Archive for February, 2025

h1

Class 4: Metaliteracy and Digital Citizenship

February 24, 2025

Everybody arrived at Çağ campus in good time for this week’s class but just as we were about to begin we all lost voice. This seemed to be a problem across Second Life because even though we moved to the VWEC Student Challenge area in the Eduverse the issue persisted. Despite logging out and back in again, turning off the voice preference and turning it on again nobody could get voice working. Eventually we decided to proceed with subtitles. Fortunately, Valibrarian is always well prepared and she had the entire text loaded into SpeakEasy to facilitate this. About twenty minutes later voice suddenly became available again and remained stable for the remaining duration of the class.

If you missed the class or would like to review the presentation you can see a recording of Val’s talk from last year at Class 4: Digital Citizenship and Metaliteracy.

Following the class Val invited us to the Community Virtual Library for a visit and some closing discussion about the how literate or meatliterate we think we are and what it might mean to call ourselves digital citizens. Val spoke of the importance of teaching these concepts to children from an early age to ensure they will be able to navigate this complex space with confidence and in safety. She also referred to AI and mentioned an experiment where she tested the ability of AI to be creative with poetry – Will AI Slaughter the Muse?

Finally, we visited the VWEC Student Challenge building area where the three Teams were shown their building spaces and recommended to take landmarks. Each space is currently surrounded by a translucent cube which delineates the available space for building. It is recommended that these cubes are left in place until the end of project – they can be removed before the final submission. We also noted that once inside your team space your voice cannot be heard outside the boudary. This is useful so that teams of students building together do not disturb each other, but remember if you want to talk to another avatar they will not hear you outside.

Here are direct links to the VWEC Student Challenge 2025 building spaces:
Red Team
Blue Team
Green Team

A quick check-in with the three teams revealed that all had selected the UN SDG they will work on. The next task is to start researching the detail of the SDG and begin to identify an appropriate narrative for the preenetation. The first building class will be held next Saturday by Builder’s Brewery so it is importatnt to attend that. Here is the link to the Landmark in SL.

Finally, we visited the Student Commons which has been provided to give you a break from all the hard work. It features a range of games and toys to play with and have a rest. There are trampolines, a lifesize chess board, pool tables and a range of others to explore while considering your pojectc work.

Posted in 2025 Class summaries | Tagged , , | Leave a Comment »

h1

Class 3: Team builiding

February 17, 2025
Sitearm Madonna presents the theory of teamwork. Photo by Acuppa Tae

Meeting at Çağ campus this week we heard from Sitearm Madonna about how teams function and the roles of the team members. If you missed the class you can review the recording of the same class from last semester.

Then we had a look at the brief for the Student Challenge in a little detail to determine precisely what is expected. The detail is in the previous post Serious Simulations in the Metaverse. Some changes have been made to the teams for the Student Challenge which will be confirmed next week but, in the meantime the teams broke out with their instructors to confirm the team lead and assistant lead and share contact details. Both Red and Green teams met but nobody from the Blue team was in class so the members will need to catch up on that work in their own time.

After the breakout the full class met again and shared their progress. The Teams were asked to arrange to meet during the week to discuss the Student Challenge and select the SDG they will address. Following that we had a request from Nova, a PhD researcher at North Carolina University, to take part in a focus group about learning in virtual worlds. Anyone interested can let John / Tae know and he will share details.

Next week we meet at Çağ again when Valibrarian Gregg will talk to us about Metaliteracy and Digital Citizenship. Please arrive early.

Posted in 2025 Class summaries | Tagged , , , | Leave a Comment »

h1

Serious Simulations in the Metaverse

February 17, 2025

VWEC Student Challenge 2025

Brief

World leaders came together in 2015 and made a historic promise to secure the rights and well-being of everyone on a healthy, thriving planet when they adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Today, with the world suffering a range of crises from climate change to a shifting geopolitical situation these goals seem even more important to the future well-being of citizens across the globe.

You task is to select one of the UN Sustainable Development Goals and develop a presentation to explain what it means and how it might be achieved. Each team will choose from the relevant list below and design a virtual education experience explaining what the goal means and what needs to be done so that it can be fulfilled. The team will then build a simulation of this in Second Life. The build must be:
• accessible,
• authentic,
• interactive,
• and cite sources

When it is finished you will record a 5 minute video presenting your simulation to the judges.

Choose from the following options

Red Team
• No poverty or
• Good Health and Well-being or
• Quality Education

Blue Team
• Zero hunger or
• Affordable and Clean Energy or
• Reduced Inequalities

Green Team
• Climate Action or
• Life Below Water or
• Life on Land

Here is a link to a video showing some of the simulations built by students competing last year.

Posted in Class resources | Tagged | 1 Comment »

h1

Class 2: Student Challenge 2025

February 15, 2025
Elli Pinion (VWEC Co-Coordinator), Valibrarian Gregg (VWEC Co-Coordinator) and Marie Vans (VWEC Event Team Lead) at the kickoff event for the VWEC Student Challenge 2025. Photo by Acuppa Tae

The Virtual Worlds Education Consortium (VWEC) Student Challenge 2025: Serious Simulations in the Metaverse was launched today. The Challenge takes the form of a hack-a-thon except that it occurs over the entire Spring Semester, rather than in a 24-hour period. Details of the brief, the support to be provided (particularly with classes about building in Second Life) and the assessment process were shared and, for those who may have missed the presentation or who would like to review them again, a recording of the event was made which you can see here:

The challenge is to form a team (which has already been done for you) and design a virtual education experience; then build a simulation in Second Life. The experience must be: accessible, authentic, interactive, and cite sources (see below for more details). You will also record a short video to present and demonstrate your solution to the judges, who will be drawn from a panel of international educational experts. Prizes, including memberships of SL and $L, are sponsored by Metaverse Libraries. Here is a video of the exhibits from last year’s Student Challenge:

Here are some screenshots showing the logistics schedule, assessment rubric and rules for the Student Challenge 2025:

Here is the link to the google doc for Gentle Heron’s Checklist, which is metioned above.

Posted in 2025 Class summaries | Tagged , | Leave a Comment »

h1

Class 1: Welcome to Second Life

February 10, 2025

This semester we are delighted to be joined by Prof Lia Pop from the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca in Romania – a member of the European University of Technology (EUt+) alliance with TU Dublin – and her students. We all met for an introduction to Second Life at the TU Dublin campus in Second Life (SL) where we friended each other, joined the TU Dublin group and spoke about the timetable for the semester. The importance of attending all the scheduled classes was emphasised. This is particularly necessary for the Student Challenge, which includes tuition on building in SL, an essential skill for completing the project. Also joining the class meeting was Dr Lucia Morales of TU Dublin and her PhD students TallNinja.

The schedule for the semester gives times for all class meetings that must be attended.

We explored the use of voice, Nearby Chat and Instant Messaging (IM) in SL, learning that IMs facilitate contact with anyone anywhere in SL. This can be very useful if you get lost or can’t find your way to where the class is meeting: just send an IM to a class mate or lecturer asking for a teleport (TP). This will enable you to go directly to the location. IMs are private and can be seen only by those who receive them. It is possible also to invite others to join an IM so that you can set up a private chat for your team or group. Saving a landmark (LM) so that you can TP there at a later time was then demonstrated and you were advised to save the TU Dublin campus as your ‘home’ landmark, making it easy to return there whenever you need to. The we practised teleporting away and back again.

Voice can be tempermental in SL, sometimes it can take a few moments before activating after logging on. There are a few things you can do to remedy this. First, try toggling the voice button on and off. If this doens’t fix it you might try logging out of SL and logging back in again. Always check your preferences to ensure you have voice enabled and the appropriate device is selected (eg, if you are using headphones they might have to be specifically selected from the dropdown menu in preferences). You must have voice activated even if you do not intend speaking in SL because if not, you will not be able to hear others speaking.

After going outside to the deck for a class photo we teleported to the Çağ (pronounced ‘chaw’) University campus to meet Magua (Prof Murat Gülmez) and Ginger (Ersin İnal) and their student. We set up three teams to work on the Student Challenge. Each team is to meet before the end of the week and select a Team Leader and an Assistant Leader. Their roles are to facilitate team meetings, ensure all team members are communicating with each other and generally try to support team development. Their role is NOT to do all the work or be responsible for team delivery. They will also be the spokespersons for the Team, with the Assistant taking over when the Leader cannot be present. To enable communication outside of SL each team was asked to agree on a communication tool. This will help with arranging meetings efficiently over the course of the semester. You could share email addresses or numbers for an app like WhatsApp.

Next week, each team will be asked to share the name of the Team Leader and Assistant Leader. We will have a talk from Sitearm Madonna on Team Building and have a briefing on the Student Challenge project. We will meet at the Çağ University campus at the usual time.

In the meantime, the Student Challenge will be launched on Saturday (see your local time on the schedule above) at the VWEC Student Challenge in Second Life. Please go there directly. If you need any help finding the location once you log into SL you can IM any of the class for a TP. This meeting will last no more than one hour.

Posted in 2025 Class summaries | Tagged , , | Leave a Comment »