Second Life Education Research

Hey folks! Just a reminder. If you’re watching this page for updates and disappointed you might want to check out my new blog Ubernoggin where I write about technology, education, business and other smart stuff. Go check it out!

Mark Bell (www.storygeek.com) and I are currently writing Second Life for Dummies. At the end of the book we’ll be listing a few top ten lists. I’d really like these lists to reflect, not just what I find interesting and useful, but also what others find as well. So here it is, your turn to […]

Hehe! Even after over a year of news coverage, the New York Times, USAToday and others I still get a thrill from being mentioned in the news.

I’m still reeling over how amazing this event was. Can’t wait for next week’s NMC conference.

I was a bit of a slacker with sources on my PowerPoint for last Friday’s Best Practice conference in SL so I’ve received a few requests for sources. I’ll give you one better. I’ll give you my whole research bib. I tend to maintain one big one in a spreadsheet that allows me to draw […]

Hey folks! It’s finally summer break here. Phew! We made it through another academic year. Over the summer I’ll be focusing a bit more of my attention to my new blog UberNoggin. I hope you’ll all check it out, grab the feed, and tune in. There will still be lots of Second Life stuff there […]

One of the toughest parts of playing with new ideas is finding a way to effectively present those ideas to other people. You wrestle with PowerPoint graphs, charts, doodles you make in Photoshop and finally stomp off in a frustrated huff. Well, no more! Ralph Lengler and Dr. Martin J. Eppler from visual-literacy.org have developed […]

The term “web 2.0″ has become about as hackneyed as a Valley Girl’s “gag me with a spoon.” Everything from Youtube (which is actually an example of what web 2.0 is meant to describe) to a car’s company’s “build your own car” page (which is far from it) is being described as “web 2.0.” The […]

It’s official. In May I will begin a new position as the Director of Emerging Technologies (great title, huh?) at Media Sauce in Indianapolis.
Media Sauce is a fantastically hip multi-media marketing company. As Director of Emerging Technologies I will be responsible for researching and creating “the next big thing” in multi-media content delivery and creation. […]

For the past few months I’ve been working on a covert project for ANGEL Learning (www.angellearning.com). Together with their chief products officer, Ray Henderson, a few students, and with lots of input from SLED members, who were sworn to secrecy, we’ve developed Angel Learning Isle. The island […]

Billy tunes out during discussion. Sally would rather pass notes about boys than read an assignment. As teachers, it’s our job to engage our students and to teach them to learn, to be excited and curious about the world around them. To feel that the subject matter in our classes is relevant and important to […]

I certainly advocate evangelize for technology in the classroom. I’ve spoken to teachers all around the country in an effort to get them excited about using technology to teach and learn and it’s wonderful to see folks get excited about their teaching. To see the virtual “light bulbs” popping up around a group of teachers […]

I attended the American Education Researcher’s Association conference in Chicago. Dr. Sharon Tettegah organized a great invited panel for us. There were eight panelists with only seven minutes each and, beyond the technology problems we ran into, we made the best of our brief presentations. Ranging from Jeremy Kemp’s presentation about Sloodle to Vicki Suter’s […]

Mother’s day is coming soon. My mom (in her mid 50s) just registered her first domain and blogs every day. She amazes me at every turn. So here with Mom’s day approaching I’m trying to figure out what to get my newly-techy mother for a gift and I read her blog only to find out […]

Nancy Baym was nice enough to tag me on the latest blogger’s meme: the Simply Successful Secrets project. The idea is to list five things you do everyday that contribute to your success so that we can all learn from each other and be more “successful” together. Apparently I’m “on a roll” lately so […]

It’s still completely strange to me that folks are posting videos of the talks I give. Anyhow…if you weren’t able to listen in last Monday or you just wanna see my shiny face have a look here to see the video shot at UNC. Thanks to Larry Taylor for shooting this and posting it.

Here are some links I mentioned in my Project Parlor today at Educause. Please feel free to poke around and bring any questions you might have to tomorrow’s concurrent session.

To create a Second Life account, navigate to www.secondlife.com and click on the orange “Join Now” button
Second Life Education page
Second Life Educator’s Mailing List
Second Life Researchers’ […]

The UNC talk went so well today. We had over 60 people in the room in RL and 80+ in SL. Audio was streamed in, Larry Taylor did a great job displaying my Powerpoint, while Mark “drove” my avatar so I could talk to the room. UNC will be posting video of the talk soon. […]

I don’t know why I’m so excited, but I am. Finally over 100 del.icio.us bookmarks for my site! Woot woot!

Chris Essex, of Indiana University, interviewed me about my Second Life class. You can listen here.  It’s a fun listen and he asked great questions. Have a listen!

I’ve been working on lots of presentations lately but this one is the most fun. For CCCC I’ll be talking about the value of identity play in SL as a benefit to education. This picture is the first slide of the PowerPoint. A little provocative? Maybe. But very fun. The allusion to “What Not to […]

Monday. It’s week two of Intellatour 2007! This week I’m off to New York City for CCCC and then off to Raliegh NC for a lecture at UNC and Educause Immersive Learning Environments focus session. Between the two stops I’m presenting SEVEN times! Yikes. Here’s the lowdown:

Thursday 3/22: 6:30 pm 1Up Video Games Special Interest […]

You know Second Life has “arrived” when blocking it is a selling point for security software. According to Computer Active, security software company Sophos will soon release a patch to prevent corporate users to log in to SL. And I thought only high schools were control-freakish enough to clamp down on computer use with this […]

Over at The Atlantic, Michael Hirschorn is writing about whether or not the “Web 2.0 bubble” is about to burst. Hirschorn quotes Todd Dagres, co-founder of venture-capital firm Spark Capital, told The Wall StreetJournal. “[speaking of the current wave of web 2.0 sites]Lots of incomplete and […]

I’ve just come back from a day of presentations at Columbia College in Chicago. In the afternoon I spoke in Patrick Lichty’s media theory class. Patrick had just begun to introduce MMO culture so I gave a little talk about identity construction in digital environments. Via communication mechanics is these digital spaces, we create versions […]

I’ve been interested in participatory media for years and it just keeps getting more interesting. Last night on Heroes (best show on TV by the way) NBC announced a contest that allows viewers to submit their theories about the truth behind on the twists and intrigue in the show via videos. This is far from […]

AngryBeth Shortbread is a genius! If you haven’t been to The Port, then GO! Go now! Come back and read the rest of this later. If you have been there, well…go again! Why? Because AngryBeth does something that most great Metaverse creators just don’t seem the catch on to…she changes things up. The great bits […]

For the last few weeks my students have been researching the rhetorical relationship between communities and the spaces they inhabit. The students have written several blog entries analyzing spaces they find interesting in real life to break down how communities create spaces and how these spaces serve to create emotional responses and prompt people to […]

We’ve all made the jokes about the lack of reliability in Microsoft products and I’d normally be the last person to crow about the wonders of anything with so much spyware…HOWEVER…Office 2007 Word makes blogging to a Wordpress site so nice!

Since I updated to Firefox 2.0 I’ve had endless problems with the popup menus that […]

This is pretty interesting. Take a look.

A recent study by professors at San Diego State finds that today’s college students are narcissist. Over 16,000 college students filled out a questionnaire to measure their NPI score (Narcissistic Personality Inventory). “The NPI test divides narcissism into seven components: superiority, exhibitionism, entitlement, vanity, authority, exploitiveness and self-sufficiency.” (Pinsky)
The study asserts that narcissists “are more […]

Thanks, Spin. How nice of you to say so.

Pheww! Take a deep breath. Don’t scream. Well not until after you watch this. Yes, Fox news has done a report on the John Edwards campaign (which it claims is officially endorsed by his office though I’ve read the contrary).
Seriously, after watching this “news” report I had to walk laps around my living room to […]

In the podcast I recorded yesterday with Akela Talamaska we discussed the potential effects of the integration of voice in Second Life. As we discussed it I mentioned that voice might result in a “wave of honesty across the grid.” As is the case with many […]

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, […]

Before reading this post be sure to read the posts by Henry Jenkins and Clay Shirky (Beth Coleman is weighing on this as well but her post wasn’t up when I read, still not up as of 2/1). Jenkins, Shirky, and Coleman plan to have a conversation regarding Second Life via their blogs over the […]

As you all may know the Colts are going to beat the Bears into the ground in next weekend’s Super Bowl. To add to the fun my friend and local crazy media guy, Ryan Hupfer, is hosting Bear Vs. Colt. There’s a new video every day so be sure to check it out! It’s a […]

This week’s INtake magazine (circulation of about 70k around central Indiana) features a cover story on Second Life with a huge picture of yours truly. It’s a great story covering SL culture, education, and the wonderful strangeness of it all.
Jim Walker, the writer, even interviewed one of the students from last semester’s class. How […]

Last night the Center for Media Design here at BSU announced that, together with the BBC, they are hosting an interactive television contest. Two lucky students will get to spend eight weeks in London this summer with all expenses paid. In return, the students must develop a pitch for an interactive media experience centered around […]

I’m sure we all get them. The emails that are addressed from someone we know and yet is full of jargon with an image attached selling Cialis and Viagra. I’m not sure exactly how the text is generated for these emails. I suspect it’s based on popular word ratings.
Maybe it’s because I’m often procrastinating doing […]

“Pick up after yourself!”
“Don’t leave things sitting around in public areas!”
“No balls in the house!”
Such was my first night of the new semester. My spring ENG 104 class is 15 men and one female. I don’t want to stereotype about how messy teenage boys are…but ok, yes I do. Geesh, are they messy! Last night, […]

I’ve been consulting at a local high school for the past few months. My job is to help the six teachers in the department learn to integrate the new computers in their classrooms into their pedagogy. When I last posted about this work I received an excited response from others doing similar work so I […]

After a month of waiting, Christine Lagario’s article about education in Second Life is finally in print. Here is a link to the online version.
In the past few weeks we’ve experienced a barrage of anti-SL hype. It was my hope that the great work that folks are doing in SL would finally get more coverage […]

A recent veritable onslaught of anti-Second Life journalism seems to be the “scoop de jour” for the end-of-the-year tech stories. Shirky and others are having their five minutes of fame on the back of Second Life user stats. Good for them. I suppose when there’s nothing more important to write about journalists become mathematicians and […]

I’m working on a book chapter entitled “’CVE, MUVE, MMOE, MMORPG…What’s the difference?’: Virtual Environments as Compositional Models.” In the chapter I attempt to delineate between different types of digital environments in which communication/composition can happen. In effect, what I’m doing is laying out the qualities that an instructor may be looking for in an […]

Among all the other projects I’m endeavoring to wrap up over holiday break (book chapters, case studies, conference papers, oh my!) I’m also doing a major rebuild of Middletown island where I teach my class. Based on student feedback and my own reflections of exercises that could have gone better, I’ve made plans to change […]

I make a practice of checking out free online games. I call it research. You can call it goofing off if you want to. Regardless, when I come across a gem like this one I can’t help but think my “goofing off” is time well spent.
In an effort to attract young women to their company, […]

Final papers are graded; scantron sheets filled out and turned in; the semester is over. We walk away from our offices for break, looking forward to the work we have to finish before the spring semester starts. Rarely, a student might ask for his/her final paper comments but usually after the questions about grades are […]

I’m going to be writing half a dozen articles summing up the semester, my thoughts, and what I’ve learned while teaching in Second Life this semester.
This week my students presented their final group presentations, showing off their websites/wikis. As they finished presenting I asked each group what role the build played in their writing process. […]

As part of the sessions I’ve been running with local high school students I’ve been asking them to take an anonymous survey to tell me a little about how they use the internet. I’ll use the result to tweak my goals for the project. However, as I look over the results I’m finding lots of […]

If you read my blog at all then you know I’m infatuated with the concept of identity as it appears in virtual worlds and especially as it appears in Second Life. I recently developed an alt avatar to explore some of these concepts. The image above (click on it to see a larger image) shows […]

This week I spent time meeting with each teacher in the English department of the high school where I’m doing contract work. I should begin by saying that I am NOT a high school teacher nor have I ever been one (or want to be after this). These teachers should be commended for the great […]

I was recently contracted to work at a local high school a few days a week helping the teachers in the English department learn to integrate their new Linux machines into their pedagogy. It’s a fantastic opportunity to gain a more thorough understanding of the obstacles teachers face when utilizing technology in the classroom. Plus, […]

I’m no expert on self-marketing but I’m learning more and more all the time and the more I learn and experience the more I become a devout believer in the need to toot one’s own horn. In previous posts I’ve discussed the importance of self-branding. I understand that not everyone wants to be an “Intellagirl” […]

I spent this weekend in Nashville TN at the annual conference for NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English). What an incredible group of people. This conference is annual chance to really talk to K-12 English teachers about technology in their classrooms. There seems to be a stereotype that in all of their concern about […]

Inside Higher Ed published an article yesterday titled “Are College Students Techno Idiots?” but don’t be fooled by the title. The article isn’t about the whole of what we consider technoliteracy. Rather, it’s about information literacy (which could imply that it’s the author who is the real id…well, that’s not important). The key […]

Can a game teach students how to write?

In a recent episode of dissertation-delaying procrastination I played a few flash games from Shockwave.com. Diner Dash II, Cake Mania and Carrie the Caregiver are basically the same game with different themes and graphics. All three require the player to attend to needy customers by accomplishing an increasingly […]

This morning I started a new listserv for folks conducting research in Second Life.
If you’d like to subscribe go here 

Mark Bell  and I went to IU  yesterday for a brown bag lunch session featuring Lee Sheldon  discussing his Londontown project. This virtual environment will be a fascinating interactive experience in Victorian era London. Complete with all the great characters and figures of the time, Londontown will allow residents to interact with Dr. Jekyl, help […]

Yesterday I was involved in a panel of Second Life educators invited to speak at the NMC  about arguing for the legitimacy of Second Life as an education tool.
Jeremy Kemp put together a fantastic panel. It was, by far, one of the most useful events I’ve ever attended in Second Life.
My ten minutes focused […]

Tonight in my face to face class there will be no fewer than three video cameras from media sources. Our local news station, a campus news show, and MSNBC will be here filming the class. I’ve got a CD of machinima footage shot by Susi Spicoli to give away as well.
It’s certainly strange for me […]

Over the weekend the press was all abuzz with the discovery of a new Robert Frost poem. Robert Stilling, a PhD student at the University of Virginia, discovered the poem written on the inside cover of a book donated to the university library as part of a larger collection. Congratulations to Mr. Stilling, of course. […]

It’s official. I must be popular. This blog came up on my “Intellagirl” Technorati feed. Apparently someone writing a Swedish SPAM blog puts me in the same categories as “Michael Moore, David Byrne, Walter Cronkite, Melanie Griffith, Bruce Willis, Steve Rubel (PR-strateg på Edelman) och Sarah Robins (aka Intellagirl).” I’ve run the site through a […]

Last week’s “Black Wednesday” update lasted well into Thursday with all kinds of system weirdness. Textures were missing (including the grass), folks were missing money, items, landmarks etc. All the typical update hiccups that we’ve come to expect. However, by Thursday night Linden was conducting rolling restarts if regions during my class. Students trying to […]

On Septermber 12 I was fortunate to have been invited to speak to the Kuurian Expedition group in SecondLife. What a fantastic group of people.
My talk was multi-fold. As an educator, I wanted to share the kinds of exercises my students are engaging in to illustrate the ways that SecondLife can be used as […]

The major goal of my ENG104 class is, of course, to teach students how to conduct and write research. I’m focusing on ethnographic research as the primary method for the semester though students will also learn to conduct library research to gain background information for their projects. In the first week we learned some […]

It seems the world is abuzz with news of education in SecondLife. Here are just a few stories from the last week.
The Chronicle of Higher Education : Here and Here
The San Antonio Current
And The Boston Phoenix (from two weeks ago)

Finally, the world seems to be taking SecondLife seriously and seeing past the strip clubs, Barbie-Doll […]

My SL class met for the first time on Tuesday night. They are, every single last one of them, fantastic! Spunky, smart, techy people! I can’t wait to spend more time with them. I’m incredibly lucky to have such a great class.
Tonight we’ll meet in a computer lab on campus and have a bit of […]

It’s official. Someone wrote an entry about me on Wikipedia and the editors allowed it to stay!
I’m so psyched!

My class starts tomorrow. I actually think I’m more excited about this class than I was for the very first class I ever taught back in 1997 (geesh I’m old).
There are quite a few unique concepts in this course:
1. Hybrid: The class will meet once a week in a face to face classroom here on campus. […]

Katie Cohen of the Boston Phoenix interviewed me yesterday for a piece about education in SL. I’ll post a link when the story gets published. I think she interviewed a few other people as well. Should be fun to read.

I’ve been developing a theory of identity that will accomodate emerging digital identities and the conflicts and dichotomies that often arise from them.
Click here to see the diagram I’m working on right now. It’s a bit complex and somewhat untested so I’ll be podcasting about it a bit later to explain it better.

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