Dynamics of the collaboration process.

As I recall it was quite difficult to arrange meeting times through the MUVEnation forum so that the whole group could attend but we did manage a core and adopted another member who could not contact her team.
The discussion process was fairly easily facilitated through everyone checking understanding and agreement very amicably.

Interestingly despite being seated in RL whenever I am at the computer, I do feel more relaxed when my avatar is seated and the log fire at the Muvenation site seemed to promote a harmonious and relaxing atmosphere in which to plan our group activity.

The initial phase was deciding what to research. We then returned at a later date with the infomration on the sites we had researched. Tere has posted these local chat conversations, to which we all agreed.

Because we used local chat it was easy to go back and check what everyone had said. As the avatar cannot give visual clues easily (like nodding and smiling in RL) it is important to show you are listening and assenting within the text, to demonstrate agreement.

The process of collating and agreeing did not pose any significant problems, although we did anticipate that it might with all our different interests.

We all agreed to search within our chosen selection of words and the second meeting we agreed which sites we would individually use for our travel guide. Searching had to go beyond our agreed words because of limited results. Despite a couple of us having picked the same sites this was divided amicably.

I was happy to choose from a variety I had investigated and in fact continued to look at more sites and eventually chose a more interactive themed site.

Initially it was motivating to have the group presence to get started but I did find the constant switching from Blogs to Flickr to Moodle tedious and demotivating. I had also made handwritten notes because of the hours spent looking at the screen. I spent at least 6 hours looking at sites and taking screen shots, only a few I actually used.

The six hours did not include the time spent at meetings, and I spent almost three additional hours yesterday collating in the various wikis, blogs etc. It was also motivating to visit the wiki and see the others’ work already there to which I added my own travel guide notes.
I felt positive about my team who had worked to compile the wiki and especially to Bascule and Tere who had posted the logs and ensured my contributions had been commented on when I did not have the time to do so myself. It is fairly typical of me that I do a lot of work that never gets seen because I never know when to stop. Bascule kept me on task, but living in the same house, he also give me additional support when I was flagging in RL.

I was not aware of any misunderstandings or problems but I was too busy with RL employment to check back with other members of the group after the initial meetings to know if they were happy with my contributions. As I started late on the course, I have not made many comments on anything, neither have I engaged in online conversations as much as I should, and I will address this in the next phase having got to grips with other elements.

As a drama practitioner I do enjoy working with others, although as a teacher and director one might assume I like taking responsibility... but actually I do enjoy others taking the lead and only like responsibility when I am totally confident.

Teen SL Global Kids

As Teen SL is not available for anyone over the age of 17 unless they have gone through Linden's security checks, I have had to take images from machinima on Youtube and information from Global Kids Website.

Video of conference for Virtual Worlds LA Sept 2008
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiqdgREXRc4&feature=channel_page

Presidential Debate learners listening to the president talking and commenting in local chat

CONSENT ...a game ceated by global kids about experimentation on prisoners through the ages.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jx9XJDYOC9s&feature=channel

Global Kids machinma on "A Child's War"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nK54WRu0jW4&feature=channel

Global Kids Digtial Media Initiative using Machinima for pressing global issues...after a series of workshops they chose child sex trafficking for their subject to raise awareness 450 donations from teens for the cause.

http://www.holymeatballs.org/2006/10/sl_best_practices_for_educatio.html

The following information comes from the Global Kids Website.

"Founded in 1989, and an independent nonprofit since 1993, Global Kids educates and inspires urban youth to become successful students and global and community leaders by engaging them in socially dynamic, content-rich learning experiences. Through its leadership development and academic enrichment programs, Global Kids educates youth about critical international and domestic issues and promotes their engagement in civic life and the democratic process. Through professional development initiatives, Global Kids provides educators with strategies for integrating experiential learning methods, international issues, and service learning into urban classrooms. Over ninety percent of the high school seniors who participate in Global Kids’ leadership program graduate from high school. About the OLP: Global Kids, Inc. is a nationally recognized leader in using digital media to promote global awareness and youth civic engagement. Global Kids’ Online Leadership Program integrates a youth developmentapproach and international and public policy issues into youth media programs that build digital literacyand STEM skills, foster substantive dialogues, develop resources for educators, and promote civic participation."

Another Global Kids project is CONSENT which was developed by the learners as an immersive experience within teen SL to learn about the choices given to prisoners about "volunteering" for medical experiments through different periods in history. The learner is given the choices and incentives such as early parole; better food; and financial rewards.

Teen SL is for 13-17 year olds so this is the target audience. Created by learners for learners, facilitated by adults.

The Holocaust Memorial Museum cont.

Who are the owners of the location and how is it organized (is there a community, group, etc)?

In continuation of yesterday's blog the museum was created by the US Holocaust Museum.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/US%20Holocaust%20Museum1/25/34/27

Education Sites - Holocaust Museum

In which way does this location address educational issues?

The museum attempts to create an immersive experience of the aftermath of Kristallnacht and charges the visitor with the task of collating the witness statements as a news report left on notecards pinned to a board. The notecards were however as far as I could see simply personal responses and I did not see any actual visitor news reports.

The reporter moves around the streets encouraged to listen to accounts and look at the evidence of destruction and recorded statements. There are no avatar represaentation of witnesses and this might have helped the experience. As a teacher I might prepare an avatar in period costume with which the learners could interact and interview. Argualbly this would be going away from the actula real witness statements but the interaction was quite limited to listening and looking. No higher order thinking is required in the reporting task uness learners are guided to evaluate what they have seen and heard. In a class situation this could for example be done with the dilemna of reporters of the period and what constraints might be placed upon them.

I did not feel I wanted to leave a message on the board as anything I might say would only seem trite or superficial. I think however, if done as part of a lesson with input on how to write news reports, a cross curricular English/ History task where the reports would be shared within the class group either as blogs or in SLreports.

According to you, which is the target audience of the educational events/action taking place in the location?

The target audience would be 12-14 year olds in particular I would think but could be for older students studying GCSE History for example, as a starter for a topic.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/US%20Holocaust%20Museum1/25/34/27

Reflections and Self Diagnosis

A. I am your friend. I don’t work in education. You are talking to me about the idea that we all learn from each other, in all kinds of contexts, and that this can often be richer than more formal classroom based learning. I am sceptical. Tell me about an informal learning experience you have had online in which collaboration was involved, show me a concrete example to help me to see what you mean.
Creative Writing and Mandarin Chinese informal learning: skills exchange.
An informal situation where I collaborated on line was after a friend of my daughter’s came to stay from America. They were learning Chinese and I also wanted to learn. Before my class started I spent time each day on instant messenger with the friend who had gone to China for a year, learning a little each day through basic conversation. I was also learning from some on line resources and I would try them out through Instant Messaging. My duaghter’s friend was very patient correcting me and giving me more to learn. We then started sending emails in Chinese. I spent a lot of time with a dictionary because they were much further ahead than me.
When they broke their ankle and were stuck in the university for a half term and needed distraction beyond learning Chinese, I played some spontaneity games via Instant Messaging ,which allows one person, in this case myself to lead the other through a creative story writing exercise.
This exercise is based on the improvisation work of Keith Johnstone, but normally done orally rather in written from, but it allows hours to pass by in creating a story. Instant Messaging really lends itself to this. One person asks open ended questions which takes the other person on an adventure, almost entirely led by their own imagination . The skill of the leader is to free up the imagination. “You are in a darkened room how many doors are there and what do they look like? Which door do you go up to and listen at? What can you hear….open the door a crack what can you see….you slip into the space…etc etc..”


B. Tell us about that new tool, or set of tools, you have just discovered that really excites you, talk about the potential it has to change your work. What do you want to do with it?
I am currently developing a teen SL island with a production company as a virtual summer school for collaborative creative projects. The reason for starting this is to try to combat the difficulties of gifted and talented learners together from across the county.
I have been exploring different ways that you can bring learners together, which started with some Honeycomb software which enable learners to share and comment on each other’s work on line. We currently have a project with three schools in year 7 after a pilot project with KS1 learners. The year 7’s are using the game Myst as a stimulus for creative writing.
The Honeycomb software allows the students to go home and continue their school work if they want to , show their parents and the assessment for learning comments of their teachers.


C. Do you see yourself as a pioneer? Do you think you are more innovative than others in your organization? Do you think your organization is lagging behind? Tell us how you feel about this.

I have been asked to come to the LA IT conference to talk about the work we are pioneering particularly the Teen SL project. I consider this to be an indicator that I must be pioneering as I advise in the filed of Gifted and Talented Education. But I am also involved in the National training of practitioners teaching on the new Creative and Media Diploma and I can see immediate links. I consider staying ahead with technology and virtual worlds as essential if I am to represent The Creative and Media Industry.

I have always tried to be at the forefront in school as a teacher in terms of technology developing websites with the whole year’s schemes of work for non-specialists and revision websites for learners in my subject Drama, where such things did not exist. I was using projection in performance work 30 years ago at university, before digital projectors existed and computers filled whole rooms. This has been inspired by my husband who has had endless patience helping me when I can’t make things do what I want them to! I did however lock myself in a room for a few days and I asked him not to come even if I screamed for help in my determination to learn Frontpage all by myself nearly 10 years ago.

Working for an LA creates constant frustration with the filtering of all the resources I need such as Youtube, SL, Teen SL, Hotmail, Facebook, Instant Messaging and so on. I have to work on my own equipment most of the time in the pioneering work. However many advisers are aware that we need these tools at the very least to access the world of the young people we teach.

Reflections and Self Diagnosis

A. I am your friend. I don’t work in education. You are talking to me about the idea that we all learn from each other, in all kinds of contexts, and that this can often be richer than more formal classroom based learning. I am sceptical. Tell me about an informal learning experience you have had online in which collaboration was involved, show me a concrete example to help me to see what you mean.
Creative Writing and Mandarin Chinese informal learning: skills exchange.
An informal situation where I collaborated on line was after a friend of my daughter’s came to stay from America. They were learning Chinese and I also wanted to learn. Before my class started I spent time each day on instant messenger with the friend who had gone to China for a year, learning a little each day through basic conversation. I was also learning from some on line resources and I would try them out through Instant Messaging. My duaghter’s friend was very patient correcting me and giving me more to learn. We then started sending emails in Chinese. I spent a lot of time with a dictionary because they were much further ahead than me.
When they broke their ankle and were stuck in the university for a half term and needed distraction beyond learning Chinese, I played some spontaneity games via Instant Messaging ,which allows one person, in this case myself to lead the other through a creative story writing exercise.
This exercise is based on the improvisation work of Keith Johnstone, but normally done orally rather in written from, but it allows hours to pass by in creating a story. Instant Messaging really lends itself to this. One person asks open ended questions which takes the other person on an adventure, almost entirely led by their own imagination . The skill of the leader is to free up the imagination. “You are in a darkened room how many doors are there and what do they look like? Which door do you go up to and listen at? What can you hear….open the door a crack what can you see….you slip into the space…etc etc..”


B. Tell us about that new tool, or set of tools, you have just discovered that really excites you, talk about the potential it has to change your work. What do you want to do with it?
I am currently developing a teen SL island with a production company as a virtual summer school for collaborative creative projects. The reason for starting this is to try to combat the difficulties of gifted and talented learners together from across the county.
I have been exploring different ways that you can bring learners together, which started with some Honeycomb software which enable learners to share and comment on each other’s work on line. We currently have a project with three schools in year 7 after a pilot project with KS1 learners. The year 7’s are using the game Myst as a stimulus for creative writing.
The Honeycomb software allows the students to go home and continue their school work if they want to , show their parents and the assessment for learning comments of their teachers.


C. Do you see yourself as a pioneer? Do you think you are more innovative than others in your organization? Do you think your organization is lagging behind? Tell us how you feel about this.

I have been asked to come to the LA IT conference to talk about the work we are pioneering particularly the Teen SL project. I consider this to be an indicator that I must be pioneering as I advise in the filed of Gifted and Talented Education. But I am also involved in the National training of practitioners teaching on the new Creative and Media Diploma and I can see immediate links. I consider staying ahead with technology and virtual worlds as essential if I am to represent The Creative and Media Industry.

I have always tried to be at the forefront in school as a teacher in terms of technology developing websites with the whole year’s schemes of work for non-specialists and revision websites for learners in my subject Drama, where such things did not exist. I was using projection in performance work 30 years ago at university, before digital projectors existed and computers filled whole rooms. This has been inspired by my husband who has had endless patience helping me when I can’t make things do what I want them to! I did however lock myself in a room for a few days and I asked him not to come even if I screamed for help in my determination to learn Frontpage all by myself nearly 10 years ago.

Working for an LA creates constant frustration with the filtering of all the resources I need such as Youtube, SL, Teen SL, Hotmail, Facebook, Instant Messaging and so on. I have to work on my own equipment most of the time in the pioneering work. However many advisers are aware that we need these tools at the very least to access the world of the young people we teach.

First Steps in 2nd Life

First experience of SL
I am on my second avatar as I have been exploring in preparation for developing an island for Gifted and Talented children in Teen 2nd Life before I heard of Muvenation: so I am reflecting on that experience.

Exploring 2nd Life has been obsessive for me in a way I would never have imagined.
The obsessive phase has been an excellent way to shed a few pounds before Christmas as I kept forgetting to eat, almost moving into the digital world where food is not necessary and also I suppose living off my nerves meeting new people and learning from them.

I compared it with learning on line poker when I moved from playing a machine to playing real people on line. Players with aliases left comments and made remarks during the games and whom I ignored to start with until I got some confidence and started winning. I was constantly nervous but realised this was great way to combat fear of failure, through an anonymous avatar. Fear of failure has plagued me as a high achiever and now I ma working with gifted and talented children to help them overcome potential risk aversion, hence my interest in 2nd life avatars.
I have not yet bonded with Amorphia, my alternate, as I relate to my first avatar who went through the first days and has been in 2nd Life daily. However I did experiment with turning my first avatar into a hideous dragon-fly occasionally to see the reactions of others. Interestingly I met the most interesting avatar and RL person behind it, on speaking to an avatar in the form of "Pedestrian man" his interpretation of the road signs, and on another occasion, he turned into a giant origami style star. He was new like me and interested in the creative side of SL and became my first friend. I have been learning and practicing my language skills in SL and have enjoyed this aspect erring of enormously, with dictionaries and notebooks, adding Dutch and Finnish to my smattering of languages. I am still amazed at the quality of English spoken in SL and one Dutch person told me about how he had learned a lot of his English through conversations in SL.

I was also struck how helpful people were from the Help island mentors to people I met. There is much complimenting of people on choice of avatar, garment, or hair etc and I began a collection of sparkly effects enjoying the magic of SL. I was approached early by someone asking me if I was an alt because they thought I looked so individual so quickly which I deemed to be a real compliment.
Interestingly as time goes on I have used SL for IMing friends running several conversations at a time discussing real life hobbies and real life experiences. It is interesting how simple role playing which is fun in the get to know you phase soon moves into more personal conversations although I gave away no real identifying information. “Pedestrian man” has now moved into my facebook as the only person I have allowed to make that transition. There were so many interesting pieces of information I was able to verify from numerous conversations that I had no doubt that he was genuinely who he described himself to be, and so far away geographically there was no chance he would arrive on my RL doorstep, if he could find out where it was.