second life

Ah, it's been a long time since day 2. The reality of learning in virtual world is that tutors keep getting dragged kicking and screaming back to the real world. Lots has happened in-world though. Check out my Flickr stream for some pics of activities. More to follow soon.

The JISC online innovating e-learning conference has opened for another year, with the real time action happening from the 4-7th November.  This is always an worthwhile event, but should be especially interesting this year as David White is presenting on how we have used Second Life for teaching and learning, as part of Theme 2: Going boldly into the dark, and I am facilitating what should be a really interesting session in Theme 1: Embracing the future now, on Supporting Staff - Transforming Culture, presented by Grainne Connole and Alan

First day totally in world.

Today was the first official day of the main part of the second art & design pilot.

Right. I better give you all a quick update before I get dragged back into the day job.

We learnt a few things in the first phase of the Open Habitat project which have informed the set-up of our next pilots. I’m currently planning the pilot that will run with philosophy students in Second Life. The main challenge with the first pilot was the sheer speed of debate in SL. The experienced philosophy students are used to being able to gather their thoughts, write a paragraph or two and pop it into a forum.

Twitter is the oil that has lubricated my ideas today.
A JISC-Emerge tweet alerted me to a blog post by Josie Frazer about Dave White's work on Residents and Visitors for the JISC funded Isthmus project. Dave is, of course, Open Habitat's project manager, which is quite handy.

My fuzzy thinking about all of this at the moment needn't prevent me from spilling a few ideas here.

Intrigued by a PhD student that I am advising, inspired by a conversation with Graham yesterday, and supported by this article I've just stumbled upon, I think we have the plan sorted.

Reality Check.

For a variety of reasons, the Faculty wide idea is no longer on the cards, so I'm reverting back to the A&D students for the second pilot.
The ruthless culling of seemingly fully-formed plans is an essential part of the creative process, but my apologies to those readers not used to this turbulent approach to project planning.

I recently helped the Police get their Freshers' safety message across by installing a poster on one of our islands:
The V.C. mentions it here in his daily reflection,
and here's a report in the Yorkshire Evening Post