Education on Vue Holyrood Park, open space to learning space -
Fiona Littleton Student views of Second Life as a teaching space
Sian Bayne Slide 2 Education on Vue: Holyrood Park, open space to
learning space Fiona Littleton ([email protected])
Slide 3 Holyrood Park place where rich resources exist where
interesting things have happened, and continue to happen where
people can go to have certain sorts of experiences great place to
play build social presence Slide 4 Holyrood Park, 4 th July 2007
Slide 5 Vue South, 16 th July 2007 Slide 6 Vue South, 4 th August
2007 Slide 7 Vue South, 6 th August 2007 Slide 8 Slide 9 Holyrood
Park, 13 th September 2007 Slide 10 Live demo (hopefully) Slide 11
Student views of Second Life as a teaching space Sin Bayne
([email protected]) Slide 12 Student talk: some key themes the
good the bad and the strange. Slide 13 Second Life is really a
platform for role playing and socialising. I mentioned to Moira
that I was amazed at how deep our conversation was and how close it
felt talking to her. She felt exactly the same. Then suddenly, I
don't know how, we started talking about foreign languages. She
started talking in Italian and I replied in Spanish. We carried on
like that for about 15 minutes! We were both so thrilled at the
experience. It was so easy to quickly ask what something meant and
then just carry on...It was also very easy to give examples of
situated grammar. In First Life students are always so conscious of
their speaking but our virtual identities just did not mind.
student weblog The good Slide 14 Mark kept getting stuck with
objects. I somehow managed to acquire the swing seat. When Frank
Lassard asked where it was, I argued it was down my newly acquired
cleavage. This was just the beginning of some wild hilarity and
most of us spent the next 5 minutes barely being able to type for
laughing. I think it represents my subversive self, the one that
likes risks and creativity and boundary pushing and questioning,
and I find that I am much more pushy in Second Life, and jokey and
cheeky... I mean I am fairly like that anyway but I am much more so
in Second Life, and certainly in the Second Life classes I have
been much more provocative that I would normally be in a class.
student weblog Slide 15 My initial impression of in-world 'talk' is
that there is a significant shift in dynamics when three dimensions
are involved. A 'person' can move around, approach people, fly, and
visit things much like we do with our physical bodies. This is a
quantum leap from a simple text discussion, like we experienced in
the early weeks of this course, and adds a far more intuitive
dimension to communication - like taking the 'smileys' a great leap
forward. student weblog Slide 16 Had my first experiences in Second
Life yesterday. Found it hard to get anywhere, flying and
teleporting were quite hard. Had trouble getting back to the
Campus. Met some witches and monsters and things. Didn't run into
any other students. All in all, it wasn't all that educational and
the graphics were really slow. In the end it crashed. student
weblog Slide 17 The bad It was quite obvious to me that I can't use
my home computer for SL sessions because of the limited bandwidth
and system requirements. So I planned to use my office computer
which performs much better than my home one. So I installed the SL
browser and tried to access it using a wireless connection. It
worked but I couldn't change the settings of my appearance. Next
time I tried to access second life with ADSL connection and it
didn't work because of the proxy and firewall settings (I think).
So, using my office computer I could take a quick peak of my "in-
world" and I felt quite embarrassed to see myself half naked there.
Fiona helped me to find out what happened and also to overcome the
embarrassment. But I still don't know why I can't change the
appearance myself. Slide 18 However, I didn't give up on SL yet. I
went to an Internet cafe close to my home and tried it out there.
The only problem was that I had to install the SL browser and most
cafes don't allow you to install anything. So I asked them to
install it for me and they did. I took a copy of the setup that I
have downloaded and after the installation it asked to do an
update. I clicked ok and my goodness it was a 23 Mb update! So it
took some time to update and finally I was able to get in touch
with my in-world again. What a relief! Slide 19 I updated the SL
browser and logged in. Still I couldn't change the appearance but I
could walk and fly and use some gestures. However, it took some
time to render pictures and when I click the arrow keys to move, it
took some time to walk. Sometimes trees block my view and I can't
see where I am. It almost felt like a blind person moving around in
an unknown territory without the white stick. Since our meeting
place was so close to the sea I was really worried of drowning
because of this time delay. That is another experience that I could
not even begin to describe. It truly gives you an out of the body
experience with unshakable feelings of getting lost, drowning and
even dying. Slide 20 My orientation session with the class members
was on Thursday. Since I had to go to the Internet cafe and book
the same computer I used earlier, I took a half-day leave from the
office. Fortunately I was able to use the same computer. So I
logged in again and find my way back to the meeting place. I saw
several students of our class and I was able to greet them. But
soon I realized that I couldn't see what the others are saying
because of the time delay. And when I finally try to respond they
are talking about something else. It really freaked me out! Slide
21 Also whenever I tried to do a new thing like checking the chat
history and landmarking this place the screen gets frozen and the
machine gets stuck. Fiona also tried to chat with me using msn
messenger to give instructions but it was clear to me that the
machine I used in the cafe did not meet the requirements of SL. So
the orientation session went pretty bad and I was disappointed.
However, I do not intend to give up on Second Life. Maybe someday
soon I will be able to go back to the virtual world without
worrying about the system requirements or the bandwidth
limitations. student weblog Slide 22 I couldn't get logged into
Second Life and I thought it was a really negative experience.
During the course I said to Sian its sort of like you are at school
and you get these school... you use to get like the cool kids and
you get people who aren't the cool kids and you get the outsiders,
and you would sort of felt like an outsider at school looking
through the gates at all the cool kids having fun, but it was worse
than that, you couldn't even look through the gates because you
couldn't get into Second Life at all. student interview Slide 23
The appearance of an avatar may sadly be a 'put-off' for those with
which it interacts. Choice of animal heads for avatar faces may
send a terribly wrong message in my culture. Such an avatar may be
considered a sorcerer or witch / wizard. Who would want to interact
with such a 'person'? student weblog Slide 24 and the strange Dark
Roly: Its really wierd You: Second Life? Dark Roly: Yes. Its fun
but sort of wierd, I can see why it becomes addictive You: In what
way d'you find it weird? Dark Roly: Communicating via an avatar,
sort of real and not real all at the same time in-world
conversation with a student Slide 25 The wind sounds in the
background tend to make it feel like this is a dream or at least
all happening in your head. When someone makes a sound then it
really stands out like a banshee wailing in the night. post-course
interview with student Slide 26 Avatars are nothing but corpses.
So, somebody comes along and will fill those dead corpses with
something that is believed to be identity or feelings? It's like
dressing a Barbie doll An avatar is a dead mass that has been built
up into a convenient, average identity, an object for an average
user. student weblog
