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.... ;)