SL – Page 18 – Mariis' digitale refleksioner

SLoodle hands-on workshop

March 3, 2009March 10, 2009Mariis4 Comments

Yesterday I attended a hands-on workshop on SLoodle led by Josmas Flores as part of the weekly meetings of the Virtual Worlds Research Group Discussions. SLoodle (Simulation Linked Object Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment) is an Open Source project which integrates SL with Moodle.

sloodle-wiki
SLoodle figure from the SLoodle wiki

According to the SLoodle website, some of the key features of SLoodle are:

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.

In the workshop we tried – quite successfully I might add (Thx, Josmas!) – most of the features, and it is for sure something I will look further into. In the COMBLE course my colleagues and I will run in April/May we will be using both SL and Moodle, so I’m hoping we can find the resources to experiment with SLoodle.

sloodle_005
Watching Josmas demonstrating some of the features …

Checking chat feature in both sites …

I don’t think all of the above mentioned features would be relevant in my courses – we never vote and I find it hard to see how I could use such a tool in assessing the students (I wouldn’t use this feature in Moodle either), but I do see potential in both the chat and the blog features. As one of the participants, Grog Waydelich, said an interesting question could also be what kind of gestures are needed for classroom attendance?

One of the MIL students from my 1. MIL research cycle in 2007 experimented with SLoodle and attended some of the in-world SLoodle meetings, and he was very positive about the possibilities and especially the helpful community surrounding the project.

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Kryger meeting with other SLoodlers in 2007

The SLoodle project was founded by Daniel Livingstone & Jeremy Kemp with fundation from EduServ. In this paper Livingstone & Kemp (2008) describe the project and the importance of the SLoodle community.

UPDATE March 6th – from Willow Shenlin:

This coming week’s meeting is hosted by Jeremy Kemp at 1400SLT. He will discuss the research and issues behind the SLoodle Project.

We will meet him directly at SJSU SLIS 128/128/0, in the new student orientation site.

Also, as usual, I am asking for educators and/or developers who have an in-world tool that they wish to demonstrate and promote to the research, teaching and learning community. Let me know and I’ll schedule you on http://socialpresence3d.wikispaces.com/SpeakerSchedule

Cheers,
Willow

UPDATE March 10th
In yesterdays session Kemp told us how Linden Lab had forced them to change the project’s name from Second Life Object Oriented Learning Environment to Simulation Linked Object Oriented Learning Environment.

/Mariis

Theoretical bricolage

February 27, 2009March 4, 2009Mariis2 Comments

This week a vicious feverish flu has influenced my research stay at The Danish School of Education. Nonetheless – or perhaps because of the fever ! – I’ve been able to make some important decisions regarding the use of theory in my PhD. Yesterday I presented my PhD project and SL (hands-on) to a bunch of colleagues from the Research Programme, Media and ICT in a Learning Perspective. It was really nice to be among colleagues who were interested in my findings and had fun exploring SL :-)

In my presentation I focused mainly on theory of remediation, PBL , Experiential learning and the Community of Inquiry-model. However, I’ve also decided to investigate another meta-theory (or Didactic theory as we would say in Northern Europe); The Theory of Interactive Constructivism. This theory stems from Germany and the work of especially Kersten Reich. Reich founded his thoughts back in the 1990’ies when he called this particular branch of constructivism Systemisch-konstruktivistische Didaktik. It’s not a theory that I’m particularly familiar with but from readings this week it shows potentials!

Reich and his colleagues at the Cologne Dewey Center have published most of their ideas in German, but have recently started to write in English too (luckily, since my German is a bit rusty!). Reich and colleague Stephan Neubert have set up a site for their work on Interactive Constructivism, and from a text by Neubert (2008) I quote these theoretical perspectives that demonstrate the foundations of the theory:

observers-participants-agents in cultural practices, routines, and institutions

processes of communication with particular focus on the dimension of lived relationships

the interplay between the symbolic resources of a life-world, the imaginative desire of subjects, and the occurrence of real events

the connections between processes of construction, reconstruction, and deconstruction in the cultural production of realities,

involvements of discourse and power,

cultural diversity, otherness, and incommensurability in multicultural contexts. (p.1)

There seems to be many interesting and relevant perspectives for my PhD work, but what I found especially interesting is their thoughts on reality de-/re-/construction. Since my object of study embrace 3D virtuality I’m always on the lookout for theories that might be able to include what I call a mixed reality perspective. I don’t think Reich and Neubert have 3D virtuality in mind, when they discuss “the limits of reality constructions”, but I have a feeling that it might be possible to expand their ideas.

I was also delighted to learn that they speak of “imaginative desire” and the social aspect;

According to interactive constructivism, furthermore, these imaginative constructions cannot be separated from contexts of social interaction. That is to say, imaginative desire is always involved in mutual mirror experiences between self and others (…). (p. 9)

By bringing in this theory, I’m hoping to be able to focus more explicitly on the social aspect of teaching and learning – an aspect which Kolb often has been (wrongly in my opinion though!) criticized of neglecting.

In any case, what lies ahead of me is extensive reading and work on trying to create a coherent and relevant theory bricolage, and I’m quite positive, since all of the above theories claim to have found their inspiration in the great work of John Dewey.

Research stay at the Danish School of Education

February 22, 2009Mariis1 Comment

Next week I’ll be visiting Professor, PhD Birgitte Holm Sørensen, Director of the Research Programme, Media and ICT in a Learning Perspective at the Danish School of Education.

bhs1

Both Birgitte and I are members of the steering committee of The Masterprogramme in ICT and Learning (MIL), and we’ve known each other for years now. Birgitte’s areas of expertise include; ICT/New media in combination with children, young people, teaching and learning and curriculum/ educational design. Birgitte is also responsible for the 4^th module in the MIL education – the module where my SL course (my primary PhD case) is based.

Besides giving a presentation on the teaching and learning potential of SL to the members of Birgitte’s research programme, I intend to use this opportunity to discuss and further develop some of the central findings and concepts in my PhD, so I’m really looking forward to this stay :-)

/Mariis

Iterative thinking, teaching and learning in SL

February 20, 2009Mariis1 Comment

One of my favorite SL friends, Terry Beaubois has been interviewed about his use of SL by Heather Livingston from the AIArchitect.

terry

Terry is a RL architect and has been teaching especially, but not exclusively architectural students in-world for four years now, so the interview quite naturally focuses on architecture, but I do think the interview is worth reading even if you don’t teach architecture. Terry elaborates on the following questions:

Why did you begin teaching in Second Life?
How does the class work?
What’s the benefit of using the virtual environment of Second Life versus a 3D modeling program?
What lessons from Second Life can be translated into architecture practice?
How have your students responded to the experiences?
What advice would you offer young architects?
Final thoughts?

Terry is a wise man which truly shows from the interview. What I especially appreciate about Terry is his positive and open-minded attitude. For sure there are constraints in using SL, but Terry has an important point about SL/VW’s:

I would continue to encourage a relationship with virtual environments. We don’t have to make all the conclusions now. We don’t have to judge it based on its current level of capabilities. It’s going to get better in the future. It’s not the be-all, end-all for everything, but it’s also not to be disregarded as a contributing technology to architecture.

I agree totally, and I think this applies for any subject matter and any emerging technology :-)

/Mariis

Read the full interview here

Lublin – in-world and out …

February 19, 2009February 19, 2009Mariis4 Comments

The COMBLE meeting my colleague, Heilyn and I just attended in Poland was held in the town Lublin. What was especially interesting for me was that I actually recognized the Old town of Lublin from my visists to this part of Lublin in SL – quite a surreal experience: “Wow, I’ve been here before :-)”

Evidently the weather RL was not as good as in-world, but I do think the resemblance still is quite easy to see …

cracows-gate
Cracow’s Gate – RL