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

Bibliography is here.

Powerpoint is here.

**Update: link to bib fixed

UBERNOGGIN 

Not only is it super handy to hover over each of the methods and see examples, but the chart itself helps us to see connections between different approaches. The table itself is a brilliant example of how the right visual can not only present information but actually make knowledge by organizing material.

Go check it out and be inspired!

1. The Web As Platform

Why this is important: In a few years we won’t remember what it was like to install new software with the exception of the latest fandangled browser. Our word processing, spread sheets, email and the like will all be online via a website. We’re already there in many ways thanks to Google’s docs, spreadsheets, and gmail. But I’m still writing this blog entry in Word 2007 which I installed off of a disk. Why is “the web as platform” a big deal? Access. Instead of investing in computers with gigs and gigs of hard drive space we can instead focus on a speedy connection and a bit of ram. More people will have access to the tools that we find common and we need not all have our own computer to be able to store documents and important information. In addition, being able to access your info from anywhere means no more lugging around laptops. Folks who can’t afford a computer won’t be so limited when they use a public access machine.

How this should change the way we think: Programs such as Photoshop are now online with cheap access. When we teach we can provide students access to software that would have been cost prohibitive in the past. Platforms like Second Life give us entrance to a world of human resources and concepts about 3D modeling (which we can also play with via Sketchup, another freebie from Google). More and more companies are learning that making their software available via a browser makes good business sense. We’re moving toward a model of openness that will benefit everyone (see #2 on this list), which makes us all potentially more productive, and builds great positive ethos for the companies which play along and let their guard down.

2. Harnessing Collective Intelligence

Why this is important: If you haven’t perused Pierre Levy’s book Collective Intelligence do it. The basic idea is that EVERYONE has knowledge that is valuable so SOMEONE. From the street cleaner to the CEO, we all have something to contribute. Wikipedia is the perfect example of the benefit of valuing collective knowledge. Everyone contributes and everyone benefits. Sites like Youtube and MySpace are close to this model in that they become “better” when more people contribute but there’s a line where too much is, well, too much and the site becomes burdensome to navigate. The real strength of harnessing the collective is that we all put in a little and get back a lot.

How this should change the way we think: In education we’ve got to start thinking about our students in a different way. They aren’t just receptacles to be filled with our knowledge. They’re knowledge makers and we can put them in the driver’s seat. They may be teenagers, returning adults, grandparents…whoever they are they have valuable experience and knowledge, unique perspectives and experiences. Making use of what they know and how they see the world can create a rich learning environment. Use a wiki, blog with comments, or any collaborative project that they design and execute and watch the ideas fly!

As businesses we should think of our customers the same way. They can teach us more about our product/service than we can teach them. As I’ve said before, a happy customer is a better marketing tool than any advertising campaign created by folks around a board room table. Smart companies allow their customers to become evangelists for their products.

In the end, the bottom line boils down to one concept: openness. Openness in business practices. Openness in classrooms. Openness in software and applications. The more we share, the more we benefit. Give away some power, some information and get so much more back.

For more great info about what web 2.0 is visit these links:

• Dana boyd’s great blog
• O’Reilly
• Web 2.0 on Wikipedia
• Mwesch’s great Youtube video explaining Web 2.0
• Go2Web2.0: a directory of web 2.0 sites. Great for inspiration
• Web 2.0 Validator: this site is meant to tell you whether a site is really “web 2.0.” I won’t vouch for that validity but the ongoing and evolving set of criteria is very interesting.
• Wired: This is an old article and that’s why it’s interesting. See what we Wired thought web 2.0 was going to be two years ago.
• Bullshitr: this is a parody but I find it informative as a way to see how much empty buzz centers around the fad of supposed web 2.0 sites.

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. I’ll be focusing on participatory technologies that put the consumer/producer/audience in the driver’s seat.

In addition to research in new technologies I’ll also be focusing on innovative ways to apply existing methods. Second Life and other immersive spaces, social networking, and participatory media models. I’ll also be hitting the road to talk to folks about this new model of marketing and training and writing white papers about the research we conduct.

It’s my dream job and I’m ecstatic about it! I’ll still be cranking away at the dissertation and teaching a class here and there as well.

Stay tuned for news about research and other projects. Also *blatant plug here* if you’re in need of a well developed Second Life space or you’d like to discuss another project drop me a line at my new email address sarah dot robbins at mediasauce dot com. I’m excited to harness the creative energies at Media Sauce and aim them at Second Life. We’re going to be up to some super innovative stuff so keep an eye out for us.

Last week I returned to my consulting work at a local high school after being away for a couple of weeks while I was on the “Intellatour.” While I was away the new Smart Boards were delivered and installed in the English department classrooms. Smart Boards are very simple touch screens that, with a LCD projector, create an interactive extension to a desktop machine. These simple devices completely changed the attitudes toward technology in the English hall. Skeptical teachers are now embracing new devices and best of all, they’re PLAYING with the technology.

The teacher who normally teaches theatre tech and acting and is now teaching more English classes than he’d like is using his Smart Board with Sketch-Up to draw theatre sets and plan blocking for the play he’s directing. Another teacher had students up at the board writing notes using the Smart Board pens, converting their writing to text, and making these the notes for the day’s discussion. Collaborative work has evolved where there was none. Teachers and students are invigorated about learning not just the technology but the course work as well.

This week I’ll be training all the teachers in the high school to use Moodle. I can only hope that this addition to the tools available to them will make an even greater impact in this little rural school system. Viva la technology!

Johnathon Richter at AERA

Everyone who knows me well knows I have a serious infatuation with socks. My mom takes it to a new level by making me home made ones that out do even my craziest pairs.

She rocks!

1. Live life as if it will end today: Every day I remember that this could be my last day on Earth or the last day of someone I love. I ALWAYS say “I love you” to my favorite people so they know how I feel. No regrets. No “woulda coulda shoulda”s. If something is burning me up I take care of it. There is no time like the present. Don’t put off tomorrow something you can do right now! Carpe Diem and all the stuff. I mean it people.
2. List the work, work the list: I got this one from my fav man, Mark. When I feel overwhelmed by what’s in front of me I go back to this saying and it helps me find a place to dive in. Plus, nothing is as beautiful as a list of completed work. Looking at last week in my planner, with everything crossed off, lets me know that if I did all that last week I can do what I have to do this week.
3. Be transparent: Tell people what you’re working on. Talk about what you’re thinking about. Share what you create with others. I do this by blogging, posting my PowerPoints and sharing what I know with anyone who is willing to listen.
4. Find joy in little things: It may sound sappy but I find great happiness in the fact that the one I love makes me coffee every morning. Before I wake up it’s there and ready for me. That little act of kindness on his part starts my day off right and I’m immediately looking for how I can pass on that feeling to someone else. My goofy socks makes me happy. A flock of birds flying in a perfect V shape in the sky reminds me that there is order in things. If you can find bliss in little, simple things then life is constantly amazing and what is more successful than feeling amazing?
5. Seek wisdom and value it: Everyone knows something of value. That little old man collecting cans, the waitress pouring your coffee, the student with the vacant look, your children….you can learn from them all. Listen to what they tell you.
6. Know what you’re capable of and then do a little bit more: push push push! Whether it’s in your work, your family, your passion…do as much as you can and then do a little more. All else fails, refer back to #1.

Well that’s my five plus one. Now who to tag next? Hmmm that’s tough. I know so many people I consider highly successful.

-My mother : she blogs now. I couldn’t be prouder of her. She’s a super mom!

-CC Chapman: a dedicated dad, super smart media guy, and endlessly genuine

-Chris Flook: he’s one tenacious dude and a fantastic friend. Watch him, folks. He’s gonna be BIG someday very soon.

-Dr. Samantha Blackmon: one of the most genuine, powerful women I’ve met in a long time. She pulls no punches.

-Mark Bell: the love of my life and one of the most inspiring people I know.

• 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’ Mailing List
• Second Life Education Blog, wiki, and forums
• Getting your own Second Life island
• A list of campuses that are currently involved in Second Life
• Virtual Newspapers
• SL Insider
• Second Life Herald
• Metaverse Messenger
• Education proceedings from the Education tracks of the 2006 Second Life Community Conference

There’s a definite benefit to being a little shocking when giving a presentation. What fun is there in listening to some say things you already know and agree with?

The PowerPoint is now posted here.

• Thursday 3/22: 6:30 pm 1Up Video Games Special Interest Group. Scott Reed, Matt Barton and I are running a “game” to show interested folks just how much of game design and play is rhetorical. Based on Burke’s Pentad, the game will allow us to explore games in a really interactive way vs the usual “who are you and what do you do?” stuff that normally happens at a SIG.
• Friday 3/23: 8:30 am My CCCC panel “Immersive Research and Experiential Writing in SecondLife: The Impact of 3D Worlds, Alternate Identities and Collaborative Activities in Composition” with Mark Bell and Bryan Carter (who can’t join us, unfortunately). We’ll be chatting about uses of Second Life in composition and new media classrooms.
• Friday 3/23: 10:30 am Computer Connection presentation about my upcoming book chapter about communication mechanics in virtual environments
• Friday 3/23: 7:30 pm Second Life interest group meeting in the New York suite on the Fourth Floor (The Hilton New York). I think this will be mostly composition folks but anyone in NY area is welcome. We’ll talk about using SL for education and answer general SL questions. Hopefully some folks will up for hitting the town afterwards.
  
• Monday 3/26: Chapel Hill NC, UNC talk about my research in virtual communications research. This lecture will take place from 11AM-12PM and will be hosted in
  the Undergraduate Library Room 205. Again, anyone in the Chapel Hill area is welcome.
  
• Tuesday 3/27: Educause project parlors “Immersion and Engagement in a Virtual Classroom: Using Second Life for Higher Education”
• Wednesday 3/28: Concurrent session 1:10 p.m. - 2:45 p.m. on immersion and engagement

Pheww! My little pink suitcase is hitting the road in a big way this week. I’ll be twittering and posting Flickr pics as often as possible. I’m looking forward to meeting lots of interesting folks and maybe even converting a few people to the wonders of teaching in Second Life. Wish me luck!

Pete Blackshaw’s CGM Glossary post helps quite a bit. Here are some summaries of his definitions:

• Consumer-generated media (CGM): “At its core, CGM represents first-person commentary posted or shared across a host of expression venues, including message boards, forums, rating and review sites, groups, social networking sites, blogs, and, of course, video-sharing sites. “
• Consumer-generated multimedia (CGM2): “This subset of CGM is more anchored to “site, sound, and motion” components, each with the potential to dial up the effect and persuasiveness of the consumer storytelling. “
• Consumer Fortified media: Such as the recent Dove campaign and, I would argue, the Heroes campaign a mentioned above. A company’s media effort is fortified by the participation and contributions of the audience.
• Consumer-solicited media (CSM): ” term that most commonly captures this form is “co-creation.” Others loosely call it “participatory advertising.” In essence, the marketer sets the specs, and consumers exercise a range of creativity and brand evangelism within those parameters”
• Compensated consumer-generated media (CCGM): “his is when marketers outright pay consumers to do certain things, or when publishers compensate artists or content creators for submissions.”
• Paid media: “This is exactly as it sounds. Marketers buy media, usually in the form of impressions, to affect sales. Some call this “marketer-generated media” (MGM)”

I don’t think many folks would argue that Second Life is some form of participatory media but which of these categories would you put it in? In some ways residents of SL are co-creators with Linden, thus making SL a form of CSM. If we didn’t make the world interesting and they didn’t make it possible there’d be no Second Life.

However, the way that Linden insists on letting its residents take the limelight for their innovations makes it feel a bit like CFM.

Things get even more convoluted when you consider specific efforts inside the SL world. How many spaces actually include content contributed by the folks who visit them and how many are built like static showcases?

Still thinking this over. What do you all think? Do we need to add a category to Blackshaw’s list to accomodate SL?

Ok you’re back.

You’ve seen the caves. You’ve seen that AngryBeth is always building and developing new features in her SL space. But this post is about more than the fact that Ms. Shortbread is a genius. It’s about the importance of making an SL space dynamic. Most folks spend a good amount of time developing a space when they first buy land but whether you’re a big Multiverse Development Company or just a little guy with a 512 newbie spot, you’ve got to keep it moving if you want to maintain a certain level of traffic. It’s not enough to build something grandiose if it stays static. The best stores get in new merchandise all the time. The best games add dynamic content to keep folks coming back. The best SL spaces offer a consistent and yet ever-changing (even if it’s just a bit of the space that changes) experience. A static sim in SL is about as exciting as your grandma’s living room. If it’s looked exactly the same way since you were five how eager are you to go back? And SL spaces don’t even bake cookies!

There are two ways to keep a space dynamic: 1) new interactive content and 2) new people. It’s a cycle. If you build it they will come. If you rebuild it, they’ll come again and again. The more people who stop by and spend time and tell their friends…well the more people who will come by, spend time, and tell their friends. See the trend? What’s the point of a great space if no one sees it?

Hiro Pendgragon recently blogged about the way that Dell has integrated their SL presence into their overall market strategy. This is also smart. If your SL space is an extension of a larger project (a website, a company, a class) it can’t be treated as optional. It shouldn’t be presented in a wishy-washy way that makes it seem less than necessary. In addition, if you’ve developed the space correctly, the people who visit it will make it necessary as well through their participation in the space.

We have to remember that building an SL presence is only the beginning of a long process. It’s a relationship. You wouldn’t consider landing the first date with a girl the end of the relationship and this is no different.

Last week the students presented “pitches” for rhetorical spaces which included details about the intended audience, focus points, ways to measure the effectiveness of the space, and some kind of interactive component that would require visitors to take an action. They researched Second Life and real life places, synthesized what they learned and proposed a space to the class. We had eight presentations ranging from recreating the Coliseum to creating a micro version of Chicago. After all the presentations were finished the students voted on which space they’d like to spend the rest of the semester researching, constructing, and then using for more research to write up in a final paper.

The winning plan is for a “Celebrity After-Party.” The goal of the space is make visitors understand the pressures of being a celebrity and inform them about common downfalls of well known people. While exploring the mansion, visitors will learn about the tension associated with paparazzi, the pressures of being a public figure, and the vices that often end careers and lives.

Click here to see the student PowerPoint for the project. *posted with student permission*
As you can see, the two students who put together the plan thought it out very well but now it’s the class’s turn to take it apart, collaborate on the details and make it a reality. Our first step will be A LOT of research and writing…shh don’t tell them. Besides learning about how spaces can be communicative, they’ll also be learning research skills (both primary and secondary), collaborative writing skills, and learning about the sort of “cult of personality” that surrounds celebrity. Unlike a generic paper, the project will require them to complete the research in order to proceed to the next step. After all, how can we create that Jimmy Hendrix room if we haven’t learned all there is to know about him?

Stay tuned…The students will be blogging the project progress here over the next two months.

Since I updated to Firefox 2.0 I’ve had endless problems with the popup menus that allow you to insert images and links in Wordpress. They’d be cut off, non responsive, and generally just finicky. However, since I’m completely reliant on Zotero I didn’t want to go back to a previous version of Firefox. Then I got Office 2007 and the blogging function in Word was like the heavens opening and Bill Gates handing me a giant aspirin to fix all my blogging headaches.

I blog in Word, click publish, and my text, images, and links go straight to this Wordpress site with nice formatting that doesn’t mess up my template. Images are sized just how I wanted them and I don’t end up screaming at my machine. I can even add borders and make use of all the goofy clipart that comes with Word!

I’ve also found this great site with easy to follow instructions to get your publishing options all set up. If you use Wordpress you should try it out!

*steps off infomercial soap box*

The study asserts that narcissists “are more likely to have romantic relationships that are short-lived, at risk for infidelity, lack emotional warmth, and to exhibit game-playing, dishonesty, and over-controlling and violent behaviors.”

“Current technology fuels the increase in narcissism,” Twenge said. “By its very name, MySpace encourages attention-seeking, as does YouTube.” From CNN

Our ability to create personal blogs and webpages, to post videos and photos of ourselves where others can see them, to create a position for ourselves (however small it may be) in the world of global media is a powerful thing. We no longer have to accept anonymity in the crowd. However, I’m not so sure that these kinds of participatory media necessarily make us narcissistic. Perhaps we feel a sense of agency, of ability to make ourselves heard, or even the power to affect change. Is that being full of ourselves? Certainly not in every case.

If feeling like I have important things to say that I want to share with others makes me narcissist then I’ll wear the label with pride and hope that others follow suit.

The NPI asks questions such as

• “If I ruled the world, it would be a better place”
• “I think I am a special person”
• “I can live my life any way I want to.”

While we should hope that we’re not raising a generation of folks hell-bent on world domination, I see nothing wrong with people feeling “special” or believing in their ability to shape their own lives. There seems to be a disconnect (from what I can find about the NPI…if you know more help me out here) between the narcissism that Pinsky talks about and the kind of self-esteem issues dealt with in the NPI found. Here are the NPI questions…see for yourself (from Raskin and Terry).

• I would prefer to be a leader.
• I see myself as a good leader.
• I will be a success.
• People always seem to recognize my authority.
• I have a natural talent for influencing people.
• I am assertive.
• I like to have authority over other people.
• I am a born leader.
• I rarely depend on anyone else to get things done.
• I like to take responsibility for making decisions.
• I am more capable than other people.
• I can live my life in any way I want to.
• I always know what I am doing.
• I am going to be a great person.
• I am an extraordinary person.
• I know that I am good because everybody keeps telling me so.
• I like to be complimented.
• I think I am a special person.
• I wish somebody would someday write my biography.
• I am apt to show off if I get the chance.
• Modesty doesn’t become me.
• I get upset when people don’t notice how I look when I go out in public.
• I like to be the center of attention.
• I would do almost anything on a dare.
• I really like to be the center of attention.
• I like to start new fads and fashions.
• I can read people like a book.
• I can make anybody believe anything
• I want them to.
• I find it easy to manipulate people.
• I can usually talk my way out of anything.
• Everybody likes to hear my stories.
• I like to look at my body.
• I like to look at myself in the mirror.
• I like to display my body.
• I will never be satisfied until I get all that I deserve.
• I expect a great deal from other people.
• I want to amount to something in the eyes of the world.
• I have a strong will to power.
• I insist upon getting the respect that is due me.
• If I ruled the world it would be a much better place.

From what I’ve been able to find, the real difference between confidence and narcissism is an imbalance between how you see yourself and how you think others see you. It’s the difference between looking in the mirror at your slightly overweight body and saying “I’m fat and that’s perfect!” (narcissistic) and “I’m fat. I know I could be thinner but I’m happy with who I am” (self-esteem). If you’re in denial that others might see you differently than you see yourself, or if you see yourself in an idealized way that denies the facts you might be narcissist. So it boils down to a lack of ability to take others’ views of you into account. So now let’s think back to this idea that the internet breeds narcissists.

Argue with me on this if you disagree but it seems to me that the internet does just the opposite. Sites like Hot or Not, Facebook etc allow people to be brutally honest about you or to easily show their affection for the “you” that they see. You may think that video of you dancing in your bedroom is a real smash but the five hits you got on YouTube should tell you the opposite. Easy feedback systems like this, feedback made of quantitative clear information, should help combat an incompatibility between perception and reality.

Of course, if we let ourselves think about the constructed, and often fictional, identities and egos that some use in virtual worlds like Second Life…well that’s a blog for another day.

Seriously, after watching this “news” report I had to walk laps around my living room to prevent myself from SCREAMING! This is the most selective, biased, uninformed “journalistic” propaganda I’ve seen in a while and that’s saying something!

Apparently, Second Life is just filled to the brim with sexual deviants, rude Christians, and terrorist violence. There’s no mention of music, education, art, social discourse (which this reporter believes can only be accomplished through chat…what about the space itself? Hello!!!).

Wow…yeah…I have to calm down. I’ll go watch that German kid screaming again. He’s Zen compared to how I feel about this level of disgustingly sloppy reporting

Dean Jansen’s post

Link to session transcript

Link to the PowerPoint on Slideshare 

Last night we moved our studies to SL. We visited three places: AOL Pointe, the Regina Spektor space, and Sony’s Media island (thanks to all the great developers who built these spaces!). Using group IM, we discussed what we saw and how it effected us. We noted what caught our eye first, the interactivity of the spaces, who the intended audience was etc.

The students decided that all three spaces had the same audience, context, medium and purpose (to sell a product to 20ish folks in SL using an immersive space). However, they quickly pointed out that the voice and tone of each space was very different. AOL was described as “needy”, “in your face”, and “pushy.” The Spektor space was described as “warm”, “comfy”, and “subtle.” Sony’s space made us explore before we found videos, games, and other product promotion items. Students said that this was a “independent” voice that encouraged us to explore. They compared the Sony space to being in a record store (they still go to record stores?!!) where the sales people aren’t pushy and just let you look.

At the end of class we talked about how they can apply what they learned to the proposals they’re writing. Most agreed that they wanted to think about different “voices” their spaces could have and more subtle ways to get visitors to participate in the space.

Well, today we get a treat. A look inside the brain of a gamer who tried SL. Drew, from “Toothpaste for Dinner” has written a hilarious blog post about trying out SL. Read it and laugh…..

Those of us who advocate technology in the classroom have to be ready to deal with the issues that come about as students acclimate to using these tools in the most effective ways. Banning laptops from the classroom is not the right decision. A government professor at Scaramento prohibits laptops and “outlines it in his course syllabus that states, “NO LAPTOPS - a clever way to look attentive while e-mailing your friends or surfing the Internet.” Shoch requires his students to take notes the old-fashioned way” (The State Hornet). According to the Harvard Crimson one professor “responded to the issue by having a teaching fellow (TF) deduct participation points from students caught checking their e-mail in lecture” though the same professor admits that she believes computers are good in class but email is bad.

Compare these reactions to a statement made by John Chambers, CEO of the computer networking giant Cisco Systems:

“Do you ever watch your children doing their homework?” he asked. “They’re listening to music, instant messaging, and chatting on the phone at the same time. These aren’t distractions you’re seeing, but new forms of collaboration. You may not like it. You may say, ‘That’s not for me.’ But believe me, that’ll be you in five years. You will change your form of collaboration, in your business and in your personal interactions….Collaboration is the next frontier. It will be enabled by different concepts and different devices, but it will be about the power of the human network in ways we are just beginning to understand.”

From THE Journal

Where is the disconnect between the 9-18 year old kids who Chambers refers to, the18-22 year olds who are in our higher ed classrooms, and we, as educators? How are we using technology so differently that we don’t understand how one another makes the best use? How do we teach students to maintain their intellectual curiosity, use their laptops to engage rather than disengage? How do we teach ourselves to trust our students to manage their own learning and be as responsible as we believe ourselves to be when we pop open our own laptops in a conference presentation or during a meeting?

I suggest the best way to do this is to model the kind of technology use we think is best for our classrooms. When a student raises a question we should run to our machines, look up an answer and share it with the class. We shouldn’t be afraid to say “I don’t know, let’s look it up.” We should charge our students with finding information to share with the class. We should discuss the ways they use technology, the ways they study, the media they consume and help them take best advantage of the technology they have access to.

 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 or two as well.

This brings us to item 1. Second Life isn’t about the quality of these objects. It’s not about whether or not that new race car your avatar is driving really functions like a race car. It’s about the fact that a resident made it, marketed it, and made a little profit from his/her contribution to the space. The SL space facilitates this kind of content creation and encourages the population at large to consume it (or not). It functions as an open market place where everyone can create and participate not just the privileged few.

Item 2: At some point, everyone in SL is a newb. We’ve all worn boxes on our heads. We’ve all built plywood cubes and smiled with pride at our first creation no matter how crude. With practice and experimentation you get better. The system allows for this learning rather than leaving it, again, to a few who already know how to do it.

Item 3: I’ve seen some pretty awful clothing, houses, scripts etc for sale right next to some amazingly skilled products. When I see the t-shirt Joe Whoever made and notice that it’s flawed I can begin to think about how I would do it better even if only for myself. By being exposed to “art” that isn’t quite up to par I’m encouraged to try my own hand. If all the products I encountered were perfect then why would I be motivated to make my own?

Item 4: Jenkins mentions criticism but in SL this criticism can take the form of market forces. Creators who make something new and innovative will sell their products. Those who make mediocre items or overprice their efforts won’t make a single L$. The market serves to critique and cull the less-than-commendable efforts and either drives out the producers who don’t improve or fuels their efforts to make better products.

Item 5: Maybe I want to wear a giant pink afro. Maybe I like clothing made with visible targa seams. My vote, my critique is in the form of my currency. This puts the market in the hands of the consumers and producers rather than larger producers who might otherwise get to “tell us what is good.”

Item 6: As the environment matures and the collective skills improve our standards of quality also go up. What might have been considered “the best” a year ago is “newb” wear now.

Item 7: The number of objects in SL isn’t limited (well not in any tangible way). Opening a new store doesn’t require that another closes. There’s room for competition, improvement, and variety among the objects being made by the participatory culture of SL.

What do YOU think? Is the SL model of participatory culture or UGC different than other models? Are we witnessing a new development or just the same old idea/product marketplace in a new form?

This year’s conference will have an education track with lots of great events, presentations, and a chance to mix and mingle with all of the great educators working in SL. To follow the developments of the SLED (Second Life EDucators) events at SLCC check here often.  Many of us are brainstorming about sessions, “unconference” activities, and other ways to encourage educators to share and collaborate.

When an “official” call for papers/sessions etc has been written I’ll post it here. If you have ideas for SLCC SLED please leave a comment and I’ll pass them on to the other organizers or post them to the SLED mailing list.

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 for a seventh-grade language class at Kelly Middle School. A few students were crowded around a PC; some were giggling. She investigated and saw the kids looking at a barrage of graphic, hard-core pornographic pop-ups. ” From PC World

Today, the author of the PC World article, Steve Bass, was contacted by one of the juror’s on the case. The juror explained why, even though Amero was a substitute in a foreign class, was held responsible for the pornography the seventh graders saw. The juror says:

“If a 40 year old school teacher does not have the sense to turn off or is not smart enough to figure it out, would you or any other person wanting her teaching your child or grandchild?”

So it goes beyond just being unprepared to teach students how to best use computers, or to know enough to be able to trouble shoot the machines in your classroom, or even enough to stop kids from getting into trouble. Now, the stakes are higher. Apparently, at least in Conneticut, it’s a criminal offense for a teacher to not know enough about the technology in the room.

Food for thought, don’t you think?

I think it’s rather funny that Stevens believes that all interactive websites present a risk to underage students under the DOPA act (Deleting Online Predators Act).

According to Section 203 of the act:

“COMMERCIAL SOCIAL NETWORKING WEBSITES; CHAT ROOMS- Within 120 days after the date of enactment of the Deleting Online Predators Act of 2006, the Commission shall by rule define the terms `social networking website’ and `chat room’ for purposes of this subsection. In determining the definition of a social networking website, the Commission shall take into consideration the extent to which a website–
`(i) is offered by a commercial entity;
`(ii) permits registered users to create an on-line profile that includes detailed personal information;
`(iii) permits registered users to create an on-line journal and share such a journal with other users;
`(iv) elicits highly-personalized information from users; an
`(v) enables communication among users.’.”

So Blogs, online journals (even private ones), any site with a profile (which could cover Moodle and many other LMS services), any site in which users can COMMUNICATE!!!!!!!!!!!! So according to Senator Ted, kids are only safe if they become passive readers who may offer no feedback or interactive discussion. So Webkins, Club Penguin, Teen Second Life, and lots of other great interactive spaces will be blocked from school computers as well as tons of publisher-supplied interactive spaces that are prefectly safe and very well monitored.

The bottom line is that Stevens has NO IDEA how the internet works. He has no concept that there are plenty of ways to keep kids safe without blocking sites. And worst of all, he’s not holding parents accountable at all. I’d love to know how many kids have been stalked from MySpace during school hours. Is the next step to force parents to block these sites at home as well? Or perhaps the Telecoms who provide home internet access should block them? Oh Geez!

Hey Ted! Maybe you should pay a little more attention to how folks right there in the Senate are abusing the internet! The “Truthiness” of the whole issue is that a major portion of adults in power have no idea how online communities work and rather than learn and teach children, they choose to ban them. This is NOT a solution.

Go build your Alaskan bridge to nowhere and leave the internet to people who understand it. I, for one, don’t want folks like Ted “protecting” my kids.

To get you caught up, though, the debate basically looks like this:

Shirky says: The numbers are inflated. Second Life isn’t a big deal.

Jenkins says: The numbers may be inflated but they aren’t that important. What is important is the cultural change that SL is evoking.

I’ve been following the debate pretty closely and I have to say that both sides have valid, important points but I’d like to take a step back and consider whether we’re even arguing over the most important aspect of the debate at hand.

I’d like to ask Clay Shirky: If Second Life isn’t important, if it’s just inflated propaganda then why have you invested so much time and effort debunking it? You’re a busy man, a great writer, and a well-respected techno-informed guy. If Second Life is a blip on the radar then move on to focus on something that you think IS world changing? Otherwise, you’re time spent on it leads me to believe that you think there is something worth talking about beyond thumbing your nose at those who you think have been somehow fooled by a marketing scheme.

The bigger question that I think is important here is “What is it about SL, in the larger picture, that makes folks like Shirky, Jenkins, and Coleman perk up their ears and start writing 1000 word blog entries about it?” The debate itself, its form, the level of participation in the argument, is what may be most notable. I can’t remember another topic as of late that has garnered such fervent debates. If Second Life is merely an empty promise then why is it worth all this wrangling and spittle?

For me, the answer is that it’s so much more than the numbers, the argument, and the economy. It’s about a new form of critical stance that people are taking on regarding technology. The whole debate is a sign that we’ve matured in our outlook. We’re no longer blinded by “bells and whistles.” We have enough choices in our range of participatory culture that we can take the time to critique and evaluate what’s available rather than jumping on the nearest bandwagon to stay afloat with the advances.

So keep at it. Keep debating. Debate topics other than SL as well. Continue the conversation and continue to model how we should all be thinking about the ramifications of the technologies we embrace. No matter how vitriolic the conversation becomes, there are folks listening and learning.

• Goal: To persuade
• Voice: Expert
• Audience: college students
• Medium: brochure
• Context: the cafeteria

They may decide that this brochure would contain information about healthy eating, about how to flirt in while eating in the dining hall, etc.

In the second round of the game we’ll have only four teams so that one element is left blank and the students will brainstorm about ways that different choices for the missing element will change the resulting communication.

Some will turn out funny; some will be serious. The game functions as a sort of “rhetorical mad lib.”

A simple hovertext script and some very basic building and texturing and you can make an interactive, collaborative learning experience in SL. What have you built for your students? Are there classroom games you’d like to see used in SL? Let’s start a conversation.

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 make visitors forget where they are and feel immersed
We define “immersion” by the following characteristics:
- visitors should feel the space is “real” though we will consider designs for “fantasy” settings
- the space should attempt to evoke specific actions and reactions in visitors. Emotional response is critical to the project.
- the space should not be “passive.” Visitors should have opportunities to participate in the space.
- Large concepts and small details are critical to “immersion”
Your “pitch” should include a method to measure or assess the space’s effectiveness. you should also include the following:
-a visual presentation with images depicting all parts of the design
-clear descriptions of : intended demographic, anticipations actions and reactions, methods of assessment to measure the effectiveness of the space
We talked about potential designs that would fit the ad. I gave them an example of an experience losely based on Fast Food Nation and Super-Size Me. We thought about building a fast food restaraunt where visitors could pretend to run the fryer etc but if they clicked on a food item and ate it their avatar would blow up to a morbidly obese size. From them on the spaces would gradually get smaller making the new obese avatar feel crowded and uncomfortable. However, in the other side of the space folks would have a chance to participate in exercises that would gradually make their avatars smaller. Of course, users would have to agree to the shape changes etc but we agreed that it would be a fun and educational build. I’m really looking forward to the ideas they come up with in a couple of weeks.

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 aisles to the most expensive items. We’ve all experienced these well-constructed spaces, spaces specifically designed to ensure that visitors feel a certain way and perform the intended tasks designated for the space. When thoughtfully and deliberately created, spaces can draw us in to participate in their narrative, their rhetorical act. However, in the real world, few of us will have the opportunity to design such a space. In an immersive world, such as Second Life, the materials are limitless, the audience captive and eager to explore, and the rhetoric of space is thick in the virtual air.

Rhetorics of space have been around since Aristotle, Jeremy Bentham, and Michele Foucault. More recent rhetorics of spaces and places are especially meaningful when applied to virtual spaces. A rhetorical space, as defined by Roxanne Mountford, is “the geography of a communicative event.” “Rhetorical spaces carry the residue of history upon them, but also, perhaps, something else: a physical representation of relationships and ideas” (42). Lorraine Code’s gendered rhetorical spaces build on Foucault’s heterotopia to discuss how the design of spaces reflect the structures of power in the space. Turkle and Fleckenstein both suggest that virtual spaces, because they are constructed of words and detached symbols, may lull users into a more lax code of behavior. The result of this detachment may be increased persuasive power of the spaces, an heightened willingness to participate in the suggestions of a rhetorical place. All in all, the current arguments about the rhetoric of virtual spaces should lead us to understand that these spaces, when constructed thoughtfully, may be more persuasive to a willing participant, than a real world space.

Given the potential and mutability of the virtual space, the power of teaching students about the construction of rhetorical spaces is increased over the same exercises in the non-virtual world. I’m currently working on a case study of a university rhetoric and writing class in which students learned about the construction of persuasive spaces by proposing, designing, constructing, and testing a virtual space built in Second Life. Students studied other immersive spaces in Second Life, performed rhetorical analyses to deconstruct the elements of the spaces that appealed to specific demographics and evoked reactions and behaviors. Based on these insights, the students then constructed their own rhetorical space as a collaborative project. The project will demonstrate the project from planning to evaluation and will offer an opportunity to explore the space constructed.

Code, Lorraine. Rhetorical Spaces; Essays on Gendered Locations. NY: Routledge, 1995.
Fleckenstein, Kristie S. “Faceless Students, Virtual Places: Emergence and Communal Accountability in Online Classrooms.” Computers and Composition 22.2 (2005): 149-176.
Foucault, Michel. “Des espaces autres (1967), Heterotopics.” http://foucault. info/documents/heteroTopia/foucault.heteroTopia.fr.html.
___. “Of Other Spaces.” Diacritics 16(1986): 22-27.
Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991.
Massey, Doreen. Space, Place, and Gender. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994.
Mountford, Roxanne. “On Gender and Rhetorical Space.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 31.1 (Winter 2001): 41-71.
Turkle, Sherry. Life on the Screen. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997.

“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.” 

In the past ten years, as online multi-player games have become more advanced, academics have begun to take notice. Applying preexisting methodologies borrowed from sociology, psychology, and communications to study the spaces and the interactions in them have provided a solid starting point for serious game studies. However, as others have noted (Dutton and Consalvo, Squire, and Manninen) these methods are limited to studying the communication itself and not the mechanics of the environments that give rise to the communication patterns that emerge. It’s as if researchers have analyzed transcripts of phone calls, declared that phone conversation is unique because it lacks visual-gestural cues, and then run off without considering the limitations of the telephone’s technology. If we’re to truly understand the new ways that people communicate in these virtual environments we must learn to see the whole picture. Taking any one element in isolation will give us only a fragmented and inaccurate view of the communication taking place.

Added to this difficulty of methodology is the ever-shifting landscape of the technology. Virtual spaces, game and game-like, don’t follow a prescriptive pattern of development. As is required to succeed in the market, each new environment boasts new developments, new channels of communication (gestures, avatar customization, object creation etc) that complicate our view of what is occurring in the spaces. The current methods we have to categorize the communication and study it aren’t capable of shifting with the landscape. They are limited applications that won’t accommodate the rapid development in the virtual space. So how are we to study the forms of communication that occur in these spaces? By thinking less of the past and more about the future. By looking less at what’s been done and more at what’s being done. To accomplish this we need to think rhetorically. We need to think of the motives present in the gap between the laws (environment mechanics made possible by the software of the environment) and the rules (norms and uses established by the developing communicative culture in a space). We need Burke.

But before we dig into the ways that Kenneth Burke might salvage our studies of virtual environments, lets spend a little time delineating just what those environments are. Game studies is a bit of a mixed bag. Lumped together are those who study games (how play functions and motivate the player), those who study games as cultural artifacts (how games represent the culture that creates them), and scholars who study how games may be used for education and training. What’s common to all of these areas is that the focus is put away from the game itself and onto the results of the game’s use. Similar to the phone analogy before, these studies ignore the mechanics of the game environment as an object; they ignore the influence of the materiality of the space on the user and the communication products that result.

Added to this difficulty, again, is the fact that the line between “game” and “non-game” is becoming blurred with the development of new environments such as Second Life, There, and Multiverse. These spaces share common characteristics with MMORPG environments like World of Warcraft and Runescape but also have elements not present in those spaces such as freeform object creation, unlimited avatar customization, and stigmergic environments (persistent spaces that can be altered by the user in ways that will be visible to others). Aside from studying the elements of play involved in the puzzle-like nature of games, what we’re really studying here are multi-user virtual environments. What we’re looking at are new communities, new forms of communication, new arenas of socialization and culture development.

More to come…

First, a fair attempt at summarizing the main points of Jenkins and Shirky in this latest round.
Jenkins:

1. The population numbers of SL are probably inflated but the numbers don’t tell the whole story. As Jenkins puts it: “Second Life isn’t interesting to me because of how many people go there; it’s interesting because of what they do when they get there.”

2. SL functions as an extended sort of carnival. Notable because it does last more than a few days and because serious businesses are starting to see the benefits of taking a role in the party.

3. SL is important as an artifact of participatory media. Whether SL lasts or not, the model will influence future attempts.

Shirky:

1. The SL population numbers are inflated which has caused (or was caused by) inaccurate media hype. The real user base is much smaller and therefor less revolutionary than is currently believed.

2. The great majority of people who try SL don’t like it and don’t stay. This is a significant argument against the suggestion that SL is a web 3.0 model.

3. SL is not an MMORPG and shouldn’t be lumped in with WoW and others to add to its credibility. SL can’t claim to be not a game and then try to benefit from the success of games. We can’t have it both ways.

4. SL is not the future of immersive worlds or VR.

Of course, both Jenkins and Shirky have written much more complex arguments than these summaries can cover but I think it’s important to boil the arguments down to see what’s really being discussed. I would like to suggest that this is two very different arguments which I hope both writers will address in the coming week as the dialog continues. Meanwhile I see two threads common in both response…
Population
I’m concerned by the disparity between the reported number of accounts and the actual logged-in users. Though I support SL and hope for its success, I want an honest picture of how the environment is progressing. Sure it’s nice to claim 2 million users but boasting inaccurate numbers does nothing to benefit the future of the project. I’m left wondering why so many people sign up and leave to never return. I also wonder how the retention rate of SL compares with other technologies. Unlike ten years ago when choices were limited, there is a plethora of virtual spaces to inhabit today. Are retention rates for all virtual environments going to be slightly lower thanks to competition? Most of all, I want to know why people try SL and why they leave SL. Is the hype giving off the wrong impression of what the space is like? Are the hardware requirements prohibitive? Do people lack the drive to decide for themselves how to use the environment? We need more info here. Not just more accurate numbers but reactions from users.
SL as participatory media:
This is one area where I hope all parties can agree. User-created content at SL’s level is a new trend. Whether users really make money or not is another issue that I won’t deal with. However, the ability to make the environment into whatever a particular user desires is a revolutionary concept that will certainly have long lasting impacts. To view this another way, however, I think it’s important to see this kind of participatory media as result long in the making. Comparing SL to Wikipedia shows us that there are few substantial differences in the model of content creation. Though SL is visual and the objects created are owned by the creator rather than the collective, it’s easy to see that the ability to create content on an individual level and have that creation effect the whole (the SL environment, economy, culture etc) is a similar process to contributing one’s knowledge to Wikipedia or another public collective project. As Cisco has so cleverly stated it “We > me.” The collective or distributed model of content creation will win out in the end. Top-down methods of media like today’s MMORPG will go to the wayside when open source code for spaces like SL is in the hands of the many creative minds connected to the web. I predict not the downfall of SL, not an amazing success for Linden, but a huge shift to user created content on a scale we haven’t seen in a visually immersive environment.
Most importantly, this kind of discussion signifies that virtual environments like SL are worthy of discussion and worthy of study. It’s nice to see some of today’s great minds putting in the effort to understand the SL phenomenon.
Stay tuned for more!

]]> http://www.secondlife.intellagirl.com/2007/01/30/response-to-jenkins-and-shirky/feed/ http://www.secondlife.intellagirl.com/2007/01/28/weekend-post-bear-vs-colt/ http://www.secondlife.intellagirl.com/2007/01/28/weekend-post-bear-vs-colt/#comments Sun, 28 Jan 2007 16:05:19 +0000 intellagirl Uncategorized http://www.secondlife.intellagirl.com/2007/01/28/weekend-post-bear-vs-colt/ 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 great combination of short videos, MySpace, and Flash interactivity.

Jim Walker, the writer, even interviewed one of the students from last semester’s class. How strange and fun have my pink hair plastered all over the state!

The BBC does some really amazing interactive television projects which draw viewers in to take part in on-screen quizzes, face-to-face events, and mobile marketing. Projects like “Citizens Required” engage audiences in highly participatory projects that are both entertaining and informative.
The students in the audience for the presentation were mostly film, journalism, and telecom. I can’t wait to see what great ideas come of the contest!

When I posted before I agreed to post a follow-up to let you know how the project has progressed. You can see the new chart here.  This PDF is just one page of the chapter I’m writing but if you refer to the previous post linked above you’ll see how it’s changed from the earlier version. I’m quite happy with how the new taxonomy is working to illuminate the important differences and revealing similarities between various environments. When the book that this chapter will appear in is published I’ll post a link to it as well.
Though the deadline is looming, I’m always happy to get intelligent feedback.

Hot, I dropped the polpettone into the glowing ashes. “No chairs for us?” I asked, but was ignored. Fido felt equally
catastrophe. None survive.
None-other than that it is at the very highest level. The people I
intact, But without the artifact. For certain reasons, we could do not
this next song to the concert master himself, Svinjar. He nodded.
They double-timed and we followed.
Around the bend into the next galactic mail order. Spend! The more you spend the better,
womenfolk. Well, this was a slaveholding society so such concern was
an honest answer, Captain, and I thank you for it.

Maybe my reaction is because I’ve been inundated with bad poetry during my years of literature classes. Maybe I spend too much time next to a poorly insulated microwave and my brain has been affected. But when I read that passage…well I think the speaker and his dog massacred people for not providing chairs, a common curtosy afterall.
Ahh the joys of technology.
By the way, a polpettone is a fancy Italian meatloaf. I had to look it up.

“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, after going through basic policies, getting everyone enrolled in the class group, and making friends with everyone, we spent the hour exploring junkyards and learning to unpack boxes. Basically, I just wanted to be sure that all of the students knew how to do the basics in SL.

They had a great time and caught on quickly. Before I knew it, the island was filled with smoking cars, puttering motorcycles, giant snowmen, and other random objects. Now, I don’t think anyone would ever accuse me of being no fun. I’m the antithesis of uptight. However, after asking several times that they remember to clean up the objects left around and contain their mess in their dorm rooms and in the sand box, I still spent almost an hour returning random objects left sitting, floating, or in the case of a run away chocobo, running around!

Every semester is a new challenge. I LOVE Second Life!.

This week I bounced between two classrooms. I persuaded both teachers to ask students to use Impress (the OpenOffice version of PowerPoint) to present informal research papers. Two class sections prepared a plan for a white water rafting trip based on Downriver and research they gathered online. Students worked in pairs to gather information, plan the itinerary, and then design their presentation with a specific audience in mind. Next week the students will present their plans and we will pretend to be their intended audience, ask questions, and vote on whether we think they planned well enough that we’d like to take the trip. I added the element of a hypothetical audience to help the students make rhetorical decisions in their slides and it seems to have had a big impact on the amount of thought and focus they put into the work. Over and over I overheard students debating “But will the go for that? Maybe we should try to lower the price of the trip? Would that age group think that was fun?” Most of the students in these classes are juniors who are retaking Sophomore English. This level of engagement with an assignment is unusual.

In the other two sections students have been studying Transcendentalism including Thoreau and Emerson. Their assignment was to create a slide show defining conformity, nonconformity, and individualism according to the two writers and then to connect the Transcendental philosophy with a more modern work and our modern culture. Again, I stressed that their presentation style was an important part of their content. Their slide design should compliment the content of the slides. Students used nature images, soft colors, and floating quotes from Emerson and Thoreau in the early presentation slides but as they moved into the modern examples I saw them shift the style to suit the examples they chose. Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King were common choices for modern thinkers but a few thought about more reactionary figures and used Marilyn Manson or a whole culture such as Goth or Emo.

The third period of the day is the lunch period and students leave class to go to the cafeteria in shifts. The class I worked with left for lunch for the middle thirty minutes of the class period. The teacher warned me that when they come back from lunch they can be a bit “wild” and it might take a few minutes to get them back on task. She was shocked when students starting wandering back from lunch early to get back to work on their projects.

These assignments are by no means unique. Many teachers incorporate hands-on activities into their classrooms but for these classes these assignments signaled a significant shift from quiet in-class reading and vocab quizzes to excited, engaged students producing meaningful projects.

For the next two weeks I’ll be working with four freshman literature classes who have been reading Romeo and Juliet. Rather than spending their time reading the play aloud in class (which causes half the class to fall asleep), I’ve asked them to slug through it on their own time. Beginning next week, we’ll work in pairs to begin fake MySpace pages for the major characters of the play. They’ll write several blog entries from a modern-day version of the character to describe the events of the play and that character’s reactions. They’ll be asked to justify their decisions with information from the text. Would Juliet really be a “Paris Hilton” type or would she be a “Lindsay Lohan” type? How would Paris really feel if he was left at the altar? Stay tuned for the results of these projects. They should be rather interesting.

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 than the sensationalist/tabloid press. I think I was right.

The beauty of SL is that it allows its residents to create anything they want. Serious users are creating powerful uses for the environment. Journalists, researchers, educators…SL is FULL of innovative people doing amazing things.

This is the future of education. This is the future of the web. Stay tuned!

I won’t even link to the stories here because I really don’t like the idea of a smirky-Shirky watching his web traffic soar and feeling justified in his empty attack. My normal reaction to such obvious “I better write a story on this thing everyone is paying attention to” journalism is to ignore it. Then I noticed that one of my all time fav websites, Boing Boing, excerpted the story and Xeni (Why Xeni?! You’re so cool!) called the story brilliant. Well, this got my knickers in a twist and now I just can’t sit back and say nothing about these reports.

I certainly can’t hide the fact that I have a bit of Second Life bias. I use the software to teach a university class and I think the concept behind the environment is the future of the web. That being said, I’m also a serious internet researcher and a social networking scholar. I know that SL is a bit of a current fad. I know that something better will no doubt come along in the next few years. But I also know that although the numbers reported in the media may seem inflated they still stand for something very significant that tells us about a movement that goes far beyond Second Life.

Rather than engaging in playground rounds of rib-poking and sneering, how about we actually think about what these, perhaps inflated, numbers mean in the bigger picture. Shirky’s most vehement argument is that the reported two million accounts on Second Life is a misleading number representing a large percentage of people who create accounts but never log in or log in only once and never return. Rather than looking at the big numbers let’s look at hard facts. On average 233,000+ unique avatars log in to Second Life in a seven day period. In the eight week period between October and December of 2006 the number of accounts doubled from one million to two million. Of course, we all know that an account does not necessarily imply a die hard user or even a user who actually logged in to the environment. However, doesn’t a doubling of interest of that magnitude signify something important?

Let’s do a quick comparison between the growth of Second Life and the growth of another much maligned and yet loved site, MySpace.

MySpace user stats are much more mysterious. According to recent Wired stories, MySpace boasts 87 million registered users. At one point in the last few years, the site claimed to be gaining 270,000 new accounts per day. This represents a .3% daily growth rate. Mind you, MySpace isn’t nearly as open with their numbers as Second Life is so these are approximate numbers based only on the bits of info that MySpace has been willing to provide. (Stats taken from here and here )

Second Life growth stats blow MySpace out of the water. If we look at a similar period of huge growth in Second Life, the period between October and December of 2006, the account growth from one million to two million in just eight weeks represents a 1.79% daily growth, almost six times the growth rate of MySpace.

We have no way of knowing how many MySpace users actually ever use their accounts. We have no data to show how many unique users log in on a daily basis to MySpace but I would gamble that the rate of users who log in only long enough to create a basic profile page and the ratio of unused Second Life accounts are nearly the same. In the same type of journalistic wave, both services have been publicized thus driving droves of curious folks to the sites just to see what the hubbub is about.

So what’s the relevance of these numbers? What’s the important step that Shirky and others skip to maintain their anti-SL vendetta? What we’re witnessing in both sites is a revolution in online social interaction. Whether users come back or not, their initial motivation in signing up for either service is the same: they wanted to find a way to connect to people. I don’t care if Second Life has two thousand accounts or two million accounts. I don’t care if MySpace has a returning user rate of 1% or 100%. What’s important here is that folks are seeking out online services that will connect them to other people. These users are trying out new social spaces at astounding rates. This is what we should care about. This is the big picture. The world is changing, folks. Whether it’s Second Life, MySpace, World of Warcraft,  or Facebook, it’s a phenomenal change in the ways we, as digital humans, desire to connect to one another.

So, of course, the first major task is to define what the differences really are…the differences that will matter to instructors choosing an environment to use for composition instruction, anyway. I’ve wrestled with the list for several weeks now and I’ve narrowed it down to nine important elements.

I. Number of Users:
a. Multiplayer: this may consist of a few users logged into a local environment or it could be multiplayer on a massive scale with millions of users. (World of Warcraft, wiki)
b. Single: only one user can access the environment at a time or in one iteration of the environment (single-user blog)

II. Dominant Content Form:
a. Text: the environment is built from text and not images. (blog, MOO)
b. Image: graphic environments where image is the dominant form of content (any game other than MOO or MUDs, Second Life)

III. Network:
a. LAN: environment is locally hosted on an internal network (local Halo game, corporate internal blog)
b. WAN: environment is hosted at a distant location and allows users to log into it (Wikipedia, any MMORPG)

IV. Persistence:
a. Persistent: the environment exists when users aren’t logged in. changes in the environment remain from one use to the next (wiki, Second Life, WoW)
b. Non-persistent: environment is instance-based. Only exists when called upon by the user (Halo, word processing program)

V. Stigmergic:
a. Stigmergic: users can make changes to the environment that will remain (wiki, blogs, second life)
b. Non-stigmergic: users are unable to make changes to the environment or the changes made are reverted by the environment (Mario Bros, Halo)

VI. Object Ownership
a. Private ownership: users can “own” objects and limit others’ access to these objects (Second Life, WoW, Blackboard)
b. Public ownership: users cannot “own” objects; everything is shared (Wikipedia)

VII. Public access
a. Public: environment is open access to anyone wishing to enter (Wow, Wikipedia)
b. Limited: environment is limited to only those granted access through a special procedure (Blackboard)

VIII. User’s relationship with other users:
a. Collaborative: users collaborate with each other in a non-antagonistic manner (Second Life, Wikipedia)
b. Antagonistic: users compete against one another (Halo)
c. Conditional: users are collaborative or antagonistic depending on the situation (multi-player games with team option)

IX. User’s relationship with the environment:
a. Collaborative: users collaborate with the environment (Second Life)
b. Antagonistic: users compete against the environment (Mario Bros. )
c. Conditional: users are collaborative or antagonistic with the environment depending on the situation Dominant forms (games in which NPCs can assist)

Refining the important elements in environments down to only these characteristics makes for some interesting contrasts and comparisons. For example, we find that the only real differences between Wikipedia and Second Life are object ownership and dominant content form (Wikipedia is text based and Second Life is image based). Below is a chart with a few examples.

I welcome any and all feedback on these categories.

]]> http://www.secondlife.intellagirl.com/2006/12/26/cve-muve-mmoe-mmorpg%e2%80%a6what%e2%80%99s-the-difference/feed/ http://www.secondlife.intellagirl.com/2006/12/20/constructing-community-through-construction-or-the-panopticon-can-be-cozy/ http://www.secondlife.intellagirl.com/2006/12/20/constructing-community-through-construction-or-the-panopticon-can-be-cozy/#comments Wed, 20 Dec 2006 14:59:44 +0000 intellagirl Uncategorized http://www.secondlife.intellagirl.com/2006/12/20/constructing-community-through-construction-or-the-panopticon-can-be-cozy/ 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 quite a few of the buildings on our sim. My first project is to redesign the student dorms.

I’ve talked about the purpose of the dorms before but just in case you didn’t read that I’ll recap. SL is really a real estate market, hence you get a free account so long as you don’t want to own or rent land. So, because I don’t want my students to have to have pay accounts I like to have a “home” for them on our sim. I also believe that having the dorms contributes to a sense of community and encourages the students to mingle, discuss, and generally get to know each other. Also, in decorating their dorm rooms, the students get an early taste of building and shopping which become important skills later in the class.

Last summer, when I began designing the island the first time, I was concerned with space. I was afraid that by the middle of the semester we would be running out of room and out of prims due to the projects that the students would be working on. Because of this, I built dorms that sort of hung off the edge of the island. The rooms faced outward onto the ocean which gave them a sense of privacy. Each room was a ten by ten square and I limited students to 200 prims in their rooms.

About 75% of students did some decorating in their rooms. The other 25% dropped some object inside to stake their claim but never really settled in. The student who became most engaged in decorating his room became the best builder of the group. Personalities were expressed in decorations and most students who used their rooms used them only to change clothes in or as a place to log in and out. The sense of community and communal space wasn’t there.

After talking to a few of the students in the last weeks of class, I decided that a major redesign was necessary to foster this sense of community. I still didn’t want to take up too much land space but I wanted the dorms to feel integral to the sim. I want the students to feel like residents of the place and not like an afterthought hanging precariously from the edge of the island. I also decided that although privacy is important, community is more important.

Here is the new design.

As you can see, the rooms face inward encouraging students to pass one another as they return home. The large glass panes make the build feel open and allow us to see how each is decorated which should encourage students to talk about their spaces and share ideas. The new dorms take up about as much space on the island and used only a few more prims (about 25 prims each) and I’ll stick with a 200-300 prim decorating limit.

A Decorated Dorm

The center of the circle is the key. This gazebo with Jeremy Kemp’s stadium seating in the middle gives us a place to meet and begin and end class. I’m hoping that by beginning and ending in this space, students will be encouraged to mill around and get to know one another better.

I’ll admit that Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon does come to mind when looking at the new dorm build and that usually this shape denotes a “watcher” and the “watched.” But on reflection, this is exactly what I want. I want the students to watch each other, to observe how others are using their space, to be encouraged to talk to each other about the space, the class, SL, and their experiences. Stay tuned to see if it works.

In an effort to attract young women to their company, State Farm launched a Shockwave game called “A Charmed Life.” As their target audience (presumably young women out on their own and faced with learning to manage their own finances and future security), I would hope that I could see in this game things I can relate to. However, each level that I completed made me more shocked and appalled at what State Farm thinks will get my attention.

The game itself is a simple Flash game in which you switch positions for symbols on the board to get three similar shapes in a row to delete them from the board. You can’t lose the game (believe me I tried) and it’s not timed (which I’ll say more about later).

In the first level, you play a young, hip “Sex in the City” chick with a cell phone and party dress. The symbols on the board include: ipods, appointment calendar, martini glasses, little red cars, piggy banks, and red high heel shoes. All the things a career woman in her twenties is most concerned about, right?

In the second level you’re settling down, pregnant, and flummoxed by the assembly instructions for your baby’s crib. The symbols on the board are engagement rings, martini glasses (wait, we’re pregnant!), credit cards (kids=debt apparently), small red cars, and piggy banks.

The third level has us back in our careers after having our children. We’re already wearing bifocals, and our pretty party dress has been exchanged for a manly button-up shirt which we wear while showing off the latest business-merger graph. The board’s symbols are: credit cards, small cars, baby rattles, soccer balls (we’re a soccer mom now!) and a symbol I can’t make out. Is it a passport? A book on fire safety? Oh no, it’s the “Red Portfolio” State Farm is trying to sell us. Apparently we don’t need to plan until the kids are born and we’re back to making serious money. Our piggy bank is gone. Our martinis are gone (as if soccer moms don’t need a drink now and then).

The final level shows us as an older woman apparently napping on the beach or passed out after yoga. There’s a dark masculine shape looming over and the symbols on the board still have the house keys, the soccer balls (apparently the kids are playing soccer in college), engagement rings, appointment calendars, and a gold U (which I think is a university symbol for those soccer-playing college kids) and sunglasses. We also retain the red portfolio now that we’re spending our kid’s inheritance with a mysterious dark stranger on the beach.

So let’s get this straight. The game is meant to symbolize the stages of a woman’s life from swinging single to mother, then to career woman and retired mom of college kids. Remember that a marketing company was paid a significant amount of money to develop this carefully crafted game. They pitched it, collaborated on it, designed it, and went to sleep feeling that they’d created a product that would really sell their client’s product in a fun, informative, hip way.

I’m not attracted to the product. I’m offended by the marketing. I’m insulted by the stereotypical life stages that State Farm, and their marketing firm, is suggesting. But this leads us to an important idea about marketing games. To be cost effective, these games must reach a wide audience. Now being a rhetorician, I’m interested in how specific audiences are targeted. State Farm must assume that there is a game-playing woman market. Are we chick-gamers the typical audience for the game and is the content suited to this techy demographic?

Another point to ponder: why can’t we lose the game? Well it would certainly go against the “you go girl” attitude of the game if we could actually lose. If we just sit, if we don’t hurry through life, shifting those symbols fast, we can still get to that sun-kissed spot on the beach with hunky guy. Apparently the message is that you can’t lose if you plan. Sure, no one who carefully planned their life’s savings was ever surprised to find that at retirement time they had nothing (*cough* Enron *cough*).

Just something to think about as the holidays near. What marketing is targeted at you? What games do you play and are they “teaching” you to be a consumer?

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. Their third paper was an individual research paper on a tightly focused topic that fit into a larger topic with their group members. Paper four consisted of building visual installations representing their research, hosting an open house where they answered questions about their work, and then a group website/wiki summing up their research for a more general audience. I wanted to know what role the in-world campaign center build played in their writing process. Did they see it as a heuristic for their writing? Did the build help them refine their ideas or was it a distraction from their writing?
Many of the students commented that they felt answering resident questions helped them more than a peer review would have. They found that explaining their work helped them analyze their rhetorical choices, refine their views, and focus their opinions regarding their arguments. They also admitted that designing the build made them think hard about the most pivotal parts of their argument, what elements would be most persuasive to a general audience, and how best to metaphorically represent these points.
A few other students admitted that building the campaign center was less boring than writing so they were more motivated to do their research. They were excited to construct the center and attracted to the creativity involved.
All in all, pairing the research writing with the in-world presentations seemed to result in more thorough research, more excited students, and a more authentic writing situation.

It should be noted that this is largly a farming community where cable internet isn’t available and the local public library only has a handful of public computers.

• 73 responses
• 34 male 37 female
• 77% freshmen (14-15 years old)
• 83% have internet access at home

How many hours per week do you spend online?

• None                                                                            7.04%
• 1-3 hours (an hour a few days a week)                           23.94%
• 4-10 hours (an hour or two a day)                                42.25%
• 11-24 hours (more than two hours a day)                      15.49%
• 24+ (when am I not online?!)                                        11.27%

• 80% claim to use Instant Messaging software nearly every day. Most preferred MSN with AIM and Yahoo tied for second place.
• 75% use My Space every day and yet 63% said they either didn’t blog or don’t know what a blog is. I can only conclude that either they don’t recognize their MySpace pages as blogs or that they only use their accounts for social networking.
• None of the students had heard of Flickr and only a handful (less than 20%) used Facebook.
• 82% use email everyday but none of them use gmail.
• Though 73% listen to MP3s, only 25% of them use ITunes to do it.
• 58% had never heard of Wikipedia
• Only 20% had every played an MMORPG and only 5% play one on a daily basis.
• None of them had heard of Habbo , There, or Second Life.

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 the evolution of this avatar over the span of a couple of weeks and the expenditure of a few thousand L$.

Whether it’s through the maturation of the user’s skill or the spending of larger amounts of money, avatars seem to mature in their use. You can see that the avatar was somewhat flat and without personality in the beginning but now has a more realistic skin, more personality in accessories, and more realistic hair and clothing. Each element adds to the avatar’s self-expression and thus my own self-expression (or at least the version of me present in this avatar).

Intellagirl developed the same way until she became what she is now, which is more of a walking-talking logo than a realistic version of me. Both avatars feel comfortable to me but in different ways. I suppose they express not only my business and personal selves but also differing elements of my intellectual interests and my personal interests. It’s fun and informative to play with this kind of self-expression. Try it and see what you learn about yourself. One thing I learned, no matter how hard I try to create an avatar that looks different, they always end up looking at least a little like me and somewhat similar to each other. I’m not sure what that says about me.

High school teachers have a tough row to hoe. They are all passionate about their fields but it seems that the students are simply there to graduate, socialize, and otherwise avoid learning. Of course, this doesn’t apply to every student but to enough that teachers have to tailor their teaching methods to somehow control the disruptive and the destructive. It seems that many of the aspects of an engaging education (think Chickering and Gamson here) are somehow antithetical to the teaching situations in high school classes.

We’d love to see these students engaged, active, excited, and enthusiastic about their education but most are apathetic, resistant, and distracted. So what’s the solution?

What I’ve seen so far is a “lock down” reaction. Students spend most of their in-class time doing quiet reading (translate into goofing off quietly or subversively), taking fact-based reading quizzes, and talking amongst themselves as their teachers are distracted by the seemingly constant barrage of office workers at the door with passes, notes, and other paperwork. Most teachers told me they don’t assign homework because the students simply won’t do it. Imagine reading To Kill a Mockingbird in fifteen minute increments and you can feel what the reading experience for most of these students is like.

There is hope, however. It’s not that teachers don’t want to engage their students or that they like these boring classes. I get the impression that all the teachers I spoke to wished they could do more but have been beaten down by teenage-apathy at every turn.

So the question becomes, how do we engage these students without throwing out learning goals, standardized testing preparation, and the classics that all students should be exposed to? It’s a tough question to answer but I think I’m getting a grip on possible answers. Although this high school is in a farming community where almost 40% of students receive reduced or free lunch benefits, the great majority of them are online on a daily basis. They almost all have MySpace accounts and use IM on a frequent basis. How can we include these kinds of communicative activities into what we know they need to learn? I’m open to suggestions as I brainstorm.

I’ll be sure to post exercises and lesson plans here as I develop them but I would also like to encourage anyone reading this to submit feedback and ideas. This problem can’t be unique to this school. There must be others out there who are fighting this fight. Let me know what you’re thinking.

Yesterday was my first day on the job. I walked up to the school and it was totally dark inside. The doors were locked and there wasn’t a student in sight even though the parking lot was full of cars. A policeman (who is also the head of tech support for the county school corp) eventually came out and let me in. Turns out the school was having a lock down drill to practice in the event of a gunman or otherwise dangerous event. There were dogs roaming the halls and students were crouched in their classrooms behind locked doors. After an hour the drill ended. What an experience and what a way to start my new job.

I spent the day yesterday meeting with principals, assistant principals, guidance counselors, tech support, and the technology director for the school corp. The relationship between the teachers and the tech guys is amazing. There is an animosity there you could cut with a knife. Teachers feel unsupported by the tech dept. They have new computers in their classrooms that don’t work. Their students sneak around and steal mice, surf to Myspace (which is totally forbidden) and generally have a disrespect for the machines. The tech guys believe that all students are out to destroy the computers (which is mostly right) and that the teachers don’t understand the process necessary to maintain the machines. To the credit of the three tech guys, they service three-five different schools (1700+ computers) and spend much of their day driving around between the schools. It’s a fascinating dynamic. I hope that my presence as a sort of intermediary will help both sides understand the situation a bit more.

Right now the plans are to install Moodle on a server and make it available to all teachers. I’ll provide training to the teachers in the English dept and then model some assignments they can use in their classes. So far so good.

On another note, if you haven’t been into a high school lately…woof! I graduated thirteen years ago (I’m ancient I know) and apparently I’ve forgotten what a nightmare it must be to be a high school student. They seem clumsy, awkward and they all smell funny (no joke there, it’s a building jam packed with hormones). The teachers have to teach while policing behavior you’d never run into at the college level. Hall passes, bathroom passes, annoying bells, clanging lockers, cafeteria trays, bathrooms without doors. Ah those were the good days. Funny thing is I don’t remember any of that from my high school days. Perhaps our brain is a better ally than we give it credit for and I’ve blocked it out.

As academics, much of our best work is buried in journals that few people read or in conference presentations attended only by people who already agree with what we have to say.

Here are a few tips to get yourself noticed beyond the confines of your academic circle:

1. Join a listserv and actually post! Most grad students I talk to are notorious lurkers. No one will know what you have to say unless you say it. This is not to say that you shouldn’t be careful when you post. Reputations are made and destroyed with posts to listservs. Contribute, but contribute thoughtfully.
2. Blog: Start a blog where you think through ideas, wrestle with theories, or just post your unpublished work. Include a blog roll of the academics who you most respect and pretty soon they’ll be reading yours too.
3. Get business cards and hand them out. My university doesn’t offer business cards to grad students so I splurged on $40 worth of cards from Kinkos. I felt weird handing them out at first but it’s become easier. I often use the excuse of writing a link or a reference on the back and handing them to someone who has asked about it. Be sure your email address is on the cards. This is another great excuse to give away your card. Also, if you’re designing the card yourself, be sure it’s visually interesting and offers something valuable that will make people want to keep it. Cover the back of the card with links that people in your field may find useful or a list of the top five reasons a specific idea/application is important.
4. Save your money for conferences. Go to conferences even if you have to eat ramen noodles out of the hotel’s microwave. Once you’re there don’t sit in your room. Get out and rub elbows. Talk to the person sitting next to you in the coffee shop. Talk to presenters after sessions. Attend special interest group meetings. I’ve learned that attending sessions non-stop is NOT the way to go. I’ve met more really great people sitting on a bench in the hall than I have actually attending sessions.

I realize that lots of folks go into academia because they’re introverted and they actually enjoy spending hours alone in the library. But please remember that academia is also very political. Getting a job, becoming known for your work, or actually earning more money than your pitiful stipend is all about politics. No one ever got elected without a campaign. At least in this campaign you get to support someone you really believe in, YOURSELF.

]]> http://www.secondlife.intellagirl.com/2006/11/21/what-grad-students-can-learn-from-business-marketing-yourself/feed/ http://www.secondlife.intellagirl.com/2006/11/21/ncte-conference/ http://www.secondlife.intellagirl.com/2006/11/21/ncte-conference/#comments Tue, 21 Nov 2006 14:15:57 +0000 intellagirl Uncategorized http://www.secondlife.intellagirl.com/2006/11/21/ncte-conference/ 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 standards, grammar, and correctness that K-12 teachers are squeamish or skeptical about technology. This just isn’t true. The teachers I talked to were technosavvy (or well on their way) and eager to learn. On Saturday night the ACE (Assembly for Computers in English) special interest group and the 20+ folks who came were predominantly K-12 teachers already doing amazing things in their classrooms. Most were using blogs, podcasts, and Moodle in some capacity. As we went around the room introducing ourselves the themes that kept coming up over and over were: 1. A lack of professional development opportunities for teachers who want to integrate technology into their classrooms. Most in the room were self-taught. 2. Disconnect between IT and teachers. Many folks talked about nightmares with the computers their IT departments install in their classrooms. There weren’t enough machines, the machines didn’t work, or there were so many filters installed that most of the functions teachers wanted to use were blocked. (can you believe that most school systems block the word “blog” in any search?) I got the sense that I was surrounded by teachers who were eager and ready to tap into their students’ ability to use technology and that they were being held back by their administration (either on purpose or just out of lack of knowledge about pedagogy and technology). On Monday I was fortunate enough to present to the ACE workshop about Second Life. I was afraid that the talk would scare some of the teachers or that they would see Second Life as too intimidating and shut me down. Their reaction was exactly the opposite. The room was full of great questions, ideas about how SL could be used with K-12 standards for English, and excited shouts of “I can’t wait to get in there!” If these teachers are any indication of the enthusiasm for technology in K-12 education…well we all have a reason to be excited.

For years writing instructors and librarians  have known that students need training to learn to effectively learn how to use the information resources available to them on the shelves and online. Information literacy skills are not inherent; they must be taught. But by whom? Just a few days ago, while sitting in on a teacher’s prep class, one of the participants proclaimed that Wikipedia should NEVER be used as a source in a student paper. The students in the class, learning to teach college-level composition, nodded in agreement. As much as I respect the faculty member who made the statement about Wikipedia, I had to disagree. Outlawing suspect sources such as Wikipedia does absolutely nothing to further the kinds of critical information literacy we need to teach our students. Wikipedia is no more out of date or unreliable as that dusty old encyclopedia on the library shelf and no “expert” written tome should be accepted without skepticism and an effort to verify its content.

So what’s the bottom line? Stop pointing fingers; stop accusing students of not knowing what they should and start teaching it. If you don’t think Wikipedia is accurate, start contributing to it to make it better. If your students aren’t well versed in real online research show them how. If Google is being used in a lazy way by your students show them how to use it correctly.

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 complex series of tasks in the most efficient manner possible. Whether it’s icing a cake, changing a nappy, or picking up dirty dishes before customers get angry, these games situate the concepts of efficiency and multitasking within simulations of real-world jobs (waitressing, running a bakery, caring for babies in a hospital nursery).

I justify these hours of clicking as research because I really believe that games can be used to teach useful, real world skills. James Paul Gee says it too. If we can develop games that instill skills that are easily translatable (close semiotic domains) we can use such games to teach players skills that they can immediately apply outside the game. The incremental increase in difficulty allows the player to acclimate to the though-load in a slow, controlled process which could be very useful in academic applications.

It may seem archaic or current traditional of me but I really think we could use such a game to teach writing process. It wouldn’t compare to the actual learning that happens when a writer engages with and wrestles with the actual writing of an essay but it could teach the helpful stages of writing to encourage writers to build a tool-set of processes to fall back on when writing gets tough.

Here’s an example of how a game like this might work:

Level 1: You’ve got a writing assignment. It’s a short opinion piece like a blog entry. You must learn to:

-         read the assignment

-         do some brainstorming

-         draft

-         show your draft to a friend or reviewer

-         revise

-         proofread

-         submit the paper

This first assignment is simple and throws us no curveballs. The next level will introduce complications.

Level 2: This assignment is more difficult. Now you’ve got some choice in your topic and you need to site a few sources.

You must learn to:

-         read the assignment

-         do some brainstorming

-         draft

-         consult a librarian for help

-         review sources

-         revise

-         integrate sources

-         revise

-         proofread

-         show your draft to a friend or reviewer

-         submit the paper

Each level would become more difficult, all the while teaching the player about the common steps in writing a paper. At random, the player would receive advice or a “brainstorm” that would cause them to revise, research, or consult a librarian again in the process to instill that writing isn’t linear. Difficulties like noisy libraries, getting sleepy or juggling two papers at once would introduce more complexity to the levels.

Now before you say it, I know that writing doesn’t always follow such paths and I know that students all have their own processes. However, I also know that it’s helpful to have a step of instructions to fall back on when one’s process isn’t getting the job done.

I’m kicking this idea around for a Flash based game to submit to the Computers and Writing game contest. Any feedback would be great.

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We were also lucky enough to get a few minutes with Dr. Castronova  who not only directs the graduate program in Telecommunications at IU, but is also the lead on the Arden project, an immersive virtual reality based on the world of the works of Shakespeare. Castronova is creating an incredible program at IU that focuses not on the old TV and radio, but on the new digital media forms such as games, virtual environments, and social networks. Keep an eye on IU. Lots of exciting studies are bound to come out of this program in the next few years.

P.S.: Lee, Ted: If you’re reading this, can I have a job?

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 on: engagment, community, and collaboration. These are, to me, the major strenghts of Second Life. To see more about the session please see the coverage here.

It’s certainly strange for me (and my students as well, I’m sure) to have all this media attention but it’s also exciting. It’s great to see that folks approve of using SL in the course and that they’re enthused and want to know more about it. I’m concerned, of course, about how the attention will impact the class. However, they can’t say they weren’t warned before they registered for the class. They also seem to really learn from the experience. Knowing that folks outside our class are reading their blogs, observing our SL and face to face classes, and that I’m being interviewed weekly about the class seems to encourage the students to write better. There’s more at stake.

Last week I asked them if they felt that they worked harder in my class because it was experimental. Some said that they didn’t but that it was more fun. Others said they felt their work in the class was more important because “people are watching” or that they really liked the class and wanted it to be offered again so they felt they should do their best to ensure the success of the class.

I’m not completely convinced that the pressure is all for the best but it’s had a very positive effect on a few of the students and the overall quality of work generated by the class so far has been great. Discussions are animated, engagement is high, and the writing is of good quality in both idea and execution.

Personally, I’m not too excited about the cameras. I’ve never liked having my picture taken and video is infinitely worse but I’m not going to let my own insecurities put a damper on the class.

I’m ready for my close up.

I have two degrees in literature and I fondly remember my dreams of someday finding the unpublished Canterbury Tale or that scrap of paper where Shakespeare admitted he was a fraud or some other Indiana Jones-like world-changing academic discovery upon which many an academic career has been built. Granted, I was a naïve student back then, but all the same those dreams are rather dashed now that I’ve been drawn into the seductive world of virtual environments, social networks, tags, and other cutting edge research.

Don’t get me wrong. I love what I do. However, chasing down the importance of tag (like del.icio.us tags), as I’m doing this week for a conference presentation, sometimes feels like trying to nail jello to the wall. And it’s fast jello; and it’s greased up; and it bites sometimes. The more research time I commit to a tech topic the more it changes in front of my eyes and by the time I’ve written something that I think really exposes an important idea…well it’s Schrödinger’s cat all over again.

But bring on the squidgy stuff. I’m ready. I can take it. And if all else fails, I’ve got a back up career in jello wrestling.

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 few translation programs and none of them make it any more intelligible. But don’t I feel special that the string of characters that make up my name is popular enough to get hits through spamblogs..errr splogs. I feel so special.

UPDATE!

I’ve received a comment from the blogger I linked above (see the comment, well…in the comments) and it turns out it’s NOT a spam blog. Apparently I’m just that cool and umm…not rubbish *insert large cheesy grin here* oh and I’m big in Sweden!

Here’s the link to the news story!

Meanwhile, as I lamented the total failure of my planned assignment, I realized that there was an important lesson in my students’ reactions. They were rolling along with the problems, enjoying themselves despite the confusion, and talking to each other. Some checked the Linden blog for status updates on the problem while others, stranded in far away lands, sent back messages about what they were seeing. The assignment I had planned may have been trashed but their learning was not.

Whether it’s because they’re “digital natives” or because they are just a really great group of students, they adapted to the difficulty and didn’t just log out and give up. I was impressed by their tenacity, sense of play, and desire to learn.

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 an engaging learning tool. However, I also wanted to take the opportunity to share with the group some of the work I’m doing with perceptions of identity and community inside virtual communities. To accomplish both goals I decided that we should participate in an experiment together (much more fun than me standing there typing).

I brought a box with me that participants could purchase for free. Inside there was a shape, a skin, and a few slides for their own reference. I asked everyone to put the skin on and to detach all of their own objects and clothing so that as many of them as possible would look identical. There were about twenty people in attendance and I would estimate that only half of them participated (which is a topic for another article here). Those who did participate were asked if they would move to the front row of the amphitheatre so we could all see them as a group, a group of identically dressed avatars with only their hovering names to identify them.

I then asked:

• How do you feel? Do you feel uncomfortable looking strange?
• Do you feel more in common with the people who have participated than you do with the people in the back who have not?
• Is there an awkwardness or vulnerability to looking strange?
• How much of your expression is tied to how your avatar looks? How much is tied to the text you use to communicate? The gestures you use to express yourself?

I think that those who participated gained some interesting insights into how they feel about their avatars. My theory is that we’re much more attached to how we look in virtual environments than we think we are and being forced to look strange allows us to see that attachment.

Some interesting insights that came from the participants:

• Complexity in avatar appearance may be a class or status marker. The better you can make your avatar look the more advanced or successful user of SecondLife you must be.
• We might judge users based on the choices they make in their avatar appearance.
• Much of the ways we decorate our avatar is meant to please ourselves, to give us something familiar or pleasurable to look at

Overall, it was a great experience. I highly recommend attending the Kuurian talks. It’s a great, informed, interested audience.

I won’t recap the stories of these three events. You can read them here:

Facebook

• Facebook site
• Mark Zuckerberg, FaceBook CEO, on the new features
• Petition against the news feed feature

SecondLife

• Linden’s Security Bulletin
• Tailrank’s list of stories

Craig’s List (some coverage not safe for work)

• Craigslist
• Violet Blue’s coverage
• Wired coverage

We’re watching the digital community mature in its understanding of what it means to really be a community that is partially hidden, obscured, or misrepresented. Groups which are as large as the Facebook population (in the millions) are far too large for any one member to truly know everyone involved and thus there is an assumption that the members we don’t know have something in common with us that makes them trustworthy enough to remain part of the group.

Here’s the metaphor I’ll use to demonstrate levels of trust in a community: Imagine a circle of people holding hands. Each person is in personal contact with at least two other people (the folks to the right and left whose hand they are holding). However, the circle is so large that one cannot see across to view everyone in the circle. We trust, though, that somewhere beyond the horizon where the chain of people continues that there are more and more people like us, holding hands with at least two people they know and that the circle is unbroken, creating a closed, safe space that we’re all invested in keeping “safe” or at least that we all have a common interest in what this space will be and how we want to be able to use it.

Now, got that picture in your head? Let’s apply our circle of people metaphor to recent events regarding online social networking.

Facebook: Facebook is a community of college students (though there is a high school mirror site and alumni are often allowed to retain their .edu email addresses and remain on the site after graduation). Next to MySpace, Facebook is perhaps one of the largest social online networks containing members from nearly every American college and university. You make an account and add people you know on campus to your friends list. You start with folks you really know, no doubt: your roommate, significant other, that guy you study Calculus with. These are the people in the circle with whom you are holding hands. You know them. You can see their faces, feel their hands. You trust who they are and what they’re doing on the site. You list your classes, the hall you live in, where you’re going on Saturday night and you do this with the intention of sharing that information with the people you really know but all the while you’re aware that people ten hands down the line or a hundred hands down the line can also see this information about you. We invest trust in the community when we assume that those people down the line have a similar commitment to the people next to them and thus the whole community, even the bits we can’t see, all have the same investment in the community and won’t treat us any different than they would treat the people closer to them in the circle.

At least, this is how Facebook used to work.

With the introduction of the news feed feature the dynamic of the circle has changed. Now people beyond our immediate view, folks who are fifty or so people down in the circle can, if they wish, get a view of the circle as if they were right next to us. Did we agree to hold hands with these people? Did we enter the circle to be so close to people we’re only mildly acquainted with? What Facebook users need to realize is that, yes, we did. By adding these people who we really don’t know to our friends list we’ve given them the ability to act as if they are right next to us in the community. They’re virtually holding our hand even if we really would prefer they were a few spots down the line from us. They aren’t violating us; the site isn’t violating us; we’re violating ourselves by adding people to a friends list who really aren’t our friends. They may still be trustworthy of maintaining the circle but now they feel a little too close for comfort.

Secondlife: The database breach at Linden Labs, makers of SecondLife, is quite a different beast from the FaceBook situation. Depending on which FAQ you read, the hackers gained access to usernames, passwords, home addresses, and credit card information. It should be said, before I go on, that Linden did a fantastic job of notifying its users about the breach and has been quick to react and forthcoming with information. So, in SecondLife we have a virtual community of users in a sort of shared Utopian hallucination of a world of beautiful clothes, fantastic homes and cars, as well as great thinkers sharing ideas, collaborating, and creating new content on a constant basis. Not all residents are who they appear to be, however, and it should be remembered that some users (I’d estimate half) are there to live a life apart from their real-life existence. This being said, how does my metaphor apply?

To apply the community hand circle to the SecondLife security breach we must add another level to the metaphor: a semi-invisible sphere of security provided by a third party, Linden Labs. Each user entrusts Linden with their personal information (billing address, credit card number…or not if you’re an unverified member which add a whole other layer of thinking to this metaphor that we’ll leave for another time) and in turn we are assured that Linden will protect the community that users are building. The database hack creates a lack of confidence in the shield around the circle so those who were involved start to break ranks, let go, wander around, or leave completely. Users still want to trust the other members of the circle but now there is a dark intruding cloud hanging over the circle that no one wants to deal with. To reestablish the community, Linden will have to work overtime to assure those who remain that the protection is there and stronger than before. Residents can continue to hold hands, look inward at each other, and not have to worry about what is creeping up behind them.

Craig’s List: Sites which cater to a more fringe or taboo topics and populations require a heightened level of community trust. Craigs List hosts ads about apartments for rent, classifieds, and personal ads. It covers as wide a range of topics as users who use it. For this example, we’ll only focus on the explicit personal ads that the site allows. The site is not “safe” like SecondLife is; its membership is not based on a common, verified attribute like FaceBook’s is. It’s a loose community where hand holds are tentative at best and probably best done while wearing a few layers of rubber gloves (or tongs). The circle of people is almost amoeba-like, shifting and floating with the occasional strong handshake and the common cautious brush of fingertips. So what happens when users are naïve enough to take a strong grip on a nearby hand that they don’t really know? The current fiasco, that’s what. The article exposing the real identities of community members who not only grasped a hand they didn’t recognize (who offered sex) but then metaphorically exposed themselves to that person, reveals something critical about our engagement in online communities: trust should be earned. We cannot always assume that the people in the circle have the same motivations that we do. Just because they are in the circle, holding hands, and we can see them we don’t know that they aren’t wearing a mask or merely holding our hand to distract us while someone takes advantage of us from another angle.

What can we learn from these examples? From examining the attributes and reactions of a violated digital community circle? I think we learn something important about the human condition when mitigated by the medium of the internet. We all drift through life establishing contact with other people with whom we share something in common: a job, a political view, an affiliation, a sexual attraction. It’s these shared things that bring us close to each other, even momentarily. We look for these commonalities; we hold on to them, and we make assumptions about those with whom we hold hands and project our own ideas onto those with whom we make contact. It’s human nature to want to make connections. People who engage in online communities are not desperate or naïve. They’re humans engaging in an activity that is innately natural to the human condition. These troubles with online networks serve as eye-opening examples that expose the problems that can arise when a natural inclination is performed in a somewhat foreign or unknown environment.

We still have a lot to learn.

8/30 Community Collisions and Cohesion
We have five dorms on Middletown. Each dorm houses three to four students who act as a team for peer evaluation and collaborative exercises. Last night each student was given a box with five avatars in it: Kool-Aid man, samuari, female alien, short green alien, and a huge grey monster. After splitting into their teams, each team was asked to select one avatar from their boxes to be their team costume for the night. After each team selected a costume they were sent to a well populated public region in SecondLife. Their instructions were to stick together as a group and observe the reactions from those they met. They were cautioned not to be rude to people or to interfere with activities they observed. The reaction to their mere presence as a group in a strange costume would be the stimulus they would observe.
The learning goals:
SL skills:
- team cohesion: students assisted each other in dressing, navigating the map, and recording reactions
- saving avatars: students learned to save their appearance as an outfit before changing into their avatars so they could return to their original form easily
- navigation: teams were given only a region name and had to find the region on the map, as well as selecting the optimal location in the region
- boxes: students learned to take items out of boxes, unpack them, put the pieces into their inventories, and wear them

Ethnography skills:
- safety in community: students learned how much safer they felt in their own groups, even small groups of three or four made them feel more confident about exploring
- identity and uniqueness: groups looked markedly different from those they encountered. Feeling unique can enhance a sense of cohesion in a group. When others are different we’re more likely to feel closer to those who are the same
- respect for communities: students were careful to not intrude on the activities they encountered. They were told to observe while not intruding.

Reflection:
There was a definite element of chaos as each team selected an avatar and got ready to explore. There were no arguments, however. Teams worked together to assist each other. A few students needed a bit more help but the teams worked well.
One team, dressed as Kool-Aid men, did get booted from the dance club they visited. Not because they were rude or obtrusive but simply because they were physically too big for the space (a phenomenon that one student compared to how morbidly obese people might feel in public spaces).

Relevant student quotes from the debriefing session:
“at first we fit in, everyone one said to the kool-aid men, “Oh, YEAH!” but then they were bored with us….”

“yah the peopl ein teh club kinda said hey and then left you out of the rest of their conversations”

“i think people are more accepting in SL than in RL”

“i feel more comfortable being weird and outgoing here than in RL”

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 looking avatars and gambling. There is so much more to SecondLife than vice. There are fantastic cultural opportunities, incredibly intelligent people, and immersive simulations so realistic you can smell the flowers.

I won’t deny that there is a learning curve that has to be overcome to teaching inside SecondLife but the payoff is well worth the effort. In nine years of teaching in higher ed I’ve never seen a class as enthusiastic, excited, or engaged as the one I’m teaching this semester. I can hear the naysayers now “But how you can you teach a serious subject in such a silly place? Aren’t the students excited about the environment and not about the actual material of the class?”

Of course they are. My students like to change their avatars, shoot guns, fly planes, and generally test out all of the perks of SecondLife. However, while they’re doing it, they’re also learning valuable lessons about community, identity, and ethnographic research and writing a ton! As I lecture about fieldwork in class their hands are shooting up to ask if they can research a community they found the night before on a distant island in SecondLife. Even the experimental nature of the class seems to draw them in. They feel privileged to be part of something that feels cutting edge. Several of them have told me about bragging to their friends about what they’ve learned and most of them have asked if the course will be offered again because their friends want to take it.

Meanwhile, they are really internalizing the methods of research I’m teaching and writing insightful blog entries about what they’ve learned about research and writing. I compare teaching writing in SecondLife to teaching chemistry in the kitchen. Using real examples that students can put their hands on makes the learning real and powerful. It’s exciting to watch and I’m fortunate to be a part of it.

To follow the class please visit our site and our picture gallery

]]> http://www.secondlife.intellagirl.com/2006/08/31/secondlife-education-in-the-news-finally-getting-taken-seriously/feed/ http://www.secondlife.intellagirl.com/2006/08/24/my-class-rocks/ http://www.secondlife.intellagirl.com/2006/08/24/my-class-rocks/#comments Thu, 24 Aug 2006 13:06:49 +0000 intellagirl Uncategorized http://www.secondlife.intellagirl.com/2006/08/24/my-class-rocks/ 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 SL boot-camp. I think most of them are pretty good at using it but I want to give them all the help I can from the start.

I’m so psyched!

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. The other night it will meet in SecondLife (students will be at home using their own computers) on Middletown island.

2. Community focus: As we learn to write and conduct research in rhetorical situations we’ll also be learning about community:

a. how communities form

b. what communities we are members of

c. what our assumptions are about communities

d. how does one become a member of a community

3. Identity revealed: As we learn about communities we are members of we will also learn about ourselves as individuals as part of communities. It’s critical to see yourself in a Venn diagram sort of way to understand what parts of you are in each community, where the communities overlap, and how membership in each community changes who you are.

4. Joomla: Our course will be documented on a joomla site (http://eng104sl.intellagirl.com) that will house all of our blogs, links, and news as well as the syllabus and other course materials.

5. Gallery site: All the work in the course will have distinct visual components. Because of this, I’m hosting a Flickr-like site where students can upload pictures and screen shots to be used in their papers (linking to an image is easier than trying to include it in a blog entry). http://www.slgallery.intellagirl.com/main.php

6. Inter-collegiate collaboration: Dr. Bryan Carter and I will be working together to provide collaborative opportunities between our courses. He’s teaching a course with very similar subject matter so it should be easy for students to take advantage of the chance to peer review each other’s papers, do research together etc.

Oh, and it’s all happening in SecondLife, the most advanced, immersive virtual world around. Should be an exciting semester. Check back here for updates!

NOTE: This blog post contains a spoiler for the plot of the new movie Pulse. Although, really folks, if you don’t see it you’re not missing anything.

I just spent eight dollars to see Pulse. Why?! It’s getting horrible reviews, has a vapid plotline, minimal acting and is completely shot with a dingy blue lense that makes you want to scream at the screen “Turn on a freakin’ light!” I did have a reason, though. Pulse is about a computer virus that takes advantage of radio frequencies not usually received by hardware. The frequency is apparently the frequency of the dead *insert dramatic music here* and results in a scary “Do you want to meet a ghost?” message on the screens of computers that aren’t even plugged in. Once you watch the message (a little Ring here anyone?) the dead come to suck out your life force which makes you want to commit suicide. The entire civilized world is destroyed by the virus and those who survive are forced out of the cities and into the “dead zones” where no internet or cell phone service is available. So now, why I wanted to see the movie.

While most of us who are connected to cell phones, wireless internet etc are enthusiastic about the range of connectivity such technologies give us there are, of course, folks who think that the Web 2.0/always connected lifestyle will be the downfall of our civilization (probably the same folks who stock piled generators and powdered milk back in 1999). Pulse plays into those fears beautifully. The main characters are all college students surrounded by wireless gadgets, constantly connected to each other, and totally techy. One by one, they are eaten by the ghosty-frequency. In the end, the message of the movie is very clear: Technology will be our downfall. In two hours you are practically pummeled with the message that our dependence on technology has made us vulnerable to each other and to things we don’t understand. It’s interesting to me that such a phobia exists. If you don’t want to be connected, if you’re worried about your privacy, turn off the cell, the cable, the internet and live your life. The boogie man won’t come to get you.

Have you seen the movie? Have an opinion? Leave it in the comments. Let’s start talking!

Click the image above to get a copy of the paper I’ll be presenting. I cut quite a bit of the theory (Lacan, Burke, and Foucault) out due to time constraints in the presentation but I’ll be writing that stuff up here later.

A few observations:

-It was fascinating to see how the audience participated in the talk. While Hockenberry and Rheingold conversed in audio, the audience “chatted” commentary. Where else but SecondLife can an audience talk over the speakers and not be considered rude? The audience participation added so much to the chat. I’d also like to give Hockenberry a virtual high-five for being able to multitask well enough to talk to Rheingold while he chatted in SL. Very well done!

-As always, SL residents asked brilliant questions and the discussion was intellectual to the max. I was lucky enough to get one of my questions answered!

-Rheingold, who is one of the most insightful new media academics around, gave excellent answers to the questions asked by the audience. His responses to issues about virtual economics, the slow decline of the importance of geography, and questions about the role of education in the teaching of online behavior and safety were right on and really insightful.

-Perhaps the question I found most interesting was a spin off of an audience question in which Hockenberry asked Rheingold is his time online had made him a better or worse partner to his wife. Rheingold responded that his wife of 38 years often IMs him even when he’s just out in his office, and that he was impressed with the voice she uses in IM. While others have been critical of the anonymity and lack of physical interaction that IM entails, it was wonderful to hear Rheingold, instead of echoing these criticisms, praise the communicative abilities of IM to allow different kinds of communication even between people who are physically close. It’s a trait of IM I’ve noticed in my own personal and academic lives and I was happy to hear him mention it.

If you’ve read any of Vinge’s novels you’ll be familiar with the kind of networked technologies he predicts for the future (wearables, holographic projection of avatars into spaces all over the globe, touchy-feely technologies). However, this piece on NPR is much more concerned with the way we network through computers and the ways in which our own intelligence can be augmented by the technology we have available to us. For example, I can “remember” hundreds of phone numbers now because my memory is augmented by the memory in my cell phone.

Vinge and Doctorow see this evolution of technology use as a “singularity” because the true adoption of such technology will surely create such huge shifts in how we communicate, work, and socialize that those who are not part of it will see those who are as almost another species (Doctorow compares it to literate people vs illiterate people).

There are several points in the discussion that I’d like to pull out and comment on.

The NPR piece suggests that the singularity will affect all humans. I really don’t think that either Doctorow or Vinge believe this but it’s not state explicitly in the interview so I think it’s important to point out. If we see the advent of the printing press and the mass availability of literacy tools as a prior singularity, we can still find large segments of the human population who have yet to be affected by that singularity. One builds upon the last. A person can’t possibly embrace the technological singularity if he/she can’t read since the basic building block of any interactive intelligence will always be text. And of course, there will always be segments of the population who are wary of new advances or whose lives don’t create a need for the use of such technology.

The concept of a singularity also seems to suggest that the change will be sudden. However, I think all involved would agree that it’s actually a quite gradual shift that has been occurring for some time. I would even suggest that there are already people who are a part of this new “species” of networked and augmented humans. People who are intensely involved in social and collaborative networks online, people who are constantly in touch with resources of information available online, people who are never truly out of reach thanks to their devices….I would suggest that these are the “early hominids” of the new human, the precursors of the new species that Vinge and Doctorow suggest is on the horizon.

Most importantly, though, I think we should pay attention to the fact that this evolution is a voluntary one, one in which we must work to be a part of. Though there may be jobs that we won’t qualify for if we don’t stay abreast of technology, there will certainly never be anyone forcing us to embrace the evolution or magically giving us the knowledge we need to take advantage of it.

]]> http://www.secondlife.intellagirl.com/2006/07/25/approaching-the-singularity/feed/ http://www.secondlife.intellagirl.com/2006/07/21/onxiam-getting-closer-to-a-universal-digital-identity/ http://www.secondlife.intellagirl.com/2006/07/21/onxiam-getting-closer-to-a-universal-digital-identity/#comments Fri, 21 Jul 2006 13:43:38 +0000 intellagirl Research http://www.secondlife.intellagirl.com/2006/07/21/onxiam-getting-closer-to-a-universal-digital-identity/ If you read my blog you know I’m infatuated with digital identity construction. One of the best techniques to establishing a strong and useful digital identity is to be consistent with your “name” everywhere you go so people can recognize you. There have been a few attempts to do this with Trillian, ClaimID, and others. The newest player in the game is onXiam. OnXiam allows you to list all of your identities in various applications in one place so people can find you at Flickr, delicious, SecondLife, utube and lots of others. Go check it out. As far as I can see, the only application it’s missing is Xfire.

Link to my onXiam profile. 

what areas of lit do I need to explore?

• power relationships in classrooms
• student and teacher roles
• impact of technology on communication patterns
• body language and communication
• shifting identities and dynamic identity creation

What problem am I solving:

• instructor’s role in a MUVE
• difficulties in distributed power in classrooms
• adapting pedagogy to new technologies
• adapting teaching environments to the philosophy of web 2.0, consumer/producer/collaborator roles

Methodology:

what am I looking for in the collected artifacts? How will each be measured?

• evidence of collaboration o language cues o types of activities o levels o engagement
• evidence of changing roles o tones of interaction o areas of role-changing and conflict
• Behavior differences in MUVE and F2F
• Community cohesion

Ways to measure “richness” of the learning environment

• Quality of resulting work
• Student engagement Education is changing.

More and more universities are offering more and more classes online. Instructors who used to teach face to face classes are now teaching in online spaces such as instant messaging, forums, and virtual environments The models of learning are changing with the demands of technology or rather technology is changing to suit our learning patterns in more natural ways.

However, traditional pedagogy models and classroom models of identity aren’t the most effective in these new learning spaces. Just as pedagogy shifted when professors became instructors who engaged students rather than being just those who “professed” and left the teaching to tutors who met with small groups of students, and just as pedagogy shifted in the 1970s with open universities and the development of community colleges, we’re face to face with another large shift in pedagogy.

Today, as student demands change, models of learning change and technology used in education advances, so do the models of pedagogy we use need to change as well. However, just like any other change in pedagogy, we must be critical and reflective as we make changes, while paying attention to attitudes, outcomes, learning styles, technology; all must be taken into account as we carefully refashion pedagogy to suit changing times. Related to these changes come elements of identity for both teacher and student, relationships of authority and power, understanding uses of technology and how they effect learning.

This dissertation will provide a model for approaching changes in online learning environments with special emphasis on the use of education MUVEs (Multi User Virtual Environments). We’ll start by looking at a brief history of online education while paying specific attention to how each technology influenced collaboration, power, and identity in the classroom and then pedagogy as a whole. Next, we’ll move on to focus on using MUVEs, the new frontier of online learning. To apply the theories developed, a case study will be offered to reveal the artifacts and insights gathered in one semester of composition and rhetoric instruction in a MUVE (using SecondLife as the platform). From the insights gathered, the piece will end with the implications of the research as well as direction on how instructors can learn to embrace these new learning spaces as well as anticipating what changes we’ll face next when using technology in education.

Chapter One: Justification and Background: Why are power, collaboration, and identity necessary topics of analysis in online teaching? An examination of the various theories that inform this work. Framing the questions that the research presented later is constructed to answer.

Chapter Two: History of online teaching. An overview of various technologies and how each impacts power, collaboration, identity, and pedagogy

Chapter Three: MUVEs. This history and development of MUVEs as well as an explanation of how they can be used in education.

Chapter Four: SecondLife. What the reader needs to understand about SecondLife to appreciate the research gathered there and presented in the next chapter. Power, collaboration and identity in the general SL population

Chapter Five: A case study of a semester-long composition class in SL. How the course came about, who was involved and the mechanics of the course.

Chapter Six: Analyzing the artifacts. What evidence of power, collaboration and identity were discovered during the semester.

Chapter Seven: ramifications and findings. So what? Analysis of the implications of the study’s findings

Chapter Eight: Broader analysis of ramifications to pedagogy in online spaces.

Certainly, if you think of Epicurean philosophy as hedonistic then applying it to SecondLife seems pretty easy. Everyone is beautiful; they can eat all they want and never gain a pound; you can down glass after glass of champagne and never even get the hiccups. But let’s look at the truth.

Epicurus was fundamentally concerned with ways to be happy. Not shopping, eating and drinking, or “lotus eating.” Epicurus gave us three rules for happiness:

1. Have good friends and spend lots of time with them. Live with them if possible.
2. Be free. Loosen as many ties to business and politics as possible. Be self-sufficient.
3. Reflect. A well-lived life is one that is thought about, reflected on, and lived thoughtfully.

Pretty simple, huh? It’s easy to see how in the years after Epicurus there were many communal living arrangements conceived in his name. It seems to me that SecondLife could be an Epicurean paradise if we let it be. Forget all the shopping, the endless additions of “bling” to one’s avatar, and the seemingly limitless consumerism and acquisition of items. Instead, focus on ol’ Epicurus’s suggestions.

Find friends. Meet people. Talk to folks you might never have met in real life. SecondLife offers a unique opportunity to “live” closely with your friends, to see them often, and to have great chats and share experiences.

Live free. Fly around. Explore. Start a business if you want but remember that this is SecondLife and you should only take it as seriously as you enjoy.

Reflect. Remember that when living in SecondLife you’re living on the frontier of a new world. Stop and think now and then about what you’re experiencing and what it means to you and to the future of technology and communication.

But most of all, be happy. It’s what Epicurus would have wanted.

Well I gave it a shot and I can’t believe the impact it had on me and the way I see my avatar as an extension of myself. First, even though it was my idea in the first place, I couldn’t believe how nervous this made me. I had time to do it but I was putting it off and then Kate Spatula “double dog dared” me and who can resist that?! I then felt that I immediately had to go hide to do it by going back to my SIM (Middletown) which is currently closed so I knew no one could see. Why be so modest and self-conscious about an avatar?

The next big realization I had was that I was highly invested in being “attractive.” It was tough for me to tolerate my avatar being ugly in any way. As I made changes to make Intellagirl into “Intelladude” I caught myself thinking about whether or not he was attractive or not. I’m still trying to figure out why that was important to me.

I will say, however, that once I’d done it, once I’d made my male version, I was rather pleased with how I looked. It seems that as a male I feel much more comfortable being silly. Is it true that in real-life men are a bit more willing to look silly in a hat, a funny t-shirt etc? Whereas women are more concerned with how they appear?

My thoughts about my reaction to the experiment are still cooking and I still intend to put on my “dude” avatar (as I’m calling it) and troll around a bit to get some more reactions.

Have you tried changing the gender of your avatar? How did it feel? Drop me a comment!