HappySteve

5 Year Plan for Virtual Worlds in Education & Integration with Moodle

We've had our virtual world "Booralie" running for almost a year now and I'm thinking "Where to next?" 

I sent my thoughts to a team of teachers at my school, Northern Beaches Christian School.

Here is that email. I finish with some conclusions as to where we might go next.

Booralie Island was the beginning of a journey - just a beginning. 'Virtual worlds' will increase in relevance over the coming years.

Technology is changing the fabric of how we relate. This is simply a fact. The choice we're left with as educators, is to stand to the side and watch new generations figure it out for themselves without us, or what I'm suggesting: notice the changes and guide our students as we see best, believing that they can benefit from, and NEED, our adult wisdom. Whether you're skeptical of the new space, or embrace it, is irrelevant - the point is to know what's happening and engage with students so that they hear your perspective and are guided by your adult wisdom. What we don't want is a conspicuous silence/absence.

Here is a superb overview of the current state of virtual worlds and current initiatives in education: http://www.l4l.co.uk/?p=592 Have a good read of it if you have time, to get up to speed on where things are up to, globally. 

Highly significant is the argument that we now have the 'V' generation - young people who have grown up using virtual worlds. A classic example of this is Club Penguin. So 5 year olds are familiar and comfortable interacting in an online virtual space then this becomes a staple tool of connection - an assumed space just like the internet has been an assumed space for some older students because they've never known a world without it.

So 3D spaces are only going to become more 'normal'. This Gartner report addresses commercial implications of this: http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=721008 (the full report costs $200!).

Consider the way that people who can't use the internet are disadvantaged. I wonder if it will become more the case that people who can't navigate and interact in virtual worlds are disadvantaged. The internet as 2D 'pages' may be seen as a dinosaur in some years from now.

So, we're on the right journey with Booralie. But, where to next?

Well, I've learnt a thing or two over the last couple of days:

1. There is at least one example, being implemented as we speak, of a virtual space being made available to every student in an entire country. The country is Scotland. Their intranet system is called 'Glow' and seems to function like Moodle for the masses - a central registration system for all the students in all the schools. Think of that! It's happening now!

A guy called Derek Robertson has set up the virtual space, like Booralie but bigger, and linked the user registration system to the country's 'Glow' system, so any student can log in with their normal username and password.

Enter discovery number 2:

2. There is software that runs very similarly to the 'Second Life' system we use for Booralie Island, but it is open source and free. In Craig's words, as we explored this other system on the weekend together, it is the "Moodle of Virtual Worlds". It is called "OpenSim" - keep that in your vocabulary. I've been aware of it vaguely for a while.

However I have recently discovered that there are companies that will set up and run OpenSim for you at the fraction of the price you'd pay to Linden Lab for a Second Life island. You can have much more space for less money. There are no imposed rules (such as users have to be over 13). There shouldn't be any problem tying it to our LDAP user database, i.e. we could make it so that once a student is on Moodle, they can also enter our virtual 3d space.

Thrown into all this is the "SLOODLE" project - that allows Moodle tools to operate in a 3D environment such as Second Life or Open Sim.

What would your Moodle page look like if it was 3D? If it was a house you could walk through? How would that change the way our students view the subject? Their engagement with it? My students are always asking "Mr Collis where on the Year 8 French page is it?" Imagine if I could reply "It's through the new door at the back of the lounge room." How would you logically set out your Moodle page if it were a house, not a page? Or if it were a beach? Or a space station? Or a café? Or a cave? Or a scene from Kill Bill? After all, visually we're wired for 3D space, not 2D space. Moodle begins to look clunky, doesn't it?

Taking all of those developments into account, I have some specific suggestions for where we go next. I need to research them more, but this is what we should probably be doing and where I think we'll probably end up:

1. I <think> we should leave Second Life and get OpenSim set up instead, with a lot more room, and linked to our Moodle user system. The new space would still be called "Booralie".

2. Therefore, envisage a situation where every teacher knows their students can automatically log into our new Booralie. It's assumed. It's normal. They login using their Moodle password. This means younger students in Primary would be able to log in. (We could, and should have a separate space for Primary).

3. We open up a section of Booralie to other schools. ANY other schools. We use the principles of the Beyond Borders website. We charge a fee to the school, thus making it scalable. We aim for the beginning of 2010 with this, and make it a teacher training course that we offer. We need a name for this space. It will become a name recognised in many schools.

4. Within a year from now, some Moodle courses appear in Booralie, especially our online courses where online students can interact with each other in-world. Within 3 to 5 years from now, many/most of our courses exist in Booralie. Also, every Faculty has space on Booralie. We notice that we take Booralie space for granted like we take the physical space of NBCS for granted.

This is all in my head right now. We'll see how it pans out, won't we!?

A Crazy Idea, All in One Lesson, & Blogged Directly from Class

As I type this, my Year 8 French students are working intensely on making comic strips by taking pictures within our virtual 3D world, which we call "Booralie Island". Now they're making comic strips. I'll paste the comics in amongst this text that I am typing.

COMIC 1, by Sarita, Danielle, and Rebekah

We're going to post the comics at http://nbcsfrench.wikispaces.com which is our website dedicated to publishing resources created by students. We categorise those resources by chapter and textbook, so any teacher or student who is using the same textbook can find resources that match exactly what they're looking at at the moment.

 

COMIC 2, by Connor, Joel and Ethan

I'd like to think that teachers who would otherwise use the textbook, might direct their students to check out our own special comics. I'd like to think that students will find it interesting to see the work produced by their peers in other places - perhaps it will give them a sense of connection with other French students. Also, it's a heck of a lot of fun. The fact I can find 3 minutes to type this shows they are intensely 'into' the activity. I can hear, right now, students discussing their camera angles for the comic shots! Students are asking for virtual money to buy virtual clothing in the virtual clothing shop to wear for the shots!

 

Comic 3, by Lee, Daniel D and Daniel MB

 

It's the sort of activity where, if you're not careful, the students will spend hours and hours getting distracted. I've been very careful to get them moving - keep the comics simple, but let's get them done here and now and have them posted by the end of the lesson. It's now 10 minutes after the end of the lesson, and I am about to publish this blog post and the comics below. This is crucial - I can't sustain uses of technology that take hours of my time. 10 minutes, I can handle!

AHHH We didn't all finish! Out of 6 groups of students, 3 groups finished on time - not a bad start considering I had to teach them how to position the camera in the virtual world, how to take screen shots, add speech bubbles, resize pictures etc. The frenetic pace to the class worked well because the students worked efficiently.

Next time we'll aim higher!

If you have 20 seconds, leave a quick comment and say which city/country you’re from – I’ll show the comments to the students. (I showed them the comments on the lolcatz blog post – you just can’t beat the effect it has on our class perspective!)

Year 8 Maths in Second Life - A guest post, by Mrs Tracey Cameron

My year 8 class had been introduced to Second life in their science class early in 2009 and were very enthusiastic about Second life and exploring Booralie Island. After looking at Booralie Island myself, I had an idea that I could incorporate some of the mathematical concepts that they had been learning into an exercise in Second Life.

The class had just been learning about data analysis and data representation and I thought this might be a good opportunity to put these concepts into practice on the island. I wanted the class to measure the heights of trees on the island, list the data in a table and then produce a graph of the data.

Steve Collis was instrumental in developing the "Statistics Garden" that was used for this activity:

 

One of the problems with measuring the heights of the trees was that the standard trees were all the same height. Steve managed to fix this by planting some trees deeper in the ground.

During the lesson, students, went to the statistics garden and calculated the heights of the trees by using the location coordinates on the toolbar. The students found the coordinates of the base of the tree and then flew to the top of the tree. They then found the height of the tree by finding the difference in coordinates.

Once the students had collected data for half a dozen trees they were then able to create a table of data in Excel. They then used the excel graphing tools to produce graphs of their data.

The best graphs were then posted in second life:

This last part was the biggest incentive for the students. Having their work displayed in second life gave them a great deal of satisfaction and pride.

My second expedition to Booralie Island with Year 8 was after we had been working on geometry. I had the idea that the class could generate their own treasure map using geometrical terms and bearings. To do this, I provided the students with a blank pro-forma and asked them to develop a 10 step treasure map :

The follow up to this activity will be when we place treasure at the end of the treasure map and ask the students to follow someone else's treasure map. Steve will again assist in this process by providing password protected boxes with treasure inside for the students that correctly follow the treasure map.

I have not yet done this second part of the activity, but am very excited to see how it works!

 

 

Practical Examples of 3D Virtual Environments for Learning in High School

Eight weeks after our students first entered our 3D virtual world, called 'Booralie', I can now say we have a suite of learning activities to showcase. We use 'Second Life' software to run this environment.

In this video I show a wide range of examples of how students are learning in this space, both in student-directed ways (developing high-order skills such as creativity, collaboration and project-management) but also in structured, teacher-directed ways. 

I show activities we've run that are specific to Maths, Visual Arts, Music, and Languages, but also plenty of activities that are generic and transferable across different subject areas and ages - especially discussion based activities that rely on text chatting.

Every single one of the activities meets my two golden criteria of being low effort (for the teacher) but high impact (for the students). We've avoided the sort of activity whereby you spend hours recreacting the city of Paris or Ancient Rome for the students for one fabulous lesson. Instead we ask 'what are the inbuilt potentials in the rules of this world? Text chat quizzes are a good example. The Poinkey's Pods speed dating discussion tool is another classic. These ideas harness the potentials of the environment for learning with very little prep time.

This video is the culmination of an extraordinarily busy term. It has been the ride of my life, utterly exhilarating. It has been bliss learning new teaching skills.

Picture me in the first few lessons with my Year 8 French class trying to manage them all in the virtual world... figuring out how to get them to the same place on the island, working out what instructions work well and which work poorly. I hit the jackpot when we opened up the disco and I realised that students feel under pressure if just asked to 'chat in French', but will gibber away blissfully while on a virtual dance floor. 

Then there is our virtual radio station, virtual art gallery, the upcoming customisable maths maze, our virtual bookstore, and so on and so on.

I finish in the video remarking that this sort of environment is obviously not the be all and end all. It is simply a teaching tool, or learning space, that deserves inclusion in a teacher's repetoire. Students relate naturally to this sort of virtual environment. They're hyper-engaged by it. Many students spend many hours in similar environments outside school time.

I strongly argue that there doesn't have to be anything light-weight about activities in a virtual world. Activities in a physical classroom can be light-weight, or intense and productive. The same goes for a virtual space.

I welcome comments or questions. Leave a comment on this post or tweet me at www.twitter.com/steve_collis . To hear from me in future - subscribe on the right hand side of this page with your email address, and you'll receive future posts in your inbox.

Setting up a School Internet Radio Station

Well, I am in the best mood ever!

With very little fiddling around, I've set up an internet radio station for my school.

Once set up, you simply upload some MP3 sound files, and people who tune into the radio station hear them broadcast live.

To listen in, go to http://shoutcast.com/directory/search_results.jsp?searchCrit=simple&s=Booralie and click 'Tune In!' (At the time of publishing this post, most the of the content has been made by me. The station is only a few hours old. In a few days we'll have student content, and I'll blog again about it).

In our case, we then nominate our radio station as the media stream to play in our 3D virtual world (which we call 'Booralie Island', using the Second Life program. Our students and teacher use this space in parrallel with the physical space of the classroom. It is early days, but a strong community has sprung up).

 [here a student has a created a huge version of the periodic table]

 Anyway, back to the radio station...

THINK OF THE POSSIBILITIES!
- drama students broadcasting entertaining radio plays
- music students recording their compositions
- students of ANY subject, ANY age recording entertaining educational recordings.
- English students speaking from the perspective of a character in the text they're studying, or giving a book review.
- recorded debates
- health and diet tips from students studying nutrition
- students read their creative writing or poetry
- history students retell historical events in a dramatic mode!
- study tips, pretend advertisements, and so on!

Students create MP3 files with a headset (cheap headsets work fine, by the way) and free 'Audacity' software available here: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/

HOW TO SET UP AN INTERNET RADIO STATION
The way I did it:

1. Set up an internet server that will run your station for you. Go to http://shoutcast.setnine.com/ and decide how many people you want to be able to listen to the station at the same time, and at what quality. I think you want at least 'Bit Rate: 64 Kbps' but any higher than costs more with little increase in quality. We selected 25 listeners maximum. Click on what you want and then you'll have to pay by PayPal or credit card. I paid on credit card and will claim the money back from school.

THE COST FOR MY OPTIONS - $37.50 US per month (or about 60 Australian Dollars)

2. Once setnine.com has set you up (it took them 3 days for me), you'll be emailed a username and password. You log into the website when you want, and upload your audio files. You can create playlists and set them to play on a loop in a certain order, or you can even 'DJ', using the software WINAMP, to run your station live.

To listen to our radio station, click here and then click on "Tune In!"

It won't be hard to maintain and run the station. I'll get a pool of audio files from various teachers, or even direct from inspired students. I simply upload them to the website, and the radio server does the rest!

Update on our Teen Second Life estate

Here's how things have been going...

Before Christmas we placed an order for a Private Estate in Teen Second Life, which is a 3D virtual world that users themselves create and build.

The order came through a few weeks ago, with me set up as the estate owner. From that point only I could access our virtual estate! Since then we've transferred about 5 of my colleagues who showed interest last year. In a few more days we'll transfer another 20 or so who've shown interest in the new year.

We still have to set up a system to allow the creation of student accounts. I'm waiting on Linden Lab to get that set up for me at the moment.

In the meantime, I've been terraforming our estate, ready for its first inhabitants!

I've set it up as an island covered with forest. There's only one small building... as if we're settlers in a new land.

Today I've spent some time creating special surprises for students (& teachers). I want to create a lot more before our settlers arrive.

Click on the images below to make them open in their full size in a new window:

A view of the island. Hmmm the mountains look a bit ridiculous and pointy, don't they?

This looks like just water... but...

even though under the water looks normal too... there is a hidden cavern under this sand!

So how to you get in? Well there's a hidden entrance to be found...

And after following a long, windy passage you get to the cavern under the sea...

So, next I thought I'd try something more ambitious - a much bigger hidden cavern in the middle of a mountain. As you can see, to create these hidden caverns you have to dig a ditch in the landscape and then cover it up with a ceiling... you then disguise the ceiling to look like the landscape.

Here I've just added the first parts of the ceiling over two huge, steep arms that I've extended from the mountain.

A few minutes later...

And now we jump to the final version... I had huge troubles disguising both the ceiling and the front covering. I ended up shoving trees everywhere! This will have to do for now, oh well!

Finally, I've noticed little shapes appearing around the island. A good sign that my colleagues are beginning to experiment with building.

I've have plenty of conversations with a range of teachers who are keen to give this a go with their students. I'll blog as it happens!

Case Study: Teen Second Life at Suffern Intermediate School with Peggy Sheehy

Scroll down for the actual video footage, folks. STOP PRESS: My school have now followed in the steps of Suffern - see our experience with our own 3D Virtual World click here for news, video, advice, and reflections on our own experience.

On the last day of our visit to the USA, I caught a train up from New York to Suffern Intermediate School, in Suffern.

There, Peggy Sheehy was the first educator in the world to pioneer the use of Second Life for teenage student. Second Life is a 3D Virtual World which you can walk around in, and interact with other people who are simultaneously in the same environment. Amazingly, the 3D environment itself is created by the users themselves. I must mention the world has voice chat, so the social dynamics of interactions are surprisingly like real life. For instance at a party in Second Life you can hear the music coming from the stereo and might need to talk loud to talk over it. If you walk away from someone your voice is fainter to them, so you might walk up to someone to converse with them. You can text chat too, of course.

Now, obviously, you can't let teens run around the unregulated environment of Second Life. In fact Linden Lab will not allow teens into Second Life.

However, the company Linden Lab also offers 'Teen Second Life' for teens aged 13 to 17 (very strictly).

Still not good enough for structured, systematic use by a school. But wait! Educators can purchase a "Private Estate" - a piece of virtual land over which they have complete control. Bingo! A locked-down piece of virtual land!

I first heard Peggy Sheehy talk at a conference held in the adult Second Life environment. Second Life is great for conferences! No registration costs, no travel expenses, no organising for cover for your classes. Just log in and get the wisdom of colleagues, and offer your own wisdom.

As Peggy started speaking I quickly warmed to her and she won my confidence. SO MANY TIMES I have felt like gnawing my own elbow off in a conference presentation. But I immediately had the impression with Peggy that...
- she had common sense and a strong grip on reality / real life practice
- er, frankly, she was smart
- she could tell the difference between the important bits, and the irrelevant bits.
- she was relaxed and could roll with punches (you have to hear her anecdote about the time a pigeon flew into her classroom). This certainly proved true during my visit, when I arrived an hour late (thanks to the bloody New York taxi system - anyone with a car can be a taxi, is what I observed in NY). Peggy offered to be my taxi back and was entirely relaxed about juggling her schedule for this!

Peggy started planning to use SL in 2005 and launched in 2006.

It was such a delight to meet her. She is relaxed, but manic. Her manner with the students, as you'll see is assertive, but relational, with lots of space for the students' initiative (she gets through the 'official bits' as quick as possible!).

If there is one thing that has stood out to me from her observations on the educational value of a 3D virtual world, it's the notion of a "Psychosocial Moratorium" - a term coined by Erik Erikson. The idea is that the social space of a 3D virtual online world is particularly 'safe', and therefore particularly beneficial for nurturing the confidence of adolescents trying to figure out who they are, what they are good at, what they stand for and what they are are known for. As someone who has spent countless hours in the safety of online environments, I know exactly what she means. As of November 2008 I am seeking to set up Teen Second Life for my school, and can't wait to see how the students respond. Peggy has many anecdotes of students who have 'found themselves' through what is essentially a scaffold to constructing social identity (my wording there).

Now, when I visited Suffern, I had my little Dell netbook and webcam, and 'taped' some conversation with Peggy. I also recorded a conversation with some students, and a short, intense, and fascinating first session where a class experienced TSL for the first time!

The following footage is not brilliant quality, and is lengthy, but I found 'being there' very rewarding and have cut out very little from what I recorded. My intended audience is educators keen to explore the real life detail of a case study in the use of Second Life for students.

Let me start with the students and we can go from there to my interview with Peggy. Here are some random students who came into the library and whom I quizzed:

Here is Part 1 of the session introducing a new class to SL. The moment when the students realise you can fly in Second Life is priceless. They've been grabbed, hook, line and sinker. This moment is so significant. It is the moment where a simulated environment becomes interesting and of value to young people who are, themselves, at their age, at an age where their key challenge is to begin to define the parameters of who they are as independent beings in a complex reality. Again I think - Second Life appears to have the potential to be a scaffold.

Here is Part 2 of the session introducing a new class to SL. Some intriguing moments for those who have the time to watch it all. The noise level slowly lessens. The students are at times confounded, at times confident, at all times utterly engaged.

Now let's take a step back from practice and hear from Peggy. My big question is "What's the point?" She announced 3 thoughts and gets distracted after #2.

But we do come back to #3!

Now, if the Second Life environment is built by users, who builds the locked down private estate 3D world used by any particular school?

The answer appears to be:
- the students, students, students (such a good sign!)
- third party developers (Peggy highly recommends a gifted developer - Eloise Pasteur who is efficient and practical with her quotes. There is a funny moment in the recording where I don't understand the surname!)
- third party companies, e.g. NASA and many others, more than willing to make available their 3D Stuff (e.g. a simulated rocket ship) available for installation in a school's virtual space.
- noticeably absent - the classroom teacher. i.e. you do not need expertise!

And finally, some more casual chatting, and Peggy shows me the security system they set up to prevent students from using SL when there was no teacher present in the world. (The teacher can flick a switch in the virtual world that glues anyone who logs in, to the one spot so they can't move.)

My thanks to Peggy Sheehy for being such a wonderful, flexible, energetic host, and so willing to share, so able to remain relaxed while cramming in an extraordinary amount into what was basically less than 3 hours, AND I had 3 cups of coffee! Peggy's twitter ID is www.twitter.com/maggiemarat. Her blog is http://metaversedltd.com/ . She also administrates a school blog at http://rampoislands.blogspot.com/ which says it has been relocated to http://ramapoislands.edublogs.com , although this website seems not to exist. (Peggy - you are sure to read this, where is the new website?)

All this the day after US election day. I was at Times Square that evening... but that is another blog post.

To follow my school's adventures of using Second Life, subscribe using the box on the right hand side. I am committed to posting material I believe will be useful to classroom teachers myself interested in the potential of technology to empower students and thereby transform education. On twitter I am www.twitter.com/steve_collis and on YouTube I am www.youtube.com/lestep. You can see my non-professional blog at http://stevecollis.blogspot.com . I have so much more to post about what I saw in American schools! Fingers crossed I find the time to publish!

3D Virtual Environments in Education

Using 3D Virtual Environments in Education

This post is written by someone just getting his head around what is currently happening in this area, for other teachers in a similar situation. i.e. this is a Newbie perspective on 3D worlds.

There are 3D worlds that are free to access over the Internet. The user controls a person who walks around the 3D world. This person is called an ‘avatar’. Often, you can not only walk around the world but create the world with fairly easy-to-use tools. 

One 3D world is called “Second Life” and is populated by 100,000s, but is not suitable for young people. Luckily there is a “Teen Second Life” which is very suitable!  A couple of days ago I saw a presentation by a Peggy Sheehy, who started researching Second Life for education in 2005, and then launched it in 2006 at Suffern High School in New York. I had not believed this was possible. I’m actually visiting her school in a few weeks and will certainly report back about this.

Then, just an hour ago, I heard about Quest Atlantis, another 3D world which is populated by students worldwide, under the watchful eye of their teachers.

CONTENTS OF THIS BLOG POST:

1. Useful Links.

2. Notes on using Teen Second Life

3. Notes on using Quest Atlantis

4. My Thoughts

5. Post Script: Open Sim

1. Useful Links.

Teen Second Life:

Blog website from

Suffern High School about using Second Life: http://ramapoislands.edublogs.o

Some general ideas on Second Life for Education: http://www.simteach.com/wiki/index.php?title=Second_Life_Education_Wiki

Peggy Sheehy’s Blog: http://metaversedltd.com/

Quest Atlantis:

http://atlantis.crlt.indiana.edu/

And now, here is what I have learnt, in handy dot point form! My intended readership is people curious about 3D worlds in education, who doesn’t know much about them!

OpenSim and Skoolaborate:

http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Main_Page

http://www.skoolaborate.com/

2. Notes on Using “Teen Second Life” Virtual World:

(notes taken from presentation by Peggy Sheehy from Suffern High School)

-        They use “Teen Second Life” which is a separate version of Second Life with strict controls. (Normal Second Life is a largely unregulated adult 3D world, with an emphasis on ‘adult’).

-        Teen Second Life allows Suffern High School to establish a 3D environment that is totally locked down. It is a safe little bubble world just for this High School. Only students from Suffern can access it, and even this is only when a staff member is in the world to supervise. So, students can enter the world from school or at home, but only when a staff member is also in there.

-        There are also some requirements for teachers to be legally cleared to use Teen Second Life. I’m not sure what these requirements are,

-        It cost about $1700 in the first year (an establishment fee and then a regular service fee) and about half this in each successive year (just a regular service fee). This money goes to Linden Labs, who created and run Second Life, and who run the locked-down bubble of Teen Second Life for Suffern High School.

-
 Peggy reported that Linden Labs were very keen and supportive with this project. (I asked her at the end “Do you think this project is easily replicable?” and she said emphatically “yes”).

-        Students do need a decent computer with a decent Internet connection to access it.

-        Peggy spent 2005 researching this. For this whole year she had Second Life running on her computer at her desk, and colleagues would see it running and this would spark conversation. In these conversations Peggy would suggest ways Second Life might be used for the teacher’s specific situation – age, learning area, etc.

-        She ‘made up’ the rules as she went, but clearly much thought went into these rules. Being something new, she had to make them up because she couldn’t copy what another school was already doing – she was the first!!! There are dress codes and etiquette rules for the world.

-        One interesting choice she made was to disable audio chat. This made all communication text-based, which is recordable and monitorable, and can therefore feed into the assessment process – indeed the process can be assessed, not just the final product.

-        Out of 1400 users she has only had to ban a very small number, and this was essentially for student-conflict.

 

How has “Teen Second Life” Been Used in Practice at Suffern High School?

-        It is not generally used for content delivery. Rather, the main value is that it is an open-ended, exploratory, collaborative environment.

-        They created tutorials for the students – i.e. the students could walk up to a tutorial area of the world and try some simple tasks designed to teach the students about the world and how to use the software. These tutorials were ignored!

-        Students build the 3D world themselves. For instance they build historical environments, or environments from books they are studying. They build interactive objects that explore mathematical concepts, or simulate the laws of physics.

-        Students spontaneously and intensively tutor each other. A huge benefit has been for naturally shy students who have a knack for navigating this world and creating objects in this world. They become the experts who other students come to for help, and this instills social confidence that consistently transfers to face to face life.

-        Teachers use the world for role-plays. They dress their ‘avatar’ up in appropriate clothes for the role play and then speak to each other in character.

-        In particular there are some special objects the teachers can place in the 3D world (they have to be purchased but they are cheap) designed to provide structured conversation. These are called “Decka’s Decks” and “Poinkey’s Pods”. They allow students to text chat around a table about a topic, and a transcript of the chat is automatically sent to their teacher. The “pods” throw two students together in a text chat for several minutes then automatically reassigns students into other pairs for another few minutes, and so on, like speed dating.

-        The 3D world has its own economy – students are paid a certain amount of simulated money as a kind of stipend. Students can trade! E.g. a student might design a set of clothes and sell these clothes. Thus they learn all kinds of skills useful in face to face life – saving, investing, marketing, negotiating.

-        I’ve heard this many times before – that these sorts of online environments are simply wonderful for students with Aspergers.

-        Students created a multimedia island with 3D objects that would play audio they had designed, like musical compositions.

-        The environment feels psychologically safe to the students so it encourages them to be confident, creative, collaborative, and to take healthy risks.

-        Peggy shared many stories about teachers adopting the 3D world as a standard teaching tool, not just a temporary fad, and many stories about benefits for students.

 

3. Notes on Using Quest Atlantis – Another 3D World:

I’ve learnt about this at the ACEC conference. Similar to Second Life, you download a small program to access it. It is a locked down world too, but not locked down to one school, but rather all schools that involved. 

-        Teachers have to through a training process to participate.

-        It’s FREE!

-        Teachers report an incredible leap in student motivation and social confidence

-        It does not feel like school, so it provides a circuit breaker for the disenfranchised student – a way to come back on board with no loss of face.

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-        Quest Atlantis is not materialistic (often 3D worlds and games provoke a preoccupation with the acquisition of status).

-        All activities in Quest Atlantis are linked to 7 key values which drive the activities. These are really prominent and fundamental to everything. E.g. Social Responsibility and Compassionate Wisdom. There are set activities – a whole range of them across learning areas and for different ages.

-        Quest Atlantis does deliver content – in the form of many educational quests which earn students currency. These quests are very interactive & open ended.

-        Some quests have real-world elements to them. You have to do something (things) in real life to complete the quest.

-        Students tutor each other and help each other.

-        Can be accessed anytime, 24/7

-        It is actively peer-moderated. The experienced students guide and manage the behaviour of the new students, for instance if they are silly or conduct themselves in a way that doesn’t fit the positive community culture.

4. My Thoughts:

Okay, so I am thinking to myself: “What does a 3D world bring to the classroom that is new and useful?” It seems to be an entirely new space with rules and potentials that are different (but related) to the real physical space of the classroom. The space is naturally creative and collaborative is psychologically safer and more consistent than face to face interactions.

I wonder if a 3D world provides a kind of scaffold to develop in students skills in designing and implementing projects, working together, coordinating tasks, exchanging information, negotiating roles, peer tutoring, constructively conversing about/debating topics, identifying strengths and gaining recognition for these, and so on. 

These dynamics then transfer to the students’ face to face lives – this is what a scaffold is, right? - A step towards something rather than requiring a sudden leap. Students often are scared to make a sudden leap, and are therefore shy and reticent – for instance suddenly asking students to give a presentation to the rest of the class, right in the deep end, and no wonder students find this overwhelming and are left with negative memories. There is a predictability and a lack of ‘in your face’ intensity about 3D worlds that seem to coax students into confidence.

Students associate physical activity with the school oval. Why not associate creativity, role playing and collaboration with another school space – a virtual one? Not an exclusive place, I just mean one space among many. The virtual 3D world becomes a school space with its own dynamics and purposes, like the canteen, playground, assembly hall, etc.

Ok so I am just rambling & speculating on what I hear people reporting on. I am dead keen to set up a 3D world at my school now. I can’t wait to visit Suffern High School and will of course report on the experience.

5. Open Sim:

I barely know anything about this. OpenSim seems to be an open source program that allows you run your own Second Life server. So, people download the Second Life program, but instead of using it to connect to Second Life they connect to your Open Sim server.

Using this technique you can start up your own mini Second Life for your school. Some people in Australia and elsewhere have launched "Skoolaborate" which uses this technique to run a mini Second Life for a cluster of schools. Word on the street is this may open up to more schools.