Final session

The final session was a little like the third with a huddle at the start and finish and Bun and I flitting off to do our respective things. This time I largely left Bun to his own devices as he has a fairly hyperactive MO that is hard to track.

I've been working on a registration hat though I'm beginning to think it's a non-starter. The idea is that students come in-world and as soon as possible touch the hat my avatar is wearing. The hat has a script that asks them to authenticate by choosing a number from a dialog (our students will have been told the code IRL). They are then presented with a Map containing a teleport to our island, given a small amount of L$ and allocated to a Team. The idea is that I can then use any publicly accessible orientation and carry out necessary formalities without the need to rez or attend in person to multiple anonymous students. At the moment it is not working. It is also necessarily hard to debug as I need other avatars for the purpose. As I said before, it may be a non-starter.

At the end I was purposely downbeat. That probably wasn't a great parting shot but I think one has to be brutally realistic about what one is trying to achieve and the likelihood of getting there depending on the approach we adopt. There is still a heck of a lot to do. In some ways it feels a little silly investing so much time in developing such a limited number of sessions (and others have commented on this) but I feel I have to give it a fair chance.

Transcript of the last lesson

Here you go!

Building in SL

Since the last (third) session I think I've finally got to grips with building and terraforming in SL! For me the best learning process is to gt stuck in and be able to ask questions when I get stuck. I also have a preference for 'playing' as a form of learning - try things out, push the limits, gt an overview with what the software will do and not do etc. I then go back and re-do and refine what I have learnt and developed.

The discussion in the last session was very useful and got me thinking about the types and nature of interactions and group (teams or pairs etc.) working in this learning environment. I'm also concious of the effect that the design of the physical environment has on the learner - is an informal learning environment (essentially an island holiday resort at the present design!1) the most effective design for the kinds of learning we want our students to undertake, or just my preferences for spacial and landscape design!!

On a practical level - picking up on Peter's previous post, I'll next develop a path structure around the island with seats, signs and a graphic style etc that will hold the whole thing together.

Nick

A sense of purpose

This session went a lot better for me because it had more structure, I had a task to complete and a rough idea of how to go about it. The one to one tuition is particularly useful for me abut it has helped develop my skills and has given me the confidence to go off and try things later.

Having the homework to do has also been useful because it has forced me to go and practice. Time is always going to be an issue for me so I need to think about how I can build in time for second life.

The intial discussion was very useful and I have to think about the issues that raises in terms of how we train staff to provide support, but also about their reaction to learning in an environment like second life.

Third session

As promised, I did a lot less in this session, mainly trying to help Bunyip (probably not very well but I am not initially expecting students to build complex structures free-form so it is a skill I can practice later). I contributed a fair bit to the discussion (maybe a little too much) but then let Bunyip get on with completing the rails for the harbour. The initial discussion was useful and seeing Marlon coming to grips with post-induction skills was interesting.

I think my next step is to think about student orientation in what I'm going to call "teams" to avoid confusion with the SL term "group", i.e. there will be a SL group corresponding to the class and then the teams will have areas out of chat range for their own internal communication. Each team will have 6 students, i.e. 3 pairs, 24 students total. I will position each team at the corner of the mesa and station myself in the centre. Students will work as pairs on the tasks. In subsequrent sessions we may use the decks instead of or as well as the mesa. Sounds like the beginnings of a plan.

It sounds a bit prescriptive but I'm tempted to give the students a checklist of objectives/tasks, most of which are verifiable and maybe logged on-the-fly out-of-world so I can see if anyone is struggling. To be continued...

Class 3 transcript

Is up at http://sleeds.org/chatlog/?c=314

Second session

We didn't start too well. Not all of us arrived on time () and many of the PCs had to be closed down and rebooted which takes an age, as does logging into SL. Without wanting to micro-manage my SL teaching, what am I going to do (if anything) with this time? And cope with latecomers?

Never having built collaboratively before, it was an interesting experience (use function in friends list, make objects copy/mod/trans). I suspect, however, that my JustDoIt tendencies make me a bit of a nightmare under such circumstances. I should probably have waited for an agreed plan to emerge but the fact that we had already lost time encouraged me in my fellonious ways.

We had a vague idea of what we wanted to do, i.e. make a harbour, though not necessarily how we wanted to do it. Having some pix of RL or SL inlets/harbours to discuss might have helped.
We also had only the slightest notion of how we were going to build collaboratively and what there was of that was rapidly overtaken by events.

I shifted/deleted existing content, then attempted to brainstorm a process using the spidergram (what to make, who to make it) but an inlet then appeared. I then decided unilaterally to clone the existing micro-landing stage to make a walkway round the inlet. After a bit of fudging, this was finished and I tested it with one of the frogitos, leaving the others to attend to rails and steps.

The good aspect of this was we got something to mull over by the end of the session and it may well be that the "final" port will look very different. The less good aspects are that I probably subverted the learning opportunities for others and didn't make good use of El's presence and expertise. Sometimes it is hard to balance reflection against showing initiative. There certainly have been times in other situations where I have shown more restraint and this actually hasn't improved matters (typically when working against the clock).

Aspects we might want to consider include:

1. Overall shape of walkway and the way it moulds into terraforming
2. Removal of terraform glitches
3. Preserving easy path round island
4. Wood (retexture?) versus paving/cobbles/stone/rock for path/structure
5. Egress from boats
6. Furniture (re-seating is a good exit mode for debarking) and features, e.g. beacon.
7. Visual appearance from other aspects