Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Using Second Life with Distant Learners: Virtual Office Hours

Wednesday, July 1
Presenter: Abbie Brown, East Carolina University

Office Hours: establish regular office hours for your online students - a great way for teacher and students to communicate - he has audio and voice

This is a report of the results of a multi-year participant-observation study using virutal reality (second life)

Second Life- Developed by Linden Lab in 2003

Access Abbie Brown's powerpoint in NECC's resources online.

What is Second Life:
  • People can meet and converse using ext chant or voice
  • Special events are held
  • Wild West of networked computing technology
  • High bandwidth
  • High end video card required
  • Constant software updates Limited media throughput

Meaning of Second Life:

"Educational technology is the study an ethical practice of facilitating learning and improving performance by creating, using and managing appropriate technologyical proceses and resoruces." Januszewski and Molenda, 2008

"Bleeding on the cutting edge so othrs don't have to." - Brown, 2008

Gartner Hype Cycle - Gartner is an information technology research and advisory firm headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut

What can this do for students:

  • cutting edge experience
  • opportunity for informal networking
  • increased feeling of social presence
  • emotional experience
  • I was looking at someone and someone was looking at me

Need to purchase Second Life land - premium membership to second life - to have your own office - he pays $72 a year.

Research: Participant Observation

  • Experiment with building and scripting - allow for play time

His Experiences:

  • Good - adding new dimension to online communication, group interacdtions
  • Bad - learning curve is steep, his students may not appreciate the preponderance of exposed virtual skin
  • Ugly - He was accosted by a big, naked man on Orientation Island - this is a public space so there are inherant dangers

Further Research Needed

brownab@ecu.edu

1 comment:

Dave said...

That's the great thing about going virtual! A Virtual Office can be used not only to run your corporate business, but can also be used for alternative solutions.
Virtual applications are an emerging technology and will be here to stay.