From jokaydia: Exploring Virtual Worlds and Games in Education

In-World Presentation: Showcasing Australasian Educational Projects in Second Life

An event for the AFLF's E-learning Networks June 19-20 Online Conference
Wednesday June 20th 2007, 6.00pm - 7.30pm, AEST/Sydney time (1.00am PDT/SLT)
(other time zones - http://timeanddate.com/s/dsz )

Event Documentation

Event documentation - including slides, videos, presenters' notes, chat transcripts, photos and blog posts - is now available on the Event Documentation page.

A transcript of the event is also available.

Overview

Jo Kay (aka jokay Wollongong) and Sean FitzGerald (aka Sean McDunnough) will host an event within the 3D online virtual world of Second Life, showcasing some of the Australasian educational projects currently being undertaken using the Second Life platform.

A number of educators from Australia and New Zealand will give brief overviews of their educational activities within Second Life. After the presentations there will be an opportunity to explore some of the educational spaces and projects featured.

Participants will be provided with landmarks and in-world resources to assist them to further explore the educational uses of Second Life in the future.

Program (draft)

• 6.00pm - 6.05pm: Sean FitzGerald (Sean McDunnough) - Introduction & Overview
• 6.05pm - 6.15pm: Jo Kay (jokay Wollongong) - Sean & Jo's Projects
• 6.15pm - 6.25pm: Glenda McPherson (Glenda Arrow) & Malcolm Jolly (Malcolm Dalgleish) - The GippsTAFE Project
• 6.25pm - 6.35pm: Kathryn Greenhill (Emerald Dumont) - Murdoch University Library Discovers a Second Life (video)
• 6.35pm - 6.45pm: Aaron Griffiths (Isa Goodman) - SL Educational Projects in NZ
• 6.45pm - 6.55pm: Gary Hayes (Gary Hazlitt) - AFTRS & LAMP in Second Life (video)
• 6.55pm - 7.05pm: Lindy McKeown (Decka Mah) - Action Learning on Terra Incognita
• 7.05pm - 7.15pm: Greg More (Dynamo Zanetti) - RMIT’s Experimental Architectures (video)
• 7.15pm - 7.25pm: Alan Levine (CDB Barkley) - New Medium Consortium and Aussie Trip
• 7.25pm - 7.30pm: Jo Kay (jokay Wollongong) - Wrap-up

Participants Please Note: It is important that you arrive early to prepare for the event - particularly if you are new to Second Life. We will be providing support to participants in our Virtual Meeting Space in Wasp - http://slurl.com/secondlife/Wasp/74/31/86/ before the from 5:00pm AEST/Sydney time. Please come and ask questions or get some help setting up.

Location

The amphitheatre at Jo and Sean's Virtual Meeting Space - http://slurl.com/secondlife/Wasp/74/31/86/.

Presenter's Information Notecard

Sean FitzGerald (aka Sean McDunnough)

Sean FitzGerald is an independent researcher, consultant, trainer and presenter with a passion for emerging technologies and their impact upon society. He has been involved in numerous E-learning Networks and LearnScope projects for the Australian Flexible Learning Framework exploring the use of Web 2.0 tools such as blogs, wikis and podcasting in education, and supporting educators experimenting with these tools. His current research focuses on virtual worlds, with a special focus on Second Life. Sean's online portfolio is available at: http://seanfitz.wikispaces.com/

Jo Kay (aka jokay Wollongong)

Jo Kay describes herself as a geek, designer, artist and facilitator. She is currently working in Educational Technology, providing technical support, professional development and elearning resource development services to the vocational education sector. Her current research focus is on Second Life and the possibilities that it offers for education, communication and collaboration. Jo's online portfolio is available at: http://jokay.wikispaces.com/

Jo and Sean's Second Life Projects

Jo and Sean are currently exploring the educational uses of Second Life. They have established a Virtual Meeting Space in-world, and give presentations, demonstrations and training about Second Life to educators.

They have developed resources to assist teachers entering Second Life on the Second Life in Education Wiki - http://sleducation.wikispaces.com/ - including a guide to Educational Uses of Second Life - http://sleducation.wikispaces.com/educationaluses

Jo and Sean are consulting on the LearnScope project - Second Life Virtual World in Teaching and Learning - for TAFE NSW - Sydney Institute.

Jo has created a virtual hairdressing salon with avatars which will be used to create detailed photo scenarios as part of a media-rich learning resource for the TAFE NSW Hairdressing program.

Jo and Sean's Virtual meeting Space: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Wasp/74/31/86/
Jack's Hair Creations: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Dowden/44/62/52

Malcolm Jolly (aka Malcolm Dalgleish) - Organisational Development Co-ordinator, GippsTAFE, Victoria Australia

I have an across institute role in the development and delivery of professional development activities. In 2004 I was made a Flexible Learning Leader where my area of investigation involved the development of a leadership capability framework for middle level managers.

I have managed a number of state and national projects for the Australian Flexible Learning Framework including Learnscope, New Practices and Networks. Contact: malcomj@gippstafe.vic.edu.au

Glenda McPherson (aka Glenda Arrow) - Project Officer, GippsTAFE, Victoria Australia.

I work with the Innovation & Organisational Development department across the Institute supporting staff to include more ICT and ‘flexibility’ into their teaching practices. I manage a number of Australian Flexible Learning Framework projects as well as a number of e-learning projects for commercial clients.

Contact me if you would like information about our ‘teaching & learning in virtual worlds’ network - glendam@gippstafe.vic.edu.au

Second Life Project 2006
The project investigated the possibility of using virtual worlds to deliver meaningful educational outcomes in the VET sector. Three pilots were undertaken involving a young mums VCAL group (Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning) a Leongatha VCAL group and a Certificate IV Painting and Decoration students.

Kathryn Greenhill (aka Emerald Dumont) - Murdoch University Library Discovers a Second Life (video)

Kathryn Greenhill is a Reference Librarian at Murdoch University in Perth, Western Australia, facillitating their Emerging Technologies Group. She is part of the team managing the Australian collaborative libraries blog - http://librariesinteract.info/. Her personal blog is Librarians Matter - http://librariansmatter.com/.

Kathryn is caretaking the Australian Libraries Building on Cybrary City in Second Life. Australian Libraries Building on Cybrary City: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Cybrary%20City/210/67/24

Aaron Griffiths (aka Isa Goodman) - NZ Education in a Virtual World

Online Services Manager for Software Educational Resources Ltd., New Zealand, responsible for the design, development and production of online interactive courseware aligned with the New Zealand Qualifications Authority curriculum.

Currently involved with the development of Healthinfo Island and the planning and consulting stages of the Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology's upcoming island.

Healthinfo Island: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Healthinfo%20Island/131/139/22/
NMIT Garden of Learning: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Eduisland/93/217/22/

Gary Hayes (aka Gary Hazlitt)

AFTRS & LAMP in Second Life (video)

Director, Laboratory for Advanced Media Production (LAMP) - http://www.lamp.edu.au/
Email: Gary.Hayes@aftrs.edu.au

Gary is currently Director of LAMP @ AFTRS and Head of MUVE Development at UK based The Project Factory. After joining the BBC in London as an editor Gary quickly moved on to lead the BBC’s development of the internet, interactive TV and emerging platforms from 95-04 as Senior Producer and Development Manager. He devised & produced many of the BBC’s ‘firsts’ - Digital Text, the first broadcast interactive TV service - ‘Nomad’ the first live internet documentary - ‘X-Creatures’ the first broadband TV service and in ‘96 introduced the first video and audio onto the BBC’s internet sites. He also produced and devised over 20 other eTV and broadband TV services including Top of the Pops, Travel Show, State Apart and several future BBC cross-platform navigators. Gary created numerous courses and seminars on Interactive thinking for linear producers, was active in the Blue Sky Imagineering and R&D depts and was a leading part of BBC strategy teams from 2001 in preparing for on-demand, cross-platform services.

Gary is also currently building and devising commercial and game-like services for virtual worlds, having recently produced and built both Telstra and ABC Second Life presences in Second Life. He runs workshops in multi user virtual environments for cinematographers, designers, script writers and directors exploring the potential of shared social online virtual spaces for collaborative production, creativity and education. He is speaking about brand opportunities in Virtual Worlds at CeBit Australia, The 8th National Public Affairs Conference, and The Australian Interactive Media Industry Association amoungst others. He runs a fictional MUVE blog JustVirtual and a renowned blog on media personalisation, digital brands, new media forms and creativity at www.personalizemedia.com. As a published music producer, composer and performer he has had over 200 works performed live and on TV/Film and Radio.

Esperance: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Esperance/128/128/0

Lindy McKeown (aka Decka Mah) - Action Learning on Terra Incognita

Lindy McKeown / Decka Mah has been developing local, national and international online learning communities for professional development and curriculum projects for schools since 1994 and using computers in education since 1980. Lindy has worked with educational organisations across Australia, the UK, the USA and New Zealand. Lindy is a freelance consultant specialising in the application of online technologies for professional learning. Lindy is managing the Second Life assets for the University of Southern Queensland (USQ). She is currently completing a Ph.D. at USQ where she is conducting research into the design of purpose-built 3D online virtual environments for professional development using Action Learning. In Second Life Lindy conducts her Action Learning Programs on her island, Terra Incognita

In recognition of the value of this research to the wider adult learning community, Lindy is the recipient of a Queensland Government ‘Growing the Smart State’ PhD Grant. In acknowledgment of her extensive work with educators, Lindy is the 2006 recipient of the state, national and international ‘Outstanding Leader in the use of IT in Education’ awards from the Queensland Society for Information Technology (QSITE), the Australian Council for Computers in Education (ACCE) and the International Society for Technology in Education.(ISTE).

Terra Incognita: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Terra%20incognita/128/128

Greg More (aka Dynamo Zanetti) - Experimental Architectures (video)

Greg More is an architect, artist and Lecturer of Architecture + Design at RMIT University, Melbourne. He is also part of the Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory (SIAL) at RMIT University. More is interested in the synthetic spaces of contemporary culture, where interactive architectures, digital cinema, and game environments converge. Web presence: http://www.agencyofarchitecture.com/ & SIAL@RMIT: http://www.sial.rmit.edu.au/

The projects on RMIT University’s Francis Ormond Island are the work of my students from our 2nd and 3rd year architecture and interior design courses. This semester we used Secondlife as the primary design media for the studio; based on 4 years of experience teaching architecture students videogame environments as a new form of design media. We challenged our students to think about new forms of architecture for Secondlife, rather than simply replicating architectures found in the real world.

RMIT: http://slurl.com/secondlife/RMIT/192/64/38

Alan Levine (aka CDB Barkley) - The New Media Campus in Second Life and Alan's Australian Speaking Tour

Alan Levine is Vice President, NMC Community and CTO for the New Media Consortium (NMC), an international consortium of more than 250 world-class universities, colleges, museums, research centers, and technology companies dedicated to using new technologies to inspire, energize, stimulate, and support learning and creative expression. He is widely recognized nationally and internationally for expertise in the application of new technologies to educational environments and was a pioneer on the web going back to 1993.

The New Media Consortium has been exploring the use of Second Life for collaboration, experimentation, and virtual events going back to March 2006. From a single initial sim, the NMC Campus has expanded to a sub-continent of some 50+ sims of our own or other educational organizations located nearby. Large scale educational events have included Artists on the Green (August 2006) featuring the works of some 40+ SL artists, A Symposium on the Impact of Digital Media (Oct 2006) - a day event of presentations, workshops concluding with a live keynote for Howard Rheingold, the biweekly educator gatherings of the NMC Campus teachers Buzz. Our online community building efforts are are documented on our NMC Campus Observer site (http://sl.nmc.org/). Our efforts have expanded to the NMC Virtual Worlds program (http://virtualworlds.nmc.org/) which provide low cost building and consulting services for educational organizations as well as low cost rental plots on our Teaching sims. Our recent efforts are to provide an Orientation Island specifically for educators.

NMC Campus: http://slurl.com/secondlife/NMC%20Campus/128/225/42/
Teaching 2: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Teaching%202/135/124/22
Red Rocks Amphitheater Research Park: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Research%20Park/39/18/45

Pre-session Requirements

This session is ideal for newcomers to e-learning or virtual worlds.

However, participants MUST signup for an account, download and install the Second Life client and familiarise themselves with the Second Life platform prior to the event. Additionally, broadband access and a high end graphics card are required to use Second Life. Some users may also have difficulties accessing Second Life due to firewall or port settings.

Please take the following steps prior to the event:

1. Ensure you have a computer with adequate system requirements and broadband Internet access (some users may have difficulties accessing Second Life due to firewall or port settings.)
2. Set-up a Second Life account and install the client software.
3. Spend at least half an hour on Orientation Island familiarising yourself with the Second Life client software.
4. Ensure you are set up to play audio and video (see below).

How to Play Audio and Video in Second Life

Playing Audio

1. Under Preferences (Ctrl-P) in the Second Life viewer, go to the Audio/Video tab and check 'Play Streaming Music When Available'. You should now see a small control called 'Music' with a Play button and volume control at the bottom of your screen, just above the Build button.
2. Click on the Play button on the music control to start the streaming audio.

Playing Video

1. Under Preferences (Ctrl-P) in the Second Life viewer, go to the Audio/Video tab and check 'Play Streaming Video When Available'. You should now see a small control called 'Movies' with a Play button and volume control at the bottom of your screen, just above the Mini-Map button. (If you don't see the movie control, then you may not have the Quicktime Player player installed on your computer. See below for further instructions.)
2. Click on the Play button on the movie control to start the streaming video. (If you have trouble getting the media stream to play, sometimes hitting Stop then Play again starts the stream.)

If you don't have the Quicktime Player on your computer - download it for free from http://www.quicktime.com/ and install it. You must be be logged out of Second Life when you install the Quicktime Player.