CPCC 3D Campus / SLC3A note to SL Training List
I wrote this just now in response to the question, "How will you use SL for training?"
I had an argument with Martin Dougiamas (maybe argument is too strong a word- discussion then) the founder of moodle last night via skype. He'd spent many many hours in a virtual world in the 90's, and felt that in education we have far more important things to work on.
I explained that while I completely agree the web, and LMS' have a long way to go, there is a huge segment of the population that is still spending a great deal of time watching sit-coms, talk shows, or otherwise killing brain cells- and anything to get them engaged in learning is useful- and if it helps the rest of us, that's great to.
So my focus is in figuring out where SL enhances existing things we have setup. We're working on this with sloodle, but there are certain things where a webpage does just fine. Need a list of links? Need to see a photo, or get some simple text? I'm not sure that SL enhances this much.
However, with some creative thinking, we can come up with areas, mostly involving BEING there and collaboration (real-time, not asynch) that let SL earn its stripes. For example, say you want everyone to compose a haiku? Each person creates a note, writes it, and then passes it around to others. They comment and pass it on. You can actually do things like one does in in-person seminars (everybody turn to the right, and introduce yourself). These kinds of things are simply not possible with existing technologies.
At the same time, I believe we should not allow SL to limit our thinking - because it's a virtual real world, we tend to constrain ourselves to certain physical things- even while flying and building floating spaces. So our rooms are still square, and our seats are still ampitheater or classroom style, and our bodies are still....well, bodies mostly.
So, lest this answer get too off track?
Math and geometry? Teach 'em to build - since you're limited to 10m prims, make them make a tower 100 m high, with 3 columns arranged on a circle, supporting a globe. It'll have to be an equilateral triangle, and the ends need to line up nicely, but when you make one column, you can multiply it times 3 to get 3 and so on... there are many many ways to incorporate real-world stuff. Things we came up with to start:
-idenitfying land fomations for geography
-scenarious for emergency medicine (mock up the accident, have characters assume roles)
-customer service role-playing (bank teller with payments, that sort of thing - even upselling at fast-food counter)
-client-consultant role-playing. I teach web design, and there's lots to do in an interview.
Overall most of these really need the sound interaction to get away from chat- and we've been using skype with some success. Time will tell.
If anyone is interested, we've also been building a blog of our collective experiences- not refined, but may be useful regardless: www.javidi.com/sl
Cheers!
d.i.-- D.I. von Briesen
God is Greater
I had an argument with Martin Dougiamas (maybe argument is too strong a word- discussion then) the founder of moodle last night via skype. He'd spent many many hours in a virtual world in the 90's, and felt that in education we have far more important things to work on.
I explained that while I completely agree the web, and LMS' have a long way to go, there is a huge segment of the population that is still spending a great deal of time watching sit-coms, talk shows, or otherwise killing brain cells- and anything to get them engaged in learning is useful- and if it helps the rest of us, that's great to.
So my focus is in figuring out where SL enhances existing things we have setup. We're working on this with sloodle, but there are certain things where a webpage does just fine. Need a list of links? Need to see a photo, or get some simple text? I'm not sure that SL enhances this much.
However, with some creative thinking, we can come up with areas, mostly involving BEING there and collaboration (real-time, not asynch) that let SL earn its stripes. For example, say you want everyone to compose a haiku? Each person creates a note, writes it, and then passes it around to others. They comment and pass it on. You can actually do things like one does in in-person seminars (everybody turn to the right, and introduce yourself). These kinds of things are simply not possible with existing technologies.
At the same time, I believe we should not allow SL to limit our thinking - because it's a virtual real world, we tend to constrain ourselves to certain physical things- even while flying and building floating spaces. So our rooms are still square, and our seats are still ampitheater or classroom style, and our bodies are still....well, bodies mostly.
So, lest this answer get too off track?
Math and geometry? Teach 'em to build - since you're limited to 10m prims, make them make a tower 100 m high, with 3 columns arranged on a circle, supporting a globe. It'll have to be an equilateral triangle, and the ends need to line up nicely, but when you make one column, you can multiply it times 3 to get 3 and so on... there are many many ways to incorporate real-world stuff. Things we came up with to start:
-idenitfying land fomations for geography
-scenarious for emergency medicine (mock up the accident, have characters assume roles)
-customer service role-playing (bank teller with payments, that sort of thing - even upselling at fast-food counter)
-client-consultant role-playing. I teach web design, and there's lots to do in an interview.
Overall most of these really need the sound interaction to get away from chat- and we've been using skype with some success. Time will tell.
If anyone is interested, we've also been building a blog of our collective experiences- not refined, but may be useful regardless: www.javidi.com/sl
Cheers!
d.i.-- D.I. von Briesen
God is Greater
3 Comments:
Hi D.I.
Nice piece. If we can get going on some sloodle dev work I hope we can start to really see how to get the best of both - and something better than either can do alone.
daniel
I'm surprised that you short Martin Dougiamas for developing the powerful Moodle courseware on his principles of collaborative learning. From his point of view, trashing it all to start over in a 3D setting doesn't make sense. Consider the people handicapped by obsolete equipment or physical inabilities to manipulate arrows and mouse -- so much of Second Life is built on menus that, AFAIK, are not tabbable.
I understand the problem of mashing the two systems together, and when I encountered Second Life, it seemed like such a natural extension of Dougiamas' work that I was bubbling. One person blogged about how the two systems might work together, and, yes, there is no satisfactory or easy way of doing it now.
From what I can gather, the solution probably will need to come from Linden Labs, and they seem to have their hands full at the moment.
Birdie- didn't mean to "short" Martin - was a friendly conversation at lunchtime in australia, and midnight in the US. He's got some past experiences with virtual worlds that probably make mine pale for now. There's more than enough to keep us ALL quite busy for some time to come.
d.i.
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