Session Three
Session 3
Collaborative & Experiential Learning in the User-Created World of Second Life
Bryan Carter, Jen Caruso, Aline Click & Pathfinder Linden
Elisabeth Hayes, Chair
John Linden
Read “Rainbows End” by vernor vinge
Second life
Can build in 3D – leggos on steroids
Any object cana be given phusical behavior, given interactivity and can communicate with the world (eg email, httprequest, xml-rpc)
Residents own their creations
- residents retain their Intellectual property rights to their creations
- Residents may buy and sell L$ for US$
- Residents may license their creations back in to the real world
You can stream live video in to the world
There is also live music, musicians playing in their studio and have an avatar in Second life as well
Emotional Bandwidth
We crave queues for us to know what’s going on.
You can customize your avatar to express your feelings, mad, sad, happy, etc
You can create emotional bandwith by creating a shared experience through the environment
What happens when you give everyone powerful tools to shape their world?
-it like a waking dream, you keep touchstones that connect you to place, but the fantastic gets added to it, the known with the fabulous that then gets shared
Collaborativve and Experiential Learning
-Real life Educators in Second Life
Using second life in a way to learn things that may be more difficult to learn in the regular world
Examples of courses that us it:
Art in virtual worlds
Digital collaboration in architecture
Itro to international business
Foundations of instructional Training
You can show, do, participate and mod all in the same moment
More online activities
-Watching a feed of the eclipse next to an astronomy learning center, with others in dialogue
Recreatin culture and cultural immersion
- want to go to the old west? Done.
- Immersable space
Academic conferences extended in to a virtual space
- the berkman Center at Harvard has a virtual meeting space
- they use it for meeting distant people
- created a modle of the real place that you can log in to and see the live feed of the conference
Four powerful themes supporting Real Education
- A world where anyone can create anything
- A world full of real people
- A world of high emotional bandwitdth
- A world shared
www.pathfinderlinden.com
Jennifer Caruso (Jen Doolittle on SL)
Teaches The Human Animal at MCAD
Human identity, what makes an animal, how historically and contemporarally have they been separated and joined? And living with animals, as peers, as an animals among other animals ( in the future)
Kafka’s ideas of metamorphosis,
A utopic possibility, the idea of the circus
Enabling artists as makers and doers, they already come to the table as produces of content, media, culture
Philosophy of “Circus”,
Part I: Circus as concept
Diana Starr Copper
Wrote about circuses as a place where animals celebrate animalness and humans celebrate humanes,, both are stars, and it’s temporary.
Built a circus online, bigtop, menagerie, midway, caravan,
Smaller tents are where students would go to get their assignments
Big top as large meeting space and performance space
Midway has smaller group spaces and work spaces
Introductory assignments
- human constructed avatar, did a self portrait identifications
- Do a scavenger hunt
o Modify their tent
- Explore the “natural world”
o What do animals look like
o What is the natural world represented by?
o The furry population…
Part II: Becoming an Animal
- looking at artists out in RL looking at the animal experience
- started creating their animal /human transformations
o Used costumes that related to their research
- One student built an object from scratch, a small avatar
- Another was interested in the ideolizaton
o Created a cumbersombird that you can fly with
- Another did angels and insects, and posed them against backgrounds
Part III: The human- Animal Circus
- created a virtual gallery exibit
- In RL, students sat in a ring with their laptops with a larger projection on a screen
- One student welcomed the newly found furry lobster to the world
- Amaizing Egg Girl
- Thehumananimallmcad.blogspot.com
Aline Click (in RL Ali Andrews in SL)
Collaborative and Experiential Learning in the User-Created World of Second Life
Her goal is to get to a point where second life is not just an addition to another class, but where the entierity of the class takes place
Has done work considered to be controversial given the perceived intended use
Game or simulation? Space?
It can have games in it, it has simulations in it.
MMOGS draw players because they are learners
Steps to Overcoming the Learning Curve
Step 2: Orientation Island
- take your time
- you only can go there once, luxuriate in it
Step two: Explore and meet
Step three: Sandboxes and time
- get to know people who can share info with you
-
Step four: In- world workshops
- there are tons of workshops in game
- at any time there will be workshops going on
Step five: The power of the group
- beloinging to different groups to help you learn, and to provide you with a community
- Learn to make use of resources
Video streaming
- how to bring in flash / streaming video
- have to buy a premium account and buy land
Byilding Glidden
- wanted to buy an island for NIU
o got them to fund it
- Got the geography department to help lay out the the elevations and modle of the campus
- Brought in a lot of RL pictures to help create something
Synchronous Learning
- she teaches in a “traditional” classroom online
- using presentation style teaching as an entry point to get faculty and students unfamiliar with online gaming
Technical Challenges
- finding labs capable of running SL
- Installing the SL client in secured labs
- Support
Click..dce.niu.edu
Black Sun II
CMSU Cyberculture Course
Ms. Click designed a classroom based on Snowcrash for
Dr. Bryand Carter at CMSU, teaches African American literature
He found second life through a project in 1996 called Virtual Harlem
- recreated 1920s harlem in a lit course
- Created the 3D world on SGI super machines and highend programs (Maya, softImage, MultiGen, etc)
Did a virtual Montmartre, and a virtual Bronzeville, all of these related to the African American literature path
Discovering SL
- fastforward to late 2005
- found it on Chronicle of Higher Education
- joined the Educator’s List
- there’s easily accessable opportunity for new users, you get a plot of name and 25 chars who share the same last name for $150
Taught a course online in the spring of 2006
Slurl.com
Helps you find locations in relationship to other spaces
Cross-Disiplinary. Cross Cultural, Cross – Interest
- jumping through the red tape of getting this approved for a college
- is collaborating with other colleges and other professors to share online resources/ classes/ spaces
- meeting with other classes of students from other universities online, doing comp classes in our and other countries
- Is also working with Freeverse, a business in NY interested in furthering the possibilities for Second Life
Student Collaborations /Activites
- students were collaborating with eachother, and the environment
- one joined furrynation
- exploring the nature of wings
Creating spaces where interaction can occur
- the black sun
o wanted something similar to the blacksun in SnowCrash
o Kiosks give the assignments
ß Machinima
ß Virtual communities
Pedagogical Plans for SL
- Fall 2006 Sim Support for Provost
- Two comp classes (one with, one w/o second life)
- Collaboration within Sl
o Ball State
o Kalmar, Sweden
o NIY and perhaps others
Is writing grants to help capture facial expressions with a regular webcam and translate it to your char’s expression
Bryan Mnemonic –Second Life char
Bcrx7 –aim
Hannibal697 – yahoo