secondlife and Second Life

Continuing the series of post from a foucs group of 19 students in an undergraduate English course using Second Life for building activites.

Affinity = World expectations
When students first learned they were going to be using Second Life in their class many developed preconceived notations of what they were going to do. Students were excited by the marketing pictures of Second Life that they viewed on the Internet, “On the website they made it all look fun and interesting and you get into the real thing and its not all”. Students also expected to “play” something similar to a popular computer game called “The Sims”.

Because of the island’s private status and restricted user accounts, students were not allowed to leave the virtual campus.  Students were disappointed with their lack of interaction with other Second Life residents, “It would have been more fun in the real SL rather than the UT island, the actual second Life game, there is more stuff to do, its not just a campus, it’s a whole world”.

For a month or so a number of select users were testing the voice chat in the beta grid. As of 5:38pm PDT on 3/28/07, that option is not open to everyone. You can find details by going here:
http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/03/28/voice-beta-live/

So - is voice in Second Life a good thing?

Many of us have gotten used to new habits developed due to needed to type conversations. There has been a whole etiquette developed surrounding this process. In fact, some of my non-education friends are very against voice chat.

I believe there is good use for voice chat - teaching, groups, etc.... But walls and ceilings don't stop sound in Second Life. So, right now, if someone is having a conversation with 20m of you, you "see" it, even though you are not part of it. Once voice chat comes in, you will be able to "hear" it as well.

One friend reported a trip to the beta grid where she was outcast and ignored by a group who were chatting because she would not use the voice chat. She said they were downright hostile.

Granted, that might have been an isolated incident, but it is likely that voice chat could segregate the SL community. I would not be surprised if the ability to use voice chat becomes an item in private SIM covenants.

This list is generating an IMMENSE amount of traffic right now - but if you want to see what people are talking about, this would be a good place to start.https://lists.secondlife.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/educators

It would be disingenuous to present only the good things about Second Life. The lagging, inventory issues, downtime, etc... One thing I've heard from a few people is that getting a response to an email is a challenge. Now, however, I have some proof of that. The most recent entry (top one) is from a few minutes ago.

***** ***** *****

Ok - trying again.

You say to write to this email address, but it doesn't seem as if it is being monitored. And if it is, why have I not even gotten the decency of a response.

On 3/19/07 5:14 PM, "AJ Kelton" wrote:

> Hello again,

> > I never received a response to my email and the problem continues. I was, > just now, sitting next to the computer that has SL running and saw the pop up > come up, I went to click on OK right away, but got the second "you are not > logged off" message.

> > Look forward to a response.

> > aj

> > On 3/14/07 11:44 AM, "AJ Kelton" wrote:

> >> Hello,

>> >> For the first few days, I'd get the blue "you will be..." pop up and then a >> few minutes would go by before being kicked off. Lately, however, I've been >> getting the "you will be..." at the same time as the "buh-bye!"

"It's been said that there are two types of computer users: Those who get this joke and those who don't."

Taken from the web page of Dot.Tunes, which you can find at http://dotpad.com. This application allows you to publish an iTunes playlist (or lists, or the entire library) to a web page for distribution to any device that can get music from a URL - such as an X Box, PDA, or, hopefully, Second Life.

If this works, it opens up a lot of possibilities for faculty members. The alternative that SL recommends is over $200 and is a full-featured application. It appears that Dot.Tunes does just enough so that it will work for what is needed. The possibilities are as limited as whatever the faculty members can put into iTunes.

There was no manual online (I was told its in the works) but they did have a forum to post questions into. I posted a question only to find that the first time you post, the posting needs to be moderated – a safety precaution I suppose. Within a few hours I got a note back from someone at dot.tunes indicting they would like for this to work and what was SL looking for in the feed. I provided the person with everything I new, or could find on SL, including URLs from services that already stream into SL. That was on Saturday and I’ve heard nothing since. TO be honest, I was surprised to hear anything over the weekend anyway, but I was hoping that they would at least post my request into the forum. Perhaps there are others out there who can help solve the puzzle.

I said to someone last night, half-jokingly but half not, really…that I think Massively-Multiuser Virtual Worlds (MMVW’s for short, but to be honest, I wish we’d pick one and stick with it, there are too many acronyms out there for this.), are going to have the most profound impact on education since the book.

I don’t know what I could have been thinking when I said that. That is simply ridiculous, clearly I should have said the chalkboard.

But seriously, folks…is this thing on? [thump thump]

I am completely convinced that SL will have an immense impact on teaching, learning, and research. I know every thing that comes out is going to “replace” the in-class experience – TV, VCR, videoconferencing, LMS’s…everything has been the next big thing. But MMVW’s have the potential to do just that. Well, per se.

See, the thing about what happens in class in SL is that there IS a teacher, and there IS a class, and there IS a classroom (or can be). The surroundings can be anything we want – a glacier melting or a tsunami, like on the NOAA site, or a Center for Learning in a Virtual Environment, like on my little corner of the digital world.