FREE Webinar: Feb 14th, 2PM- Improving Female Participation in STEM with Virtual Worlds

Who : OCCDLA Emergent Technology Work Group in partnership with the Emergent Learning Commons present Jim Bailey, CS Faculty, Lane CC and Dr. Jonathon Richter, U of O Center for Advanced Technology in Education.

What: Presenting their findings of a 3 year $450k NSF grant funded study which explores the use of Second Life in community college computer science curriculum. Initial data shows an improvement in female enrollment in CS introductory courses, as well as gains in female participation in programming courses beyond the initial CS sequence.

Where: Online Webinar in Elluminate (https://sas.elluminate.com/m.jnlp?sid=2010305&password=M.98E610CA647B17234D41DB779345A1 ) Room will be available 30 minutes before and after the presentation

When: Tuesday, February 14th, 2:00 PM PST for 1 hour.

Why: This phase of the NSF grant requires exploration of partnerships to expand the use of curriculum that has been implemented and improves STEM female participation. Jim and Jonathon are looking for educators (K-20) who are interested in collaborating on using their grant developed curriculum to improve female participation in STEM curriculum.

Avatar Help Sessions

If you are an instructor in the Oregon Community College system and are considering exploring the integration of virtual worlds into your curriculum, you are welcome to stop by our open instructor avatar skills building sessions on Oregon Community Colleges Isle.

We post our schedule a week in advance on the island calendar :

http://bitl.ly/ORCCIsle_calendar

Note: We don't schedule assistance times during the first week, finals week or during breaks (spring break, for example).

So if you're looking for advice, assistance, practice, content help, ideas? Bring your questions by the sandbox! One of us is available during posted times.

Arts & Education Film Festival- On Now!

Happening now in the Sky Box Theater!

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/OR%20Community%20Colleges/188/160/343
Bring a colleague or invite new virtual friends to join you for a shared viewing of a playbill that selects presentations that will get you thinking about the possibilities of Second Life. In the Sky Box Theater above Oregon Community Colleges Isle, we’re screening a collection of videos that focus on Second Life - it’s current state and future pedagogical possibilities.

Island Update

It's finals week for most of our Oregon Community Colleges, and as we get ready to break away for a breather, I've produced a brief Island update for the OCCDLA. Though we haven't been blogging much, a lot has been happening with the project. (As a side note, we at PCC are also migrating our learning management system from Blackboard to Desire2Learn... busy times!)

Remember- if you are a faculty, staff or student in the Oregon Community Colleges system and would like to use virtual worlds in your curriculum, for an event, or maybe even for student group meetings, let us know- we're happy to help you! Our Monday 2PM meeting at the OR CC Isle camp fire is a great place to drop in and share your ideas.

Where we were:

• Summer 2007- OCCDLA Emergent Tech Workgroup Formed, Team ID’d.
• April 2008 - Purchase of Island in Second Life
• 2008-2009 - Development of Island & Basic Resources (Blog, main Website, Calendar, Island Council meetings, etc.)
• 2009-2010 - Pilots, Ongoing Development of Island resources (Library, Public Events)

Where we are:

• 2010-2011- In third year of three year exploration pilot
• Establishing Student Services
• Exploring HS Completion & Student Success & Retention
• Supporting HS students using Second Life in their current curriculum migrating from the Teen Grid as it is being shut down in early January 2011.
• Training Instructors to use Virtual Worlds and how to integrate Second Life into their course events, and how to assess the outcomes of those events.
• Developing instruction for students- Virtual Worlds Skills (Spring 11)
• Exploring Clinical Simulations and Virtual Worlds for OCNE
• Ongoing course events throughout the year
• BI 202- Botany- Indigenous Flora- Students of BI 202 help populate Oregon Community Colleges Isle with greenery by collecting images of native plants in the field
• ED 206- Students in the Library Assistant program are introduced to Second Life and how this technology fits into the greater Ed. Tech. toolkit
• PHL 201- The Philosophy Garden- Our most advanced/immersive use of Second Life. From a launch point on Oregon Community Colleges Isle, students are teleported to Plato’s cave, where they begin their journey from the darkness of ignorance to the light of the Philosophy Garden. Once there, a walk through the garden introduces them to seven historical western philosophers
• Arts Events available to an international audience
• ArtBeat 2010
• 2010 Student Kickoff Party featuring Chervona, a Portland folk band

Where we’re going:

• Oregon Immersive Education Initiative
• Multi-Institutional partnership within Oregon Ed. System (K-20 proposed), including Oregon Center for Advanced Technology in Education (U of O) Teaching Across the Curriculum (OSU), OCCDLA
• Coordinated program development statewide
• Programs designed to support students throughout their academic careers in an effort to encourage college enrollment
• Next 3 years- Second Life/OpenSim Duality
• OpenSim not yet mature enough to directly migrate, but rapidly developing
• EDU groups mass migrating to the OpenSim Hypergrid, which allows for an interconnection between independent virtual worlds, making communication and inventory sharing possible.
• Second Life ending EDU discounts in 2 years. (prompted mass migration)
• Offering uninterrupted service for courses currently using or developing course events/public programs/high school completion etc. events that use virtual worlds
• Exporting Content out of Second Life to Open Standards
• Eventual Migration to all open content/open standards/open tools by default.
• Blender and SketchUp for Content Development
• OpenSim Platform
• All Content registered .CC Creative Commons- Non-Commercial (Attribution) and cataloged/shared via clive.merlot.org

Oregon Immersive Ed Days

Just returning to campus from Oregon Immersive Ed Days, the inaugural meetup of statewide educators and affiliated groups working in virtual spaces. We're all working toward greater collaboration, and this meetup was a great kick off to those efforts.

Though Oregon focused in name, truly we're an open group and had participants from out of state in attendance enriching our tribe. We're working in tandem with many other groups at the moment all the way to the international level looking at the future of immersive education. If you are interested in joining our group, we would love to add your input and energy to the collective- just email jonathonrichter at gmail dot com, and he will add you to our listserv. Also, check out the wiki- I've just posted notes from Saturday's planning session at http://immersiveoregon2010.wikispaces.com/.

My notes from the individual presentation sessions if you'd like to check them out can be found at http://bit.ly/oied2010_Notes .

Getting a chance to link up with others around the region who understand these technologies for teaching and learning and dreaming about how together we can take greater leaps forward than alone was truly a treat. Though avatars are a great for when you can't get together, there's nothing like bantering possibilities over a pint and slice of pizza to get to the heart of a groups challenges.

To the future: here it is, now! :)

Chervona Party- Happening NOW!

Come join us on OR CC Isle til 8PM Tonight- Russian folk rock band Chervona is rockin' it streaming NOW!

http://bit.ly/sandbox_Cafe

Kick off the school year with Chervona!

Come join us Sunday, October 10th from 5:30-8:00 for a bit of FREE social R&R as we welcome PDX's very own Balkan party band 'Chervona' for their first performance in the Metaverse! We'll be streaming a live show recording that Chervona has made available to us specially for this event.

"Mixing together taste and passion of the best Gypsy, Russian, Ukrainian, klezmer and Balkan musical traditions, Chervona brings the fire of Eastern European carnivals to the land of America. With their authenticity and genuine fire Chervona has stolen many hearts."

We're honored and delighted to have the band playing for us at our kick off party for students, faculty and friends of Oregon Community Colleges Isle. If you've never enjoyed the sounds of Chervona, head on over to http://www.reverbnation.com/tunepak/2457609 to get excited about hearing them get their Gypsy jam on! Also see http://www.starbugs.com/chervona/ if you want to know more about this fabulous band.

We'll be partying in the Sandbox Cafe: http://bit.ly/ORCCIsle_Cafe

Want to join us and don't yet have a Second Life account? Get a free one at http://secondlife.com, and then check the island calendar for drop-in help times available throughout the week- you can find it here: http://bit.ly/ORCCIsle_calendar

See your pixels on the 10th!

Philosophy Garden Tour and Ethics of Virtual Worlds Discussion

On Wednesday May 26th at 3:00 PM Oregon Community Colleges in Second Life will be presenting a tour of the Philosophy Garden with instructor Bill Noonan of Columbia Gorge Community College followed immediately by a group discussion in the garden amphitheater on the Ethics of Virtual Worlds led by Philosophy Instructor Matthew Stockton of Portland Community College.

Please encourage your philosophy minded colleagues from any interested academic discipline to attend. Philosophy instructors who teach the history of western philosophy (PHL 201) will be especially interested in exploring the Philosophy Garden as a shared resource that can be used to easily introduce an immersive learning experience into their courses. If you would like to see a preview of the Philosophy garden and hear a few words from instructors and students who have participated so far, click here.

If you have a Second Life account , the Second Life URL (SLurl) link where this tour and discussion will begin is here:

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/OR%20Community%20Colleges/132/169/24

You can also get a free account for yourself at www.secondlife.com. Instructor Mike Russell from MHCC has written a brief guide to get you started available on our main project website by clicking here.

Assistants will be available 1 hour early at 2PM at the starting point on Oregon Community Colleges Isle to help you prepare to participate. Please feel welcome in dropping by during this time to ask any questions to help you improve your avatar skills.

Note: This event will be enhanced with live transcription to to make it accessible to all participants.

Live events on OR CC Isle

Yesterday we presented our very first live video streaming event on OR CC Isle, Tango Pacifico, a wonderful musical group who gave a beautiful performance. While I can't say the event went off without a hitch, I was happy to say that those of us on Mac computers experienced a good event. The majority using PC machines however couldn't see the stream within Second Life. With flexibility, this isn't a problem, as it is possible to see the stream out in a web browser. (We're also streaming it to the Art Beat page on PCC's website at www.pcc.edu/events/artbeat . )

Today we'll be streaming Tears of Joy puppet theater and their live performance of Stella Luna. We're streaming this into the outdoor amphitheater which you can get to by having a Second Life account and clicking on this link: http://bit.ly/dfjcYW I'm very excited for this event today, I'm a huge fan of puppets! Hope you can join us in Second Life to share it.

..and a HUGE note of thanks must go out to the Media Services and Production staff at Portland Community College- with a specific nod to Michael Annus and Marc Cole. We've used this event to help us figure out the technical aspects of what our equipment and facilities are capable of re: live streaming. We're all in the middle of an incredibly busy term, so the team and their willingness to always go the extra mile in service to our institution is admirable and inspiring. Mahalo nui loa!!

Note: If you don't have a Second Life account but would like to enjoy this event anyway, you can see it on the Art Beat website at 1PM. http://www.pcc.edu/about/events/artbeat/2010/live.html

Oregon Information Literacy Summit

This Saturday, island librarian KevinW. Huckleberry (Kevin Moore of Portland Community College) and I will be going to the Oregon Information Literacy Summit at Linn-Benton Community College. We'll be available at a poster table to answer any questions librarians and information specialists from across the state may have about the Oregon isle library, and library services in Second Life in general.

So far, the island library pilot has included Kevin establishing the space and creating a link to each of our 17 community college's library catalogs. The library also includes an area for small groups to review and discuss media, as well as a link to a 24 hour reference desk. We both think it's a good first start, this presentation of content.

We're both also looking forward to having an open conversation with those who are thinking deeply about information literacy regarding what the next steps for the library and services on Oregon Community Colleges isle might be. After all, we're working in an environment exploring a new kind of literacy-avatar literacy.

I grew up on an island, and the local library was my bloodline to information from the outside world. Having earned my master's degree online, I reflect back to see now how similar the mental isolation of these two experiences were. Maybe if the librarians at the library helped my imagination flourish as a kid, I wonder, could it help distance learners in their sense of isolation to have access to a librarian? Would some of those learners prefer to do it through an avatar?

I hope to find a way to bring a couple key roles to the island for 2010-2011 to help us answer some of these questions, and Kevin as our librarian is one of them. Student services is another. So far, our work has been focused more from the perspective of finding out if faculty are interested in using virtual worlds as a tool for presenting learning experiences. Now that we have a core team of instructors who know how to use the environment and value it's pedagogical strengths, I'm excited to delve more deeply into helping Kevin help our students become more info-literate avatars.

Avatars United - A "Facebook" site for Second Life?

Greetings!

In late January Linden Labs announced their acquisition of Avatars United (http://www.avatarsunited.com), a Facebook-esque social media site designed specifically for the avatar. Avatars United had been designed for avatars of virtually any genre (Second Life, World of Warcraft, etc.) to come together and share exploits, pictures, and more.

I joined Avatars United earlier in 2009 as my avatar (Regulus Darkstone), but there had been virtually no activity until the announcement from Linden Labs... now, with the force of Second Life behind it, Avatars United is exploding. Indeed, at the time of this writing (February 4, 2010), their main "Recent Activity" page says "Limited Activity Feed" due to "increased load on their site". I would concur: Regulus has been receiving a plethora of friendship requests over the last week, and he has (somewhat enviously) noticed other avatar profiles with friends numbering in the hundreds... *smiles*

Anyway, I encourage you to explore Avatars United... and if you create a profile, be sure to request the friendship of Regulus Darkstone! :)

Peace, -- Michael Russell (Mt. Hood Community College, Gresham, Oregon)

Thank you Gearsawe Stonecutter!

I want to take a moment this afternoon to send a shout out of thanks to Gearsawe Stonecutter, the developer of a tool in Second Life called U-Poser that we use to create poses for our avatars. I love it because it's a very simple visual tool that works directly in Second Life. I also love that its creator bothered to stop and take the time to help me this afternoon, making me feel both connected to this technology, and incredibly well supported in my tool selection.

I ran into a frustrating road block by my own error- when you create a pose in U-Poser, you export the data to chat and then copy and paste the data back into a notecard in the HUD to save it for later retrieval. There are two types of data that prints in your chat window, and I by Murphy's law and trying to do too much with too little time grabbed the wrong format. It's the one with plusses, not decimals, if you're ever in the same situation.


Gearsawe patiently came by OR CC Isle and helped me walk through what could be wrong. twenty minutes later, I feel a bit foolish when he points out to me my error, but also grateful beyond imagination that he reinforced my feeling of belonging to a true community by his assistance.


If you are in the market for a pose creation tool, I can't say enough good about U-Poser or it's creator.

Tueday afternoon with the Gaming Students at PCC

It's always interesting to spend time with the students enrolled in the Gaming Class, each group focuses on something different when in the sandbox on the island. The last time we were with the group, they were interested in finding vehicles to drive around on the island with. This the students enrolled in the class this term found great delight in building and wearing boxes. They were very interested in modify their avatars body shapes and clothing.

This group was the first group that were able to visit Socrates' Philosophy Garden that was build for a class at CGCC. As you can see several students enjoyed playing in the virtual water fountain.

These classes are always a bit challenging getting everyone into second life and on to the island. The experience is always fun and enjoyable!

A Messy Sandbox is a Happy Sandbox.

We had PCC's Walter Morales' CIS 133G- Computer Game Programming class on the island yesterday. Each fall and spring DharmaPuppy PinkLady and I do a session for the game programming students, most of who haven't actually had experience with Second Life or heard of it. They are intrigued by the concept, but also expressed the sentiment of virtual spaces being a time sink. I don't think that will be the case for kids used to playing in these spaces so they already have avatar skills, but I do wonder about how mental play in virtual spaces via embodiment paralells or differs from physical play in learning?

We didn't get as far with this larger group- there was more technical time needed to get everyone on board, and then more requests around the classroom leads to not moving as far forward in the session as I thought we might. Everyone seemed to pretty rapidly start expressing with their avatars- two students stood around and did a stooping dance together in their boxer shorts, boots and helmets. It was a funny moment that gave me a chance to talk to the group about asking themselves as they did certain things like the squat dance- how does this make 'me' feel? In this sense, who is 'me'? As game programmers, I reminded them that this experience design was something that they had to think about when creating their own games, and I think that resonated with them.

Great stuff! I always love being in the classroom with people exploring Second Life for the first time- the students are an especially fun view, they seem to be less inhibited than instructors when it comes to being expressive through their avatars quickly, so you never know what student sessions are going to bring.

Great thanks to DharmaPuppy and her pink beacon of hair- it's easy for the newbies to follow. :)

Notes from Our Virtual Frontier Now Available

With enrollment through the roof we've been a busy team making sure all of our beginning of the term requirements were met. For updates on what's been keeping us busy, check out the September issue of "Notes From Our Virtual Frontier".

We present this newsletter every month to two months, depending on where we are in the school year (November and December are presented together because of holidays, March and April are also presented together because of Spring break.) If you are faculty, staff or a student group of the Oregon Community Colleges system and would like to include something in an upcoming issue which we distribute statewide, please email me your need and content to be included.

Check this out- though these platforms are hundreds of meters up in the sky, and avatars can easily fly or teleport from place to place, two of our instructional tech specialists have placed a bridge between their work spaces.

A physical bridge.

Functionally, it's superfluous in this environment. But mentally, a virtual spaces connection is made between two who work closely together in the physical world. It gets to be expressed here for others to see in pixels, forming a bond of communication between two platforms for imagination.

Have I mentioned lately that I love my job and team?

Test Scores, Training Outcomes Improved with Second Life

I'm always excited to see new studies supporting teaching and learning in Second Life. Thank you to Regulus, for sending this around via email this morning:

The article from Linden Labs can be found here: https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/community/education/blog/2009/07/10/case-study-loyalist-college-massively-improves-test-scores-and-training-outcomes-using-second-life

A case study from Linden Labs on this even can be found here: http://secondlifegrid.net.s3.amazonaws.com/docs/Second_Life_Case_Loyalist_EN.pdf

The article from the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research can be found here: https://journals.tdl.org/jvwr/article/view/374/449

Finally, and the best for last, here's a YouTube video on how they are using Second Life at Loyalist College (cool!): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCUWcpVPtMM

A question for instructors in our community college system: how can we support those of you exploring using Second Life in your courses in doing a bit of action research to gather some feedback about how things are going? Pro or con, gathering this data can help us learn how to support your exploration better, so please let us know.

"Teaching in Second Life - Impressions"

Greetings OCCDLA!

From the desk of "Shameless self-promotion" (but all falling under the auspices of Second Life and education! LOL):

I just wrote a "reflections" paper entitled, "Teaching in Second Life - Impressions: Thoughts and Lessons Learned During Five Quarters of Teaching Experiments in Second Life".  You can view the full text here:

     http://mhchem.org/slt

Several references to the members of the OCCDLA and specifically the "OCCDLA in Second Life" group can be found inside.

See you in the metaverse!  Peace,  -- Michael Russell (SL: Regulus Darkstone), Mt. Hood Community College

Regulus at Chouchou

Here's further proof to me that avatars matter. I don't feel the same way about working on other objects as I feel while I am sitting here scripting some life into one of our virtual patients. I'm quickly learning how to use Prim Puppeteer so that I can turn this shop assistant shaped object (Thanks to Todd Borst for the awesome freebies!) into a 57 year old grouchy Catholic male with broken ribs. The animation build for this doesn't actually take much- someone with broken ribs doesn't move much. What I find interesting is that presence of another human-ish is being implied by something human shape, and I do feel less alone in the lab with Nurse OCCDLA at the front door, and this prim puppeteer stand in for our future patient laying on the exam bed. Isn't that funny? They aren't even inhabited by human agents!

I have to admit though, I also feel like this is something I'm glad I don't have to explain to people passing by behind my cube at campus- taken out of context, it looks like I'm playing some weird medical game as a mad scientist, bringing some strange new life like creature into being.

Oh, wait.... ;)

Spring Report Now Available

A spring update to what projects are happening on the island is now available! You can get it here.

If you have any questions about current projects, please contact avatar MonicaMarlo Martinek.