Crossing over to the dark side

School has started. What happened to the summer?!!!!!

So, besides balancing three storeys upon an aluminum ladder to scrape and paint the west side of my house, I spent some time exploring a couple of other MUVEs, Blue Mars and Friendshangout.

I had tried Blue Mars last fall but could never get in with my old laptop. However, I got a new laptop from LCC this summer that has a better graphics card (I can go up to Medium in graphics with SL and still have a decent frame rate) so I finally got in. Blue Mars is pretty, with nice shadows, and smooth avie animation. But the viewer is really stripped down and basic (though I've just installed a new version, so we'll see if that's improved). Not to mention you have to practically be a professional computer animator to build there (which makes my son, a professional computer animator, happy!).

Friendshangout gives you free land, and lots of it. But it's really alpha right now, and I haven't explored enough to figure out how to build, if you even can yet. But what I most found irritating was the landscape. You have mountains in the distance, but if you walk towards them, you never get to them! It's like a backdrop on a movie set rather than an actual virtual space that you can explore. And the camera shot always puts the URL on the photo. Of course, I could have trimmed or blotted out with Adobe Photoshop, but hey, the haze of summer is still upon me!

But the most significant event of the summer is that I've crossed over to the dark side and actually purchased for the very first time an Apple product! I picked up an iPad a couple of weeks ago. I decided to get one for a variety of reasons--smaller device to use in meetings, around the house, when travelling. And I really want to explore using the tablet for reading, to see if it's possible to grade student work with it, and if doing so is less taxing than doing so on a laptop. But the overriding reason I wanted one is because it seems to me that the device is a game changer in how we use computers, much as a laptop was compared to desktops. Or maybe even more so. It reminds me of the tablet used in Tad Williams' Otherland series, and in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

So do I think it was worth purchasing? So far, yes. The touch screen works really well, is very intuitive and makes reading, searching, viewing movies and writing (in small increments--like email or FB postings) quite enjoyable and productive. Also, the battery is long lived, and the device doesn't get hot, something I always hated with laptops in the summer.

But it really showed its mettle this last weekend when we helped my youngest daughter move to Ann Arbor to attend the University of Michigan. We spent hours in Meijer and Target while she and her mother deliberated over every little item to purchase for the apartment. I stayed sane by propping the iPad in the shopping cart and reading!

Also, my use of the iPad reminds me of what Philip Rosedale said in his keynote message at the SLCC a couple weeks ago concerning the iPhone: it's not as good as many phones, but it's a lot more enjoyable to use. Same with the iPad--it's not as good as a laptop, in that you cannot multitask (though coming in the fall?), the glass keyboard is slow (though much faster than a phone keyboard!), and it won't run flash. But it's a lot more enjoyable than a laptop.

Which brings me back to education in a virtual world. It may not be as efficient as an LMS like Angel, especially with asynchronous discussion or submission of assignments. But it's a lot more fun.

When I first heard Rosedale's mantra for moving SL forward--"fast, easy, fun"--I thought he was being cute or trendy, and took little stock in it. But the more I think about it, the more I realize he's exactly right. Second Life, for all communities who use it, but especially for education, needs to be fast to learn, fast to use, fast to access content, needs to be easy to maneuver, easy to find stuff, easy to communicate, and needs to be fun to use, fun to play, fun to work in.

Only then will its immersiveness become more pervasive among more users. And that's the key for expansion into virtual worlds with educators, especially in distant ed.

And face it--entering SL through an iPad would be really cool!

Roger and Me

A couple weeks ago (to be precise, on 6/17), Roger Ebert tweeted the following: "Find me a person who would value any video game above 'Huckleberry Finn,' and I'll show you a fool." As you can imagine, gamers lit Twitter, his blog, and their own with a wildfire of responses (one of his blog postings had over 4000 comments!). And then finally, Ebert relented, admitting that he shouldn't really be commenting on video games when he has had little experience with them.

The discussion led me to thinking about my own experiences with Huck Finn and video games.

My first memory of Twain and Huckleberry Finn go back to Christmas 1965, when I was in third grade, and my family lived in the Sierra Nevada foothills, the town of Oroville. My grandmother and grandfather Lyons had given me a handsome edition of the book for Christmas, and my father read it to us, one of the only times I remember my dad reading a book to his four children. I especially recall my father almost rolling on the floor laughing when reading the chapter "Was Solomon Wise?"

Jump ahead a decade to my first year in college, a few years after my father's death, a year out of high school, when I had always planned on majoring and working in the sciences, probably some form of physical chemistry. What I found, though, in that first year at Diablo Valley College, was that I really didn't want to pursue science. The work just didn't interest me as it had when in high school, for some unfathomable reason. I even took a disliking to math while taking a trig class, something I had thoroughly enjoyed up to calculus in high school.

It wasn't until I took a class on Mark Twain the second semester, that I realized my interests were much more focused on literature than on science, that I was much more interested in reading about science than in doing it. I was more engaged in works of imagination than in works of the physical world.

Now jump forward another fifteen years. My oldest son at ten years old bought a Nintendo Gameboy with his paper-route money. A number of evenings after work selling real estate, or just starting my career in teaching in community colleges, I would sit on our couch surrounded by my four children as we all watched me maneuver Mario through the little screen images of Super Mario World, jumping, running, flying, knocking turtle shells, and so on. All of us were immersed, engaged in that little 2-3 inch screen, watching that little plumber negotiate the obstacles of a rather unfriendly world.

Now was that video game as rich an experience as reading Huckleberry Finn? In many ways, of course not. A simple game on a little screen does not compare to the rich world along the Mississippi River filled with round characters that Twain creates. Or of any of the rich narratives that my children and I experienced together as I read dozens of books aloud to them. But in both cases, father and children experienced a world of imagination together, laughed and held their breaths together, talked and enjoyed being with each other.

You see, I'm convinced that the use of imagination in placing oneself into an virtual world, or as Tolkien calls it a secondary world--being immersed, lost in, enveloped by that world--is the key to engagement in a number of media. One doesn't become engaged in page after page of words, tiny screens of choppy images, models floating through a star scape on a black and white TV--even the most sophisticated imagery available today on an HD TV or digital theater, whether in video games or film--without placing oneself imaginatively into the midst of that world, becoming immersed in it. One cannot be surrounded by a virtual world literally. One can only imagine being so.

Consequently, the idea that children playing video games are mindless vegetables compared to those who read I find wrongheaded. A child cannot become immersed in a video game without using his or her imagination any more than he or she can with a book.

And I think that's the key to success for MUVEs, MMOGs, virtual worlds--being able to believe, again as Tolkien says, while in the world, that what takes place is reasonable given the initial setup of that world. I rationally recognize that my avatar in Second Life, Profdan Netizen, is not me, it's a blob of pixels on a server. And I know that anyone I interact with in SL is one removed from their avatar, just as I am. But with my imagination, I secondarily believe, and am hence immersed in that secondary world while I'm there, and hence can experience it as I would a rich novel, a vivid video game, or a well crafted movie.

But I also see, as I contemplate my relationship with Huck Finn and video games, that social interaction is crucial to the experiences. My father reading to me, my mother buying me books, even when it wasn't a special holiday (I remember one afternoon coming home to find three paperbacks arranged carefully on my bed--the Lord of the Rings). Reading to my children and playing video games, from Gameboy to Nintendo in all of its variations to Playstation. Although reading and playing video games often are solitary affairs, just as often they were social events in my family. The communal nature of collectively exercising our imaginations and entering a secondary world together magnified the immersion--same is so with watching TV or going to a movie together.

Jump ahead another twenty years. I now find myself working with students in a virtual world. As I've mentioned in earlier entries, I've taught online for a dozen years in the 2D world of the Web and learning management systems like Blackboard and Angel. All along, I've found the lack of space in the online educational experience to be a serious deficiency. Why? Yes, I've been able to work on writing with students as a community through 2D apps. But I've found the experience to be detached, imaginatively shallow, no sense of place. A big part of it has to do with the likelihood that who we are, what we are, what we do are all mightily influenced by geography. As Annie Dillard mentions at the beginning of An American Childhood, "When everything else has gone from my brain--the President's name, the state capitals, the neighborhoods where I lived, and then my own name and what it was on earth I sought, and then at length the faces of my friends, and finally the faces of my family--when all this has dissolved, what will be left, I believe, is topology: the dreaming memory of land as it lay this way and that." I've always thought that having an online world to work in, much like the worlds of a video game (hopefully more friendly than Super Mario World!), would enrich the experience, help students enjoy more fully the class, and give them an imaginative anchor--a topology of place--that would keep them in school more effectively than does 2D online learning.

Social interaction and imagination--both bring us back to virtual worlds. Both are essential to the richness of Second Life and other MUVEs and MMOGs.

Some students get imaginative/social interaction right off with Second Life, many don't. Part of it, I think, is the newness of the medium, much as many students didn't get working with a community of writers online twelve years ago. But I'm wondering what I might do to help students recognize the MUVE as a place of the imagination that will build community and exercise mental skills which improve their writing.

Face it, without a well developed imagination, one cannot write effectively.

Dog Days of Summer?

Although it's only early June, the brouhaha over Linden Lab and their downsizing makes it sound like we're in the throes of a miserable heat wave. All over Twitter and the SLED list, proclamations of the demise of Second Life are being proclaimed because LL has cut their work force by 30%, including the disbanding of the Singapore office, and most disturbing for educators, the lay off of Claudia and George Linden. Here's a CNET article on the layoffs: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-20007260-36.html.

There are also reports of colleges and universities pulling out, from Princeton to the College of DuPage.

So is the use of Second Life for educational purposes in trouble?

Well, maybe. But not any more than other aspects of education are in trouble because of the current recession. What seems to be forgotten is that we are in the worst recession since the Great Depression, and educational communities have been hit hard by the collapse of support from states and property taxes. Did we really think there would be no casualties in the MUVE?

Fortunately, the cost of using a virtual world in education is small compared to other expenses. Yes, it may be cut, or slow to expand for a while, but I would imagine the retreat will be short lived. Online education--not the only driver of VWs, but certainly a sizable aspect--continues to grow. VWs are a natural next step in bringing students into a fully immersive experience that gives them a sense of person and place that no 2D LMS or even Web 2.0 2D app can give them.

True, if Linden Lab so focuses on social network gaming (does it really want to become the next Farmville?!!!), as it also announced with the layoffs, and if it continues its overtures of slighting educators, the ramp up and development of open source VWs may be the place for colleges and universities (not to mention primary and secondary education).

The open source sims are still clunky, but they are improving rapidly. VWER has been hosting field trips to different educational builds on places such as ReactionGrid and 3rd Rock, which have been quite fascinating. They can't handle very many people without crashing, but that was so with SL, even just a couple years ago.

Linden Lab lays off 30% of its workforce during the the Great Recession. Not really news. I'm surprised it just now happened. Linden Lab is pursuing what they consider potentially lucrative 3D avenues. Again, not surprising. However, I hope they are not simply running scared and find themselves behind the curve in both the flatter social network 3D gaming world and more graphically rich new worlds, such as Blue Mars (though I've yet to get in because my computer's graphics card is too old!!!).

Swamped by the semester

Wow, where did February, March, and April go! I checked my notes and found I had started a couple new blog posts but never finished. That's what happens when you teach four writing classes a semester!

Now that I've had some time to decompress from the semester, here are some highlights for the middle part of the semester:

Voice

This semester, I've required students to use voice in order to share drafts of essays for composition courses and drafts of poems/stories for the creative writing course.

I hope for most writing instructors, the reasoning is self evident: having students hear their writing helps them to discover aspects of their expression that they will not realize when simply reading silently. The value is mostly for the writer, though it can also be beneficial for the listeners/respondents.

Having an oral reading component in online writing classes has always been problematic. In the early years of teaching writing online, I didn't even try. I considered it as one of the limitations of the delivery method that had to be abandoned. A few years ago, though, around the time when I began to teach creative writing online, I decided I had to have an audio component. Students who write poems and stories had to hear their writing. So I began to use WIMBA, which was supported by the college and accessible through Angel LMS. I would have students read and record their drafts and then asked group members to listen while reading before they responded.

It was all done asynchronously. WIMBA does have a synchronous voice chat, but it is rather clunky, and the archiving it does of mixing text and audio clips is hard to follow. So I stuck with asynchronous posting of oral drafts. I could determine whether or not students recorded drafts, and score accordingly. I couldn't really do so with the listening part. Participation over the years was never one hundred percent (little is!).

SL voice seemed to be a better solution. Students could read drafts, and share text copies in notecards. They could take turns reading their drafts, and elicit discussion, just as I would have them do in a f2f class. And the sense of space and presence would be superior to the bodiless voices of WIMBA or even something some students are more familiar with, Skype.

When it worked, it was great. Several students in their reflective essays at the end of the semester mentioned voluntarily how much they found voice presentation of drafts helpful. But SL voice proved to be buggy. Too often students couldn't get it to work, and one student never did even though she was pretty computer savvy (I suspect network congestion on her end). I think next semester I'll have them use Skype as a back up.

Which brings me to two other issues: too many apps and tech help inworld.

Too many apps

I've found that students get app overload pretty quickly. I lost a scad of students because they didn't read the schedule book concerning using SL, and the computer needs to take this course. Some dropped, or stopped working, right away. Those who stuck it out either were pretty tech savvy or very tenacious. But even among those who stayed, I could tell that having to juggle Angel LMS (including uploading/downloading files, discussion forums, reading web page assignments, looking up grades), Word or OpenOffice, Second Life, Twitter, AIM, and Diigo became difficult, especially for those who were doing online classes the first time. Next semester, I think I'll drop Twitter, even though I found its use quite valuable for quick communication and sharing between students and with me for those who tweeted frequently. However, I found too many ignoring it even though keeping a Twitter log while working on their essays was required.

Also, I plan to use Skype instead of AIM so that I'll have a back up voice chat should SL voice not work, and a back up text IM all in the same app. And for the first semester comp, I may also drop Diigo, though, since I don't use it until later in the semester, I may keep depending on how the group's competency pans out.

The point is that I have to juggle between making a rich online class experience and making it too opaque for weak tech users. As I've mentioned before, I will always lean towards a rich experience, and chance losing students, but I don't want to make it accessible for only the highly proficient tech user. Those with a moderate familiarity with the web and computer use should have no inordinate problem with the course, as long as they set aside enough time to do the work!

Tech help in world

The other issue is finding tech help in world. Students at LCC can get help with software and applications supported by the college, such as Angel (well, usually--they've not been very helpful with WIMBA!). But not with apps that are not supported currently by the college, such as SL or Twitter. Therefore, I have to do the heavy lifting of helping students solve technical problems, which I've done for many years. But I'm not available at all times, nor am I as technologically proficient with VW problems as I'd like to be (though I'm learning!). So I really need to find some places/people that students can contact when having problems in world.

This is really essential. Whether or not SL is effective as a place of learning for online students is directly affected by whether or not they can have a relatively trouble-free experience while in world. Problems will arise, but they need to be solved. Yes, those who try to do SL with underpowered machines or on weak home networks (wireless or Ethernet) or without purchasing enough RAM or a headset will find SL clunky and frustrating. But that shouldn't be the case for those with the right equipment/connection. Too often it is.

New Semester in Second Life

Spring 2010 is well underway. As you know, last semester, I taught one WRIT 121 hybrid course using Second Life. This semester, I'm teaching two WRIT 121 courses (combined as one in Angel LMS) fully online and with Second Life. I'm also teaching a WRIT 260: Creative Writing I course online and inworld.

So what's different this time through?

Well, first off, with fully online courses, we couldn't do an orientation all at the same time (both because there is no scheduled time when we would all meet, and there were potentially 55 students!). So instead, I gave instructions to do the orientation on their own on Virtual Ability Island, and then later in the second week, to come chat with me at Angel learning Isle.

I also put together a walk through, signing up through Virtual Ability, and then starting the orientation.

Overall, orientations/chats went well, though some students seemed to get lost on VA Island. And a good number seemed surprised that we were using SL, not realizing we were going to do so, even though it was announced in the schedule book. I had so many in their intros expressing ignorance we were going to use SL, I asked our lead instructional support, Brett, to check to make sure the notice was presented online when students registered (it was). Consequently, there were a good number who didn't have sufficient computers to deal with SL effectively.

But for those who jumped in and did the orientation, and met with me that first time on Angel Learning Isle, they seemed to enjoy themselves.

Week 3 in the WRIT 121 class, we had a chat, and then an SL field trip. Their first essay is about a particular toy, and its value to children (or adults, if they choose to explore) so they brought to the chat notes about three of their favorite toys as children. After the chat, they would search about their toys, and then decide to go to one sim that deals with the toy in some way.

Last semester, the student searches were hit or miss. Some sessions the students couldn't really find anything of value, so I realized I needed to have some possibilities in my back pocket in case that happened.

Come to find out, it didn't need them. Students had no problem finding interesting places to visit, in a very short amount of time, from bike trails to mechanical toy factories to baby dolls and furniture. It seems that Linden Labs has improved their search engine quite a bit, and/or more intriguing content is being built in SL.

Also, I had an experience that really surprised me during one of the WRIT 121 chats. After the chat, we went to Kool-Stop Country where we picked up some free bikes to explore the island.

One student found a dance ball to practice a little tai chi.

After the field trip, I went back to Angel to change out a notecard in the in the notecard dispenser. One of my students was on the office roof (where I have an oriental rug). She mentioned how pretty the sunset was.

So I jumped up to the roof, and she was lounging, enjoying the view. I sat, and we just started to talk. She told me about her husband and his family overseas, asked me about why we were using SL, and whether I'd done much traveling. In other words, we were just relaxing on the roof, and talking. After about a half hour, she said she had to go to work early the next morning, so needed to go, but thanked me and said, "This was nice." She then left, I finished my work, and left as well.

Now--I've done small talk with students f2f, and with online students, in chat. But the sense of presence, the connection, that took place in this online class, was very different than anything I've experienced before, and it solidifies the value I see in working in a MUVE.

Very simple, but I find very profound the spontaneous exchange we had during a sunset on a roof at Angel Learning Isle. If this doesn't exemplify the fact that SL is a place, I don't know what does.

In fact, I'm beginning to think that the power of SL with online education is that when students don't have f2f interaction with you, such as with a hybrid class, they rely more on avatar interaction, and hence it becomes much richer in creating a sense of presence.

Last semester we had SL field trips; I had students take snapshots; they posted them in Writer's Cafe. Same this semester. But this semester, students not only took pictures--they wanted to take a picture of the chat group posing. And not just one group suggested such. Again, not something that was ever suggested in the hybrid class. Could it be that when students never meet f2f, they make a much stronger connection with their avatar classmates and professor than takes place with a hybrid class? The hybrid class need not rely on SL avatars to have a connection with the prof and class members. They can enjoy the experience, but it's secondary. But with online classes, the 3D avatar interaction, possibly, becomes the primary connection, with the 2D interaction in the learning management system becoming secondary.

Of course, this is all tentative, and preliminary, but certainly promising.

Wish You Were Here: Learning in Second Life

Happy new year! I gave a presentation on my forays into teaching in Second Life this week for the spring 2010 professional development days at Lansing Community College. It went well, though the PowerPoint on the classroom computer was rather stingy in showing pictures, and the remote clicker I received from Center for Teaching Excellence died after two clicks. But the SL viewer worked fine and the faculty in the audience seemed to enjoy exploring Angel Learning Isle, as well as a couple other sites, such as Montclair State University, NOAA, and Blarney Stone Pub at the Dublin sim. A number expressed a desire for LCC to have an island in SL.

Here's the URL for the PowerPoint slides in PDF: http://web.lcc.edu/personal/holtd/wishyouwerehere--pd_1-2010.pdf

Whole class meeting in SL

A couple weeks ago, I met with my WRIT 121 class in Second Life as a whole. In other words, instead of meeting f2f on a Tuesday evening, we all met at Angel Learning Isle.

As you know, up to this point, I had met with students only in small groups on the balcony of my office.

Now we would meet in the classroom area.

The purpose of the class was for students to read/review the virtual lecture on thesis statements and then to get into three groups, where they would discuss their thesis statements, using some specific prompts to help them make sure they were working with a position that brought insight to the issue.

The lecture link was available on a sign with a screen shot of the first page of the lecture (behind me in this picture).

The prompts were available on a notecard in the blue box in the middle of the seating circle.

In a f2f class, I would have them get into groups, spread throughout the classroom, and they would take turns sharing/discussing.

In regular online classes, I would have them discuss in text chat sessions at different times.

Here on Angel Learning Isle, I had them spatially get up, move to three corners of the classroom area, and stand next to teleportation globes. Once I saw that the groups were evenly divided, I had them teleport to three sky class areas (one a gallion, or pirate ship), where they discussed their thesis statements. Doing so made it possible for them to discuss in small groups without hearing (if using voice) or seeing (if using text chat) the other group's discussion.

Once I got everyone situated--I had to lead a group from my balcony over to the classroom area--the explanation of what we were going to do, the reviewing of the lecture, the receipt of the note card prompts, and the movement to the sky discussion areas went smoothly.

While they met in groups, I stayed in the classroom area, in case late students showed up, and in case students had questions. When students had questions, they would IM me, which can be done anywhere in SL; one need not be close by.

What is interesting is that one student, instead of IMing, teleported back to the classroom, asked his question, and then returned to his group. It seemed like he did so deliberately, almost like he wanted the movement. That sense of movement, of going from one place to another, seems to add to engagement, much like having students move around in a classroom to break up a long class session. Online students participating in a text or voice chat never have a sense of movement within a landscape of any sort while working with each other.

I didn't have them return to the classroom area. Like I did with my online class that uses only the Angel LMS for chat, I had them write a note to send to me through the Angel drop box, summarizing what group said.

What I often do f2f is have groups report to class and share what they discovered from the group interaction. I didn't even think to have this class do so in SL, but of course, I could have, and might try that next time.

I don't know if I'll have any more whole class meetings this semester. But I do know that when I mentioned returning to f2f the next week, some students expressed disappointment, especially those who discussed their thesis statements in the hull of a pirate ship!

Chatting with students in Second Life

The last two weeks I've started holding chat sessions in Second Life on Angel Learning Isle on my office balcony.



For online classes, I usually require students to attend at least one chat a week, no more than an hour, based on times they send to me. For each class, I'll then set up 3-5 chat sessions (obviously more for double sections), usually from Wednesday through Saturday. Here's a link to the chat sessions I typically schedule for an online class using 2D web apps in Angel's LMS and AIM: http://web.lcc.edu/personal/holtd/writ121/chatimes.htm.

I have done this over the last dozen years for one main reason: it gives students a sense of person, a sense that they are working with real people, even though it's only text. Yes, they get some of the same with asynchronous apps, like discussion boards. But the immediacy of chat heightens the online experience.

Again, though, it's still all text:


Now, as a writing teacher, I have no problem with text. Text is great. But text is not a person. One point I've been making in this blog, and elsewhere, is that online students would benefit from a sense of place, just as f2f students experience when walking onto campus. And that sense of place, or sense of space, would enhance their experience as taking place with real people. This is what I had hoped would be possible in Second Life.

So with two weeks of chat sessions, what did I find?

First off, teaching on SL presents a deja vu experience for me, as simply dealing with SL has all year. As I mentioned earlier, SL reminded me a lot of the Web in 1996: lots of promise, tremendous potential, but in large part empty, with little valuable, useful content.

Take finding interesting articles online. In 1996, you were much more likely to find well researched, thoughtful articles from magazines, newspapers, journals by going to the library and searching something like Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature, or using CD ROMs to search, and even then, you likely had to find the full text on paper or microfilm. Occasionally you could find research online from colleges and universities. And some magazines began posting articles early on. But really--you had to go to the library to find most of what was published on an issue.

That changed, though, on the Web, in a very short time. Each six months, users found exponential increases in useful, valuable content, so that by today, there are very few venues that beat the Web in finding worthwhile resources, including physical libraries. Ask any librarian--most funds are being poured into digital acquisitions. Why? Because that is what patrons want, to be able to search and find stuff online.

Getting back to using SL with students: deja vu all over again--thanks, John Fogerty for a very timely song title. In 1997, when I first started teaching online classes using AltVista Forum as our learning management system, I found that one had to rethink teaching in substantial ways. I could not just plop a f2f class online and go on my merry way. Simple example: when does an online class start? Today, the answer is simple--whenever I decide it's going to start. But in 1996-97, while we were first designing online classes, that was a puzzling question. For f2f, we knew that class started when they were scheduled--on Mondays and Wednesdays from 2-4 p.m. beginning on August twentysomething. But with online classes, they could start, the minute the semester started, or later, or even before--since students would be populated into online sections usually weeks earlier.

So now, when moving from 2d online to 3d, do I just throw an online class onto SL and conduct just like I have with 2d Angel LMS?

Well, first of all, I can't. I have no discussion forums, no gradebook, no drop boxes in SL. Those developing Sloodle are furiously working to make such an integration between SL and Moodle, the open source LMS. And Angel started to, until Blackborg assimilated. However, I've recently heard Blackborg is now working on integration (resistance is futile).

Even so, one still cannot have students working on discussion forums in world, which I think would be cool. Maybe soon, when real time access to the web in world will be available.

But I can do chats in SL, real time communication with class members.

So how is it different? Well, first off, the sense of dealing with a person, the sense I found very strong in communicating with colleagues at conferences and meetings during my sabbatical, is as strong when meeting with students. Students overall seemed intrigued with the method of communication. Some were having friends watch over their shoulders--one with a friend from Lake Superior who insisted on seeing what she was doing because she said "we don't have anything like that at our campus!"

Furthermore, students seem really to enjoy meeting in SL. Throughout the years, I've had some students express enjoying chats, and others not so much. But students immediately found the medium engaging and our discussion about the Harvard video Shaped by Writing fun. The next week, I added something you can't do in Angel chat: a field trip, where students set off to visit toy sims in SL. The success of the groups with the field trips varied (more below). But last Tuesday, when I told students we weren't having a chat this week, some were really disappointed.

Meanwhile, I found that trying to give instructions about what to do in the chat to be challenging. I first tried to explain to students how to create a notecard and give it to me through chat. It did not work. They just got confused. So I created a notecard with instructions that they could open from a simple blue box.



That worked fine for most students, actually for all who had computers that worked decently in SL (I have several that have found their computers too old and rushed out to get new lap tops).

I also found that I must have back-up suggestions if I ask students to teleport somewhere to explore. As I mentioned above, I had students last week take a field trip to toy sites in SL. Their first essay is on the value of toys, based on their own experiences and observations. They need not write about SL, but I wanted them to do some exploration of SL to see if the toy they were writing about had a presence in the MUVE, especially since SL residents are all adults. Well, I found that if I don't have some back up possibilities, students can come up dry. Again, like the web in 1996, you can often search for something and find little of value. For example, one chat group decided to search for Barbie. And they learned one thing--Barbie is quite sexualized in the virtual world! One student accidentally ended up in an exotic dance club! But besides that, there was little out there except for some stores with Barbie avatars. And another group tried to find Lego sims, but found some profiles or teleport profiles that said they had Lego stuff didn't really. So I found that having some back up possibilities--like simply searching toys in Search--to be valuable.

The last group worked best, and it was the largest with seven students. I tried to break them up, but they wanted to stay together. I found that if I give them instructions first in text chat--to search for the toys they brought to discuss--and have them share in text chat what they find, that they find more sites that way. They ended up spending most of their time sledding in a winter park.

I think next time, I'll have them find a couple relevant sims on their own to bring to chat, and see how that goes (next week--essay topic, music).

So I think so far that SL as a real time meeting place for students is definitely worthwhile. It's still 1996, but the millenium is about to turn!

Orientation for First Year Composition students

This last Tuesday, I held my first orientation session for WRIT 121 students on Second Life. After going over some reasons why we're using SL, I had them all visit the Virtual Ability Island sign in web site.

One of the problems I find with helping students start up a new account in any online application is that in order to be familiar with the process, you have to do it, and it's often difficult to reapply after having done so. I've avoided creating a new avatar that I'll never use just to show others how to do so.

Which leads to the problem we encountered. I assumed that if you signed up for SL through Virtual Ability Island, that once you had created your avatar, it would be dropped onto Virtual Ability Orientation Island. Well, I missed something, because when students signed up. there was no link to jump to the VA Island. So I had students open the SL viewer and log in. They were sent to a public help island and couldn't get off, even if I gave them the coordinates.

I tried different things, such as giving them the slurl and a TP as an attachment. Neither worked. The only thing that did was my offering a TP to each individual avatar.

So it took quite a bit more time just to get them to the orientation island. Once I got them all there, things went smoother, beyond the occasional scream and panicky request to help someone redress their naked avatar!

Most students got through the orientation fine, but many spent quite a bit of time adjusting their appearance and I had to goad them to move on. The good thing, though, is that everyone seemed to have a good time figuring things out.

No pictures--I was too busy putting out fires in RL and SL!

Back to school

First week back at Lansing Community College. Along with the other three classes I'm teaching, I've been working on the WRIT 121: Composition I class that will be using SL for the first time.

As I've been thinking through this class, and what I want to accomplish, I came up with some

principles I want to operate from.

1. Simplicity: I want to make sure that my approach is simple both for students and for other faculty.

• For students, because I know that for many of them, I'm going to be throwing quite a bit of new web applications at them--discussion forums, drop boxes, word processing beyond simple texting, Twitter, social bookmarking, IMing. Add to all of this Second Life, with the need to create an avatar, orient into the virtual world, and then real time chats, text and voice, along with group expeditions exploring the world.
• For faculty, because I expect to show instructors at LCC what I'm doing, all with the purpose of getting them interested in possibly including SL in their online course. If it looks too "cool" with lots of gee-whiz stuff, many will become dismayed that the virtual world is beyond their ability, or beyond the time investment they see themselves needing in order to overcome the steep learning curve.

Therefore, I made a simple circle of pillows to sit on for class,

a simple sign at my office on Angel Learning Island,

a simple URL dispenser for the course syllabus (and calendar).

I want to keep the tools I use in world recognizable and useful for students and perceived, quickly, as such by faculty. We'll see how well I can do so.

2. Second Life is a place: I've heard over the last few months a number of people describing SL as a tool, even as an educational tool. However, I consider the designation of SL or any MUVE as a tool to misperceive its potential in education, especially in online classes. Angel is an aggregation of tools--drop boxes, discussion forums, chat logs, URLs and so forth. Podcasts are tools. Most Web 2.0 apps are tools. But Second Life is a place where you can use tools to accomplish work (or learning, or play) that you want to accomplish.

A chat client is a tool.

Angel Learning Island is a place in Second Life where chatting can take place.

3. Writing class, not SL class: The biggest struggle that I've had with SL concerning writing classes has been that most comp courses I've seen (and some very good ones by Intellagirl Tully, Ignatius Onomatopoeia, and AJ Brooks) have had students write about SL. Which is great. But in order to make SL really viable as a place to conduct online classes, the focus has to be on something else, in most cases. In other words, when I first started online classes, I did not have students write about being online. They wrote about popular culture or controversial issues, or with creative writing, stories and poems that had nothing whatsoever to do with being online. I've never had a student write about Angel!

• However, if I see SL as a place, which isn't the case with learning management systems like Angel or Blackboard, then it makes more sense to consider having students write about that place, bringing readers insight about what a virtual world is like.
• So I keep going back and forth. Write about SL, write about other things, and use SL as a place to do some of the work. At first I planned to have the class write the first two essays about their experiences in SL, but I'm thinking the first essay on SL makes no sense, since they'll be just getting used to the MUVE.

So stay tuned as my thoughts about how this all works evolves!

Building in Second Life

In July, I took a class through Ball State University entitled "Building Blocks 101," a beginner's course in building stuff in Second life, taught by master builder SunQueen Ginsberg. Here she is with some robots she created.

Some of what was covered I had already learned through a course offered at TLE and by Kevin Freelunch on building some furniture. It was very helpful as well, though it was more, "do this, then that, then that" whereas the BSU course included much more of why and how the editing controls work.

Now, I have no intention of spending a lot of time in SL building stuff, though I find it quite enjoyable to do.

Here is a shot of our two assignments, a sculpture with five prims (which means primitive objects in SL lingo) and a robot. If you can't tell the difference, the sculpture is on the right, a glass flower-vase, and the robot is on the left!

My goal was to understand the basics so that I can manipulate objects needed while teaching. This class worked really well in giving me those basics.

Also, in July, I made arrangements with KarenSPC Fride, the administrator on Angel Learning Island, to teach WRIT 121 in world on the sim (simulation--lingo for the virtual land owned and controlled by users). So I have an office and some space for a class where I can leave stuff, and students can go to, both for whole class meetings and smaller group meetings. Here's a shot of my avatar sitting on my office balcony overlooking the ocean. I have to say, certainly beats the view of a brick wall in my LCC office! (by the way, the blue chair is one of the pieces of furniture I built in the TLE class mentioned above.)

So, July has been a busy month in the metaverse! Now it's time to get serious about preparing for fall semester. With four preps this time through, I need to start right now.

Twitter, Iran, and Michael Jackson

On June 25, I was online and a tweet flashed across Tweetdeck. "Michael Jackson dead?" Soon other tweets popped up about Jackson being rushed to the hospital in cardiac arrest, and then soon after that he had died.

We all know what happened. But what I found interesting about that afternoon is that the announcement of his death spread all over the world in a matter of minutes, and an hour before major news outlets confirmed the same. I went onto Twittervision and watched tweets about Jackson, and almost only tweets about Jackson, flashing all over the world--from Kansas, Cantoon, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Phillippines, Belgium, Columbia. Searching on Twitter search, the app every few minutes would announce thousands of new tweets on Michael Jackson.

The month of June, as well, found the heavy use of Twitter during the Iranian revolution, with protestors tweeting about what was happening in Iran, sending out information that was unavailable from major news sources, and even spreading pictures and video around the world that the Iranian government did not want out, such as the death of Neda.

So what does this all mean?

Various blogs and newscasts call it Twitter "coming of age" which is a little silly. But what is intriguing is that we're seeing an explosion of a use for the microblog as a democratization of news. Ellen Goodman suggested that Twitter's use, especially of the video shown above, is this generation's AP photo of the young Vietnamese girl burned by napalm. Where in essence the populace "gets it," grasping the horror of despotic rule crashing upon a people who desire only to live in peace.

Makes sense for the Iranian revolution. But what about Michael Jackson, a pop star who crowned himself the king of pop? I was just struck at the worldwide reaction to his death. Watching people from all over the globe at the same time offering up expressions of grief for the pop star's death was both chilling and exhilirating. Of course, part of it is the suddenness and at an age where people aren't supposed to just drop dead. This especially hits home for those of us in our early fifties! And of a pop star who in his latter years has been surrounded by controversy, from mask-like plastic surgery to allegations of sleeping with little boys. In other words, it's like a global train wreck where hundreds of thousands online are careening their necks to see a twist of steel and flame.

But it seems more so that the worldwide outpouring of concern and grief comes more from his art--music, dance, video--from the 70s and 80s, having the highest selling album ever. His music played a part in the lives of millions of people all over the world. It reminds me of John Lennon's murder--the shock and grief felt by my generation was palpable across the land, through the media available at the time.

But of course, the outpouring of grief is also the overriding response to the Iranian Twitter phenomenon. When the Neda video was tweeted, all over the world people were sobbing collectively for the senseless murder by a clearly brutal regime.

Empathy. It seems that Web 2.0 apps like Twitter and Facebook have made such collective emotional outpourings much quicker and more visible.

End of semester musings

Well, it's a couple weeks out from the end of the semester (actually a month out by the time I finished this blog posting!), and two long distance graduations completed (Sarasota, FL for Jonathan graduating from Ringling School of Art and Design and Berkeley, CA for Rebekah graduating from Graduate Theological Union/Pacific School of Religion--congratulations, kids!!!!).

I found that the use of Twitter and Diigo by and large were successful. Twitter gave students opportunities to see what each other was doing, helped them keep on task, and gave them opportunity to receive quick responses from me. I think for next semester, I'll need to push more frequent and thoughtful tweets earlier, if that's possible. And to use gadgets, widgets or standalone desktop apps to have Twitter available all the time. Too often students would disappear for days, even weeks, at a time from Twitter with the expression that they forgot about it. But definitely worth using again.

Diigo also seemed beneficial. It is quite clunky with library databases, so I need to work on creating more quickie tutorials on doing so for next semester. Also, I've yet really to see the value of groups in Diigo for classes. I'll have to explore that more fully. But the ability to have bookmarks that include highlighted material and sticky notes (though I didn't see the latter used as much) and accessible on any computer was quite an improvement to what students have been using--from printouts to emailed articles.

So fall semester--I'll be using both, though I'll need to adjust based on the class. WRIT 121 is not as research intensive, though I still think that getting students to search for articles and read before each essay will make Diigo helpful. And I'll have to figure out how to juggle them with Second Life (at least for one class) without overwhelming them.

Across the Metaverse: A Web 2.0 Primer

Here's a link to the slides I used in a presentation at the CTE I did last month. I'm planning to do another version for the Writing Program in May.

A quickie on Twitter

A couple of observations:

1. Students helping each other after a chat. I have students chat in Angel (or AIM if the LMS goes down) in small groups, usually once a week. I'm beginning to find students extending the chat into Twitter, giving further suggestions about issues and sources a day or two later.

2. By essay 3, students are really beginning to interact, asking questions, giving advice, commiserating, celebrating--particularly right before spring break.

3. From Twitter: hrheingold--using with students for the first time this semester: a handful hate it and don't get it. I've found much the same. However, I'm also seeing some who were resistant beginning to become more comfortable with its use. I think, though, next semester, I might want to find ways to encourage students to use gadgets, widgets or a standalone viewer so that they see Twitter more often. I wonder if there's a widget for Angel?

Sabbatical report

Here's a link to the report I sent off to the LCC HR department: http://web.lcc.edu/personal/holtd/sabbatical%20report.pdf.

Twitter and Diigo and AIM, oh my!

A month into the new semester. In my comp II classes, I introduced the use of Twitter and Diigo. I started with Twitter in the very first week, as a very simple assignment. Sign up, log in, and tweet to me, "@danholt, [student name] in WRIT 132 is all set to use Twitter." Here's a link to the assignment. Among the 50+ students I had, only one had been using Twitter previously, so for most all of them, it was a new experience.

I got a range of reactions, from "Wow, this is cool we're using Twitter" to "Why in the world are we using Twitter?" And several had difficulty with tweeting as I requested, so that class members would be able to search easily for class members to follow. Finally, a good number simply didn't do it.

Not unusual. Usually students who have some online experience, especially with online classes, have no problem with jumping in and exploring a new app. However, with students who have never taken an online class before, or may have but are overextended--6 classes, 40 hour a week job, part time job, rearing children on his or her own (and if you think I'm exaggerating, think again!!!)--being able to take the time to follow instructions carefully often hinders the student.

Of course, the problem with instructions and certain populations of students has been a challenge in teaching online classes since I started in 1997. Granted, early attempts left lots of holes since I was unfamiliar with how to translate the give and take of guiding students through an assignment in an online world. But now, especially from students who've taken a number of online classes, I receive positive comments, relieved they can follow and implement the tasks I lay out before them.

But I'm noticing with this semester, as I require students to do Angel discussion forums, chat, AIM, audio essay submissions, Diigo, Twitter, that I'm pushing many to the edge, very like what we had with students first trying online education in the late 90s. 

Add to that the fact that Angel has been buggy--students unable to log in at one point a couple weeks into the semester because of problems with communication between Angel and Banner. I know of at least three students who threw up their hands and dropped because of the log in problems. Furthermore, the discussion forums have been squirrelly, working with one browser, but not another, problems with uploading files, even emails sent through the discussion forum appearing as a single word: null.

Even so, my goal of offering a rich environment for a writing community, seems to be working for many--Twitter still has naysayers ("still can't see the value in doing this!") but some interesting reactions. A couple students have mentioned that they really like using Twitter because it helps them to stay on track by seeing what class members are doing.

And Diigo, though rather clunky with library online databases, has been a hit with most students. 

But even so, I had to drop a scad of students because of non-participation. So, should I make classes rich in applications to benefit those who have some experience with online classes and who devote appropriate amounts of time to the work, or should I make it easy and spare, so students who have little experience with online classes and/or have little time to devote to the class can succeed? 

I guess it's simply not in my nature to do much capitulation toward the latter.

So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, goodbye!

This will be my last posting for my sabbatical, though not my last posting. One of the values, I see, in sabbaticals is the opportunity to start activities that can then be incorporated into one's professional life. So my goal is to continue this blog next semester.

But before that happens, I thought it would be good to do some summary and reflection on the work I did this last semester. First off, here is a list of applications that I played with this semester that I hadn't really used until going on sabbatical:

• Blogger
• Diigo
• delicious
• Google docs
• Pageflakes
• Second Life
• Facebook
• Myspace
• Twitter
• Twittervision
• Twistory
• Flickrvision
• Google Reader
• Google Calendar
• Google Chrome
• Ping.fm

There are a few others that I looked at and briefly dabbled with, such as ning, pbwiki, wetpaint, Google Lively and so on. But those listed above are ones I spent significant time with, and will most likely continue to use at some level. And I've used flickr for some time, though only for personal use.

Furthermore, here is a list of conferences, seminars, and discussion groups that I attended in SL the last 45 days:

• ISTE discussion group
• UCLA Mellon seminar in Digital Humanities
• East Carolina University conference "Virtual Worlds in Education"
• Educause Annual Conference
• MacArthur Foundation "Real World Impacts from the Virtual World"
• Community Colleges in Second Life discussion group
• Epic Institute "Where Are We Going with Virtual Reality?--and Who Will We Be When We Get There?" discussion group
• Second Life Educators Roundtable
• Virtual Worlds Research Group
• Metanomics
• Science Friday
  
• Science Fiction and Fantasy Portal at InfoIsland
• West of Ireland reading
• Program for the Future conference
• University of Louisiana's Invitational Conference on Virtual Worlds

So what did I learn? Besides the fact that I've only scratched the surface of the metaverse, here are some thoughts based on a review of my blog postings from the last three months (parenthetic dates note previous blog entries of issues):

One of the first assertions I made in the beginning of this project--in the proposal--was the desire to see if we were at a place where we could expand 2d online education to make it more immersive. I've come to the conclusion that we are on the cusp of launching online education into a 3D immersive environment, where students will not simply communicate through screen windows of text, but will find their online classes situated within a place, where up, down, left, right become essential elements in understanding where they are just as they do in real life (RL) classrooms. Where students see each other and the instructor within an environment rather than just text on a page:





Virtual worlds like Second Life make concrete learning through social interaction and will likely lead to higher engagement/retention (9/9). However, we need to keep in mind, that SL and other virtual worlds are bleeding edge (9/5), and very much like the frontiers of browsing in the mid-nineties. It's not quite "ready for prime time" in the sense of being able to use to its full capacity with multiple sections of fully online classes across an institution. But it will be soon, where seamless interaction with 2D applications within a multi-user virtual environment will make fully online education as socially present as a face to face class.

The concept of e-mmediacy--feeling connected with students and instructor in online classes (11/14)--takes place today with learning management software, like Angel or Blackboard. But it only happens with some students and faculty. I've had many students, and faculty, I've worked with express dissatisfaction with online learning because they miss the connection with others. Even though they've dealt with fully interactive online classes. Multi-user virtual environments (MUVEs) seem to me to be a critical development in online learning, and any institution who ignores them will soon look quaint in its approach to distance education.

Now, do note that I mention seamless interaction with 2D applications within a 3D world. MUVEs by themselves are nowhere near enough. By themselves, they become only Jung's collective unconscious, a dream world (10/9) that may be valuable for study but not necessarily a place to study and learn. Even just now (12/16, 7:15 p.m.), I attended a discussion at the SL educator's roundtable, and we discussed the need for seamless access of 2D applications in SL, such as the ability to present web pages easily and quickly to others while in world. Most agreed that if another virtual world offered such, and SL didn't, SL would lose educators. Project Wonderland is another MUVE that advertises the ability to collaborate with others on 2D applications. And Sloodle is working on such a presenter of web pages now for use in SL (as announced by a Sloodle developer at the meeting just mentioned). With these developments, I can see fully online classes using virtual worlds for an immersive space to do real work. And if SL stays at the forefront, then the axiom expressed recently by John Seattle will really be so for online education: "Second Life is real life" (11/20).

One other point: In order to use a MUVE in online education, at least for community colleges, there must be accommodation for mixed-age classes (11/25). It's true that classes could be advertised as 18 and over only, but that's not the best situation. There is no reason that under 18 students should be kept from immersive online classes as long as they have parental permission. Hopefully, Linden Labs will relent in the near future.

If not--Second Life really will be the Netscape of the 21st century as other MUVEs leap over it to accommodate higher education.

What's next? I will definitely be using Twitter, Diigo and Pageflakes next semester. I may have some SL activities that are optional, where students can participate rather than do something in the discussion forum or chat. Or as extra credit. I need to explore more fully the different orientation possibilities, to get students started. Right now, I'm leaning toward the Virtual Ability orientation. I'm hoping to build up my skills in SL so that I can require its use in the fall. I'm also going to explore the acquisition of land. Lansing Community College really needs to invest in developing immersive environments for their online classes. If we as an institution are not ready to invest in our own island, I plan to check into ed islands who offer space to other institutions.

And I plan to continue using SL for professional development. Conversation and participation with other educators has been quite enjoyable, much more than I expected when I first began this project.

So until next year, Happy Christmas, Merry Hannukah, Uproarious Kwanza, and may the Force be with you.

Netscape 1995

My sabbatical basically ends this week. I plan to do two more blog entries, this one and then a wrap up at the end of the week (or Monday).

One of the primary benefits that I've found with exploring Second Life is that of professional development, both in the sense of online conferences as well as more informal though periodic discussion groups.

For example, this last couple weeks, I've participated in five different discussion groups:

SL Educators Roundtable



Community Colleges in SL



Virtual Worlds Research Group



Epoch Institute discussions on virtual worlds (from a social science perspective)



The Science Fiction and Fantasy Portal at InfoIsland

Oops, forgot to take a picture. Well, you'll just have to trust me that I was there. I did, though, also stop by West of Ireland for a reading of Washington Irving:



I'm not going to summarize the discussions, though they were often rich and intriguing. My point for this blog is that in the space of two weeks, I've had conversations with other professors, instructors, high school teachers, students from all over the US, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Portugal, Holland, England and so on. Yes, such can happen through listservs, MOOs, blogs, Twitter, wikis. But the sense of presence and space one experiences in SL adds a dimension to online interaction that I find significant, a sense that increases the more I explore its use.

But again, as I've mentioned before, and has come up in a number of places in world, SL is on the bleeding edge of technology. At a conference I attended the last couple days that took place in San Jose (Program for the Future) and also took place in SL, one of the RL participants whined about how difficult SL was to download and operate, that one needed a high-end computer even to operate in the virtual world, that a grandmother in Kansas would never be able to do it.

I made the comment in world that my children's grandmother (my mother) had no problem downloading and exploring SL (quite enjoyed the quilt exhibit at University of Kansas library). But the bigger issue is that many of the same complaints that are made about SL were made in 1995 about browsing the web. I remember using Netscape on my son's first computer and waiting 15 minutes for a page with still images to download!

And I'm sure we all remember searching for stuff on the web in the mid-nineties: nine times out of ten you'd just find crap. Yet, in just a couple years, we could find magazine articles, research from universities, rudimentary video clips and such that made it much more useful, not to mention the beginnings of interactive usage as we began to explore with online classes in 1997.

And today, the exponential increase of content that one finds with resources online is truly staggering. My wife, just the other day mentioned that in the last six months she's noticed a marked increase in quality of sources she pulls up when searching online.

Second Life is Netscape in 1995, or maybe a little further along, say 96 or 97. But in the next couple years, it seems to me that the richness of interaction and content will explode.

However, Second Life may also be the Netscape of 1995 for another reason. How many of you today use Netscape? That's what I thought. As we all know, Netscape got squashed by Internet Explorer and leapt over by Firefox. Will the same happen to Second Life? Will Google resurrect Lively or release something much more powerful? Will open source virtual worlds like OpenSim or Project Wonderland leap over SL's success? Who knows. But as mentioned in the Metaverse Roadmap, in the next 5-10 years, 3D immersive environments will be a significant part of our web experience. And I expect it will be the primary platform for online learning.