Lesson for an Instructor - Class 4

Wow this class had much to offer - especially for me.

• Don't hesitate to tell a guest presenter when they are getting off track (or in this case hadn't yet gotten on track). Today's presenter seemed to have forgotten who is audience was. The presentation begun was not that which we had agreed to. The audience was forgiving, the instructor (me) was direct, the speaker was flexible. After a few moments of panic I suggested we move right to questions. The ensuing discussion was highly interesting and productive.
• Torley video's are great, put are not necessarily for beginners. After class Rosalita helped me do a run through, watching the Torely vid only as an overview of the project. We followed that with a step by step voice instruction by me.
• Room/furniture layout doesn't really matter in a virtual world. Expecting today's presentation to be held on another island, I had left the classroom meeting space free of furniture. Change of venue, the presentation would occur where we were milling about. To settle-in students began to set out chairs of different styles from their inventory, some rezzed boxes to sit on, some rotated their seats along an unexpected axis so that their avatar was cocked at an unorthodox angle to the virtual floor. All faced in different directions. Some with their backs to the speaker. We were a motley crew. Yet all cameras were fixed on our speaker, all ears were listening - as was clear from the questions. In a virtual world you do not need to sit in rows and turn your avatar to face the speaker. But my goodness it can be confusing to an on-looker.
  

My First Look at RP

There are so many things that have been introduced to me in Second Life. And so often I have started out thinking "I just don't get that." One of those things is role playing (RP). At first I just did not get it! But I am starting to, and even drawn to it.

To me role playing had two connotations before my SL began. Both were yucky. 1. Sex games that involve women in demeaning dress up - scantily clad nurses or housekeepers, 2. Embarrassing activities in college, in which unlucky students make fools of themselves in an effort to demonstrate the instructor's elusive point.

While I was intrigued by the phenomenon of Dungeons and Dragons, I never played it, and could not really even imagine it. I have never acted in a play, never enjoyed participating in skits (because of afore mentioned embarrassing college classes), never required my students to act out social skills (for same reason), never took a course in clowning or improv, or tap dance (at least not since I was 6). While I write a lot, I never have felt I could write creatively, with characters and dialog and scenes and imagined conflict and resolution. I never dress up on Halloween.

But I love to read fiction. I enjoy a good series - in which I can follow the life of a person through a variety of adventures. I can immerse myself in fantasy and science fiction, can imagine being a member of the crew, the love interest, the tortured protagonist.

Aren't all of these part of the same phenomenon. Don't we all have ways in which we enjoy leaving the grind of day to day life behind and become someone else, the protagonist in our own screenplay?

In Second Life I am role playing all the time. Esme is my protagonist. Her costume changes are arranged not in her wardrobe but (strewn about) in her inventory. She plays the welcoming docent at ISTE headquarters on Tuesdays, she is the cheerful tour guide on Sundays. Every other Saturday she is the wise teacher. And at the times in between she is the bold adventurer, traveling solo to foreign lands, talking to the strange natives.

How is this different from librarians and Shakespearean scholars who dress in period clothes and speak middle English on Renaissance Island, or the romantics who court at Avillion, or the waring gangs that gather on street corners in Toxian City.

The people I have met in RP sims have not been sick or creepy. They have been interesting and usually kind. Whether toting a scroll, an healing potion or a deadly sword, each is simply writing her own novel, playing dress-up, clowning around, having fun, immersing herself in something that will free her, however fleetingly from the stuff of everyday. And it looks like fun.

Virtual Web Quest - It's a SLeb Quest!

Here's the SLeb Quest (I hope I just coined that).

The Task
You are journalists on assignment. Your editor (me) was to have a brief - containing the goals of your assignment and some background info - waiting for you at the airport. It did not arrive. Your team is made up of a project manager, a communicator/fact finder, a photographer and a writer. There is a story to write, but you don't know what it is. As a group you must determine how to divvy up responsibilities. You only have 10 minutes in each location...

Project Manager - Keep track of your team, the assignment and the time. Your job is to make sure the work gets done.


Communicator/fact finder - find people and ask questions. If no one is around or info is unreliable see if you can find out anything by searching google (name of island and "second life" as keywords)

Writer - create a notecard and record what the team learns about each sim. It doesn't need to be good writing, just clear enough for others and me to make sense of. The note card should contain the first name of each member of your team.

Photographer - take photos of the environs, something special about the place, something to show others about this sim, your colleagues in action...

Try to find out what is unique about the place, does it have any educational potential, why do you think I sent you here?

Week 5, In-World Class 3

As we gather for the third time as a full group there is excitement in the virtual air - at least I imagine there is :-). Pamet and Drew have transformed themselves. Later Tiernan reveals that he has identity tricks up his sleeves as well. Others have adjusted hair, changed clothes... Though I have resisted the temptation to change my look for many months, I am drawn into the past weeks discussions and am myself donning a new outfit. Hair and "question reality" button remain so that I am easily recognizable from a distance.

I always pack too much into the agenda. Hour 1: SL version of a webquest. Hour 2: Teen SL with a guest speaker. Hour 3: debrief/sharing from first hour and building basics. Everyone was prepared with voice - just a few hiccups of screeching mics. Still it took us half an hour to get going... onto my agenda. The time was well spent. We are still getting to know each other, people have questions. And given voice I talk, perhaps too much.

The groups did not take off immediately to the first location on their quest, as I had envisioned. I would have traveled first and divvied up assignments once there. But most groups gathered first and made a game plan. I liked it - first because it is a sharp reminder that people have different ways of doing things. Second I had the opportunity to observe some of the process. This was only the second time the class members have worked in small groups, and signs of leadership and trust were apparent in all.

The pressure of our speakers arrival at the second hour left little time for the groups to travel to several educationally related sims. The world of Second Life is vast - with much worth looking at. I hope the brief visits were intriguing and will lead students to go back and explore the same or other sims on the activity note card.

In spite of the rush groups made brief visits to the International Spaceflight Museum, Reflexive Architecture, the Healing Pool, NOAA, Virtual Starry Night, Sistine Chapel, Dante's Inferno, Renaissance Island, Ivory Tower Library of Prim, Camp Darfur. TelRport was not what I had told that group to expect Dr. Danforth where is your testis?!

Selected sites that I don't think were gotten to include the towers at International Schools, Svarga, College of Scripting, Paris 1900, Info International, Greenies and Slolar.

Flexibility in teaching is an important skill. When adding the component of technology the need for flexibility increases exponentially. Our guest speaker did not arrive and my over planning and generally calm demeanor (ok don't talk to my husband about that) came in handy. We debriefed as a group and got spend a decent amount of time on the basics of prims, textures and uploading images to the texture folder.

As I reflect on what I'm doing I remind myself that there is not time to offer people comprehensive training in any aspect of Second Life. The emphasis must be on the potential for teaching and learning and not on specific advanced skills in communication, building, scripting... I offer an introduction to various aspects of virtual existence and encourage students to explore more during the intervening weeks. Once one knows that something can be done, s/he can take one of dozens of free classes offered daily in SL.

Through the instruction I provide in the basics of SL I hope that I am not only exposing students to some of the media available, but also modeling teaching techniques for maximizing the opportunities and minimizing the obstacles of the 3D classroom.