information literacy: I'm not good at math, but my avatar is (presentation)

Sheffield

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Interesting.

Virtual living -- what can't you do in second life?

When I have a bit of free time (as if - ha!), I've been wandering around second life. Honestly, I still don't get it. I've been to a couple of academic/IT related presentations, I've gone shopping (for free clothes), and I've been to a few museums/art galleries. I'm still trying to see how I could use this for learning or teaching. I see some of the potential (emergency services training, language classes/conversation, virtual meetings, museums, interactive multimedia art projects, etc.) , but I'm thinking the technology is still too new to be of greater use by the general population.

Why? Mostly the usability sucks.

• Navigation is not very easy -- the navigation has gotten easier, but it still doesn't work very well with a traditional keyboard and mouse. I can't imagine trying to use it on a mobile device. I expect to be able to move my mouse and my avatar will follow -- in as much as I can see, that doesn't happen. The mouse is more an extension of your hand, in that anything that you click on, interacts with you in whatever way that it can. Your avatar will not walk over to the object first.
• Directions / help are terrible, if available at all.
  
• Design is hard -- Although I can find my "closet" aka in second life terminology, inventory, I haven't found an easy way to see what the clothes look like before I put them on. I've also found a couple of places where I can create/design artifacts via secondlife. End user / community generated content should be easier.
  
• Slow to load / high demand on computer resources -- Even on a decent enough computer setup for multimedia/video (albeit, not a gaming computer), some "lands" (think: villages or cities) are very slow to load. I think my avatar is getting bored waiting for the graphics. ;-)
• Other users -- well, there's another issue altogether. Given that I'm still learning my way around, I'm not spending a significant amount of time talking to others.
• The cost factor -- It's a little bit hard to find the free stuff in SL. Searching for free stuff is the best way (or join a "freebies" group), but for the most part, there are quite a few people attempting to make REAL money in SL.

However, I did go skiing in SL a few days ago. Was it as satisfying as the real thing? Absolutely not, but then again -- it wasn't cold, I didn't get knocked down by another skier, and probably more importantly, I didn't fall down, either!

(btw, this is NOT me)

Video excerpt on digital video repositories

Video excerpt of last week's webinar in second life. This segment deals with digital video repositories.

Today! Academic Webinar in SecondLIfe

I just found out about this and I'm going to try to attend (if I can find my avatar....)

Please join us for Carolina Conversations. Carolina conversations is a series of live interviews with members of the UNC-Chapel Hill community conducted in the virtual world, Second Life. Our guests discuss their work and interests and will also respond to questions from the Second Life audience attending in-world.
Guest: Gary Marchionini, Professor in the School of Information and Library Science (SILS) at the University of North Carolina.

Live at 3:30 p.m. EDT, on Tuesday, October 7, 2008

SLurl: http://slurl.com/secondlife/UNC%20CH%20II/222/28/40

Gary Marchionini Bio:

Gary Marchionini is Cary C. Boshamer Professor in the School of Information and Library Science (SILS) at the University of North Carolina, where he teaches courses in human-information interaction, interface design and testing, and digital libraries, and heads the Interaction Design Laboratory. He received an IBM Faculty Research Award for 2006-07 to work on digital video surrogate creation and metadata evaluation. He leads the development of a digital video repository, The Open Video Project, and was principal investigator for a National Science Foundation-funded project to develop and test interfaces for video retrieval and browsing. He is also the principal investigator for a Library of Congress grant to develop strategies for preserving digital video content. He is active in the leadership of several professional associations, has published more than 150 articles, chapters, and reports, is author of Information Seeking in Electronic Environments (Cambridge University Press), and serves on the editorial boards of numerous information science and technology publications. His Ph.D. is from Wayne State University in mathematics education, with an emphasis on educational computing.

Conversation (voice) lessons in second life

Just passing along! Interesting -- gives virtual office a whole new meaning!


Subject: Looking for Colaborators? Need content development?

Hi everyone,
It's Fire Centaur here from English Village.

I am sending this message in a search for Collaborators!
Are you looking for a venue to bring your students? Interested in teaching English or another Language publicly? Or need an educator/programmer for educational content development?

Well, then please contact me - Fire Centaur at English Village or email me
fire@eslteacherlink.co.kr

Every Thursday 3AM SLT (7PM Korea time) I'll be offering casual conversation lessons - (Please enable Voice)
And one hour earlier at 2AM SLT, I'll have office hours for educators interested in collaborating, or searching for a content developer.
The English Village ICall feed is here:
http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http://www.google.com%2Fcalendar%2Fical%2Fenglishvillage.secondlife%2540gmail.com%2Fpublic%2Fbasic.ics

I have also recently upgraded EV, with some great new facilities - including:

* A gorgeous 3 story French Villa, with plenty of cozy study spaces
* A nice private Yaught
* A Family Robinson Treehouse
* A tree lined beach complete with a holodeck
* An Onion Shaped Welcome Area, with Pully Ride to the beach
* An accompanying Website: http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http://EnglishVillage.Asia

You can TP to EV here: http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http://slurl.com%2Fsecondlife%2FEnglish%2520Village%2F131%2F125%2F108%2F

Google goes 3D?

Okay, not quite... at least, not yet. ;-)

Google has entered yet another space with the launch of Lively, a tool for creating 3D social spaces on Web sites, which is now available in a public beta test.

The platform lets users create and personalize their own character, so-called avatars, and their own rooms, which is nothing new: Second Life does as much. But a key feature of the Lively platform is integration with the regular Internet. Users are able to create a room, and embed it with their web site or blog, writes Niniane Wang, Engineering Manager at Google, on the company blog.

Well, that sounds interesting, although unlike smallworlds, there is still software to be downloaded and installed. I wonder which virtual world will topple SecondLife, though?

So You Want Your Library or Organization in Second Life: A Practical Guide (SL workshop)

Please join Sonja Morgwain and Teofila Matova Tuesday, July 1st at 8:00 a.m. SLT at the Open Auditorium on Cybrary City 1 in Second Life for the third "So You Want Your Library or Organization in Second Life: A Practical Guide." This workshop includes a short presentation, tour of a library, and lots of time for questions and answers. Also offered is a tour of available parcels on Talis Island. Presentation is in a combination of voice and text. For more information, or if you would like to help answer questions or be involved, please IM either Teo or Sonja or use email address below. Location:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Cybrary%20City/124/157/24

Best, Sonja Plummer-Morgan, MLIS (Sonja Morgwain in world) & Allison Brueckner (Teofila Matova in world)"

sonjamorgwain@yahoo.com or teofila.matova@gmail.com

Second Life Shakespeare

Now this sounds coool -- if only I get my avatar out of the
ocean (I'm just as clumsy in SL as I am in real life, APPARENTLY) ;-)


sLiterary, Second Life: Of shipwrecked twins separated in a foreign land, love
triangles mixed with identity confusion, and girl masquerading as guy falling in
love with her noble… The SL Shakespeare Company takes a brief hiatus from Hamlet
to pursue a full length performance of Twelfth Night—broken down into "bite-size"
chunks in a series of full-costume staged readings. The production will be
performed by a moving cast, and audience members from the last week who wish
to enlist would have the possible chance to make the cast.

According to director Enniv Zarf, "This production is an experimental way of
performing Shakespeare. But hey we are in Second Life. If we can't try it here,
where else could we possibly try this." Ina Centaur, Artistic Director, tells
of the visual differences in this production, "The SL Shakespeare Company is
known for our unlimited extravagance in visual adornments and animations.
Because it is a staged reading, the overall look of this particular production
will be distinctly different. The outfits will be grayscale to emphasize that
this is a staged reading, and because we have a possible shifting cast
with the same person playing multiple characters on the staged reading
stage, we may use scripted changing sculpted masks."

The performances are from June 20 to July 20, an Act-a-Week, every Fridays at 7 PM,
Saturdays at 11 AM, and Sundays at 3 PM.

The SL Shakespeare Company is the premier professional Shakespeare performance
troupe in the virtual world of Second Life. The Company performs in a meticulously
accurate replica of the Globe Theatre (http://visit.SLshakespeare.com ). Since 2007,
it has continued to provide immersive live Shakespearean theatre accessible to
anyone anywhere in the world with a high speed Internet connection.

For more details on this and other SL Shakespeare Company productions,
please visit http://playbills.SLshakespeare.com

Second Life -- Resources for educators and more

Very nice annotated list of articles relating to educational uses of second life, second life and pedagogy, as well as second life resources of a more educational nature.
http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~mpepper/slbib


Another very useful resource of a more broad nature is the official second life blog;
the blog covers just about everything including lots of howtos and tutorials.
http://blog.secondlife.com/

Also, John Lester out of Linden Labs (second life's company) maintains a resource list at del.icio.us -- lots of good and interesting stuff there. If you use del.icio.us, you can add it to your network or well, just bookmark it.
http://del.icio.us/secondlife

Virtually vague - secondlife, opensim, and other stuff

It's certainly easier to pretend to make art or to speak the truth than to actually do either.

--NPR, Are we not gamers?

Although my computer more than meets the requirements for secondlife, it's very jerky. Graphics card, maybe?

I've tried secondlife a few times now, the first time was when it was kind of the shiny new thing on the web. This latest time, I wandered around orientation island for a while, got really lost (I think I was standing in the middle of the ocean?) , got bored and gave up. Maybe it is that I didn't understand exactly how to interact with the software (needed an instruction session, I suppose) or perhaps, it is just that this format doesn't appeal to me.

In spite of all of the web stuff I do and have participated in, I don't consider myself a gamer. It really doesn't appeal to me (although I have played some games online or via a standalone machine -xbox, etc.). NPR has an interesting article about the diminishing distinction between gamer and non-gamer.

SecondLife feels very 'gamerly' to me. I also dislike the 'real' money involved. I don't fault SL for trying to make money - hey, it's their product! I am interested in the educational applications of secondlife. How are educational institutions using secondlife and other sim environments? Are these successful projects?

Are their implications to teaching, conducting research, or otherwise engaging students in SecondLife? Yes, says Michael Bugeja of the Chronicle.

When it comes to Second Life, we're not only talking about money. We're talking about whether you as a professor or administrator will be held accountable for introducing your students and/or employees to a virtual world that accepts little responsibility for anything that happens among avatars, including online harassment and assault.

Enter into the mix the opensource virtualworld product, OpenSim, aka OpenSL. Will educational institutions and organizations embrace opensource virtual worlds?

Will one day in the future, instead of typing into a search engine, I will virtually walk up to an information desk and ask for help? Will I be able to do that, or will I be stuck in search engine city?