VECoP

Places to Visit

I am reading the blogs about BaBa's excursion, and there are so many places s/he has visited that I have not seen.

When the exercise has visited I think we need to post the story (from the notecards) and make sure we have SLURL's of all the places visited, and maybe we can fix a few dates and times and a few of us can have trips to some of these places.

I'm also looking forward to trips to other MUVEs.

Labels: BaBa, Second Life, SL

BaBa now was visiting its (is it now a she or a he?) friends in the Hauwai Zoo. I couldn't put her on the ground (because she was afraid), so I carried her, and I had to rotate her a little so that she can see something. She was also afraid after a while that I could keep her there locked in the Zoo, so I took her to a roman spa instead to relax.

Then she went to see Sus...

Labels: BaBa, Second Life, SL

Hi everyone!

I am Christina aka Tina.

In my “first life” I have a background in translation studies, communities of practice and editing. My (research) interests are primarily in the areas of eLearning, intercultural communication, knowledge sharing processes, diversity, advertising and lifestyle. I have been self-employed since 2000 and work with a number of profit and non-profit organisations. My mission is to create learning environments across cultural, language and geographic boundaries. I am convinced that communication processes within and across organisations as well as within and across first and second lifes encourage individuals to reflect on their shared interests and trigger knowledge sharing and innovation processes.

My “second life” is very young – I logged on as Tina T. for the first time three weeks ago. At first, it was a culture shock but it was good and comforting to find friends “in-world” that I knew from a different context, i.e., CP2. What struck me was the similarity of their avatars with their real life appearance as well as the specific lingo they used – for example, “k” for “OK” and other such “strange” abbreviations.

I’m here because I want to learn more about virtual worlds and the possibilities they offer for online collaboration. What worries me a little is the time factor. You should know that I’m more into mountain hiking, skating, dancing and cocktail-drinking in real life than online…

Labels: introduction

BaBa's journey continues ...

Baba was delivered to Corwin in the NMC campus' Life Sciences building.



Not a place he liked to be, so he was taken to visit a more pastoral setting before going to see JoeC/Simon.

Labels: vecop

Introduction - Andy Roberts - DARnet

I had my first 3d avatar made for me in year 2000, using a photo booth camera which took a full length portrait from 3 sides and then converted the images into a 3d digital model. The claim was this would soon be used all the time to represent myself everywhere on the internet. The result was recognisable, just, though a little creepy in appearance. The idea was way ahead of its time though, because there weren't any virtual worlds or games it could be used with at the time.

AT about the same era my internet activity consited of email, pure text newsgroups and cheesy homepages. So not a great deal has changed since then! That's not true, now we can add flickr photos and youTubes to our text based blogs and wikis.

I'll be trying to keep up with the group excursions into Secondlife, other virtual worlds and the various experiments which are being planned, and I'll write up some reflections here. The last one was published on my own blog - How I would like to use SecondLife


For more about me, please see my LinkedIn profile

Labels: andyroberts, introduction, vecop

Now BaBa has been to the Holodeck at the ICT library. Here are a few pics:



I've given BaBa to Nick/Corwin. At least that's what I think I have, it was the first time I have given stuff to off-line people....

BaBa
Here are a couple of pictures from Second Life.
I found the crate containing BaBa at the Freebie warehouse.

Going to busy places like this really shows the problem with lag and Second Life. At home we have an ok broadband connection, but it takes an age to get the view anything like properly loaded. At the university, where we have a superfast connection there isn't a problem.

I went back to Boracay to unpack the crates and that is where I found BaBa.

I also found in my crates a new shirt with a rose on it, just the thing for Rosie to wear, and a pair of dark glasses, to protect from the Boracay sun.

Labels: BaBa, Second Life, SL

So far Karsten, Rob, Nick, Simon and Sus have said they would like to take part in the asynchronous activity in Second Life.

I've found a Sheep (I call it BaBa) and I am going to pass it and a notecard (BaBaNote) to one of you (actually Karsten/Futura as we are in the same place and that may be easier).

You will receive the offer when you are next online.

Then can you take the sheep somewhere interesting, rez it on the ground and take a snap of you and the sheep, write a bit on the end of the notecard about this "adventure" and then save it. You should delete the sheep you have rezzed as you will still have a copy in your inventory.

Then pass BaBa and BabaNote to the next person on the list. You do this by opening their profile and dragging BaBa and BabaNote on to the Give Item area (under 2^nd life tab).

I hope this makes sense. If it doesn't say and we can see if we can met in world to sort it out.

If anyone else wants to play – just say.

Labels: BaBa, Second Life, SL

There is a JISC funded report "Learning in Immersive Worlds - review of game-based learning" at http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/programmes/elearning_innovation/gaming%20report_v3.3.pdf

It links from an article on the JISC homepage entitled: "It's just a game? Report on computer gaming published".

JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) is a UK funded body looking at "innovative use of Information and Communications Technology to support education and research".

Labels: game-based learning, JISC

Sus Nyrop - my intro






*Sus 1955 *Sus 1960* Sus 2001*Sus 2003 *Sus 2005 *SusNy 2007

As 2007 is said to be the year of the ME, I'd better follow up with my current intro version.
Sus Nyrop in Farum, Denmark, SusNy Foss in SL since October 06 where I joined just before the first million inhabitants: by now I think more than 3.5 million have opened accounts.
I'm currently involved in several web 2.0 teacher training projects in Denmark. I'm a free agent and independent researcher with a cyber anthropologist focus on teachers' virtual community practices, using social tools and strategies for their lifelong self directed professional development For a living, I'm doing occasional service as a state appointed external examiner (in Danish language and pedagogy) - for social pedagog colleges all over Denmark. This used to be my professional field, until I decided for a major change in my career. In 1993 I took an intensive beginner class of computer science, very traditional and outdated, but a solid foundation. I fell in love with my Macintosh computer, and did my bachelor in communication and multimedia at the Danish University of Education, Copenhagen in 1995. Since then I've been working slowly towards a masters (candidate) in general education, with a focus on edtech and online learning community processes. . Since 2001, I got together with Webheads, in 2002 I joined the Electronic Village Online and in 2003 I joined CPsquare, the community of communities of practice. I'm currently enjoying being a senior mentor in the traditional Foundations of CoP workshop - where Nick Noakes will be one of our virtual guests in a few weeks. I've found out that so many different paths lead me towards SL as I meet more people in world that I already knew from other contexts.

In my off line private life, I enjoy being a granny, and a loving partner with Bernt, a retired school librarian and sportsman. We share an interest in gardening, film, literature, art and music, and we have travelled in Europe and China.



secondlifedk.blogspot.com - a co-blog with four Danish colleagues (in Danish)

www.xanga.com/susnyrop (my first blog from 2002 onwards that I still keep for nostalgic reasons)
worldofwebheads.blogspot.com (a more recent blog - I need to update or abandon it one of these days)
teachingculture.wikispaces.com ( my portfolio wiki that I used for an international EU funded diploma course in teaching intercultural, 2006)

The Nordic Voice project (2005-06) was a community oriented experiment, targeting Nordic language educators with a special interest in voide enabled digital and online learning. I was a cordinator and facilitator in this context. We hosted asuccesful all online conference, and invited guest speakers, posted a newsletter, and found new collaboration partners in Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Iceland. We were funded by the Nordic Council. ns05.wikispaces.com/

Labels: introduction, vecop

Catching up
Over the last week I lost track of the emails coming in about what we now call VECoP, so I though I would try and reflect/summarise the general mood and suggest some way forward.

Summary
Lots of people think we should look at virtual worlds other than Second Life.
We have a definite time zone problem in that if we are to meet synchronously someone will be in their pyjamas.
Getting sufficient time for doing this work is a problem for all of us.
Exchange of practice, recording best practice is important.
Trying our ideas with our own students and communities should be an aim.
Publishing what we do is important, well at least for us academics.
Getting funding is, for most, a necessity.

Way forward?
We should schedule some field trips, with a purpose, in to Second Life and other MUVEs. We should aim for the hosts to try to run such events twice, so that we cover a civilised time for all VECoP members.

We should look at what funding opportunities are possible (Marga: can you post a bit about what is possible for networks etc with the EU?).

Next Week
I have an idea for an asynchronous activity in Second Life that we can all participate in during next week. By asynchronous I mean we don't have to be there together (although we can schedule help if needed). If there is interest I'll set it up.

Labels: Second Life, vecop

Labels: introduction

Introduction

I am Shirley Williams (aka Rosie Luna). I am a lecturer at the University of Reading, UK. I am in charge of the group teaching in the area of Information Systems, but my own teaching is primarily in Programming. Both Karsten and Rob in the past were members of my programming classes; I hesitate to say I taught them to program, as they are both much better programmers than me!

My research interests are primarily in the areas of knowledge transfer, communities and eLearning. I am involved in a number of projects, some funded and some not. The interest in Multi User Virtual Environments and Educational Communities is currently unfunded, my aim is to get some funding so we can do more work in the area.

PS I tried to post this from IE7; and the text failed to appear.

Labels: introduction

Nick Noakes Corwin Carillon

I work as a faculty/educational developer at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology where I'm Director of the Center for Enhanced Learning and Teaching or CELT for short!

I have been working with a couple of educational non-profits, Educause and the New Media Consortium, in my out-of-work time for the past 4 years. I played around with graphical virtual worlds, Active Worlds, in 1995/96 when it first came out but it was so laggy and resource intensive that my PC couldn't really cope with it. Last June I was brought into Second Life by NMC colleagues and am the co-founder/facilitator, with the NMC's Alan Levine, of an in-world group (emerging CoP) called Teachers Buzz that meets fortnightly. For more on this see the NMC Campus blog and the NMC Campus wiki.

My passion is transformational change with teachers, learners and organizations, which has taken me from online learning to online facilitation to communities of practice to appreciative inquiry and back again.

I've stayed in Second Life, despite it's myriad issues, because of these interests and because these environments/platforms seem to engage people and their identities in new learning trajectories (see Etienne Wenger's Learning for a small planet).

Labels: introduction, nmccampus, secondlife, vecop

First off I'd like to encourage you all to use labels (tags) when you post here. I've registered the blog at technorati, so if we make good use of labels, then that can become a powerful tool for us later.

On a personal note. I'm a Research Assistant at University of Reading in Computer Science, where I also do my PhD. on the side. I've got many interests in CS, I especially look at knowledge representation (ontology) and what can be done with automation of semantics. At the moment I do this in the domains of eLearning and competency description, which also is somewhat connected to eLearning and lifelong learning.

MUVE's is a bit of a "pet" interest, and I can see many areas which could benefit from use of knowledge representation and semantic automation tools, especially in learning situations, however that is probably further down the road, because at the moment there are definitely many other areas that need attention before these kind of tools become neccesary...

Labels: introduction, ontology

Me?

I'm Rob Ashton.

I graduated last year from the University of Reading and I'm currently working for a design automation company in the north of England.

While I have left university officially, I never really left in spirit, still staying involved in a number of university projects.


That's me after skiiing in Austria last year. I'm the smarty-man in Second Life - I don't think he needs another picture.

I'm really interested in the use of virtual worlds to assist in the learning process, and while Second Life may not be the most appropriate place for this, it seems to serve as a useful testing ground for researching the potential pitfalls and benefits of this kind of teaching.

I guess that explains why I'm here - I hope to be of some help during this project :)

Labels: introduction

My Introduction

I work as a trainer, coach, and consultant to nonprofits and individuals in effective use of technology. I work mostly on projects that include: training, curriculum development, research, and evaluation. Some of my expertise includes: how to use new web tools (blogging, tagging, wikis, photo sharing, video blogging, screencasting, social networking sites, and virtual worlds, etc) to support nonprofit.

I'm also a professional blogger and write about the use of social media tools in the nonprofit sector for social change at BlogHer, Netsquared, and my own blog, Beth's Blog.

If you want more detailed background, check my web site: http://www.bethkanter.org
or my LinkedIn profile.

My musings about Second Life and Nonprofits and an article I co-wrote about it for TechSoup.

I'm here because I'm interested in learning more about virtual worlds may or may not work for online collaboration. I still have mixed views on Second Life.

Labels: npsl

Welcome to VECoP.