EduservCETIS 20Sep2007

Joint Eduserv/JISC CETIS Second Life in Education Meeting
IMPORTANT: the tag for this event is ecsl07. If you write any blog entires or upload any images or videos of the event, please use this tag. Thanks.

In 2007 as part of their annual research grant, the Eduserv Foundation funded four projects to specifically explore the use of Second Life in education. This joint meeting featured presentations from each of the projects, as well as presentations from Andy Powell (Eduserv) and Lawrie Phipps (JISC).

The aims of the day were to: NB This was a real life event :-)
 * showcase the projects to the JISC CETIS community
 * explore potential issues with using Second Life in Education such as interoperability and sustainability
 * discuss ways in which funding bodies can best support the community’s activities with virtual worlds.

Presentations
Slide presentations from the day are listed below and are available to download from slideshare
 * Sheila MacNeill, JISC CETIS, Introduction and overview (slides only)
 * Andy Powell, Eduserv, Eduserv, Second Life and All That (slidecast)
 * Lawrie Phipps, JISC, Overview of JISC developments in SL (slidecast)
 * Diane Carr and Martin Oliver, Institute of Education, Learning in Second Life: convention, context and methods (slidecast)
 * Daniel Livingstone, University of Paisley, Learning support in Second Life with Sloodle (slides only as as Daniel gave an in-world demo).
 * NB Hugh Denard (Theatron project) gave an in-world demo and Ken Kahn (Modelling4All project) gave a demo of tools so there are no powerpoints of their presentations.

MP3/Podcasts
[[Media:Andy_Powell1.mp3|Andy Powell]] (5.9mbs) | [[Media:Lawrie_Phipps.mp3|Lawrie Phipps]] (1.7mbs) | [[Media:Hugh_Denard.mp3|Hugh Denard]] (4.4mbs) | [[Media:Ken_Kahn|Ken Kahn]] (3mbs) | [[Media:Carr_Oliver.mp3|Diane Carr & Martin Oliver]] (4.1mbs) | [[Media:Daniel_Livingstone.mp3|Daniel Livingstone]] (5.4 mbs)

Accompanying zip files for download

 * [[Media:Ken_Kahn.zip|Ken Kahn]], Oxford University, Modelling4All: Intersecting computer modelling, Web 2,0, and Second Life
 * Hugh Denard, Kings College London, Theatre, performance, history and creative pedagogy: Theatron’s Second Life (coming soon)

Accounts of the day/related links

 * Sheila's work blog
 * eFoundations blog entry
 * Daniel Livingstone's live blog of the day
 * Jonathan Chetwynd's Twitter acount of the day
 * Shirley William's blog
 * Adventures of Yoshikawa blog
 * Toni Sant's blog
 * Accessibility & Second Life (via Jonathan Chetwynd)
 * Eelke Folmer - http://newsroom.unr.edu/?p=122
 * Online virtual worlds could soon be accessible to blind people thanks to research by students at IBM in Ireland. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6993739.stm
 * | IGDA Accessibility SIG
 * | W3C Web Accessibility Initiative

About the Projects
(A poster presentation about the projects is available from Slideshare and in Second Life @ http://slurl.com/secondlife/Eduserv%20Island/97/41/30

Theatre, Performance, History and Creative Pedagogy: Theatron's Second Life: In 2002 an international consortium launched the EU-funded Theatron project: an online interactive educational module comprising digital 3D models of 19 milestones in European theatre design, from the Theatre of Dionysus at Athens to the Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz in Berlin, each contextualised with extensive graphic and textual materials. Theatron 1 was widely acclaimed, being Laureate in the Computerworld Honors Program and forming the subject of several case studies. This presentation will describe how the King's Visualisation Lab at King's College London, supported by Eduserv, is now transforming this content into an extensive, content-rich range of research-based virtual environments in Second Life, generating innovative, interactive teaching and learning resources designed to take full advantage of the pedagogical potential of the environment. It will also outline how, in collaboration with The Higher Education Academy Subject Centres for English and for Dance, Drama and Music (PALATINE), Theatron 3 funds and, by developing in-world resources and tools, provides a virtual infrastructure for five pilot projects by UK academics focusing on aspects of scenography, stage machinery, mixed reality performance, "virtual poiesis", Commedia dell'Arte and Renaissance Drama.

Learning in Second Life: convention, contexts and methods: In this presentation, the project team will adopt a work-in-progress stance, to report on our research into learning in Second Life and World of Warcraft. We will describe our experiences in each of these social, virtual worlds, and discuss how these experiences are shaping our research. We will indicate particular methodological issues arising from our work within social worlds. We will report on a number of specific themes that are emerging, including issues pertaining to drama and self-representation, the notion of implicit and explicit contextual constructions of expertise, and questions of user motivation, pleasure and the Second Life ‘learning curve’.

Modelling4All: Intersecting computer modelling, Web 2.0, and Second Life: As part of the JISC-funded Constructing2Learn Project we have built a desktop application that enables students without programming skills to build serious models in their field of study (e.g. zoology, business, or sociology). We believe that the success of this project can be greatly amplified and sustained if our application was rebuilt as a web application and tightly integrated with Web 2.0 community services. We hope to nurture a broad community of students and researchers in building, sharing, analysing, critiquing, rating, tagging, and blogging computer models, components, and composable behaviours. In addition to providing the ability to run user-created simulations in a web browser, we will attempt to provide the ability to socially and immersively experience the execution of models within Second Life.

Learning Support in Second Life with Sloodle: Virtual worlds such as Second Life present significant opportunities for exploring new approaches to learning, teaching and helping students engage with their subjects. However, these complex environments can also be distracting, confusing and supporting users in such environments presents a number of new challenges. This presentation outlines some of the challenges which exist in Second Life and how tools such as Sloodle might be able to support teachers and learners by bridging the gap between current web-based virtual learning environments and this new generation of 3D virtual learning environment.