Pilot Study under way and Second Life Video

Started my pilot study this term, to measure what the differences are between video gamers and non-video gamers, when they enter Second Life as learners.

I made this video to introduce the study and, introduce Second Life and how education is used there:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTGhp0oONKE&list=UU1YP7__CTLIoBrjVVz50tiA&index=1&feature=plpp_video

The Sense of Touch in Virtual Worlds: Haptic Technology

Stanford University is working on the use of haptic technology, for virtual worlds. As we delve farther into virtual spaces, the sense of touch is something missing. Video games that "rumble" offer a great example of how the sense of touch in the virtual is powerful. Using this in Second Life for exploration and interaction would be quite interesting!

Now, sense of smell in the virtual? They kind of manage it on Soarin' Over California at California Adventure. Long way to go though.

This video speaks a little about haptic technologies used in Second Life. How could we use this with distance learners? We can already feel butterflies in our stomach by watching movies and playing video games or reading exciting books (and riding with some family members who drive...interesting). What about constructionism principles designed into virtual spaces, learning experiences? Cool, man!

Augmented Reality and Teaching

I was introduced to this at ISTE in Philadelphia last summer. Augmented Reality is to me, part of a revolution to recreate and "augment" the physical world in the digital, for the purpose of interaction.

But, in order to be valuable in education, there must be transfer from the technology, based on sound instructional design, to real, physical life.

Standford's Virtual Human Interactions Lab (VHIL)

There is much to think about here and Stanford is doing some great things.

This demonstrates to me, that a "virtual world" is far more interesting than any one environment.

Watch this video for a brief explanation and tour of the facility and  research: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/virtual-worlds/second-lives/the-avatar-effect.html

Virtual State Fair in Second Life - Oct 26-29, 2011

The Virtual State Fair is one of the best examples of higher education in Second Life.  I have visited the site and my institution, the University of Wyoming, has its own exhibit, as so many universities across the US.  Here is a description of event.  Note the link to a flyer below.

The 4th annual eXtension Virtual State Fair event in Second Life, October 26-29, 2011, offers a fine opportunity to join colleagues for a visit to an immersive, social virtual world. New this year is the Land Grant University Expo, highlighting virtual world projects by educators around the country, with group tours departing for their regions each day. Enjoy live performers streaming music into Second Life at 8pm EDT nightly on the Midway Bandstand and discover the secrets of our haunted Morrill Manor.


Link to the State Fair in Second Life

Virtual State Fair 2011 Flyer

When Leading Educators with Technology

When leading with technology, especially an emerging technology, one must:

• believe in it
• know how to use it
• understand its significance in education
• be patient with other

More Innovation using Second Life and the Xbox Kinect

Xbox and Second Life should both be pleased with these "hacks" that bring real life imagery and shapes into the 3-D world of Second Life, hoepfully brining in the future a greater level of realism.

http://youtu.be/aEJhakY-gMk

Screen Sharing finally available for Teaching in Second Life

The wait is over, and join.me has delivered. Screen sharing as a tool and function of distance education has come to Second Life. Once Second Life's viewer 2 came into being in 2010 and one could share websites with an audience, the final frontier for live teaching was sharing one's computer screen, no matter what is on it, for the most robust and interesting classroom experiences.

Join.me is free and way easy to use. Add this to Skype and companies like Citrix that offer GoToMeeting are in real trouble.  Join.me has no voice capability at this time but does have chat, which I think is in the Pro version.

Also of note is join.me has smart phone viewers which can see your screen as well. The service is free unless you add some features in which case, it becomes $30 per month which is steep for just a screen sharing software.

Here are some shots of my demo within Second Life:


This is showing on a screen in Second Life, at the Wyoming Entrepreneur island.

This is the screen at classroom 1.  Once loaded with a screen sharing session, attendees click on it once and start to see whatever is on the screen being shared.

This is what the screen looks like when an attendee clicks on the teaching screen inside Second Life, but nothing is being shared.  Note the tools at the top, showing on the computer screen only, of the person who will share his/her screen.

The above screen is now showing my desktop which currently has this blog being displayed in Internet Explorer.

Hopefully this software will stay around for a while but if not, another should take its place in this open source, open content movement we are blessed with.

Just imagine the teaching possibilities with this tool...

Visit a 3-D Virtual Disneyland? On Xbox Kinect, yes.

Farther and farther we go into the virtual frontier, using more than just our hands and minds as Xbox and Disneyland are proving.  Check out the video below to see how you may visit Disneyland in California, without buying a passport.

Universities not safe to buy at Second Life Marketplace

While preparing for an internal training, I purchased a golf cart rezzer for a team building activity.  The golf car would not work, no matter what was tried.  I contacted the seller who told me he did not care.  To my surprise, Second Life, told me the same thing.

This seems unusual for Linden not to follow eBay and Amazon in buyer protection policies, especially for universities that purchase land.  My short and surprising conversation with Linden may be seen below:

We did, by the way, have a very successful team building activity with jeeps made by a seller called Lusch Motors.  Excellent product, not something easy to get right when the product actually has to do something.

University of Idaho, very impressive program in Second Life

I visit universities from time to time in Second Life just to see where this industry may be headed.  If the University of Idaho can be used as a indicator, things are going well for higher education in the 3-D virtual space. What started as a nice building a some landscaping is in my opinion, the finest example of higher education to be found anywhere in Second Life.  Wow, have a look and you won't be disappointed. But do take some time to notice some a couple of things:

1. The entire campus has been the result of professional planning and a vision of high quality.
2. The facility program is founded upon an educational program, and that's how it should be.  Tools like Second Life are meant to support programs, and not the other way around.

Here is the link:  http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Idahonia/134/129/36

Training Internal Staff with Second Life

Our department will conduct part of our annual retreat in Second Life sometime in May.  Part of the activities will be team building (games), and others will be presentations about the results of our teleworking committee (I am chair), and our strategic plan.  See, you really can do serious work in Second Life!

To prepare for this, I designed instruction of two trainings for our internal staff, which I am happy to share.  Training 1 is a watch and ask questions session where I teach staff by alternating my screen sharing between the Second Life Quick Start Guide (http://secondlife.com/support/quickstart/basic/all-in-one), and Second life where I demonstrate several of the different procedures as I explained concepts and taught vocabulary.  I screen shared using GoToMeeting.

For Training 2 learners will participate with avatars.  We will meet inworld on Wyoming Entrepreneur Island, then teleport to an orientation island with learning stations that allow learners to practice different skills, with me on hand as instructor to demonstrate (only if needed) and answer questions.

Today I taught the first Training 1 session and it went extremely well.  I have discovered not all staff are overly excited about learning Second Life since it takes some time and effort from other activities, and hey, we're all busy.  But this was encouraging.  Professional (including educational) activities in Second Life will only increase with time and we are doing ourselves a favor by adopting this technology.  Of course, Second Life is only one of many virtual worlds and in time, will have a viable competitor.  At least let's hope so.

Interested in a copy of my instructional design document?  Happy to share: mark.atkinson@uwyo.edu

Wyoming's Ruby Vegas Designs (custom jewelry) to join Business Incubator in Second Life

Robbie Bustos is a native of Rock Springs, Wyoming and an expert jewelry maker and talented artist.  Amongst the seemingly over-crowded world of jewelry artists, Robbie stands out. And not only as an artist, but as an entrepreneur.  She understand how to use web-based sales channels like Etsy, website and Facebook, and she founds her sales efforts upon sound business practices.

Robbie's jewelry creations are unique and interesting, even to a man like myself who knows little about jewelry.  But I do know quality, whatever the product.  And, I can recognize entrepreneurial talent.

Ruby Vegas designs is found at: http://www.rubyvegasdesigns.com.

In time, the earrings, necklaces, shawl pins, and hair accessories will be available to purchase in Second Life as real and virtual products.  Robbie envisions selling the real stuff to be worn by humans, alongside virtual products to be worn be avatars.  Of course, avatars are people too!  (some of them).

Keep an eye on Wyoming Entrepreneur Island in the coming weeks to see Real Life products for sale by our incubator clients.

Offering Small Business Classes in Second Life

I have taught two small business classes in Second Life at Wyoming Entrepreneur Island in the last 3 weeks.  Both were attended well enough all things considered, and brought clients to us so that is great.

However, during the first one, a business startup class, a griefer posted some objectionable materials.  This nearly shook my faith in Linden Lab and made me wonder why the coding of the program allows for this.  Answer? Companies are more concerned with their bottom line than anything else and griefers I suppose, spend money too.  Thankfully, all of the attendees were zoomed in on a Google docs board and I was able to eject the griefer and his garbage before anyone noticed.  But still, it interrupted the class and shook me up quite a bit as it was my first experience with an inworld terrorist.

Anyway, the second class, taught yesterday, went without a hitch and evaluations are good.

What did I do different and what is my advice for teaching formal classes in Second Life?  Here goes:

• Advertise using email marketing, your website, and other media, but NOT INSIDE SECOND LIFE.  Griefers are just waiting to come and ruin your event, and watch mostly inworld.  They can find you in real life certainly, but this is an important consideration.
• Require pre-registration in a system outside Second Life, then lock down the classroom and verify each person that comes in.  How unfortunate, that this must be so.  But...it must be so.
• Have security ready to eject and ban, with estate banning screen open.  If you just right click on the griefer and eject and ban, they leave the parcel but not the estate.  Banning from the estate is the only way to fly...
• Should you report griefers to Linden? Nope, waste of time.  The person who terrorized my first class is still in Second Life and it does not matter anyway because this person can make another avatar in 5 minutes and come right back if removed by Linden.  Also, just my opinion, Linden Lab does not care.  After reporting the griefer, the email they sent to me reinforces this opinion.  They will never even tell you if they investigated.  I understand privacy issues and why they would not reveal whether someone has been ejected, but this is going too far.  Linden should capitalize technology and strategy to ensure a much more secure environment, especially for universities.  Closing down our entire sim is not a solution.

Here are some snapshots of one of the classes.  Some of the common learner problems are people using old computers, not buying quality headsets, and not taking the time to practice before coming to a class.  All these things a university can overcome with a good plan.

St. John's MBA Students visit Wyoming Entrepreneur Island

I get quite a lot of email lately from graduate students asking for information about our program. Three intelligent and polite MBA students from St. John's University visited this week.  As expected, they had many questions about commerce in Second Life and about working with entrepreneurs there.  We went on a field trip to my favorite inworld clothing store after hanging out and chatting in the Old Faithful Inn.

Not all visitors equally find Second Life interesting, nor useful. Currently, there is little to no real life commerce taking place there which is the crux of my Second Life incubator project.  We will see if Wyoming entrepreneurs can be successful using Second Life as a sales channel but not for virtual goods, for real life products.

University of Wyoming grad students visit Wyoming Entrepreneur Island

Nearly 30 University of Wyoming graduate students spent several hours being introduced to the 3-D virtual world, Second Life.  The day included multiple presentations from faculty, graduate students and other staff from the institution.  One of the visits was Wyoming Entrepreneur Island, a facility of the Small Business Development Center (SBDC).

Some of the students accessed the virtual world directly with their own avatar while others met in a room and watched a projection with sound of their professor's avatar.  The latter strategy is an effective work around to a Second Life island's limit of about 50-60 avatars being on an island at one time.  Although the software allows 99 avatars on an island at one time, experience shows that an island without too many objects or running animations, will typically run stable concurrently accomodating around 45 avatars.  The Wyoming Second Life facility was purposefully designed to have few objects and practically no constantly running animation, to allow great capacity.

The required activity seemed a success with many positive comments from the learners.  Typically though, not everyone who visits Second Life is impressed since it is sometimes difficult to distinguish this environment from an online video game, and envision its possibilities with work, government and education, or other users.  But they are there and many envison 3-D virtual spaces to become a common platform for distance collaboration of all types.  The current 2-D web used in our daily lives may even become 3-D within 10 years, so says I.  In order to do so, interoperability between virtual worlds and platforms would be requisite.

University of Wyoming Outreach School to offer Courses at Wyoming Entrepreneur Island

Distance education (higher) in Wyoming is kicking it up a gear at the University of Wyoming.  This semester (Spring 2011) both graduates and undergraduates will be completing learning activities at Wyoming Entrepreneur Island.  Summer will have a biology class building objects to represent what they learned from lecture and reading.  There is even a professor holding office hours at the facility.

So what does this mean for a Small Business Development Center in Second Life?  As an educational organization at heart, these activities overlap with the nonformal education we provide to entrepreneurs in Wyoming.  Also, synergy will be created between us and the university's academic division, creating more awareness on both sides.  This is how government works best in my opinion, and benefits all.

Four classrooms have been parceled and are ready for professional meetings, classes, and other activities.

Bronco Skytower no more; Display Names in Second Life - Viewer 2.3

From beta to production and now with Second Life viewer 2.3, I can finally use my own name for my avatar.  It never sat well with me to pretend being someone else.  I like to be me.

I have noticed in the week or so using viewer 2.3, that people are still calling me Bronco instead of Mark, even people I am acquainted with.  This means that others are not yet using the new viewer, but that will change.  There was one person in my friends list that I did not recognize and that is because he too is using his own name.

I wonder though, how many people will take off the mask and be themselves, at least by using their own name?  My assumption is that most people will not, since Second Life for many is really a double life.  Also, others worry about privacy violations.  For me though, and probably you too, I am all over the internet.  Any one of us can Google our own name and see links to LinkedIn, Facebook, websites, and so forth.  So for me, there is no issue of privacy.

Note former Bronco below in the photo, Bronco no more!:

Main Problems with Meetings in Second Life & other virtual spaces like Web Conferences & Skype

For me, it's the open mic that is the defining problem with meetings in Second Life, or web conferencing, or what have you.  Too much typing, cell phone ringing, coffee machines, all dissolving the professionalism of meetings.  I made a sign and placed it on our island in teaching locations, that illustrates how people can monitor themselves in a Second Life meeting.

What other types of disruptions do you see in Second Life or other virtual meetings?

Awesome Tools for Teaching in Second Life

For a school project I have been observing a teacher in Second Life. The new viewer 2, which is not that new anymore, allows access to and displaying of the cloud in Second Life. I can now use Google docs to demonstrate how to develop a business plan with a Word doc, and how to use our financial projections workbook with an Excel doc.

Also, I can teach how to build a website with Webs.com, and by using Scribblar, I have access to a whiteboard which will display asset such as images (diagrams) and PowerPoint. Powerpoint has been available for a long time in Second Life but displaying it with Scribblar allows the use of drawing tools to highlight places on slides and enhance teaching, I have found.

Visit the island by clicking HERE: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Wyoming%20Entrepreneur/162/237/46

See photos below for my use of Google docs in Second Life.