I first heard of Second Life when my husband had to create an avatar and build something for course in his ed. tech. doctoral program. At the time, I thought it was crazy and I listened in disbelief as he described that you could make stuff in this virtual reality and sell it and make real money in the real world. I finally got up the courage to create an avatar when Jeremy Kemp began holdingSLIS events in Second Life. That time, I never even made it off the help island. I got really freaked out by other people I didn’t know talking to me while I was trying to change my wardrobe and my hairstyle.

This time, I started out with a new avatar that I didn’t change from the prototype all that much. I also liked that I could use theSLURL to navigate directly to the SJSU campus site. Someone welcomed me immediately when I arrived and introduced themselves as someone from San Jose. I never saw them since I couldn’t even turn around at that point, but I felt comforted that someone friendly was around to answer questions. I then wandered around the campus looking at all the rooms. I visited ConnieCostantino’s memorial. It was neat to see that. She died shortly before my father did last year. (January was a horrible month). I felt like I was getting the hang of moving around and enjoyed roaming by myself. I didn’t particularly like meeting with our class, except that it was comforting to see everyone else behaving like a zombie too . I was just too stressed out that I would bump into somebody. I think Second Life is an example of the possibilities with online simulations (imagine having your students do virtual field-trips or being able to demonstrate some physics theory) But I don’t want to have to negotiate all the weirdness, awkwardness, and time-wasting to get there. For example, I really like Yahoo’s simple way of creating an avatar for your chat sessions. My 11-year-old helped me set one up, which in turn made me feel more like working on my Second Life Avatar. But once I started, I quickly lost my enthusiasm with all the detailing for theSL one. I think in general, I would be interested in exploring more activities in virtual worlds but I am not sold on Second Life.

I too first encountered Second Life in LIBR 203. I concluded then that SL was either (a) a great cultural/technological innovation (b) the mother-of-all-time-sinks (c) a great way to meet new people, exchange ideas, be creative or (d) a sort of creepy, geeky, voyeuristic, nether region in cyberspace. I still haven’t made up my mind.

A few more observations: Parts of the SJSU SLIS area look like a poorly laid out suburban subdivision, circa 1955. There’s hardly any cohesive architectural or aesthetic unity to the place. And like a badly designed web page, it is cluttered with visual pollution, oddly placed items, signs with too many font sizes/styles and ugly color combinations. And while there’s a lot of fun stuff to do – first you have t find it. Only through a process of serendipity and lots of flying and walking was I able to find some cool things. Someone needs to make a better map/index/catalog of the place!

I had a lot of fun in the SJSU “sandbox” rezzing prims and building stuff. I had watched a number of the annoyingly wonderful tutorials by Torley Linden and tried a few things.

In about 30 minutes I created a small scale replica of the Library of Congress (with a floating text label) , that when “touched” enables the toucher to see and use the LOC website that pops up in a small window. To accomplish this I wrote two little programs (“scripts”as they are called) and associated them with my building. A lot of fun. Wish I had more time to experiment!

Via Karl Kapp

Directly from the conference website:

 “The Virtual World Best Practices in Education (VWBPE) conference originated from the 2007 Second Life Best Practices in Education Conference. This grassroots, community-based conference attracts faculty, instructors, trainers, administrators, instructional designers, technical specialists, and members of organizations from around the world”

Within The MUVEnation programme some participants proposed 5 workshops that were included in the conference area Games, Simulations, Tutorial Presentation Area.

The workshops will take place on Saturday 28 March from 10 a.m to 12 p.m. and will cover the following areas:

• A – Dialogical Teaching: Controlling Interaction in Group Discussion, basic level, Gloria Gomez Diago (RL) gloriagdiago Galicia(SL)
• B – Acquiring and practising vocabulary: techniques and tools, basic level, Antonella Elia (RL) Astra Martian (SL), Elisabetta Marzetti (RL) Betta Twine (SL), Laura Fedeli (RL) CorDeRosa Loire (SL)
• C – Creation of flexible learning environments with Builder Buddy, intermediate level, Giuliana Perco (RL) Cvetka Nacht (SL), Jaime Alamo (RL) Alpha Lorgsval (SL), Jennifer Stanigar (RL) Bonbon Braveheart (SL), Margarita Pérez-Garcia (RL) Paz Lorenz (SL)
• D – How to prepare a presentation?, basic level, Alicia Barbitta (RL) WonderAlica Alturas (SL), Annamalia Tancredi (RL) Fabrizia Karillion (SL), Angelina Macedo (RL) Morgen String (SL)
• E – A peek inside HUDs, intermediate level, Peter Jacobs (RL) Narci Shan (SL), Cedric De Meyere (RL) Achilles Lefèvre (SL)

Fortaleza do Guincho

Sou apaixonada pelo  Portugues, a “ultima flor do Lácio” como dizia o

escritor brasileiro Olavo Bilac e é tempo de começar a minha carreira de bloguiera, não sei bem o que vai acontecer mas acho que vai ser interessante!

Gostaria de praticar a lingua Portuguesa contando as oportunidades de encontrar resorsas em lingua e cultura portuguesa em Second Life.

Alguns dias atraz descobri un lugar interessante, Utopia Portugal VII, na Fortaleza do Guincho você pode visitar a Galeria de Arte: “quatro artistas um objectivo, criar uma plataforma de integração aos artistas sejam fotografos, designers, pintores ou outros”.

Foi assim que descobri que uma escritora havia apresentado o seu ultimo livro em Second Life “Aventuras de Ego de Todos Nós no Misterioso Reino da Consciolândia”, estava curiosa de saber mais dela e foi busca-la na Web, Carminda Hipólito Proença tem seu proprio blog …boa ocasião de ler e aprender!

Dear friends and readers from all over the world

This is a short message to introduce a brand new incoming author in this blog: CorDeRosa.

Cor, as her avatars’ friends use to call her, will blog about her experience as a teacher, researcher, tutor or simply as a traveller in Second Life. You have already heard about her through lauraeffe’s posts but now Cor decided it was time to take the speech, introduce herself and report autonomously the steps of her learning paths.

Looking forward to reading you CorDeRosa, welcome on board!

Many researchers have been talking about stigmergy in Web-based environments. Sarah Intellagirl Robbins has been doing research in facets of Virtual Worlds and their potential for education. Stigmergy is one of the affordances she identified (or put the name to the face) in working with Virtual Worlds.

From Wikipedia we have:

Stigmergy is a mechanism of spontaneous, indirect coordination between agents or actions, where the trace left in the environment by an action stimulates the performance of a subsequent action, by the same or a different agent. Stigmergy is a form of self-organization.

For stigmergy in other contexts visit: 

Web Stigmergy

Definitions of Stigmergy

Stigmergic Collaboration

The annual conference on language education in 3d virtual worlds will take place on 8 & 9 May 2009 on the EduNation islands in Second Life.

In the official website you can find detailed information about:

• how to attend
• call for papers
• presenters
• organization and locations.

You can register in the Edunation Island in Second Life.

See also the following presentation:

Do you want to post a pic directly from Second Life on the web without saving it on your hard disk?
It’s quite a simple procedure, you can take advantage of SnapZilla!
Having your account in SnapZilla will let you post photos from SL selecting the option “send via e-mail” after taking a snapshot; to know more about the e-mail address to use go to the section “how do I use SnapZilla.“
Do you already have a Flickr account and want to post directly there?
Just check your flickr upload e-mail address and use it!
Do you want to post both to SnapZilla and Flickr? You will be also able to do that if you update the SnapZilla control panel with the flickr upload e-mail address.
Hope everything is clear

Some days ago I participated in an event organized in the Italian educational location Anitel. The meeting, which involved teachers and educators, was about the use of games and collaborative activities in Second Life and was run by Misy Ferraris.

Misy had arranged the space to show different tools and described with an action role playing her personal use of the Kip Yellowjacket’s Mouse Trap Game Board.

We were split into two groups and each participant in turn had to play, throwing the dice and answering the question related to the number.

It was funny and we acted in a very collaborative way suggesting answers to our team mates and enjoying our final conquest,  the Green Team won!

It was an interesting experience, I gathered various inputs to reflect on the way to improve collaboration and sense of cohesion in a group in Second Life.

It was, for example, a bright idea to make each participant wear his/her team t-shirt , this is not merely useful for practical reason but also because it does build a sense of membership.

When I use the Board with my students I will enrich this step letting members build in SL their own t-shirt with their chosen logo, this pre-activity could help creating collaboration between students and develop their process of negotiation that is so relevant when acting together towards a common goal (in a game or in any learning/training activity).

The Board can be used to practice a foreign language, focussing the questions on one  topic, for example, you can make participants work on specific vocabulary areas.

Kip is so generous to have made available to everyone the original board whose scripts can be easily modified adding/changing the questions so that the board can be used in different ways according to each educator’s objective.

P.S.: In the original Board Game created by Kip the path of numbers (and questions) brings to a mousetrap: if you land on it, your avatar gets trapped like this!.

Applications are now open: participate in an international teachers’ training course about using virtual worlds and web 2.0 applications!

The course is free and developed within the European Project “MUVEnation”: Motivating pupils, linking teachers through active learning in multi-user virtual environments and will be run by 6 different institutions based in Italy, Uk, Spain, Germany, France and Belgium.

Please refer to the original Project’s site MUVEnation to get all the information about the programme and guidelines to apply.

Italian applicants can access the form to register at the following page.

If you are interested hurry up, the programme will start at the beginning of November!

Good Luck.

As seen in this article from PC Magazine reported by ITExaminer, Microsoft (via Craig Mundie) doesn’t seem to believe in Open Source virtual worlds such as Second Life. 

While I agree that (open) virtual worlds are still very limited, I believe in the potential of such environments on a long term basis and I don’t think that users should be discouraged to go in and experiment with them. If the first attempts at playing with DOS had been discouraged, Microsoft wouldn’t be making billions with Windows and their other products  ;)

When we discuss Education it gets even more serious since, in general, the education sector can’t afford expensive closed technologies and have to experiment with open source and free (of charge) ones. Open virtual worlds also offer the opportunity of easy creation of custom worlds and enforce the sense of community and collaboration which most avant-guarde educators believe in now.

So, Microsoft, let’s not discard Virtual Worlds just yet, no one said they were perfect.

Jeff Crouse betreibt zusammen mit seinem Partner Steve Lambert die Anti-Advertising Agency. Die beiden haben nicht grundsätzlich etwas gegen Werbung, sondern gegen versteckte und verlogene Werbung. Adam Kluger ist Chef seiner eigenen Werbeagentur Adam Kluger PR und war früher Agent für Popgrössen wie Mariah Carey, New Kids on the Blog, Ne-Yo, Fall Out Boy, Method Man, Lady GaGa oder Ludacris.

Er schickte eine Email an Jeff, mit dem Angebot, dessen Produkt Double Happiness Jeans gegen einen angemessenen Geldbetrag in einem kommenden Song der Pussycat Dolls unterzubringen. Product Placement. Unglücklicherweise ist Double Happiness Jeans aber keine Bekleidungsmarke, sondern ein Second-Life-Projekt, ein virtueller Sweatshop, in dem Second-Life-Bewohner Jeans für 90 Cent die Stunde nähen. Hier geht es also um Bewusstmachen von weltwirtschaftlich-industriellen Abläufen. Jeff und Steve posteten Adams Email in ihrem Blog, die Leser kommentierten entsprechend begeistert, bzw. zerrissen den “Spammer/Betrüger” Adam Kluger in der Luft. Dieser bestritt, die Mail überhaupt verschickt zu haben und forderte das Löschen des Beitrags und der Kommentare.

Daraus wird natürlich nichts, und die Welt ist um eine Erkenntnis reicher: Die Musikindustrie verkauft Werbeplätze in Popsongs, und anschliessend die Popsongs auf überteuerten optischen Speichermedien, und will es m Ende nicht gewesen sein. Und da wundert ihr euch, wenn “music”, “pop” oder “rocknroll” für weite Bevölkerungsschichten als schmutzige Wörter gelten. Was aber egal ist, weil in sämtlichen verkauften Computerspielen sowieso irgendwelche Musik gratis dabei ist. Fuck yeah.

(via, und)

Many people complain about Second Life’s drain on processor performance. 

Linden Labs created this wiki page with alternative Second Life viewers that might be of interest to those trying to experiment with Second Life. Some of them claim offer a cleaner, easier to navigate user interface. 

I am experimenting with some right now and will let you know (Mac users) my opinion about them. Other Mac users and also Windows users are more than welcome to post their favorites and opinions here as well.

CollegeDegree.com posted a list of resources, link,s tips and tutorials for those who want to teach or provide learning experiences in Second Life. This list compiled by Heather Johnson is definitely worthwhile.

Das Sommerloch ist eine Gelegenheit, etwas abgefahrenere Lernumgebungen zu präsentieren – heute: virtuelle 3D-Umgebungen: umfassende Beispiele, auch Kurse, über Lehrversuche in “Second Life” (SL) gibt es auf dem von IBM und SL gesponsorten “Second Life Grid“. Mittlerweile gibt es auch ein zweites Deutschland. Eines reichte eben nicht…

Seit ca. 1 Jahr habe ich selbst auch ein Büro in SL, auf “Aya’s Rock“. Einfach einen Account holen, und im “Search” nach “Birkenkrahe” suchen, mir dann eine “IM” (Internet Message) schicken, die ich kriege, auch wenn ich nicht gerade eingeloggt bin. Mein virtuelles Büro hat einen Pool, deutlich mehr Platz als mein reales Büro, sowie einen Seeblick… den ich sonst in Berlin nicht kriegen kann! Angefangen hat diese Reise für mich vor 15 Jahren, als ich einen der (den?) ersten virtuellen Kurs lehrte – in einer textbasierten Umgebung namens MOO. Thema: die Programmiersprache C++. Bis heute argumentieren Praktiker, dass textbasierte Umgebungen möglicherweise Lernen besser unterstützen als 3D-Umgebungen – siehe Forschung von GATECH professor Amy Bruckman.

Meine eigenen ersten Versuche im letzten Semester, Studenten als Teil mehrerer Semesterprojekte ins SL zu holen, waren begrenzt erfolgreich. Die Projekte waren zwar ziemlich gut, aber wirklich virtuell unterrichtet habe ich dort (noch) nicht. Dabei bin ich überzeugt, das sich zumindest ein Teil des E-Learning in den virtuellen Welten abspielen wird – und zwar im wörtlichen Sinne, nämlich “spielerisches” Lernen, anstatt Wissensvermittlung. Das ist genau der Trick. Im MOO hat das (damals) gut funktioniert, und die Präsenz vieler Dozenten im SecondLife weist ebenfalls darauf hin.

Hier ist eine Übersicht aller in SL tätigen Lehranstalten (soweit sie angemeldet sind). Häufig sind Schulseiten noch besser als universitäre Angebote. Beispiel: Math-Playground – in SL vertreten auf Edu-Island, wo es noch viele andere Resourcen gibt. Z.B. diese Präsentation zu Moodle.

Seit Juni 2008 ist auch die Universität Hamburg in SecondLife vertreten – mit einer eigenen Insel (“private island”), die aber öffentlich zugänglich ist: dort sehen wir das Hauptgebäude der Uni, in dem sich ein voll ausgestatteter Hörsaal befindet, im Foyer und vor dem Gebäude präsentieren sich aktuelle Forschungsprojekte, und gegenüber steht eine Bühne mit Schlagzeug, Synthesizer und Lichteffekten, bei der jeder mal spielen kann (“Sit down to play”).

Im Juli 2008 feierte SecondLife 5-jähriges Jubiläum auf dem Internet. Bei einer (virtuellen) Feierveranstaltung in SecondLife sprach einer der Gründer und Investoren, Mitch Kapor, der für IBM die erste Killerapplication (das Spreadsheet Lotus 1-2-3) entwickelte. Business ohne Spreadsheets ist heute kaum vorstellbar … Kapor erklärt seine Vision des “nächsten Trends” virtueller Welten: die größere Emotionalität der Avatare, der elektronischen Abbilder menschlicher Nutzer, durch mehr Gesichts- und Körperanimation. Die Technologie hierfür steht bereits bereit – mit Hilfe von 3D-Kameras werden eigene Körperbewegungen und Gesichtsausdrücke in SecondLife animiert – ein kleiner Video erläutert das.

Wie geht die Story weiter? Wir wissen es nicht. Ab September werde ich wieder virtuelle Sprechstunde abhalten – vielleicht wird es sogar bald eine “Second FHW” geben?

(Siehe auch: früherer Artikel).

As if Google wasn’t already trying to be the know-it-all and the have-it-all of the Web, now they also try to compete with 3D chat rooms and virtual worlds in this new release in beta phase:

Lively – “Chat and interact with your friends in rooms you design.”

“Customize your avatar and stream personal photos and video.”

“Invite your friends to chat and help decorate.”

The look an feel resembles virtual worlds such as CyWorld, for instance. Many others are compared on this chart by TechCrunch. The Blue Book published by the Association of Virtual Worlds contains and enormous list of Virtual Worlds…

It might be worth giving it a try. I am just not sure whether we need yet another virtual world combined with a chat room capability… mmmm… All in all, It might be just another move for Google to place their ads all over the Web , this time on the 3D Web…

By the way, no Mac version as of now…

Also, take a look at Karl Kapp’s list of Alternative to Second Life.

Meer info is hier te vinden.

An interesting interview with Milosun Czervik on the use of Second Life for teaching and how most people just replicate flawed real-life environments and approaches when using MUVEs for learning.
Interview conducted by Kevin Lim.

NOW we can have immersive experiences that involve our body movements in MUVEs.

This was something experienced mostly by Nintendo Wii users when playing boxing and dodging a punch. Well, Linden Labs has been doing some research on the use of 3D cameras that allow you to control your avatar throught body movements, no keyboards, no mouse.

Imagine what this can bring to educational experiences:

It has been awhile since I updated this blog. I apologize. There has been a few reasons.

First off, I have been busy ripping our CD collection. Yes, we’re finally moving to all digital music. Currently we sit at almost 30GB of music. I still have more CDs to go, but the majority has been completed. A few of the rips didn’t take, so I will have to redo a few, but most sound good so far. I put em all in a playlist and hit ‘random’, so it may be a year or so until I can sample enough of it to make sure .

I added a new 400 GB SATA drive (WD Caviar) for the music. I will eventually obtain another 500GB backup to protect the music. Whee! I prolly could make a RAID array, but this mobo is old and has only two SATA slots, so I’d have to expand and blah blah blah. A Maxtor Onetouch will work just fine in the USB environment. I have one at work (although I am thinking of bringing that one home and using a smaller one there) and it works peachy. Its a lot cheaper than a dedicated backup server, building a RAID array, or NAS setup.

So, I’ll probably buy a 80GB Zune or iPod soon. Let me know what you think of em. Was going to buy the 160 GB iPod, but I just don’t need the space.

My job rocks. I have no idea what I am doing, but it is 10000x better than what I was. No stress.

I am working with this engineer at work. She’s been out of college for about 10 months. Chemical Engineering from out of state. She is of Asian decent, just don’t know the particulars. Cute, but not my type. She’s so….boring. Not that she’s not pleasant or nice to be with, mind you. She just seems like one of those folks who:
*Studied hard all the time in school.
*Would never think of getting a tattoo.
*Drink? Party? Might have had a cream soda once…
*Probably still a virgin, if not, might have lost it under a chem lab table.
*Nah…virgin.
*Thinks about work all…the…time.

Not that it is bad or anything. She probably is very happy and satisfied with her life. I wondered once what a romantic interlude with her might be like. It was awkward and uncomfortable. She just doesn’t emote any…sensuality. That’s it. She seems to lack what I most like my women to be: sensual. Smart is great. Smart AND sensual. Wowsers.

Oh well. Not like I am trying to date her or anything. Just an observation. She’ll probably go through life never experiencing a fiftieth of what I have, and be fully and completely happy about it. Its just different.

My Lancia broke. I am having a new part machined at a shop in Freeport. Just affects the alternator bracket, but keeps her from working. At least I caught it before something bad happened.

My congratulations goes out to Melissa R. She just completed her Masters in Criminal something-or-other at U of H. Good job. I may have to work during your commencement, but we’ll try to be there.

I think I will start building a new system. It will be a graphics workstation for Chel and her Adobe. I might get her to start building some Second Life stuff.

Speaking of which, I am back in SL. My av is Mikester Nikolaidis, so give me a holler. I bought some land and built a house (ok, pre-fab, but I am customizing it as much as I can). Its nice and quiet there. I will make a bid on some adjoining property if it come sup for sale. It is currently a rental, but I am sure the owners would love to just get the dough.

Still no offers on the modeling job, which is as well as the Lancia is not drivable right now. Craigslist scares me. I am afraid I’d get some heroin chic or underage runaway. Yikes.

The family is doing fine. No big issues or drama.

Hope to hear from the folks out there. Will talk more later.

L8rs-