Month: November 2009

After reading about my classmates experience in  SL I felt a little nostalgic and decided to head back in. It’s funny, logging in after a long time and Althea, my avatar, is just waiting for me where I left her, although there was a new basket of fruit on the table which made me wonder who else had been around….

Since I visited a lot of libraries and educational sites during my experience last year, I decided I wanted to try somewhere new. For some reason I decided on forensics and ended up in the Medical Examiner’s Office – Forensic Pathology. It was not immediately apparent who created the site, but there was a lot to look at, and lots of free stuff (always a bonus…)

They used to call the internet the information highway, or something like that, but it’s Second Life that’s scattered with billboards everywhere – it’s strange with such a powerful technology the best way to communicate is BIG SIGNS and LOTS OF THEM…
As I said, there was lots of free stuff – Tshirts, autopsy gloves and aprons in different colors, various wounds you could put on.  I took it all. It was all free. However, when I put on my apron, my skirt came off! I don’t know a lot about forensics, but I don’t think this is standard procedure at all. Luckily, there was no one else there. Which is also typical of what I remember about Second Life – unless I made previous arrangements, I was always flying solo.

 

Even Tim Horton’s was deserted… and you know this never happens in real life, no matter what time of day.

So, it sounds like I’m making fun of Second Life. And I am. Because it’s goofy.
But I do think it’s early days, and even at this stage there is value in immersive worlds. There is no denying they are extremely engaging. Just visiting the medical examiner’s office, Tim Horton’s, an art gallery and a monastery I was gone for over an hour and it seemed like minutes. Bringing that engagement to learning will be valuable. Information professionals have a ‘role to play’ (pardon the pun) – knowing how to navigate these worlds and find the resources within them.

Back in September Nathan posed the question on his blog – Is Second Life Getting Any Better?  I confess, after doing a professional experience project last year on the possibilities for a Resource Rooom on BCIT Island, I have only visited the virtual world a handful of times – but because I did some presentations on it at BCIT and my avatar was featured in a staff newsletter, I often get questions about it. The queries are often about how to get a good outfit.  It seems there is so much potential for virtual worlds, but people end up spending a lot of time making sure their avatar is well-dressed. And many educational organizations, including universities and libraries, give away virtual T-shirts and hats.  Why is how our avatar looks so important? 

A great explanation is listed on page 7 of the Alliance Library Systems Report  [pdf] on their first year of operation in Second Life.  Kitty Pope calls it the Sousa effect – “The marching band enthusiast John Phillip Sousa achieved tremendous success organizing bands, not only because people have an innate desire to play a musical instrument and belong to an organized structured group but also because they get to have new band uniforms.”

This all came to mind this week because I came across What not to wear in virtual circles in the Tiimes Higher Education.  It seemed humourous that avatar fashion was newsworthy in an academic pubication, but I found the solution proposed by one commentator very interesting: “My solution is to have two avatars: a boring one for institutional business, and one with a more adventurous character- and a much more extensive wardrobe-that I use for recreation.” It brought back the discussions around online identities, performance and the blurring of work and personal identities in the early weeks of this course. As for myself, my avatar Althea Snoodle wears a BCIT T-shirt and keeps it professional (see left sidebar).

Yesterday I had the privilege of attending a webinar Informal Learning Spaces on Campus presented by David Zaiser. It was especially interesting because I had just recently watched Dr. M. Wesch’s inspiring podcast  The Future of Education. What the two presentations have in common is a focus on student-centred learning and the strong role collaboration has to play in learning.

I have a keen interest in Learning Commons, mostly because I work at the BCIT Learning Commons. The  dual rise of Web 2.0 and the Commons phenomena always intrigued me. It is only this term, due to a Directed Study on Learning Commons and Libr 559M that I have realized collaboration and digital information are  the common factors between the two. The Learning Commons is all about providing spaces and services that enable collaborative learning and that allow students to access and manipulate digital information.  Social media is all about collaborating to create and share digital information.

Now that this epiphany has occurred it just seems to be hammered home again and again – as in the two presentations this week.

And to close I will show you some pictures of our lovely BCIT Learning Commons…