Eduforge: NZ Education in a Virtual World

After many months of setting up and finding our feet the NMIT owned Second Life sim Koru is starting to take shape as a uniquely New Zealand educational collaborative.  From a building perspective I have taken pains to give it a definitive Kiwi flavour, in the interest of creating a familiar environment for New Zealand users.  The central area, used mainly for meetings and presentations (though the odd dance or two gets thrown in) has been fashioned as a kauri grove with seating, a visual display board of past events and up to the left (see image below), a resource area for new users and educators.  Video or slide displays are added to the meeting area as required for different users.

Along with the Kiwi Educators group meetings a number of other presentations have been held here including one on midwifery hosted by Carolyn McIntosh, a midwifery lecturer from Otago Polytechnic, one from Leigh Blackall of Otago Polytechnic on Creative Commons and just recently, a live streamed-in concert from Nelson (thanks to Todd Cochrane for his streaming account, Doug for his engineering skills and Sam for the wonderful live performance).  And of course Clare Atkins of NMIT for organising this special event on my 2nd Rez-Day (my avatar's 2nd anniversary in SL).  As you can see below we all took advantage and danced to celebrate the occassion. *smiles*

And great to see today, Todd Cochrane of Weltec busy inworld introducing his students to the SL environment and letting them loose on SL's building tools on Weltec's private parcel on the sim (see below).

As the TEC funded project gets underway I expect Koru to get even busier as members start the actual work involved and interested educators gather to upskill, discuss and take part in this exciting challenge.  All in all it looks like a fun year ahead.

As an added note in terms of upskilling in SL, I am currently offering inworld building classes for Kiwi Educator group members.  If you wish to participate join the group in SL and IM me with your interest.  Places are limited so if you are keen let me know asap.

Regards

Aaron Griffiths/SL: Isa Goodman

Quite a time ago, while down in Wellington for the IBM forum, I met with a group of educators and began a conversation.  After many months the result has been an acceptance for funding from the TEC Encouraging and Supporting Innovation fund for what I hope will be a worthwhile educational project; Engaging with Second Life: real education in a virtual world.

The anticipated benefits of this project are:

• identifying the additional value of SL to the learning experience e.g. increased engagement, collaborative problem solving
• identifying the learning outcomes that would most benefit from the use of SL resources
• increased understanding of the benefits and challenges of teaching and learning in global virtual immersive environments for New Zealand educators and learners
• increased capability in designing and developing shareable resources for innovative delivery within SL for New Zealand educators and learners
• increased capability in teaching and learning within SL for New Zealand educators and learners
• increasing understanding of the benefits and challenges of cross-discipline and cross-institution collaboration in the development of online resources in SL
• the creation of a New Zealand space and community to encourage, support and share best practice in relevant SL education.

Early days obviously as the successful applicants have only just been announced but very exciting news.

Watch this space *smiles*

Aaron/Isa Goodman

Koru, NMITs collaborative educational sim, was host to an excellent gathering of midwives last Sunday. The meeting was hosted by Carolyn McIntosh, a midwifery lecturer from Otago Polytechnic and was attended by around 20 midwives from a number of different countries including the UK, USA and Canada as well as New Zealand of course.

The group has come together specifically to investigate the potential of virtual worlds in terms of opportunities for networking and communities of practise for midwives and intends to have weekly meetings on Koru (time permitting). It will be very interesting to follow the discussions and see where they lead. A screen shot of the meeting is shown below.

Regards
Aaron/Isa Goodman

It seems as though Second Life is starting to garner more interest in the educational sector in New Zealand with this being noticed particularly by the number of institutions with a presense on the Koru sim (the island that I administer and that is owned by NMIT).  We now have, in addition of course to NMIT, Massey University Albany, UCOL, Weltec, Otago Polytechnic and Open Polytechnic owning their own parcels.  In addition Victoria University has their own island in SL (as previously mentioned) and AUT language department has snapped up a parcel on the Cybrary City II sim.

It will be interesting to see what develops out of this community over the coming year in terms of integrating virtual environments into the educational toolbox.  I for one will be watching closely.

Aaron/SL: Isa Goodman

Its very unlike me to go a month between blogs on this site but my late redundancy has had me concentrating my efforts more on things that may progress my re-employment, rather than Second Life.  Kiwi Educators Sunday sessions had also come to a close a couple of weeks before Christmas and the few previous had low attendance due to end of year madness so a break was sort of looming anyway (btw... we'll be starting the sessions up again later on in January no doubt).

In the break I have thought quite a bit on SL and am re-evaluating what I'm doing there currently.  Not a lot of concrete conclusions so far but I do know that I'm dissatisfied with where I am in terms of teaching in these environents and want to practice in more tangible educational ways.  At the moment its all very much in the realms of theory in terms of what I actually do.  I'd definitely like it to me more than that this year.

Ok... New Year's resolution out of the way... except for the doing something about it *smiles*

Happy New Year All.

Aaron/SL: Isa Goodman

Last Wednesday and Thursday I had the privilege of attending the Digital Futures Summit held in Auckland, New Zealand.  I say privilege because it is not the sort of thing I could normally afford to attend.  But many thanks to Dexter Acquitaine (Pete Rive of LaunchSite) for streaming the complete 2 days into Second Life.  A very indepth conversation for sure and am looking forward to seeing whether the talk and the walk meet up.  Hoping they will.

Cheers

Aaron/SL: Isa Goodman

Would have liked to have been a little more upbeat on this post as we have had a great time over the last two Kiwi Educators' sessions, one especially informative and the other just great fun. 

The former relates to the IBM tour described in the last post and led by Pipe Hesse (SL), one of IBMs virtual world engineers, in which we were guided over a number of the IBM sims and were able to discuss many of the exciting research projects they are involved with.  I was very impressed by the Australian Open sim which was set up to feed in and visually display, in near real-time, captured data from the actual Australian Open.  Ball and player postion set by set was fed into the sim and SL users could take the position of the players on court and virtually experience the game.  Incredible!

Then on to the IBM Business Centre which is staffed 24/5 by IBM support people and enables you to basically get all the same information that you would if you dialled the standard IBM sales line.  It also has great references and public conference areas and architecturally was also very impressive.

From there we teleported to the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) Hub which uses SL to teach people about SOA in an interesting and informative way.  IBM are currently developing a more game based approach to this form of tuition and as an extra to the SOA Hub we got to have a quick look at SOA Adventure Island.  Will be keen to go back there when development is complete.

As happens on these tours all too often, time flew past, and before we knew it the tour was over.  Pipe (and Gizzy) offered to give us another one at a later date so am looking forward to that possibility.

The week after the IBM tour we abandoned discussions, tours and tutorials and set out to PARTY!!  The occassion was the first Rez-Day for Arwenna Stardust (Dr Clare Atkins of NMIT), rez-day being the day your avatar first appears (or is rezzed) inworld in Second Life.  Was a chance for us all to just let our hair down and socialise for a change.  Another great night *grins*

Unfortunately for myself the upbeat mood bought on by these occassions was blued dramatically by receiving notice of my redundancy a couple of days ago.  So Aaron/Isa is now job hunting.  All offers considered in the online and virtual eLearning worlds.  Seriously folks if there are any opportunities going, either full-time or on a contract basis I would be grateful for the chance to apply.  In that vein I have attached my CV to the Files section of this project site.  Contact details are on the last page.

Regards
Aaron/SL: Isa Goodman

Just to update you all on the itinerary for the IBM Second Life islands tour (see this post).  The tour, guided by Pipe Hesse, one of IBMs virtual world research team, will cover the following: 

• Tour of Australian Open Sim demonstrating bringing external data into Second Life and visualising it
• IBM Virtual Worlds Business Center
• Core memory exhibit
• SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) Hub and SOA Adventure Island
• and if we have time, we'll go through some of the simple educational games around IBM and Open Source technologies. I know I'll be making time for every bit of it I can *smiles*.

The tour will kick off from the IBM Australian Development Labs building at 8pm (NZ time) on Sunday 28th.  Note: You must logged into Second Life to activate the inworld links below.

IBM Australian Development Labs

For those relatively new to the group who would like a quick group intro/orientation, myself and other group members will be at the Koru Kiwi Educators meeting area from around 7.00pm until the start of the tour.  Note: The tour itinerary can also be found on the Kiwi Educators' photo board in the meeting area (click on Next Kiwi Ed Group Session button for notecard).

Kiwi Educators' Meeting Area

Tour attendees must belong to the Second Life Kiwi Educators group for the purposes of inworld communication and entry permissions to some of the IBM sims.

Times for zones other than New Zealand can be found here.

Regards
Aaron/SL: Isa Goodman

Yesterday afternoon I had the pleasure of attending Victoria University's School of Digital Design students' festival of machinima, on their island MediaZone.  Yes finally the borders came down and in getting to see their island at last, I can understand the need to keep the casual visitor out.  MediaZone is basically set up as a number of movie sets where obviously students have been building, directing and filming their machinima and in the nature of the real life versions closed sets are definitely called for.  A storyboard/design area is set up on the platform that can be seen above the island.  A bird's eye view of the island can be seen below.

The screenings were held in an open air theatre (see below) in the middle of the island and though Arwenna (who attended with me) couldn't get the video stream working I did get to see a fair sample of the work produced.  It was a shame in a way that most of the audience consisted of the students as some of the work definitely deserved a larger crowd.  I would also have liked to hear each of the students introduce their work but its possible that they were doing so on their group channel and forgot there were non groupies about.  It certainly would have given it more of a "festival" atmosphere.

Cheers
Aaron/Isa Goodman

Slowly, step by step, I'm starting to tranform small areas of Koru, NMIT's Second Life island, into little bits of home, at least to the point that it will be easily recognisable as being part of Aotearoa.  I finally managed to get a decent photo of a ponga frond and with quite a bit of warping got it to sit reasonably well on a torus.  The result can be seen in the image below.  Now to get a half decent shot of a trunk thats not too bent so that I can get full-length shots rotationally around it.

Have also been adjusting some of my standard items (e.g. the torch stand post) to give them a slightly more Kiwi feel by adding paua trim to them.  Definitely finer detail but the little things can all add up to give the general feel.  And in the Kiwi Educators meeting area Arwenna has added her bird sound effects that really make it feel as though you are sitting in a bush clearing.  It was rather funny the other night to be on Koru, hearing the sound of a morepork (there are day and night sounds) and to be also hearing one just outside my house.

Cheers
Aaron/SL: Isa Goodman

SAN JOSE, Calif. - 10 Oct 2007: IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Linden Lab®, creator of the virtual world Second Life®, today announced the intent to develop new technologies and methodologies based on open standards that will help advance the future of 3D virtual worlds.

As more enterprises and consumers explore the 3D Internet, the ecosystem of virtual world hosts, application providers, and IT vendors need to offer a variety of standards-based solutions in order to meet end user requirements. To support this, IBM and Linden Lab are committed to exploring the interoperability of virtual world platforms and technologies, and plan to work with industry-wide efforts to further expand the capabilities of virtual worlds.

Read more...

The Herald has also run with the story.

For those who may be interested the Kiwi Educators group will be taking a guided tour of some of the IBM Second Life sims at 8pm (NZ time) on Sunday, October 28th.  With upwards of 28 individual sims on the boil IBM are definitely taking virtual worlds seriously.  The tour will be led by IBM Australia Virtual Worlds engineer Chris Yeoh (SL: Pipe Hesse) who presented at the IBM Forum 2007 on their involvement in Second Life. 

The tour is not limited to New Zealand educators though it is suggested that those wanting to be part of the tour join the Kiwi Educators inworld group.  This will enable better communication across distance and allow for updates to times and places through the group notice (not that I anticipate the time changing).  Membership of the group is open.

Regards
Aaron/SL: Isa Goodman

Well MoodleMoot is over for another year and I must say for myself it was one of the more enjoyable I've attended to date.  Whether this was due to my need of late to access the elearning community in a more tangible way (due to work situations that wont be discussed here) or because my presentation seemed to get a good reception I don't know, but it was definitely great to be back amongst the NZ elearning community, discussing, sharing ideas and meeting many new people along the way.  Definitely many of the familiar faces from eFest for sure but also many who I haven't seen before.

The presentation as I have said got a good reception and it was great to hear folks take on the possibilities of MUVEs in the discussions that carried on in the break afterwards.  For my part there was no intent to force SL down anyones throat but more just to make the attendees aware of some of the MUVE possibilities being explored in terms of education.  From the comments received afterwards it appears that in that case I was reasonably successful.

Pleasingly too there were a small number who expressed a wish to continue the discussion, both inworld and off, so it will be interesting to see where those conversations lead to.  I for one am definitely looking forward to the possibility of more collaborative ventures.

On a more technical note one of the post-presentation discussions centred around using SL to demonstrate physics so it was rather serendipitous on arriving home and checking my email to find that the Second Life beta now incorporates the Havoc 4 physics engine which by all accounts will mimic real world physics much more accurately than the current Havoc (1).  A video demonstrating the new engine can be seen here.

Cheers
Aaron/SL:Isa Goodman

Finally some news on Victoria University's presense in Second Life though I must say I beg to differ on the video caption "First virtual reality classroom plunge" (see this post).  I guess the Kiwi Educators group sessions can't be classified as official classes but it shouldn't diminish the fact that they are happening and have been for a number of months now.

It is rather a shame that Vic hasn't had anything to do with the Kiwi Educators community in Second Life to date as I'm sure they have a lot to contribute from their work so far.  I made my interest well know when news first broke of their involvement back in March, contacting Marcia Lyons who indicated she was passing my interest onto Pete Rive, the inworld tutor.  With no response from Pete I assumed that was an end to any collaborative possibility, though in retrospect knowing how busy folks can get once they step into Second Life I should have been more persistent.

I do hope it is not a case of New Zealand institutions seemingly once again, going down the track of everybody doing their own thing and lets totally ignore the possibility of collaborating in these new educational environments.  Not only is this not in alignment with tertiary education strategy but it seems to go against the grain of education in general in Second Life.  In this environment, or at least in the educational parts of my SL experience, collaboration appears to be very alive and well.  Maybe its an early adopter thing where there is so much to handle at that stage that collaboration is the only reasonable path.  Whatever the reasons I know that where I am today in terms of my experience inside this virtual environment would not have been possible without the generosity of those educators who shared their knowledge, friendship and resources with me during my time there.

I hope that it is not a growing trend for New Zealand educational groups to hunker down behind their island barriers.  This is surely not the way that we should be approaching this new educational environment.  Please Victoria, at least raise your borders so we can share a little in your experience (Vic's island MediaZone is closed to the general public).

Regards
Aaron/SL: Isa Goodman

I am looking forward to this year's MoodleMoot with a little nervous anticipation given that this year I am giving my first MoodleMoot presentation, Virtual learning - Second Life and Moodle (or Sloodle).  It will be interesting to see another educational group's reaction to SL after the experience of eFest (see previous posts) and whether there is any indication of a general increase in the interest of New Zealand educators into virtual education environments.  From the number of attendees enroled in the session I'd say there's at least some interest out there.  Here's hoping I do both the subject and the attendees expectations justice.

Spent a little time today at the Life 2.0 Summit in SL listening to a couple of lectures on sculptie use (sculptured primitives).  Very informative.  Just a shame that most of these sort of presentations happen outside hours that allow me to attend.  Some really interesting lectures coming up tomorrow so get along if you can.  You must register at the web site first.

Cheers

Aaron/SL: Isa Goodman