Virtual Environments: Is one life enough?

Our regular module “Is one life enough” has just ended andrather thanstaying quiet all summer, we are now running a module on Teaching in Virtual worlds.
We will be using this space to document the path of this module as well.

Last night, Thursday the 24th o fMay , we had the second session of our new module: Teaching in Virtual worlds.
The module is being offered to teaching and training staff and run at 8pm GMT on thursdays and will hold for 7weeks….5wereks more.
Last night’s class was on virtual environments in general, how they function, conventions governing behaviours, communities, etc.
Here a snapshot of the discussion group sitting around the table. we were missing two participants.

After weeks of preparation, the students pulled togther all they had learned in their final projects in which they had to work in groups.  They had to  navigate the challenges of working in a virtual team to create an artefact which represented the theme “Virtuality”

Guest judeges were Sitearm Madonna and Lisa Elfay. We also had 2 special guests Jaynine Scarborough who had been of immense support to the students from when we visited her “thousand rooms” on a field trip

As they say a picture is more than a thousand words and video…..

*Pictures are courtesy of Sitearm Madonna

Given that students have now been split into groups to work on their ideas for end of term showcase, we spend this session discussing the dynamics of group working particularly in an online context.

Our guests from the MSc in Applied elearning made it to this week’s  class and also took part in the conversation. Second-life life as a bit laggy today but it didn’t stop the class from having a good conversation around the topic.

It was concluded that working collaboratively online could be successful if managed right. To manage it right, key things such as communication, clarification of agreements and goals, using appropriate tools which can track work such as Google docs or wikis(pbworks) were all deemed as important. It was also determined that a project coordinator was required and not so much to lead but more to ensure things stayed on track . The students also felt that is was important to be able to “contain” both people who had a tendency to dominate and those who had a tendency to hide behind others.

All in all, we hope to see evidence of good teamwork in students end of term presentations!

Next week’s class will hold on the Friday instead of the Thursday and students will be presenting what they propose to do for the showcase and also explain how it meets the module objectives from their perspective.

On the 19th of April, students will hear from a graduate of this module: Sitearm Madonna  on how to tighten their work as a group and he will also suggest some approaches and tools to consider.  Apart from being a graduate of this module, Site works online on various SL projects.

Class started with a reflection on last week’s class led by Elfay and the class visit to Thousand rooms where we were hosted by Jaynie and met with a number of very interesting people who had build up significantly large communities within  second-life with some even expanding into real life.

For class 5 we focused on the creation of content for online. That is digital content.

Digital content in our context refers to images, sounds, videos, text,etc. As art an design professionals, a lot of work is created for the online medium and even work that isn’t can end up in an online space.(e.g real life sculptures). In this class we discussed the relevance of being able to responsibly share work created by  others and what to consider when making our own work available.

Discussions then touched on the use of the web as both consumers and producers referring to Axel Bruns and hs concept of produsage .

Students have now been split into their groups for the end of term  assessment showcase

The concepts of copyright and creative commons were introduced and students were given an assignment to blog about their perspectives on how to handle theft or misuse of their work as had been experienced by one student.

8pm GMT: Class will begin at the regular virtual DIT classroom with Lisa for an hour.

Second hour will move to J9’s SIM Thousand Rooms (make sure you already have the SLURL for that SIM ahead of class time)

She (and I) will have invited our regular friends/guests from both our shows to participate in this portion of the class.  J9 will likely perform (she’s a professional musician in both worlds) and then talk about her own experience with the issues covered in beginning of class.

Interact with us and our guests throughout the hour.

There will be time for Q & A before class ends.

The Show Links:

Coffee & Pajamas Jazz Show networking:

1. Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/elfay lots of posters in the photos section here as well
2. Google+: https://plus.google.com/101611317878800691310/about
3. Show Voice Sampler: http://www.wix.com/xxelfayxx/jammies
4. Deviant Art; http://elfay.deviantart.com/gallery/
5. Neil Delaney; Show Poster Designer: http://vandalhandle.deviantart.com/gallery/27585645
6. His own Site: http://vandalhandle.com/

“The Frequent Asides:

There is also my own life/”private” networking on Flickr, Tumblr, Linkedin, Artbistro, and Mandys as well as my own portal site.  But they can all be found by starting at one or more of the above.  So nothing is private. So in other words…nothing is private.”

My personal favorite Blogs:

1. http://thebloggess.com/
2. http://maddox.xmission.com/
3. http://bitchesgottaeat.blogspot.com/