Friday, March 14, 2008

Build It and They Will Come

As quoted from the movie Field of Dreams, "Build it and they will come" and wow...did they show up! Approximately 20 University of Regina students from Dr. Alec Couros' ECI 831 course participated in a tour of Second Life.














ECI 831 tour group from U of R. (Photo provided by Dr. Richard Schwier, March, 2008)

This was my first opportunity to organize and lead an official educational tour for a group in SL. Thanks to Dr. Alec Couros and the entire group for providing me this opportunity in which I learned a great deal. I certainly appreciated everyone's patience. I am also grateful to Kev Juno (Kevin Lowey-RL) and Slugger Sosa (Dr. Richard Schwier-RL) from the U of S for their assistance during the tour.

To start the tour participants gathered in the theater area of the ECMM building (shown above) to receive instructions and objects including a tour HUD, notecard and participant list. During the tour we visited five educational locations including:
  • Information Communications Technology (ICT) Library
  • Georgia State University
  • Discovery Educator Network (DEN)
  • Teacher Network Center
  • International Spaceflight Museum
The tour was organized on a Tour HUD (Heads Up Display) which is worn by each participant to provide details and a landmark for each tour location. When wearing the HUD, it is displayed in the SL viewer interface of each participant (shown below).














Tour HUD shown in upper-right of viewer interface (photo taken Mar. 12/08).

As in real life...Second Life includes strategies and methodologies for delivering instruction and managing groups. The problem is coming up with strategies, methodologies and proper group etiquette in a 3D digital world where much of this is still being discovered.

The first issue that we had to deal with was helping newbies understand movement and camera controls. Many people in a group like this are new to SL and therefore a plan should be put in place to support these individuals. We did not really have a plan in place but Kev Juno ended up being our support person, helping many of the newbies struggling with their avatars.

The second issue was communication. As a presenter, voice is very nice and easy to use. The problem I ran into was not everyone could hear voice. I therefore used voice but also had to text with those not able to hear voice. To solve this problem I would use voice but have a helper along to communicate through text with those unable to hear voice. If a helper is unavailable then I would use only text chat with the entire group so no one feels left out.

The third issue was handing out objects (HUD and notecards). I had the objects in my inventory and decided to hand the objects to each avatar. Bad idea!! This took a long time and created absolute mayhem. To solve this issue I would construct an object containing the items that needed to be handed out. This object could be scripted to hand out the items to avatars when touched. Using this method would allow for the object to be placed in a location where members of the group could touch it and receive necessary items.

The final issue I will mention is computer systems. For some reason people using certain types of Macs had problems with the tour HUD. luckily I had a backup plan for this and created notecards with the landmarks that could be handed out to these individuals.

Time and experience will provide us with best practices required to effectively use digital platforms like SL. Much like RL careful planning is necessary for creating successful events.


5 comments:

Glen said...

Great blog and great project. There are a few educators in Manitoba who are interested in SL for K-12. Have you heard of anyone looking at that?

Kirk Kezema said...

Hello Glen,
Thanks for the great comments. I have never blogged before but with this project I am enjoying it. I find it useful to put my thoughts down regarding specific items.

Regarding SL for K-12...there is a Teen Grid which is very active in SL. Anyone under the age of 13 cannot gain access to the main grid of SL. Individuals, for example teachers, must be approved and given permissions to go into the teen grid to instruct.

Personally I have never been on the teen grid as all of my work to date has been with post-secondary. However I hear about wonderful things going on in the teen grid and certainly would recommend interested teachers to look into it.

Richard Schwier said...

Just for the record, Kirk... that was a great evening. And how many classes can say they finished off the evening with motorcycle races on the lawn in front of the main campus building? :-)

Rick

rdrunner said...

Hey Jeff, as a member of that inaugural tour (I'm sitting in the front row, Bip Wylie's the name) I must congratulate you. Of course it wasn't perfect, but you had thought through some of the potential issues, such as the HUD not working, and the backup plan worked great.
And you learned! Your post-assessment is perfect, as you've analyzed what went not-so-well and built strategies for the next time.
As a newbie myself, I know that one thing I'm still having trouble with is the camera controls, mouse view, etc. Perhaps one of your tutorials can speak to that.
I know that some classmates were less than impressed with SL, but I also think that creating some comfort with the tools will change that with time.
Thanks again for a fun experience.
Cindy

john said...

Hey hey. I enjoyed reading this post. You are obviously devoting plenty of thought to your adventures in SLeducation.

The subject of newbie orientation is a frequent topic of discussion, and not just amongst educators. Eloise Pasteur (venerable SL developer and instructional designer) recently posted about this in her blog.

I wonder if c seibel's classmates (the ones who were "less than impressed with SL") are serious gamers. Those folks are often left wondering why anyone would find SL interesting. They might be expecting more commercial gaming experiences, and completely miss the extraordinary opportunity that SL represents to the rest of us.

Regarding the distribution of objects to a group: I have passed a script to you, in-world, titled "Freebie Vendor GIVE script". It is a modified version of a script once given to me. Open 'er up and you'll see how you can customize the interaction a bit. Then, drag it into any prim, along with the item(s) you want to give (these can be objects, notecards, textures, landmarks, or snapshots).

Cheers,

Azwaldo
"Will teach for food."