VECoP

A few days ago I had, via my SPAM box, an email from purporting to be from Linden saying:

"We have identified that you reside in a European country. Accordingly, your next bill will reflect Value Added Tax (VAT) charged at the rate specified by your country."

There is a load of discussion about this going on over at: http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/09/28/questions-about-vat/

Apparently it is a real message.

Quite a few people on the blog are saying they hadn't received the email, I suspect Linden need to think about where they are sending such mail from and then we can add it to our White Lists.

Labels: Second Life, SL, SPAM, VAT, vecop

I went to a meeting today in Real Life about Education in Second Life. I’ve written a fuller report over at http://redgloo.sse.reading.ac.uk/ssswills/weblog/1674.html.

But there was one really spectacular project called Theatron where they produce in-world models of theatres correct in detail. They even have to advise peopleto re-size their avatars – as apparently most people have avatars which are the equivalent to 7 foot tall!

The SLURL for their island is: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Theatron/183/23/48

Labels: CETIS, ecsl07, Eduserv, JISC, Second Life, vecop

I have added a new goal to my 43 Things: Visit Places in Second Life.
My motivation for this is: I have got a small amount of money to set up Community of Practice at my university to investigate educational possibilities of virtual worlds.
I thought an interesting goal related to this would be to set myself the goal of visiting 50 different places or events in Second Life. A visit should last at least 30 minutes, preferably longer. Having visited I will write a blog entry for the visit or event. I'm going to use the tag 50SL for these entries for pictures in Flickr and on my blog.
If you think it might be fun add it as your own goal, and use the tag 50SL, and we should be able to RSS them together.

Labels: 43Things, 50SL, Second Life, secondlife, SL, vecop

I had another visit the Microsoft Imagine Cup site in Second Life. Caroline Phillips and Miel Van Opstal have set up a nice location and a good event. Miel has blogged about the island over at http://micromiel.com/2007/06/25/sneak-preview

The theme for this year's Imagine Cup is education (“Imagine a world where technology enables a better education for all” - http://imaginecup.com), Reading had teams in various challenges, our Web Development team: Rediverse did ever so well, especially considering they were first years. The SL Island is dedicated to the Software Development challenge entries from across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Caroline (Imagine Nishi) invited me to go along today as some of the teams were attending to show off their videos of their products and meet each other.

I got there to find quite a few people wandering a round. I had a chat with a guy from Portugal who told me about there entry which was to educate about cookery, I love that idea, and I wondered if the team knew about my object oriented cake examples.

I then met a guy who had an avatar called: "Creative Janus", he was from UAE, and their team had a very cool video that showed off their software that was going to save me time by allowing mobile learning. He (well I assume he was a "he") and some very snazzy shorts on, most of the avatars were new to SL and were wearing fairly standard newbie clothes, this outfit certainly stood out.

I went round and watched a few more videos and powerpoints. The ones I liked the best were those that told me about the products and a little about the team.

Imagine Nishi then introduced me to the Italian team, their mentor was part of the winning team last year. I had a long chat with them and watched their video, we also met a woman from Germany, who was part of the team that set up the blog site (I can't post there because I'm not a competitor L).

I then had a quick visit to the dance floor and then it was time to go.

I'll put my pics up on Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/ssswills/) with the tags:
imaginecup secondlife vecop

Labels: Imagine Cup, Microsoft, Second Life, secondlife, SL, vecop

I met up with Sus in SL and she has bought a holodeck. There are apparently 25 locations to visit. We had a go on the space shuttle, including the experience of weightlessness; then some where more picturesque.

Sus and I had a bit of a gossip. Someone remarked when we are in RL we talk about SL and when we are in SL we talk about RL.

Labels: holodeck, Second Life, secondlife, SL, vecop

I now have visited the Microsoft Island in Second Life three times and thought I should reflect a bit more about the experience.

On the launch night I had difficulty getting to the island. Second Life kept saying it couldn't get me to the island and that it had teleported me nearby. Nearby was in fact miles away. I managed to hop to a nearer location and then teleport in. The lag was very bad, I chatted to a bloke from Norway who said he couldn't move for 5 minutes. I managed to pick up a free Imagine Cup T shirt (I was the only person I saw wearing one).

I had a bit of a mooch around and then headed over to the stage for the Natalie Moody concert. I was very impressed by that, I liked the music and there was a good atmosphere in the arena. The concert was followed by dancing. Dancing was easy; all I needed to do was click the floor and accept the dance steps. I do wonder how many people at the event were there because it was the Imagine Cup event and how many because it was a free concert.

The next afternoon I visited with a colleague (Futura) and we had a quick look at the facilities. There were a load of humming birds about, and they seem to be attracted to avatars, they were very annoying and so we decided to leave.

I returned in the evening for a bit of a longer look round. The island was much less busy but still suffering from lag. I was propositioned by a guy in an evening suit who thought I might like to visit another venue: "No thanks I've come to look at the IC stuff". The annoying humming birds were still around. I picked up details of a challenge (effectively an Easter Egg hunt), I was told the first egg was in area 10, which is the area which includes the UK. I didn't have much look in 10:

• I couldn't get the video for the UK team to stream;
• There was an invite to blog about my experience, but although I could read other people's blogs, there appeared to be no way to post;
• Nor could I see an egg anywhere, having organised a treasure hunt in Boracay a few months back I thought I knew about where to look for things but obviously I can't find eggs!

I'll probably go back and see if I can get some of the other videos to stream, I would like to see the UK team as I saw them at the UK finals in Reading and it would be good to know how they are progressing.

Labels: Imagine Cup, Microsoft, Natalie Moody, Second Life, secondlife, SL

Microsoft have opened an island in Second Life and have linked the launch to an Imagine cup event (see http://www.microsoft.com/emea/presscentre/SecondLife/default.mspx) the island is open until early August and is worth a visit.

There was a concert by Natalie Moody.

Followed by dancing.

Labels: Microsoft, Natalie Moody, Second Life, secondlife, SL

Experience a conference where virtual meets real life.
Encounter potentialities for businesses and learning environments in a virtual life.
Engage in political and social real-life discussions and the effect of political and social decisions on the virtual life.

The conference will consist of a one-day workshop followed by a two-day conference featuring interactive sessions and workshops revolving around Business & Marketing, Education, Art, Design & Scripting and Community & Citizenship. Keynote presentations will also be a highlight of the conference as well as evening entertainment programs.

The event will take place in Berlin, Germany, from September 16 – 18, 2007.

http://www.slconference.eu/

Labels: Conferences, Second Life

Yesterday I attended the Eduserv Foundation's symposium entitled; "Virtual worlds, real learning?" The event was quickly oversubscribed, and they appeared to have limited attendance to one person from the majority of institutions.

The event ran in real life (at the Congress Centre in central London) and at a couple of place in Second Life (SL). There was a limited communication between us and them, as we were discouraged from running SL as it would certainly have led to bandwidth problems. We could however see them and watch what they typed (well I could as I positioned myself near to a screen).

Following the opening remarks the first session was a presentation by Jim Purbrick (Babbage Linden), he talked about SL and its potential, it was probably a good overview for people without in- world experience.

The second talk was by Roo Reynolds of IBM. I knew what of their work – I have visited the Sear's shop; but it was interesting to hear of other things they were doing. There area few links that look worth checking out: http://eightbar.co.uk/ and http://www.rooreynolds.com/. He also mentioned a SL area for learning about SOA – will have to check out where that is.

The third talk was Holyrood Park – an initiative from Edinburgh University to set up a virtual campus. Good to see a traditional university taking such an initative.

Lunch was interesting (the SL folks didn't get lunch) I talked to a few groups about their plans and work.

The next talk was by Joanna Scott about Nature's use of SL – they have an island Second Nature. Essentially they are experimenting, but from their point of view it is a small investment and potentially a huge area.

Then came Gilly Salmon, of Leicester. I had attended a keynote speech by Gilly at iLearn Paris, and not surprisingly most of what she said in London was a subset of the talk in Paris.

The final speaker of the day was Stephen Downes (http://www.downes.ca/) – he took a view that SL wasn't the way forward, with the problems of commercial ownership and that it wasn't really Web 2.0. He was very entertaining.

Then there was a panel session. This included all the speakers, and introduced Sarah de Fraitis (who wrote the JISC report on Immersive Worlds). Sarah spoke for about 5 minutes about her work, she has just taken up a post of Director of Research at the Serious Games Institute in Coventry. Then questions were taken from both audiences. The questions were largely aimed at Jim on aspects of SL, particularly on open sourcing.

The event finished with a drink receptions, a time to network. I fixed a meeting with Stephen Warburton (Kings College London), he had done a lot of work on recent proposals we were involved in and we have some ideas for the future.

Labels: Eduserv, Second Life, SL, vecop

In preparation for next week's event can you try to build a simple bridge. My directions below may help!
If you have problems call me.
--

Making a very simple bridge in Second Life

To do this you need to know how to rez and edit objects, if you don't there are lots of "Basic Building" classes in world.

1. Make a box that is 0.5x3.0x0.5, call it base1, note its position (for example mine was 46.267, 105.39, 299.5)
2. Make a second box the same size, call it base2, and position it 9 metres away on the x axis (mine ended up at 55.267)
3. Make a third box that is 10x3x0.1, called bridge.
4. Position it so that it rests between the two bases (I did it by positioning mine at 50.767, 105.39,299.75)
5. Link by selecting base1, base2 and then bridge and doing ctrl L

You now have a very simple bridge, to ensure others can change it etc, select allow any one can move, and copy.

You can save your bridge to your inventory, remember to delete any you have created.

Labels: bridge, Second Life, secondlife, SL

Sus Nyrop posted this over at CPSquare - I thought since she said "spread the word" I would copy it here:
"NMC online conference in SL, may 25
http://slbestpractices2007.wikispaces.com/
Second Life International Conference: Best Practices in Teaching, Learning and Research. A good friend of mine, professor Beth Ritter-Guth (alias Desideria Stockton), is preparing this all online, 24 hour conference on Friday, May 25 She kindly encouraged me to help with practicalities the European timezone. By then I'll be anderswo engagiert - in Porto, so I resisted this challenging temptation.
There are openings for keynote speakers and other presentations. Please spread the word! "

Maybe we should think about a VECoP presentation?

Labels: Second Life, secondlife, SL, vecop

Next Event

I was just talking with Nick/Corwin about organising another event (bridge building).

We suggest Thursday 3rd May 4pm British Summer Time (3.00 pm GMT), we could probably cope with a group at a different time.

Comment here if you can do that time or not.

Feel free to invite others.

Labels: Second Life, secondlife, SL, vecop

Another book review:

"the Complete Fool's Guide to Second Life" by Foolish Frost, I stumbled across this book, from a SL link, the book is at: http://www.sldrama.com/.

It is an amusing tale of a first visit into Second Life, supplemented by tips on how SL works and what can be done. As with other works on SL it is now out of date – it talks about First Land, which Linden has now deprecated, but other than that it appears to be current and I would recommend it as a style of writing that is readily accessible. It may be possible to use this style for other SL related training.

Labels: Second Life, secondlife, SL, vecop

Book review:

"second life – the official guide" by Michael Rymaszewski, Wagner James Au, Mark Wallace, Catherine Winters, Cory Ondrejka, Benjamin Batstone-Cunningham. I have had a Second Life (SL) account for about a year, I see a lot of potential in Second Life, but by Real Life doesn't give me much time for messing about and discovering SL. I bought this book because I thought it would help me, and indeed I found lots of things in it that were interesting, for instance I didn't know that I had a Library in my inventory and for a lot of those objects I can access the script, this allowed me to take a script from a chair and experiment with it (I now can make my avatar sit upside down). There is an Appendix by Pathfinder Linden (John Lester) on real Life Education in Second Life, I particularly like his section entitled "work at unlearning", educators too readily fall inti the trap of trying to re-create lecture theatres for learning events in MUVEs. In places the book's multiple authors show and things are repeated and/or contradicted, a little bit of proof reading probably would have spotted this and may well have avoided the curious repeats in the Glossary.

Labels: game-based learning, Second Life, secondlife, SL, vecop

Discovering Second Life with a Sheep
Rosie
This tale begins with Rosie Luna on a Friday night, she was wanting to organise an activity where people co-operate asynchronously in Second Life. She needs something that can be passed around and people can take to different places, write about what they learn, and take some pictures. Leafing through her landmarks she finds a landmark for Freebie Warehouse (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Burns/95/148/79) and she decides to go and visit. The warehouse is full of people and crates; she checks out the contents of a lot of the crates and decides to take one labelled: 62 Decorations, she also picks up 69 Clothes.
She returns to Boracay and finds a quiet spot by the sea and starts to look through the boxes. One of the things she finds is a sheep; she names this.
The next day she returns to Boracay and decides that this sheep she will pass round, along with a notecard that people can extend the tale. So she takes a few pictures of herself and the sheep. Writes this notes and then passes it on to Futura Fortas.

Futura
So the story continues. I decided to take BaBa to the Holodeck @ the ICT Library (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Info%20Island/13/183/33) where I took her to a virtual church. After all being a lamb/sheep I found that it was appropriate. In the holodeck I discovered how to take snapshots. I'm the kind of person who hates taking pictures in First Life, so I've only owned one camera ever, which I had while on a trip to the States. I sold it of immediately when I returned home. Having said that, I quite enjoyed taking the pictures in SL! Especially because I could take pictures of myself, even from underneath myself.
I've now passed on BaBa in the hope that the new "owner" will take care of her. (Hmn is it a her....)

Corwin
Unfotunately BaBa had a rather traumatic first experience with Corwin! When BaBa was sent to Corwin he was in the Life Sciences Center at the NMC's Research Park.
Corwin stupidly showed her the lab he was in and Baba was immediately reminded of cousin Dolly. No way was that the route to be taken for Baba and she quickly made her feelings known in no uncertain terms. Corwin blushed in shock at the vocabulary under a young sheep's control! Corwin apologised profusely for frightening her like and quickly moved off to more pastural grounds. So they went to Tol Eressea where Baba met some friendly horses and ate some grass and drank some fresh water.
Finally calm she asked to meet her next new friend.

JoeC
BaBa now was visiting its (is it 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!

SusNY
Sus was visiting the office of the Danish newspaper 24timer where she is preparing a carnival fest on Sunday, (for Danes only). (We'll invite our international friends later on). BaBa had the opportunity to climb a small snow mountain, created at a photo exhibition from Swiss. Sus thought that BaBa needed a face lift, and tried tentatively to give her a pink rose fur dye, and a texture! She did look cute, until Sus discovered to her dismay that BaBa has lost her significant face!
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Boracay/174/67/26
This discovery led to abig cloning experiment! Apparently each time Sus took up her BaBa, there was yet another little sheep! So this is how we make sheep in world , sus said to herself and started to create a flock.

Day 2:cloning rainbow sheep
Baba now has a whole family of clones. For everytime I pick her up, I get one extra BaBa. I've had to find out how to differentiate one sheep from another,to make sure I can keep track on the OriginalMotherBaBa. I like pink sheep! And baby blue ones to. buty my absolute favorite invention is BaBaLeo! This is a crossover, a mule with leopard skin. In RL this would mean she would not be able to breed new ones. but in SL, cloning is as easy as copy & paste!
I've taken my BaBaLeo identical twins to a playground area called ImagiLEARNING 57, 188, 21 where they learn how to climb poles with monkey twins! The URL copymaker is out of order today ,just like the Teleport button. My interface is reduced and i feel very uncomfortable about this. It took me some days to figure out hwo to get access to my inventory and find BaBa again. And I apologize for not sharing too many landmarks as they're hard to track in the Inventory under the actual circumstances!

Morton Mains 181, 159, 107
At the old castle of Morton Mains, There is a ferris wheel! This is something Sus loves, so she tries to get poor baBa feel the spinning around. BaBa gets scared and jumps up in Sus' arms! And next time Sus and BaBa logs in, their friends get a good laugh because baBa is still in the arms of her care taker. However now is the time to move on Baba!
Rob will be next in line, and I'm so sorry for being late with this; we had major problems for a while! Bye bye BaBa ; I hope that I'm handing over one of the original , horizontal sheep and not a clone with a preference for vertical presence! Or you can have both BaBa and BaBa Leo which is an extra bonus sheep :-)

Rob
Being very new to Second Life, Rob doesn't really know where to go with BaBa so he asks the now well travelled sheep what she wants to do with her time. Not surprisingly BaBa is hungry after all her adventuring and decides that she wants nothing less than the finest grass.
After finding out from the internet that there was a golf course at Hollywood (191,15,175 ), I decided to take BaBa there for a bit of well deserved, well groomed grass.
It seems that this sheep has a disposition to cloning itself and I'm soon left with an entire herd of BaBa imposters feasting on the grass. I do my best to tidy up and decide that we'll go to find somewhere a bit more stimulating for the afternoon.
Success, I found Space Port Alpha (152,227,175). Not wanting to end up with more BaBa clones I decide not to let her go this time, and hold her in my arms while I sit on the tallest space rocket I can find for the view.
BaBa is tired after all this adventuring and now needs somebody to show her somewhere a bit more relaxing!

The end?
Well that is the end of the Baba game – it took some what longer than expected, and we are still hoping to see some more pictures.
However BaBa and her colourful clones are still out there, so watch out for BaBa the Sequel.

Labels: BaBa, Second Life, secondlife, SL, vecop

Eduserv Foundation Symposium 2007

Virtual worlds, real learning?

Thursday 10th May 2007
Congress Centre, London

for more details of this free event see: http://www.eduserv.org.uk/foundation/symposium/2007/

Labels: game-based learning, Second Life, SL

Margarita Pérez-García / Paz Lorenz introduction





Hi everybody, in RL, i am Margarita Pérez-García, a researcher in education science, working with MENON Network in Brussels, Belgium and SCIENTER in Bologna, Italy. I have bee working in the field of education for 15 years in all levels from primary through secondary to higher education. I am currently coordinating several projects on digital identity and reputation, user-centric implementation of Europass ePortfolio, online job search user behaviour, social directories, social sectoral libraries, social technologies in education and ePortfolios. I also work in the field of learning difficulties, in particular school performance and early school leaving. I promote the use of open source technologies and i am an activist in the field of citizens' digital rights and gender equality. My current research interests are focussed on the gap between epistemological conceptions and pedagogical practices and design of educational artifacts in massive multi-user virtual environments.

in SL, i am Paz Lorenz, educator, technoprogressive and hypernomade. Free spirit, free-thinker, free will, wild and rebel. Feminist, believe in and fight for gender equality in-world. Concerned by freedom and rights of our digital personas. Dream of an interoperable and open source grid. Wish to break barriers against inclusiveness and help disadvantaged people to access learning thanks to SL.

Labels: Feminism, Inclusiveness, introduction, Learning difficulties, Paz Lorenz, Second Life

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

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