Second Life Education Research

Here’s the latest Intellacast! After a long hiatus the podcast is back! This episode is an interview with Akela Talamasca (aka Keoni Chavez in RL), the lead blogger for the Second Life Insider. We had a chat about avatars, blogging about SL, and VOICE in SL! Have a listen!

Have a listen…oh and after you listen…the […]

Zdnet and others are announcing the integration of voice chat in Second Life. According to Znet, only select beta users will be using the voice feature for now but the feature will roll out to the main grid by the end of March.
How it […]

Mike Bloxham, the Director of Insight and Researcher for the Center for Media Design here at Ball State, is the most amazing networker I’ve ever met. You need only talk to him for a minute to trust him and feel like you’ve known him for years. In his job at the CMD, Bloxham is responsible […]

I was lucky to have been invited to run an in-world education workshop for the MIT Beyond Broadcast conference today. We had a great turnout of about 20 people. The discussion ranged from creating connections between the real and the virtual, simple simulation tools that anyone can make in SL, all the way to Sloodle […]

My students have been studying how to read a space as a text of the community to which it belongs. We’ve drawn maps of common places (our kitchens, the local food court, our classroom etc) and tracked the traffic to identify the focal points and shared artifacts in the space.
Last night we moved our studies to […]

Have you ever wandered into one of the SL welcome areas and been asked “So now what do I do?” or “Where can I go to fight?” If you have, you’ve run into an MMORPG player. The most common response I hear from gamer friends who try SL (because they want me to shut up […]

Last night in my class one of my students, sitting at a table in the back of the room, kept smiling at his laptop screen. He wasn’t clicking much, not typing at all, and seemed a bit engaged in the discussion though not as engaged as others. Midway through the discussion I asked what was […]

 Paul Madsen, Conor Cahill, Richard Piccarreto and I all participated in Aldo Castaneda’s Digital Identity podcast last week. Have a listen! We discussed everything from OpenID to how digital identities are formed. It was a blast and I learned a bunch from these great guys. Have a listen and I’m sure you’ll learn a thing […]

From YouTube to blogs to Doritos commercials in the Super Bowl and the new Bare Naked Ladies video, User Generated Content (UGC) is everywhere.  It’s fabulous that the average Joe (or Josephine) can become a creator instead of just a passive consumer. And though the term UGC is certainly under contention and most folks agree […]

Mark your calendars. The 2007 Second Life Community Conference will be held on August 24-26 in Chicago at the Hilton Chicago. To follow details of the entire conference check out JennyFur’s official SLCC Blog.
This year’s conference will have an education track with lots of great events, presentations, and a chance to mix and mingle with […]

Yes, the blog title is extreme, but it got your attention.
As if we needed another excuse to be sure that teachers get adequate training in the use of computers in the classroom, here is a case that should influence us all. Here’s the story in a nutshell:
“On October, 19, 2004, Amero was a substitute teacher […]

Well, Ted Stevens is at it again. This time instead of spouting about “Internet Tubes” he’s trying to pass a bill to force public schools to ban “interactive websites” which would include MySpace for sure but could be applied to Wikipedia, Google Docs, and lots of other useful sites.
I think it’s rather funny that Stevens […]

As many of you may know Jenkins, Shirky, and Coleman have been having a round-about blog-based debate about the perceptions of Second Life and the inflated user numbers. To read Henry Jenkins’ latest post (which does a great job of summarizing the bigger points of Shirky’s latest comments too) go here.
To get you caught up, […]

One of the most important tenets of my class is making sure that students understand how the elements of the rhetorical situation influence each other. Students learn to unpack the rhetorical decisions made by others and then to construct their own responses to situations (real and constructed). In an effort to help my students internalize […]

My students are working on a new project. They’re writing a “pitch” for an immersive virtual environment in response to an ad I wrote for them:
WANTED: Design Idea and Rationale for an Immersive Virtual Space
A group of Second Life residents seek a well-developed design for an immersive virtual space. We seek a space that will […]

Teaching Visual Communication and Rhetorical Contexts Through the Construction of Immersive Spaces
This passage is a section of an abstract I submitted to the Immersive Worlds conference at Brock University.
Cathedrals inspire awe and reverence. A long dark path through the woods evokes a sense of mystery and adventure. A well designed store compels us down the […]

The Elearning Guild published their 360 Degree Report on Immersive Learning Simulations today. You can access a preview here with a free membership. Included in the report is a case study I wrote about my class in Second Life. Give it a read and let me know what you think. Also, be sure to explore […]

Have a listen HERE.

“In this episode, Susan shares her experience learning about Second Life, the virtual world receiving a lot of press as an environment with distance education potential. Part of her journey included meeting Sarah Robbins, who is indeed teaching within Second Life.” 

Multi-user virtual environments, whether game or non-game, all have one thing in common: communication. All MMORPGs, CVEs, MUVEs…you can’t have multiple users in an environment and not have some kind of resulting communication between them. The communication may be non-verbal through gestures, appearance, or battle. Verbal communication may take the form of private instant messages, […]