As you know I have an interest in second life and have been considering the educational potential of this virtual world for students. When we have students who are at a distance from one another I think second life could be useful for collaboration and establishing a sense of community. It does require a good internet connection however and also a good quality computer. I was perusing the internet today and found a conference presentation delivered by Sarah Robbins “Intellagirl”. this presentation gives a great overview of second life as an educational tool. She also describes the characteristics of the average student population and how this is evolving. It is a worthwhile view when considering flexible course delivery and presents some excellent arguments about why learners need flexibility in courses. Click on the view presentation on the page linked to conference presentation. When I played this video it stalled half way through, I managed to fix this by fast forwarding a couple of times and it started to play again. It is wise to stop the video from playing and allowing the whole thing to load before trying to play it. This will allow it to play without stopping and starting, which can be annoying.
Another very interesting aspect of this presentation is the Medialandscape player which is the software application through which it is delivered. This plays the video and also presents the slide show alongside. I am hugely impressed with this tool and would love to learn more about it.
By the way I have a whole new look in second life, this is me now.
4 comments:
Hey Carolyn, Thank you so much for the links on RSS. Any success on using 2nd life as a tool to interact with you students? Running two seperate lives must be keeping you busy!!
Glad that was helpful Michelle. I have not started using second life with students yet. I need to know my way around pretty well myself first before i can do that. Next year my students will be off campus for much of the year and I am thinking this might be one of the tools we can use to connect with one another. We will not know how good it is until we try.
Hi Carolyn
Thank you for the link to Sarah Robbin's presentation - very interesting and useful. It would seem that the technology can only get easier and VLEs will be integral to what we do. We have a bit of time till then to develop the pedagogy. Exciting times.
Debbie
Hi debbie, good to hear from you. Interestingly I was in a remote part of the south island this weekend and was able to connect to SL through the broadband connection there. So it seems the technology is getting there.
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