Tammie Ciccarelli

I attended my first educational seminar in SL today. Very exciting stuff! So exciting that I’d like to attempt to take you on a quasi virtual tour of what I experienced. First of all I consider myself to be very techie but I’m not a gamer and I’m often uncomfortable when I try. SL isn’t a game. It’s a virtual world that works much like most video games today, especially the online ones. As I’ve been getting my feet wet in SL I’m uncomfortable, unsure and hesitant. I’ve managed to figure out how to move around and teleport to different locations. So making it to today’s seminar wasn’t very difficult.

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I walked in and sat down.

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So far so good, I’ve done all this before. The audio starts, the speaker appears and I’m excited. As the speaker continues I realize I should be seeing the slides change and a chat dialogue stream but I’m not. Have I done something wrong? Was I supposed to turn something on? I begin checking my menu options and clicking on the screens. A video begins to play on one of the screens,

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the speaker continues to talk and I’m having trouble absorbing anything. I think this can’t be right so I click on the screen and turn off the video. After several more minutes of feeling out of the loop and very uncomfortable I decide to try other things, finally after a restart I’m in the game.

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Now I can relax and enjoy the presentation,

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my fellow attendees,

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some good conversation,

[9:12] DocL Brandenburg: Are you using Second Life to teach?

[9:13] Wizzy Wezzog: I think I have it now. Are you talking to me?

[9:13] DocL Brandenburg: Yes.

[9:13] DocL Brandenburg: Iming

[9:14] Wizzy Wezzog: OK, I’m experimenting. I’m in an elementary school so the kids can’t go online

[9:14] DocL Brandenburg: I will be using 2nd Life next semester for inservice teacher training…

[9:14] Wizzy Wezzog: I’m thinking Prof Dev in prep for future possibilities

[9:14] Wizzy Wezzog: Oh, what type of training?

[9:14] DocL Brandenburg: but I am hoping to do something to do with Teen Life and reading.

[9:15] DocL Brandenburg: I teach technnology integration, visual literacy, and video production…

[9:15] Wizzy Wezzog: What do you do? Funny you answerd me

[9:15] DocL Brandenburg: my students are mostly inservice teachers…

[9:16] DocL Brandenburg: I teach in the Instructional design department at Western Illinois University.

[9:16] Wizzy Wezzog: We have a video studio here. The possibilities of integr in SL are staggering

[9:16] Wizzy Wezzog: Great, how long have you been on sl

[9:16] DocL Brandenburg: I am hopiong to try out Machinima for one of the video production projects….

[9:16] Wizzy Wezzog: What is Machinima

[9:16] DocL Brandenburg: I have only been on 2nd life one month, but it seems easy to use.

[9:17] Wizzy Wezzog: I’ve been on about 2 weeks but only 4 or 5 hours

[9:17] DocL Brandenburg: Machinima is real-world filmmaking techniques applied within an interactive virtual space where characters and events can be either controlled by humans,

[9:17] Wizzy Wezzog: I’m very technical but find it intimidating

[9:17] DocL Brandenburg: I think once you immerse yourself in 2nd life, it becomes easy

and make some connections.

[9:21] Wizzy Wezzog: Are you new to SL

[9:22] AvatarEnglish Lane: not so new – almost a year

[9:22] Wizzy Wezzog: Wow, I’m looking for someone that I might be able to explore with. I’m a techie but not a gamer so this is new to me.

[9:23] AvatarEnglish Lane: to explore what?

[9:23] AvatarEnglish Lane: what areas?

[9:24] Wizzy Wezzog: Educational connections. I work in an elementary school.

[9:24] Wizzy Wezzog: I’ve only been in SL about 4 or 5 hours now.

[9:25] AvatarEnglish Lane: We can stay in touch

[9:26] Wizzy Wezzog: Thank you, Can I add you as a friend?

[9:26] Wizzy Wezzog: What types of things are you doing online?

[9:27] Wizzy Wezzog: Oh, great thank you

[9:27] AvatarEnglish Lane: in terms of other tools – google docs, skype,

[9:27] AvatarEnglish Lane: and looking to use mindmaps for teaching

[9:27] Wizzy Wezzog: What do you do?

[9:28] Wizzy Wezzog: Opps, I already asked that ESL in Sl, is that working well?

[9:28] AvatarEnglish Lane: i don´t usually use this avatar, so i will send you a friendship request from my other when he feels better

At the end of the seminar the presenter handed out his presentation and some of the educational tools by dropping objects for the attendees to pick up.

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After I left the seminar I walked over to the EduNation sandbox to explore one of the tools.

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This particular tool is called a Treasure Hud. The student puts on the Treasure Hud and clicks on the Listening Post. The Listening Post displays a question at the bottom of the screen. The student answers the question via a chat box. If the question is answered correctly the student is teleported to the next Listening Post. In the sandbox I was shown pictures of famous international landmarks and asked to identify them. Unfortunately I didn’t make it very far.

I really enjoyed my first seminar and I hope you’ve enjoyed my recap. If you’re interested in joining me in SL please let me know and we’ll take a virtual field trip together.

By the way I entitled this post The Bleeding Edge because that is what the presenter called collaborating in SL.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 1st, 2007 at 4:43 pm and is filed under Second Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.