Without claiming any kind of authority over them, King’s Corner has off-and-on provided a place for news and information about Conversation Cafes at Pellissippi State. (Off-and-on because many of them have happened without posting anything here.) Because of a new initiative that will unfold over the coming year, there is now an official blog dedicated to Conversation Cafes at PSCC. We are developing it now, hope to have something substantive in place before the semester starts this fall, and will direct all further traffic about CCs there. The existing posts here have been copied over there, but will remain here just in case someone somewhere has already linked to one of them.
Author: Donn King
Growth of virtual worlds continues
This article provides some evidence that growth in virtual worlds usage continues. More importantly, the writer sees indications of an increase in the ability to move from grid to grid, a necessary requirement for virtual worlds to truly become the “next Internet.”
Of memorials and culture in SL
Interesting and insightful post that is ostensibly about a sort of memorial, but is really about the unique culture that is Second Life.
Kingdon out, Rosedale back at Linden helm
I’m on the road, and so don’t have a lot of time to either write or analyze, but I note a major story relating to Second Life. Mark Kingdon has stepped down as CEO of Linden Lab, the owner and creator of Second Life, and is being replaced by founder and original CEO Philip Rosedale, who is returning. The metaverse is much abuzz about what this might mean for the future of SL, as well as the future of education in SL. I’ll weigh in again later. It has been reported by a number of outlets: here’s a story from The Metaverse Trib.
Linden Labs restructuring
The blogosphere that follows Second Life has been buzzing in recent months about the number of people leaving Linden Lab, some involuntarily (Linden Lab is the company behind SL). It seems that it was the precursor to a corporate restructuring. We’ll see what it means for Second Life in general and education in SL in particular.
New article about games in education
We know that Second Life isn’t a game. Got that. Wish I could get more people to understand the difference. Nevertheless, the fact that SL uses game software for non-game purposes, and that we can take advantage of the game skills students bring, makes this article of interest for SL folks.
Beyond Blowing Up Enemies: The Future of Games for Learning follows the two-day Games for Change festival at New York University. Among the observations:
No doubt assessment will be key to this mission. And games could transform assessment. Scratch that: games could be assessment. One powerful form of it, at least. Instead of slaying pixel-painted dragons, for instance, I discovered that you could navigate a mid-air obstacle course using the laws of physics in a quest of save the world (that’s a game in the works at Vanderbilt University) or try out different ways to save the real-life lake that is dying in your real-life town (a game being developed in Madison, Wisconsin, starring local Lake Mendota).
The changing “delivery” of education
We have many conversations going on in the Pellissippi State community concerning what constitutes acceptable or effective or “real” college education. I came across an interesting article that adds fuel to the discussions, potentially boosting velocity in several directions. When you first start to read “How Web-Savvy Edupunks Are Transforming American Higher Education,” you might assume it is a whole-hearted endorsement of “delivering” education as a commodity via the Web. This assumption will likely be exacerbated by the realization that it is published via Fast Company’s Web site, i.e., a business publication.
Read further. You’ll find that the article observes the need for caution in that assumption through statements such as Brigham Young University’s David Wiley. Keep in mind that Wiley is one of the “architects of education 2.0.” He has written, “If universities can’t find the will to innovate and adapt to changes in the world around them, universities will be irrelevant by 2020.” Although the article predicts that unless higher education folks adapt, they will join newspaper chains and record stores in near-extinction, Wiley also makes it clear he speaks not of simple packaging and commoditizing.
“If you didn’t need human interaction and someone to answer your questions, then the library would never have evolved into the university,” Wiley says. “We all realize that content is just the first step.” In other words, education is more than the mere mastery of information. To truly educate yourself, you will always need a teacher. But the nature of those interactions may come in many forms. Let’s face it, the classroom itself was at one time an innovation, a way to deal with the need to connect teachers and students in larger numbers. Few can afford the luxury anymore of wandering among the hills in small groups of one teacher and four or five students engaging in Socratic dialogue.
The question remains, though, how to maintain the quality that makes education more than mere aggregation of information. Wherever you fall on the spectrum of answers to that question, you will likely find material in this article that will both delight you and enrage you.
A teacher’s perspective of Second Life
Dr. Matthew Trevett-Smith, a visiting professor of performance and communication arts at St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y., says Second Life Provides Real-World Benefits. He’s an anthropologist with a real sense of how our subjects intermesh in a liberal arts education, and he sees SL providing a means of bridging the traditional challenge of teaching critical thinking skills and broadening outlook/experience with the modern challenge of reaching “digital natives” who “will turn to Google rather than visit the library, or search Wikipedia instead of asking for a reference librarian.”
Virtual worlds engage my students in higher-order intellectual activity by requiring them to make and defend judgments. Ultimately, they are left with more questions to answer, a key outcome of liberal arts education. And as they immerse themselves in another culture — even a virtual one — they have physical emotional reactions to what’s happening on their screen.
Dr. Trevett-Smith isn’t arguing for us to replace study-abroad trips or other forms of education with SL; rather, he simply points out that SL is another tool in our toolbox, one with benefits that may not be more apparent without some deeper exploration.
New viewer brings new tools for educators
This post is now three weeks old, which is ancient in the blogosphere, but it points out some useful info for educators who use Second Life, and it’s still valid, even though the “beta” has now been officially released.
While the article talks about five new tools for educators, I think the most significant one is the arrival of the long-talked-about “HTML on a prim.” The official name is “Shared Media,” and it’s simple to set up. The Second Life wiki has a good resource on the “how to,” which will eventually wind up in the Knowledgebase.
The gist of it, though, is that the “old way” involved setting the URL via something on the Land tab. In other words, the URL was tied to the parcel. Shared Media, on the other hand, is set in the object itself via the + symbol at the bottom of the Texture tab in the Build menu.
The upside: it’s easy.
The downside: unless you are using the new SL 2.0 viewer, you are completely unable to view the Web page. It would have been nice if somehow they could have enabled people with older viewers to at least see the page, but I understand why they couldn’t. (If it hasn’t clicked for you, look up a couple of paragraphs: the old way tied the URL to the parcel; the new way ties the URL to the object. Therefore, the older viewer has no way to understand an object with a URL tied to it.) Users of the older viewer will simply see the texture you choose for the tie-in.
So I’m going to make a texture that says “If you would like to see this Web page, please make sure you’re using Viewer 2.0 and then play your streaming media.”
Someone who does so will see not just a picture of a Web page (which is what the old style, in essence, did), but a fully interactive Web page, subject to the security restrictions the builder puts on it.
I think this will open up a whole new dimension for using SL as a tool of education.
Ace your exams
While I drew legitimately on the article title, I think the original author chose an attention-getting title rather than the real focus: effective learning. I know I did. Few people actually seem to want to learn; they want to get good grades. Ironically, though, learning effectively is the easiest way to get good grades, so it’s not pure fraud to dangle “Ace your exams.”
Take a look at How I Was Able to Ace Exams Without Studying. This will be a win-win: you’ll get better grades, and I’ll get the satisfaction of knowing you learned something along the way.