second-life

Online Learning in Virtual Worlds

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I had two mixed Real Life/ Second Life work events today. The first was more successful than the second one.

The second was a meeting with 6 ICT students who are working on some Teaching and Learning projects in Second Life as their semester long project. The library is the client for this. Our Uni Second Life Interest Group had identified potential pilot projects, so I kept track of who wanted what done, found a few relevant resources, gave the students some building/ navigation tips and watched them quickly outstrip my skills within a day or so.

Two of the group members are in country towns and one is in Europe. They had their avatars in Second Life during the meeting, however we had some hardware problems and I forgot my headphones, so they were left in silence for a while and I don’t think they really knew what was going on. It will be interesting to see whether the group develops an efficient method to use Second Life to communicate or fall back on something like Skype party calls.

The first event involved staggering out of bed and on to the PC by 7:30am. The University of Southern Queensland’s Faculty of Education Symposium Online Learning Using Virtual Worlds was streamed live on the web, into Second Life and involved people presenting at the campus in Real Life. I presented from within Second Life as Emerald Dumont and was on a telephone line into the room at USQ at the same time. My voice was then streamed into SL on the big screen…where Emerald Dumont was listening.

Other presentations were from Dr. Rob Sanders who coordinates the Appalachian State University Library Science program, and uses Active Worlds in his teaching, Dr Penny de Byl, a Senior Lecturer (Computing) with USQ Faculty of Sciences about ALIVEX3D and Lindy McKeown, PhD candidate at the University of Southern Queensland about Action Learning in Second Life. Dr. Daniel Livingstone who teaches Computer Games Technology at the University of Paisley and was going to present on sloodle must have slept through his alarm, as he couldn’t be found…not in RL, via IM or in SL.

I had prepared two clips – a 15 minute one about Libraries in Second Life and a shorter one called Murdoch University Library gets a Second Life, explaining what we are doing with SL at MPOW. While they were playing, Emerald was part the back channel typing comments within Second Life….so while I (Kathryn) was presenting in RL (although via telephone and streaming), I (Emerald) was also being an audience member with critical input. And I swear I never left my seat in front of my PC to do it all.

There were quite a few comments like “oh wow, those librarians are cool” and “these aren’t like librarians I know” and “oohh…a science fiction portal”. One avatar from Australia even asked me for a copy of my presentation so he could show his fellow scientists how far ahead librarians were of scientists. ( And so I think I may have unintentionally created more work for my librarian friend, Sue who works in the same organization – sorry).

For the panel discussion / question time, I was answering questions and once again part of the back channel typing responses and questions within Second Life. I think I was even Twittering when it all got a bit slow. The questions were about topics like copyright, plagiarism, what you say to people who call it “just a game”, how “real” you need to be to keep the experience immersive and whether Second Life is being used for research as well as Teaching and Learning.

I was surprised at how much I felt like a participant, rather than a spectator. I think it helped that the streaming video looked rather jerky – so the people in RL seemed less real and more avatar-ish. Lindy and her team of 11 geeks are to be congratulated on making an experimental event such a success.

Slidecasting – add audio on slideshare

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I like this trick. Slidecasting.It’s a quick and easy way to add a soundtrack to a slideshow, all using online tools. I think it’s been available via slideshare.net for about two weeks.

Here’s one I made today, Virtual Libraries, Real Librarians .

If you have an Mp3 file uploaded anywhere public on the web, plus a set of slides on slideshare.net , you can play this game. Today, the State Library of Victoria published a 45 minute mp3 file of my talk, Virtual Libraries, Real Librarians 45 minute mp3 file of my talk, Virtual Libraries, Real Librarians from 23 July. I already had the accompanying PowerPoint slides uploaded to slideshare, so thought I’d give slidecasting a go.

At the page for your slideshare set, select the “edit” icon, then select the “edit slidecast” tab. Insert the URL for the audio file.

You then get a synchronization tool that looks something like this:

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You drag the red slider to navigate the audio file, then click on a slide to set the start and end point. Just fiddle around a bit and remember to save as you go.

I found it frustrating that I couldn’t zoom in on the audio track to set the points more precisely. Many of the breaks in the audio aren’t exactly where they should be. I also found the “preview” function showed me my slideshow with the audio file added, but not broken up into sections to match each slide. It was OK once published however.

Two years ago, I would have been charged lots of money for something that didn’t work half as simply, and I would still have had to find my own hosting / publishing solution. It doesn’t show the way I clicked each caption onto the screen as I spoke..but it’s not bad for the price I paid.

By the way, listening back to myself, I’m amazed at how I seem to channel all this random stuff into something logical. It’s like I unzip my mouth and half my brain comes out . I have only a very rough idea of what I’m likely to say and surprise myself often. Like when I was editing and I actually heard myself say

“I’ve got a friend who’s a solar system, so she’ll turn up and be a solar system walking around Second Life – and when she sits on a motorbike, it’s really interesting”.

I’ve not embedded the slidecast into my blog, as some feed readers won’t handle it, and it can slow the page loading time.

Off on an adventure

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I’m flying to Melbourne on Friday to spend the weekend there before talking on Monday about “Virtual Libraries: Real Librarians” at the State Library of Victoria’s training day for public librarians Libraries, Web2.0 and Other Internet Stuff. I’m excited about spending a whole day hearing about libraries.

I spent last weekend creating new slides. After outlining what is Second Life and how libraries are using it, I will talk about ten ways Australian public librarians can get involved. I’m aiming to do a live demo on the day -with the audience telling my avatar what to do. I also pointed my video camera at the screen as I did a tour of Info Island and the Australian Libraries Building so that I have a backup if glitchiness happens.

I even upgraded the driver for my video card so that there is no chance of Emerald being clothed in textures in her environment instead of clothing textures. (It used to get a bit embarrassing when a tree texture didn’t quite cover what ought to be covered).

After a tech run through at the State Library on Friday afternoon, I will be free until Sunday. Michelle, the Connecting Librarian, is taking me to St Kilda Markets and a visit to her home and her library until the evening when we have dinner with Christine McKenzie from Yarra Plenty and Helene Blowers from the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenberg County.

I’m really excited about meeting these folk. Michelle and I have worked together on librariesinteract.info for over a year and I have watched the Learning 2.0 program as it’s grown up and moved to Australia. I was tempted to bring a mike and make a podcast that night, but I’m leaving it at home and just enjoying the company instead.

Of course on Saturday morning I will be popping to the local K-Mart or Target to pick up a copy of the new Harry Potter. No kids and the day to myself to read it! I would be better off saving it until the plane trip home, however. If anyone would like to suggest something I shouldn’t miss in Melbourne or catch up for a coffee or show me their library, I’d be happy to do so on Friday night or Saturday. Just email me sirexkat @ gmail dot com .

I get home about 10:30 on Monday night, my very lovely boss has offered to do my desk shift so I can recover, then I fly back to Melbourne again at 3:30 on Thursday to attend the Carrick Exchange focus group the next morning. If my kids and Co-Pilot didn’t want to see me, then I could maybe miss a flight or two and just stay in Melbourne all week.

Second Life Workshops in an Academic Library or “Fluffy librarianship”.

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I’ve been doing a lot of work with Second Life recently and wonder if I’m hanging out at the fluffy end of librarianship.

While my colleagues in our uni library are finding the best electronic resources to meet scholars’ needs, I’m giving 8 workshops in the next 2 months for the uni community in “Creating your avatar” and “Doing more with your avatar”. In my classes in a library PC lab, people are giving themselves silly names, bouncing on virtual trampolines, changing their clothes in front of their classmates, banging into walls and laughing a lot. If you want to see what we’ve been doing, here’s the course outline, murdochsecondlife .

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My interest in Second Life began as an extension of an earlier Sims 2 addiction and a curiousity about how you would “do” a library there. I saw it as a geeky playtime, much the same way as Andrew Finegan makes great clips about libraries on YouTube in his spare time. Bit of fun.

Yesterday I had an extremely exciting invitation to fly to the other side of Australia to do some professional development with public librarians, all about Second Life. (I should be cool and pretend it happens every day). I love showing people Second Life for the first time and explaining to them how libraries are using it – people get very engaged and have that “wow” look on their faces. (Well, some have a “OMG that’s a load of crap” and others a “I feel motion sick” look).

I guess, I’m becoming known as “that librarian who knows about Second Life”…not sure that’s who I want to be. And my Second Life stuff is taking me away from the serious, grown-up edge of librarianship, like finding out more about open source library management software.

Ord Canning, a library avatar

I do think Second Life will have applications in education and for libraries, if it can just iron out that “have to have an expensive computer and huge amounts of bandwidth” glitch. And people continue to think that it’s OK for each avatar to take up as much energy as a real person in Brazil. With faster and cheaper computers it is possible that access to SL may become more equitable and less costly.

Behind the fluffiness of my workshops lies a point. I think online virtual worlds require a new literacy that you can only learn hands on. The Horizon Report 2007 identifies virtual worlds as one of six major trends in emerging technology that will impact on higher education, so I think our academics and students need to be able to evaluate this tool. Half the workshops were full the day the notice was emailed out, and they are now booked out, so there is certainly great interest.

I still feel like I’m maybe having too much fun…I’ll get over it…..

Eduserv Symposium: Virtual Worlds Real Learning?

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Right now I’m on Cybrary City in Second Life attending the Eduserv Symposium Virtual Worlds Real Learning? which is being streamed live from the London . I’m having my first shot at liveblogging.

[Bit of a break in here. Below is a long steam copied as the speaker was talking, more or less untidied. The first two speakers aren’t nearly as interesting as Stephen Downes at the end, who had a brief to be provocative and took a technoskeptic line. He’s worth looking at.

The speakers were streamed into a large screen with audio, a small inset of their face talking in the corner of their presentation slides. As one of the SL audience said, we were still slaves to HorrorPoint.

In between speakers, I got some tips about resources for the introduction to Second Life classes I’m giving in the next few months, I teleported a friend who had noticed on twitter that I was at the symposium, and met with a blogger in remote Scotland whose blog I have read for the past 6 months or so, but hadn’t realised was involved with SL. ]

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JOANNA SCOTT: Nature Publishing : SECOND NATURE

The first speaker is Joanna Scott from Nature Publishing, who publish the Science Journal, Nature.

Their island is called “Second Nature”. They started off with a couple of nifty installations, like a 3D display of molecules – you specify the molecule and a model appears in front of you. They also experimented with a representation of a cell.

They decided, however, that they don’t create content in their magazine, they take content from other scientists and they wanted to replicate this model in Second Life.

There have been several people who took up the offer to use the space, including a professor who teaches classes in Second Life and has a Blue Obelisk Cemetary where people can click on blue stones and take a quiz. The value turns out to be that lots of people stop by and chat about the subject area. Also the JCB Center for Open Notebook Science and the Gene Pool are other projects.

Would never consider putting the articles from the journal on the web.

“We don’t exactly know what we are doing in Second Life, and we don’t think anyone really does, but we can see the potential and we’re going to stay here”.

Could Second Life replace the Conference? She raised the point that Environmental Scientists are not attending conferences due to the impact of airflight.

Question: How to justify the time and energy put into SL

Answer: Her department is there to investigate things like this without producing immediate return. SL has potential to be really big, really important..don’t know how..but being there gives us the skills and ability to shape what the future of SL will be.

Question: Are other scientific journals doing anything in SL?

Not that she knows of, although Penguin publishers are there.

GILLY SALMON University of Leicester A SECOND GUESS AT THE FUTURE

Need to start exploiting potential of Second Life. Set up a Learning Futures Academy.

Universities don’t change very quickly 😉 so this project lets students envision how their university will look.

Not creating an artifact, but collaboratively creating a future.

Looking at what can do in SL that you CAN’T do in RL, not what you can do in SL that mirrors RL.

Imagining futures better.

Media Zoo – for evidence from media projects

Want to elicit viable and possible futures by interactive environement in SL. Have been messing about with it, but haven’t come up with the answers yet.

Shouldn’t be looking back in 5 years time and saying “oh, if only we’d known”. Hope to engage everyone now.

“Today’s students are not longer the people our education systems were designed to teach”

Designing for an unknown future.

Activities to innovate…1) Extend and defend core business 2) Build emerging business 3) Create viable options

Hope higher ed will begin focussing on 3).

SEAL research- Second Life Advanced Learning

Aim:

1) Surface learners’ choices

2) Build communities of learners

3) Create models of learning for the future

Methodologies for face to face environments aren’t applicable to SL. They are using Cognitive Mapping. Looked at successful models from other online applications. Work with futurists.

(Cognitive mapping = by Kelly 1955 )

Output: Want to create a framework of learning and a sharable model.

[comment from someone in the SL audience: we dont get far away from the lecture model at conferences even in SL. We’re slaves to power point]

Question: ethics and informed consent

Answer: can use existing approaches

STEPHEN DOWNES: Virtual Worlds in Context

Being cast as a Technoskeptic

Hearing a lot about SL. People are making points about the economics of SL. Gartner Hype Cycle mentioned again: “80% of all active Internet users will have a SL in a virtual world by 2011”. Is that really reasonable?

Teen Second Life library mentioned. When he saw the paper on Teen SL Library, particulalry noticed the “special permission” to librarians to be in Teen SL…language seemed odd for public education

It’s all so derivative. He’s pointing out the ridiculousness of it all. (But without spite I think). Branding in SL.

It’s like a scene from Star Trek until you hit the casinos. Buildings and nothing else. Look at map and see the little green dots where the people are, teleport down and there is a casino.

Clay Shirky. “I’ts a try me virus”.

When SL reached 38 K people online, it began kicking people out. “38K compared to the number of users in the internet is a rounding error”.

The media is largely push driven.

Where is open source in SL? Why was copybot killed?

People forget history. (eg. virtual reality). Before the internet, there was two sides..the gamers side and the text side. When people say SL is not a game, I hear myself saying “how is this not a game?”, when what people are doing is creating things and showing off cf. Sims city.

<SHIFT> Fund in Sim City , can get more dollars. Same in SL, you can cheat and buy Lindens. Crossover between MUDS, MUVES, MUSES, DIKUs.

Mult Academic User Domain. The Palace. Furcadia. Active Worlds.WoW.

Gartner Hype cycle. 5 laws of VRs

  1. Virtual worlds are not games (speaker: yes they are, but it’s OK)
  2. Every avatar is a real person
  3. Be relevant and add value
  4. Contain the downside
  5. This is a long haul (This is what your broker tells you just before the big crash.)

Real issues . David Noble. Digital Diploma Mills. Internet didn’t suddenly commercialise education, BUT the environment for education in SL is what Noble warned against.

Who owns SL? Not the users, not the learners. If you don’t subscribe, you get kicked off if it gets too busy.

Centralised. It’s all in one domain and it doesn’t work. Too much data and can’t be handled.

Can SL scale?

Interoperability. MUDS and Inter MUDS. People would chat between MUDS. Communications between MUDS. Issues of transport of goods.

[Audience comment: Isn’t that what Multiverse was about]?

Why do we tolerate something like SL where we can’t even own our own names.

SL taps into our latent conservativism. This is so NOT Web2.0. It doesn’t empower people. Pedagogy doesn’t change, power structures don’t change. No open standards. SL is where the traditional publishers are creating the content.

Why do people like SL? Is it because you can stream? Because you can lecture…Is that what is unique to SL. We have been able to do these already.

SL isn’t too good at communication. Try to have conversation in a group of 100 people.

Compare to IM, MySpace, YouTube, Skype, Wii.

How much in SL is being done just becuase it’s SL?

What is real value of SL?

1) SL has real economy

2) Can create ownership

3) World must be persistent

Is this the online learning we have been waiting for. Is private ownership what we were looking for ? Is it branding? Proprietary technology.

[Audience:  I view SL as a prototype of a much  more capable future 3D environment.]

Hardware and software should be distributed. Should be open source. Should be non-commercial. Should be diverse and democratic . Want to have ownership in our identities. This will create the Learning Common. But we won’t have it by 2011.

(He had been asked to be provocative)

Q: How can this be a game when I’m doing my professional work and making academic contacts in it

A: I got my start in academic circles via MUDS. Just because it’s a game doesn’t mean it can’t be those other things.

Archiving our online life

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Are you backing up your blog? Do you think you should? Do you think libraries have any role in archiving them?

The UNC Chapel Hill School of Info and Library Science are after 300 bloggers to take a survey answering these questions. Blogger perceptions on digital preservation. I took it and it reminded me to download the blog backup I keep on the very same server my blog is stored on.

In Australia, the Pandora project, run from the National Library of Australia archives significant Australian web documents and sites. LINT was archived there a few months ago, leading us to reconsider our copyright statement. We updated our instructions for contributers so that they understood everything published there was under a Creative Commons attribution license. If you want to know about other impacts on sites that were archived by Pandora, check out Edgar Crooks’ For the Record: Assessing the Impact of Archiving on the Archived in RLG Diginews, 15 August 2006.

Edgar asked me, after my Second Life talk at the National Library, how we could archive the Australian Libraries Building in Second Life. I suggested that we could create a machinima (movie created using the tools within the virtual environment). He liked the suggestion, so a couple of months ago Emerald Dumont gave a guided tour of the library which was filmed by another Second Life librarian, who is still editing it. Interestingly, the Pandora people didn’t want to do this themselves as to enter Second Life you need to create an avatar, which means they are “imposing themselves on the archive” and creating content rather than just recording it.

Six very bad reasons to have a library branch in Second Life

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Yesterday I outlined Ten very good reasons why your librarians should be in Second Life.

I think it is a fantastic idea for many Real Life libraries to have a library within Second Life, but I don’t think a Second Life branch is useful for all libraries and get a bit worried when I hear people using the reasons below to justify it.

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1. It’s where the users are.

Uh-uh. No way. Not yet.

2. Dell. Adidas, Disney, Toyota, (insert company name) are there.

So?

3. It’s so Library2.0

The whole point of Library2.0 is to take new web tools and tailor them to your clients’ specific needs. Would a Second Life branch do this?

4. It provides access for more people

Yes it does. If they have the high end video card and broadband required by Second Life.

No service that aims to be equitable, should be offered in Second Life unless there is access also via another medium. Sometimes the interface and environment of Second Life do have great advantages over tradtional interfaces.

5. It doesn’t take much time or skill to run a branch in Second Life, so it would be easy to set up and run.

No comment.

6. We need a separate service in Second Life just for our users.

Are you sure? Maybe Second Life libraries would offer your users a better service if you put your energies into an existing Second Life library services like the genealogy library, or the children’s literature island, or the gothic manor, or the science ficiton portal, or a writer talk, or a book display, or the replica of the Globe Theatre, or staffing the reference desk.

AND ONE VERY GOOD REASON TO HAVE A LIBRARY BRANCH IN SECOND LIFE

We have the resources and time to establish and maintain a project in Second Life, we will provide workstations and training for clients wanting to experiment with Second Life, we are willing to see this as both an experimental and a production environment, and a branch in Second Life will meet our users’ needs and matches the strategic goals of our organization.

Is that right? Then go for it!

Ten very good reasons why your librarians should be in Second Life

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I’ve been experimenting with providing library service in Second Life for about 6 months. In the last 12 months, the Second Life library has moved from a shopfront on someone else’s island to a 19 island archipelago staffed by over 500 librarians.

There are great benefits to librarians in getting a Second Life. There are limited benefits to our parent organisations and to our users – at the moment. The same thing happened when librarians first authored web pages – the first stage was learning how to do it, the second stage was others accessing our output.

With Forbes.com reporting last Tuesday that Gartner Says 80 Percent of Active Internet Users Will Have A “Second Life” in the Virtual World by the End of 2011 , we need librarians with the skills to understand virtual worlds.

Here’s my top ten list. Many of them depend on creating and maintaining social networks within Second Life.

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1. Learn a new interface

Web browsing in the future won’t be identical to being in Second Life. It will probably have elements very similar to the 3D, social, immersive environment of Second Life. Learning how to put out objects, create environments, navigate and interact socially within this environment gives your librarians an edge to learn new web interfaces.

2. Learn to relate to your PC like our users who game.

Second Life – without rules, points, objectives and strategies – is not a game. It has many elements of gaming, however – you control a 3D representation of yourself that has an inventory and interacts with the environment and other people. We all have clients who game. Gaming can be used for recreation, leisure and – increasingly – to provide information. It is an alternate literacy that we should understand.

3. Fun and creative expression

I’ve had several librarians remark to me in Second Life , “I’m having the most fun I’ve ever had in my professional life”. You can build your ultimate library service. Don’t like something? Zap it and start again.

4. Break down professional isolation

Second Life librarians who are geographically isolated, work in one-person libraries or have highly specialised positions can go days without contact with another similar librarian. In Second Life, you can meet other professionals every day.

5. Increase coding skills

You can create a book, make the pages move, make it give out some written information when touched, or force someone’s web browser outside Second Life to a specified web page. There are people around to help and example scripts that you can use, but ultimately it becomes a fun challenge that increments your scripting skills without you even noticing.

6. It’s a collaborative learning community

There’s lots of librarians there. Via meeting in Second Life, the InfoIsland blog and the google group, we share ideas and work together on projects, such as a package of useful bits and pieces for people brand new to Second Life.

7. Networking about non – Second Life library matters

There are official programs about topics like MySpace and book discussion groups and author visits. Dave Pattern and I were chatting one night in Second Life about user ratings on OPACs. I sent him a link to our OPAC and after half an hour of coding, he’d coded a similar facility for his OPAC too.

8. Access to a host of experts – not just with Second Life skills

Within Second Life, I’ve met people who are experts in podcasting in libraries, and single person libraries and library instruction. It’s a helpful kind of place and it’s like having a panel of experts to call on if you get stuck at work in Real Life.

9. It’s free, we can access it now and it has first mover advantage

The Second Life interface is clunky and the environment boring to people used to gaming. There are better online virtual worlds. Second Life does have critical mass and is where you’ll find the most librarians experimenting. It’s free and we can get on right now.

10. Flexibility of thought and learning

Once the tools of librarianship, like AACR and LCSH, were standardised, and could be taught in library school. Our toolkit is now rapidly evolving to include blogs, wikis, multimedia and social software tools. We need people with nimble, exercised minds who are able to adapt to a new environment. There are a hundred different ways to join people with information within Second Life. To do this successfully, librarians need to decide what they need to know, work out how they are going to learn it and find the resources available – including other people – to create the tools they need. This assessment and assimilation of new tools is a transferable, valuable skill that applies beyond the PC.

To give a bit of balance, my next post outlines six very bad reasons to have a library branch in Second Life.

Lazy Easter patchwork post

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I’m taking Easter off from PCs ‘n’ stuff, I think. I don’t even have a suitably thoughtful post to keep at the top of the aggregator for the next week..so four disjointed, lazy woman bitties…..

1. A GROSS GENERALIZATION BASED ON A HUNCH WITH NO EVIDENCE TO BACK IT UP

The biblioblogosphere has seemed a bit quiet in the last couple of months. Is it because many of our libraries are implementing the projects we’ve been jumping up and down about in the last year?

Last year there was a lot of “Wow..this stuff is so COOOOL and I think we could use it in our libraries, maybe..why doesn’t my workplace GET IT”. Now it seems to be more often “I’ve been asked to talk to a roomful of my colleagues about this Cool Stuff”.

I think there’s a glimmer of “I’m setting up this really great project using the tools I was speculating about last year”..and even “one of my colleagues had this great idea how we could use this stuff”. Maybe I’m just projecting….

2. WHAT THEY SAID

Ever find yourself nodding and saying “aha, aha, yep, aha” all through a post?. Here’s three from the last 24 hours, where the only thing I have to say more on the topic is “what they said”.

3. AN IMAGE

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Emerald Dumont talks to BrianA Corleone atop his treasure trove and hopes the dragon’s egg will hatch.

4. A CLIP

Via HeyJude

David Berlind, Managing Editor of ZDNet describes mashups in a way that makes me understand where APIs fit in the mashup food chain.
[kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/U9sENSA_sjI” width=”425″ height=”350″ wmode=”transparent” /]

Embedded video: What’s a mashup