I do find that the spaces are lovely, and that it is interesting to be a person in the space, but I have found it difficult to find people who are interested in exploring what SL is good and not good for specifically and would like to explore more situations where the learning is not embedded in the tool/portable.
I think this is because we have to commit quite a lot of time and some money to really understand how the tool works. This means that by the time people have the skills and permissions which enable them to speak about the platform they are in effect investors or advocates of the tool because they would like to see a return on their efforts.
This is reasonable, but I think that it makes it difficult for people considering the platform from outside to unpack the investments people are making and the conversations around those, from the functional advantages and challenges posed by the tool.
Noob navigation experiences
I have looked at sites around SL and sent my pictures and comments to Decka in game. Largely my experiences of SL have been navigating buildings.
This is a bit like visiting a University campus on a Sunday - or a shopping district. It is a bit hard to tell from the buildings how SL functions for education.
It is possible to spend a lot of time navigating space without getting to places with people active and interested in the participation of tourists in education.
Some spaces were secured. I was given a suggestion about how to access a company's secured space using a polygon but I felt that this was probably some kind of digital trespass.
I did meet a chap who had done some building and he said to contact him if I needed building done. I also met some people at the IBM site who were promoting IBM.
A lot of edu stuff probably happens in USA daytime or EU day time so perhaps this is an AU disconnect.
would like to be able to pick spaces to visit using tag clouds around the kind of topic and level of activity in a place. Exploration of data munging and physics where the data can flow in and out again and
Student perspective on efficacy of the tool
There is considerable bandwidth and time required to access information. I feel that theability to wrangle information and process it is still a bit raw. And that the fact that sharing images and ideas does cost is a factor which should be kept in mind. To provide a picture for Decka Mah in game did cost. Thanks to Decka for the $.
Because the tool is structured in a way which means investment underpins participation I feel that the people who are currently reviewing the tool are seeing it largely from the perspective of people who own.
I have questions about how someone who volunteers their time to develop materials in a space owned by someone else is able to have some security on their time investment.
Students will often be in this kind of situation, and especially in action learning and similar models the work they do in a learning program could have relevance in another context, but in situations where the assets or skills are contextual to SL or to a place or functionality which is owned by the program this could make it tricky for students. to reuse what they have learned. Their investment is scoped by the permissions/duration/funding of the course, and also by the permissions/corporate policies of the software platform itself.
I think that it would be great for stretching the discourse around education in SL if there was a month of FREE EDU SL as in freedom and free as in $ practice, where people found out what they could do with the kinds of resources that a student might have. ie how much can we learn without spending and how much can we take with us if we have no 'tenure' or 'franchise' on the materials and space. I think this could help to inform good practice in developing spaces and programs which do consider the rights of students/participants/volunteers to their efforts.
If the discourse is only around practices which involve ongoing investment then the access to education is on a subscription basis and this should be considered as a part of the profile of the tool in education.
Investment in tools is not specific to SL but I feel that it is embedded in the opportunities to speak and participate in a way which would make it easy for owners to find it difficult to anticipate or plan for the experiences, hopes, expectations of their students if these aspects are not a part of the discussion.
I guess I am talking about the kinds of expectations people have around RTO organisations about accessibility and portability of their investments in learning. Some kind of civil rights for avatars or ethics and principles for good practice in edu space.
Here is an online conference I am participating in which uses moodle and elliminate. The elluminate sessions have been made into mpgs
http://ltc.umanitoba.ca/moodle/mod/forum/index.php?id=12
I like this because they are using the tools and then breaking the material out of the tools when the tool has served its purpose. There is some good discourse there.
Geetha has a wonderful program working in Bangalore with homeless kids. The spaces are small the learnings are student directed. They make resources they can share freely with their communities.
http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2007/edition-13/narayaran/
The fingertip knowledge hands on knowledge and constructive approach of the community reclaiming buildings and making small networked schools is inspiring for me.
Future SL - I think it could go either way.
People who love it buy into it and advocate for it.
People who are time poor or bandwidth poor cannot invest enough time or money to find their value in the context. This results in a shift in the ways it is recommended to be used. Possible to become fully an expo space where people pay to play. Possibly well suited for corporate learning and promotion.
Not recommended for variable access cohorts, but more targeted to known networks and participants who have invested the right amount of time to be really effective in the space. Architecture design and marketing in particular suit the space and people interaction. ie more advanced users and more targeted focus but more interesting things achievable.
Or underpinned on a commitment to skilling and planning for fair and accessible participation. To become more flexible in its use of information and combination with other tools. Second Life can be a moment or a model or a discussion in that space. Perhaps this means more work to make the tool or alternatives work comparably and might mean that there is a difference in what can be achieved by people with more or less investment in time and space on SL.
I am excited about danah boyd coming to AU.
She is doing a lot of work on social literacies and how we define our digital educational spaces. (Disclosure: I work with edna. I am interested in freedom and negotiated space as a general theme.)
http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/
http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2007/?page_id=28
http://educationau.edu.au/jahia/jsp/index.jsp
http://www.groups.edna.edu.au/course/enrol.php?id=1358
Here is an opinion about access to knowledge which differs from mine
but which includes some interesting ideas around indigenous culture.
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/other/AIPLRes/2006/13.html
I have been dabbling with content from the archive of sled
to see if I can do a mashup of the content from the list so we can search it by keyword or author.
http://dabbledb.com/
(The demo is worth watching)
