tranquility, orderliness, and predictability; and Dionysian (irrational) aspect, characterized by creative chaos, passion, and change. Daffodil Fargis: But this is more a lecture than a discussion, isn’t it? Freudbot Voom: What makes you say that? Daffodil Fargis: 🙂 Freudbot Voom: Thank you for your feedback.<br/><br/> Daffodil Fargis: Need to go now Freudbot Voom: Would you like to know about my cocaine habit? Daffodil Fargis: What? Freudbot Voom: I began to experiment with the drug cocaine in the early 1880s. As I wrote to Martha, I took very small doses of it regularly to fight depression and indigestion with great success. Daffodil Fargis: Didn’t know that. Freudbot Voom: Have you ever been to the United States? Daffodil Fargis: Yes, I have. Freudbot Voom: I gave a set of lectures in America in 1909 at Clark University at the request of G. Stanley Hull, a well-know American psychologist. Daffodil Fargis: Aha. Freudbot Voom: What you said sounded interesting. Could you explain further? Daffodil Fargis: No, I don’t think so 🙂 Freudbot Voom: I see. Daffodil Fargis: Well, I really need to get going now. Freudbot Voom: Your response leaves me speechless. Daffodil Fargis: ha ha Freudbot Voom: I see you find that amusing.<br/><br/> I presented my work on psychoanalysis and the lectures were warmly received by my American hosts, including William James. Daffodil Fargis: Bye! Freudbot Voom: Thank you for talking to me. Stand up if you would like to stop chatting. Freudbot Voom: Goodbye. It’s been a pleasure talking with you. Daffodil Fargis: Thanks!
2. The Music Academy
David (or Benton in SL) was kind enough to show me around his Music Academy in Second Life (website). His aim is to teach music immersively and interdisciplenary (e.g. if you know about the time, history, events, fashion, architectrue, etc of a musical era, it is easier to understand). Here is the SLURL.
The houses that represent the different eras were built and furnished in that times fashion and often show scenes of historic events that took place then. These scenes were built by students.
3. Otis Island – Art project
This is a building project with Michael Wright’s art students. Groups of students (who had no previous SL experience) were assigned parcels to build their art objects according to a chosen theme.
Student and instructor reflections and more snapshots are here. And here is the SLURL.
4. Talkademy.org‘s project-based Business English course
Students have to work in teams, get roles assigned and have to come up with a product and a business plan. This is a blended course using Moodle, a wiki and snychronous meetings held in Second Life. In a second project technical students have to produce a machinima (a video made in Second Life). You can see the machinima produced by these students and an interview with their teacher here.
Some ideas for PBL in SL for language learning
Language learning students explore different ways of how SL can be used for learning and/or practising the target language and present their results in different ways (exhibition, presentation, panel discussion, book+presentation, blog, essay, report, etc.)
CLIL: Biology, Sociology, etc (visit related places, experiment, explore, interview, etc. – depending on the topic – then create a final product to present their results
BE: Set up a business, have project meetings, etc, report results
Event organisation (students take on the different roles necessary in the organisation of an even, plan the steps and execute their plan (e.g. an exhibition, an end-of-course party, a conference, a charitable event, etc.)
These are just some ideas. I’d be very happy if others contributed with their ideas and thoughts.
In January/February, my colleagues Dennis Newson, Graham Stanley, Nick Noakes and I moderated a 6-week online session for language teachers on Virtual Worlds and Language Learning. We are now presenting the outcome and discussing it with the audience at the VWBPE conference.Our roundtable is scheduled for Sunday, 29 March 6am SLT/PST (1pm GMT – your time zone) on ISTE island.
There are many interesting keynotes, presentations and workshops. Read the official press release below for for information about the conference.
ARE VIRTUAL WORLDS THE CLASSROOMS OF THE FUTURE?
2009 Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Conference (VWBPE) Bringing together Educators from around the World in Second Life®, March 27-29.
______________
March 17, 2009 — Virtual world educational environments may not replace real classrooms (yet), but they are becoming integral to the future of education, say the  organizers of the 2009 Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Conference (www.vwbpe.org) to be held in Second Life®, March 27-29. Conference keynote speakers and panels will focus on how virtual world environments can help today’s learners become all they can be and build the work force of tomorrow.
“We are a global grass roots community  that is collaborating and co-sharing knowledge about the role of virtual world environments in education today,” said, Marlene Brooks of Memorial University, CA (Zana Kohime, SL) program chair of the conference. “Our goal at the conference in Second Life® is to use virtual worlds as the centerpiece for discussion of the questions that impact all of our futures: What is education? What is teaching? What is learning?”
The three-day conference will be an opportunity for virtual communities from around the world to showcase projects, courses, events, and present research that lead to best practices in education. From presentations on the architecture of designing a virtual classroom and campus to projects that engage middle school students with math, science and languages to the award-winning 3D-Wiki technology created in Second Life used to design a medical clinic in Nepal, the VWBPE conference is dedicated to furthering the creation of innovative, interactive  and immersive environments.
Keynote speakers (see attached list) and panelists for the conference represent a wide range of institutions, leading universities as well as K-12 school systems that use Second Life ® as part of their educational programs.
The Virtual World Best Practices in Education (VWPBE) conference originated from the 2007 Second Life® Best Practices in Education Conference. Educators are one of the most vibrant and growing groups in Second Life® with an outreach to more than 6,000 SL residents.
For additional information and interviews, please contact;
Marty Keltz (Marty Snowpaw, SL, Vice-Chair, Program Committee)
1-416-587-3381 Email: marty.keltz@gmail.com
In October 2008, I mentioned I would moderate an EVO sessions with other online colleagues (Dennis, Graham and Nick). Now, it is sign-up time. Follow this link for a description of the session and a sign-up link. The session starts on 12 January 2009 together with 17 other very interesting sessions.Â
 Teachers teaching in Second Life might need to have at least some building and skripting skills (to design learning space, create or manipulate tools, etc.). In order to further develop these skill, we are asked to build a tree. Other objectives of this activity are:
to cooperate in a community project
to experience and develop master-apprenticeship model and other forms of peer to peer support
to explore informal learning opportunities in-world
My building and scripting skills are still very basic and although I haven’t needed more sophisticated skills for my lessons so far, I do want to improve them.Â
My tree
I tweeted about this assignment on Twitter in the hope to find others to help me brainstorm what kind of tree to build. Carol Rainbow replied and had some good suggestions. In the end, I decided to make an ice tree fitting the season 🙂 What I knew from the beginning is that I wanted to make my tree do something and not just a tree to be looked at. Again, because of the season and because of the ice tree, I decided it should recite a snow poem. It would be the first time for me to create the necessary sound files to upload to Second Life.
I started building some crystals for “leaves” and was looking for a tree trunk that I could use. I wanted to change the texture to something that looked icy. Then, Carol joined me and she found a leafless, snow-covered tree in her inventory which was luckily modifiable and transferrable. I made several copies in different sizes of my crystal and attached them to the branches of the tree. I also added a snow emitter so that it snows.
Meanwhile, I had given up on finding a good snow poem and decided it should be a winter song instead but I didn’t know how to overcome the 10-second limit (sound files uploaded to SL need to be under 10 seconds). I don’t have the rights to stream sound on the MUVEnation sim. Carol made my day by telling me about Psyke’s Music script that connects 9-second long sound files to a continuous sound. I was thrilled not only because this solved my song problem but also because this would be extremely useful for creating objects for my language lessons. I found a free version of my song, a very popular German song about a snow flake, Schneeflöckchen.
The only drawback that the script has is that all the sound files need to be exactly 9 seconds long. I’m sure there is an easy (automatic) way of splitting a longer sound file into 9-second bits but I haven’t worked much with sound files, yet so that this took me ages. I uploaded my six 9-second sound files and dragged them onto my tree together with the script. Carol also showed me what to do to have the cursor turn into a hand indicating that this object does something when clicked on (write “Touch to play music” into the description field of the object in edit mode). So, now, I had an ice tree that snowed and played a song when clicked on 🙂 Thank you for all your help, Carol!
Some days later, I felt like I didn’t really build a tree and wanted to create a second version from scratch. I used the same ice crystal and coloured them. The script is the same, too.
My main problem when building is that aligning objects takes me incredibly long although I use camera control to look at my object from all angles and zoom in on my objects. I know I can use the grid but that wouldn’t help with objects like my tree. Whenever I added a crystal and thought it was positioned correctly on a branch and I looked at it from another angle, I saw that it was not where it should be at all. Another issue with this tree is that the number of prims I used is very high, which is something that good builders always try to avoid. Therefore, I am looking forward to the master builder session on the MUVEnation island which will take place soon.
My trees and all the other trees built for this activity are located on the MUVEnation island (temporarily).Â
 In activity 9 of this section, we were given a list of tasks to choose from. It is still about identity and appearance. I chose to interview a strange avatar and take pictures of them for a temporary in-world exhibition. I wasn’t sure whether it was about a “strange looking” avatar or a stranger to me, so I found two avatars who are both 🙂 Well, not any more.
Blogging about this task is not a requirement but I found what my interviewees had to say so interesting that I asked them for permission to post it on my blog to share this with all of you. I didn’t want to summarize the conversations as I think most of what was said is relevant and I couldn’t possibly say it better than my interviewees. I also didn’t want to take things out of their context. However, I highlighted the bits that are directly related to my assignment and the questions if you want to read only those bits.Â
Interview with Schmilsson Nielsson
<
Click to read the conversation:
Interview with Exosius Woolley
Click to read the conversation:
Many thanks to Exosius Woolley and Schmilsson Nilsson for granting me these interviews and giving me permission to publish them on my blog.Â
Update 2 Dec 2008
The exhibition
Originally, we were told to build a square prim and put a picture of the avatar on one side and a picture of the text on the other. This wouldn’t work with my two interviews, long texts and many pictures. We were then told that we could be creative. So, I build these frames. On the left and right are the chatlogs of the interviews. When clicked, they give the link to the original Google document in case that zooming in to the text and reading it in-world is too difficult. The two frames in the middle contain the pictures. To be able to show several pictures without making them too small or taking up too much exhibition space, I used a picture changer script. Finally, I made an “information cone” with a hovering text that tells visitors whose work this is, gives them instructions and hands out a notecard with a description of the process and a link to my blog post.
Texture: Normally, I like simple patterns or plain colours. But on the day that I created my exhibit, I was in a playful mood 🙂
Building is not yet something that I do very well in SL so building this relatively simple exhibit took me disproportionally long.
In spring 2008, two online friends and colleagues of mine and I have created a group calles SLexperiments for language teachers who want to or already teach in Second Life. The aim is to share our knowledge, demonstrate tools, invite guest speakers, go on field trips and, of course, also socialise 🙂
We have been meeting every Friday since April 2008 and have over 70 members now, from total newbies to experts.
Here is a machinima (a video made in a virtual world) from our last meeting in which Dennis Newson, one of our early members, has taken us on a field trip to an educational island, Boracay, created by Nick Noakes. The machinima was produced by Calisto Encinal (SL name). Enjoy!
In October, I was invited by a Second Life friend of mine, who teaches a course on Second Life and journalism at the American University of Cairo, to a meeting with his students. Their task was to interview me about education in Second Life, my work and other SL-related topics and to write a report. They were all journalism students.
