New Life for K-12 Use of Second Life

I think of Second Life as an online collaborative environment that I am using to support teaching and learning in real life. The wonder of the interface is the low-cost and engaging one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many aspects.

There are a core group of pioneering K-12 educators who have been in Second Life for a while now. I am starting to notice a couple of things and would like to pose a challenge.

1. There is a core group of K-12 educators, but I am not seeing many new faces.

2. There does not seem to be a lot of real life K-12 professional development going in in SL (or I am not aware of it.) I think, in order to entice others to the venue, more emphasis needs to be placed on the professional development aspects instead of the social aspects.

3. There needs to be a central database (not dependent upon the group messages) of any open-to-the-public K-12 real life professional development taking place in Second Life.

4. Everyone needs to have voice chat enabled...they do not have to talk, but must be able to listen.

5. Group leaders should use the group IM process sparingly, and only minutes before an event is to occur. It is often problematic and annoying when users are involved in something else. I have taken myself out of many groups because of these interruptions. (I liken it to someone coming into a real life faculty meeting and yelling "There is a make-your-own sundae bar in the staff room!" The meeting kinda goes flat at that point.) We are professional enough to have the events on our own calendars, IMHO.

The challenge I propose to current Second Life educators.

1. Bring one new educator colleague into Second Life per month. Mentor them through the beginning tough times. Make sure they have voice chat enabled.

2. Create and present one real-life professional development session, using voice chat, every two months in Second Life. Those of you in Second Life are capable of using the tools and I know that you have a a huge amount of educational pedagogy to share. Enter the information about your event here. I will be the editor of the database.

With two recent prime-time televisions shows and many talk shows showcasing the non-educational side of Second Life, I think it would benefit those of us who feel this venue is valuable for teaching and learning to provide more professional content in-life.

Kathy

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Kathy Schrock
Lighthouse Learning Island
Nauset Public Schools

Day 5 of the PLC: Presentation In-Life

Well, this was an experience! Tonight I presented, with voice, and streamed mov files on the topic of public service announcements for use in the classroom. (http://kathyschrock.net/psa/).

The presentation was to showcase the use of both a presentation board and a media center. Members of the PLC were in attendance, as were many other visitors including Hodgjazz, Dewey and some of his grad students, Westley, Ahlan, Kety, and Vinnie, to name a few. Although each announcement of the presentation went out explaining voice chat was to be used, some attendees showed up without the voice chat enabled. I did my best to present via voice, cut-and-paste the text for them into chat, and change the slides and start the movies, but I am not sure the whole thing came off smoothly. Most of the technology worked, even with the 20 or so attendees on site, so that is encouraging!

Next week I will be doing another presentation. I think it will be in the large presentation area in the back of the Nauset building. And I think the topic will be Web 2.0 applications for teaching and learning. Thursday night, November 1 (US day) at 5:30pm SL time.

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Kathy Schrock
Lighthouse Learning Island
Nauset Public Schools

Wiki postings from day 4 of the PLC

SECOND LIFE PROFESSIONAL LEARNING COMMUNITY
HOMEWORK FOR WEEK 4

Today in the session, we took a tour of educational sites on the Main Grid. I asked the participants to envision that the interactive sites (not the professional development sites) were available on the Teen Grid and their avatar was also on the Teen Grid. Participants were asked to come up with three ways to use these interactive sites with students. They will be providing their SL avatar names in their post so you may follow-up with them in SL, we are using Google Docs to revise and edit this document, and I will be posting it to the blog when it is complete.

Kathy Schrock

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After spending a few hours on several of the sites we quickly visited in class, I could see lots of potential for student use. For example, I visited the Morocco site and was able to put on an Moroccian clothing, look at different items for sale, and visit the Mosque. I think students would find it not only engaging but also enjoyable and enlightening to be able to be emersed into any culture that could be created in this manner. They could participate in viewing a celebration specific to a culture, witness a religious or governmental event, or just view and participate in a family's daily life routine to learn about the various aspects of differnent cultures. I can see huge potential in the future in this area.

I also toured the Computer Museum and the NASA space center. I would love to see the Computer Museum have a walk through exhibit that students could actually see the inner workings of a computer. Sections could be added to allow students to learn about the various parts and how they all work together. The history piece at this point seems to be just a series of slides. I envision a timeline that students could touch and be transported to that point in history to see how the computer functioned at that time. The NASA site was the most developed in my opinion. With voice-media streaming, it allows the student to take a flight into space while learning about the suits astronauts have to wear and why. I enjoyed the teleport to Mercury, however, once there I could not move (perhaps that is due to lack of gravity? ) At any rate, I see great potential in this area also. Students could be asked to investigate the inner workings of the sun or a smaller star, visit a planet, discover gravity, etc. using their avatar. Students could also set up experiments for other students to try. The biggest advantage to Second Life is the abililty for students to be actively engaged, in a real sense, in their learning experiences.

Kimjoy Fizzle

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I have had to try to think like a teacher of high school or middle school due to the fact that the minimum age is 13 and I teach K-5 students.

A study of glaciers and climate change would be timely, especially with the melting of the ice in Antarctica and the Arctic Ocean and of the glaciers at places like Glacier Park in Montana. At the NOAH area in Second Life, the different phases of the glacier enables students to see what actually happens. Seeing what happens when sea level rises and relating it to what would happen to Cape Cod if the ice in the north were to melt would help children find relevance in the information they are looking for.

Students who are learning how to assemble computers and troubleshoot hardware at Cape Cod Tech could actually purchase the components necessary to build a computer at a teacher made electronics store. They could then "build" the computer in a sandbox reserved for the class.

Using the IBM sports place, have students create a virtual baseball game. Area could be set up that allows students to choose the speed and type of pitch and figure out how a variable such as trajectory and speed affects a batter's performance. This may be impossible to set up on Second Life but it would be a good physics project.

Babette Botha

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Kathy Schrock
Lighthouse Learning Island
Nauset Public Schools

Day 4 of the PLC: A Whirlwind Tour

During our session this week, I teleported the entire group to places all over the Main Grid. These sites illustrated the different TYPES of sites that can be created in Second Life-- simulations, interactive sites, front-end to the Net sites, etc.

The teachers were asked, ahead of time, to pretend they were on the Teen Grid and had access to their students and to think about these sites with relation to teaching and learning. Their homework is to provide 3 ways in which they feel some of these sites may be used. They are posting that information to a wiki and I will add it to the blog once it is complete.

Next week, on October 25th at 5:30pm (SL)/8:30pm (EST), I will be presenting a real-life presentation for the group in the Nauset Public Schools building on Lighthouse Learning Island. The point of the presentation is to showcase HOW to present in Second Life. All are welcome, but make sure you have voice enabled so you can hear the presentation!

Kathy Schrock

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Kathy Schrock
Lighthouse Learning Island
Nauset Public Schools

Day 3 of the PLC and a Fraps video

During day 3 of the PLC, the participants demonstrated, through their questions and actions, that they are ready to go in the SL environment. They can now easily navigate and are able to edit their avatar and change clothing. Most of this session was spent with the acquisition of personal objects and befriending others in the PLC.

If you would like to chat with any of them in SL, the newbie users are:
Wang Wingtips, Babette Botha, Raia Schmooz, Kimjoy Fizzle, and Dahling Carling. We also have a couple of SL veteran users in the group.

For next week, they have to locate 3 objects that they are able to transfer to the rest of us, so they begin to understand about permissioning of objects.

Each participant received a copy of Richard Mansfields "How to do Everything in Second Life". I have finished it myself, and it is full of tips and tricks and is very well-written.

Below is an embedded video tour of Lighthouse Learning Island. (Be gentle with the comments...it is my first attempt at using Fraps!)

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Kathy Schrock
Lighthouse Learning Island
Nauset Public Schools

Movies of Second Life

The method of making movies available within Second Life is called "machinima" and it does not really do a great job. However, I have found a piece of utility software called Fraps($37) at http://www.fraps.com/ which allows the easy creation of videos from games and online environments like Second Life. You can see a short video from Lighthouse Learning Island here

For anyone who is planning to create movies that can even be brought back into SL if necessary for training purposes, I would suggest the purchase of Fraps. It is available for the Windows platform and there is a demo download that allows 30-second videos.

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Kathy Schrock
Lighthouse Learning Island
Fraps

Day 2 of the PLC

Day 2 of the PLC had some frustrations...first, one must remember to visit the computers with the SL client the day of the workshop in order to update the software. Pulling down the update to all the computers at once really got us bogged down. Luckily, Pia Klaar (SL) did some of the installs so I could be free to demo some things.

The group is SO engaged and very fast learners. A few have left Orientation Island and were interested in editing their appearance, others are almost ready to leave, and the advanced users in the group are working on building. It is an exciting PLC, and I hope I can keep up with all of them as they continue to advance their skills!

I did purchase several copies of this book, How to Do Everything with Second Life, for all of the groups. It is really well done and has tons of information!

Their homework is to finish and leave Orientation Island, find their way to Lighthouse Learning Island, and find and put on a Lighthouse Learning Island t-shirt.

On another note, I presented our 5-year technology plan to my five School Committees earlier this week and filled them in on the Second Life Project. Of course, a few had seen the Law and Order episode the previous night in which a MUVE called "Another Universe" was presented in a negative light. It did not have an impact on how the project was received, though, since the committees see the project as a worthwhile one! w00t!

Kathy

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Kathy Schrock
Nauset Public Schools
Lighthouse Learning Island