Hi everyone!  

Today I successfully transfered over the Sloodle Tools to the teen grid!  It was a great exercise because in the process, I managed to upgrade the Sloodle Award System Scripts  as well.

To help the Lingualand project out, I also imported a Sloodle Classroom I built in Second Life a few weeks ago.  The classroom was specially designed to house the Sloodle Toolset in easy to understand locations for the student and teacher. 

I also created textures for with instructions, and placed these beside each Sloodle Tool to explain its use.

 

 

Hi everyone, today I completed a project Chris Flesuras of Skoolaborate commisioned me to program on the Teen Grid of Second Life.  Using these Language Chairs, the Head teacher can automatically move 35 teachers and 35 students into the sky, and have the chairs rotate on an interval to ensure that each student gets to talk with each teacher at least once!

This chair system can be used in many different pedagogical instances! I am excited to see how Chris will use these on his Skoolaborate network of islands!

Today I worked with Elecktra Abseguk on the Teen grid to help her plan out the floor plan of Lingualand which is a multi-language learning island for teens in Second Life!  Today we figured out where the various countries classrooms will be located! So far we have found room for a Spanish / Portuguese classroom, Italian, French, English, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean location.  The idea is to have each classroom side by side with a nice main street that connects them all.  Then to the South students will find a beach area where they can meet and collaborate together.  I will be installing Sloodle / Moodle for Helen's class as well as hooking into Skoolaborate technologies.  With these two technologies connected, Helen will have a great system available to manage her distance education classes, and use Second Life as a delivery platform.

Since I was in Korea for five years myself teaching English, every day I saw a repeated scenario - kids wanted to play games - mothers wanted the kids to learn English - Second Life presents a great opportunity to marry these two together - deliver English through Gaming!  Now both camps are happy - the kids - AND the parents!

Today we also:

• defined the limits of the land with a prim in each corner
• decided to have six wider, 2-storey buildings along the back, rather than 10 narrower ones
• placed prims the size of the buildings on the land
• attached textures to denote each langauge
• assigned individual buildings to Chinese an English (likely to attract the greatest numbers) and paired the others
• placed a long oblong prim to represent the central ‘passaggiata’ (this will have an attractive texture .. )
• placed paths up to the front of the building from the passaggiata which in turn will separate the shared arcade areas (each side a different language)
• decided that TV screens would be a good way of separating the beach areas
• agreed to keep the area simple .. avoid items which could hamper navigation (especially for those new to SL)
• advised that sound parcels would define media limits, but that voices can carry beyond

The next stage for Helen and I, is to replace the 3D blocks with actual buildings, and then insert the SLOODLE/Skoolaborate tools - such as a 3D Flash card game, a quiz chair connected to Moodle, and a scavenger hunt system.  The beauty of all of these tools, is that by using them, Helen will be able to track her students using the Moodle / Skoolaborate learning management systems! Gear up for fun, and stay tuned for more reports!

If you'd like to start a Language Learning lab, or other educational lab in Second Life, don't hesitate to contact
us! Cheers!

 

 

Hi everyone!

Today I released a product on the Second Life Market place! It's the TV Backpack!

This backpack takes advantage of Linden Lab's new viewer Viewer Beta 2.0!

What's really cool, is that once you wear it, a TV monitor sits outside of the backpack above your avatar's head, where you can broadcast live ustream.com feeds directly from your Web Cam!

Great for bringing an additional level of Transperancy to the Virtual World!

Using UStream, you can broadcast your audio and video onto the display screen, but I recommend that you disable audio. Instead, use Second Life's built in voice audio for better quality.

This product is could be a lot of fun!

Give it a try, and let me know how it worked for you!

 

You can buy it here!

 

Here are some Youtube Video instructions:

 

INSTRUCTIONS

1) You will first need a Second Life account. You can create your avatar here: http://secondlife.com

2) Next get a ustream account: http://ustream.com

3) Create a broadcast and copy the broadcast url (in the right column under share)

 

4) edit your backpack while you where it, and select "edit linked prims"

5) click on the black display surface

6) Click on the texture tab, and click the +

7) Finally, click start broadcast on ustream and you are ready to go!

 

Now buy it here!

 

Today Linden Lab announced Viewer 2.0.  There are several user interface enhancements, but these pale in comparison with the game changing technology they just introduced called "Shared Media".  Now, any user in Second Life, can broadcast web media directly onto any surface of a prim (primitive object in Second Life)  Below, you can see an image of me, writing a new blog entry right from within Second Life, on a prim!! This is an amazing step forward for educators using Second Life as a colaborative tool!  Totally wicked Awesome!  Imagine the educational, and business potential here! Check out the other side of this prim! I'll See if I can load Google Wave

Nice one - it works!! Google wave loaded!

 

Great news for all of us in the Metaverse! Second Life has released its viewer 2!

Among many new user interface enhancements, Linden Lab has added "Shared Media" which allows the skinning of any 3D surface as a flash enabled webpage!  This is a gigantic step forward for all content creators in Second Life!

More information here:  https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/features/blog/2010/02/23/second-life-viewer-2-beta-now-available

 

Hi everyone!

I met with Dallas TreFoil today  (Dallas Mcpheeters, a grad student at the University of Arizona today to help him set up the Sloodle Awards System with his course that he will be teaching in March.  Dallas got land granted to him from Sloodle.org - you can reach it by using Second Life to teleport here:  http://slurl.com/secondlife/Sloodle/25/140/23

Dallas has an exciting plan set up for his students in March using SLOODLE!  Details are below:

Here's a breakdown of what we will be doing and learning during our virtual experience together...

 

• Meeting in Second Life, a virtual world, by way of our own personalized Avatars. We can work together or self-paced so no worries about scheduling conflicts and last minute changes.
  
  
• Taking virtual field trips together to explore the Metaverse in all its grandeur. We'll focus on educational sites and discuss the pros and cons of a virtual space for learning.
  
  
• Participate in a virtual classroom complete with quiz chair races, power-point presentations, YouTube videos, and live polling.
  
  
• Create your own content by building virtual learning objects.
  
  
• Enjoy a fireside debriefing chat as a self-reflective and peer-review assessment tool to complete our experience.
  
  
• The take-a-ways for participants include the following...
  
  
• Fulfilling several national educational technology standards (NETS).
  
  
• Learning to navigate, communicate, and build within virtual world platforms.
  
  
• Learn to use contemporary communication and collaboration tools (NETS-A std#5)
  
  
• Learn innovative technology tools to facilitate student creativity (NETS-T std#1)
  
  
• Learn first-hand the strengths and weaknesses of virtual learning environments (NETS-T std#1)
  
  
• Learn about public attitudes toward new technologies and future trends (NETS-A std#5)
  
  
• Learn cutting edge tools for distance learning (NETS-T std#1)
  
  
• Learn how virtual learning environments (VLEs) can enhance constructivist approaches in course development (NETS-A std#5)
  
  
• Learn the importance of connectivism within VLEs (NETS-S std#2)

 

If you want to read about this project and why I decided on it as well as the instructional design model used, strategies implemented, targeted outcomes, etc., you can read my detailed proposal via the Word .doc file download link below (It's a big 1.4Mb file). You can view a brief power point as an intro to education within Second Life here:

http://www.slideshare.net/dallasm12/second-life-for-education-3186421

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Sloodle/25/140/23

 

Hi everyone! 

It's been a busy Wednesday! Today I went about re-modelling the Sloodle 101 Classroom, and added a few fun activities for you to try.

To Try the quiz:

Simply sit on one of the quiz chairs, and your scores will be recorded on the Scoreboard! Let's see who gets the best score! Also, if you'd like to contribute to the Sloodle Quiz questions, by searching through our forums and adding something you think the community will benifit from, send me an email to  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , and I'll give you an extra 100 points for every good question you create from our forums!!! Prizes will be given at the end of the month for top scores!

Activity 2 - Sloodle Island Scavenger Hunt

Hello everyone,

We have great news! Based on our work with the University of the West of Scotland,

Skoolaborators, and other institutions using Second Life as an educational tool, we have been approved as an official Solution Provider!

 

 

Here is the link: http://solutionproviders.secondlife.com/provider/show/id/1299

Freemail Blogger now added to B3DMultitech.com!!! This means the next time you are in Second Life, you can send a Second Life Snapshot (by pressing Control-Shift-S directly into our Moodle Blogs! Select "Send via email"

Then for recipients email type: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it next, in the subject type b:username:password then in the body type title: your title and then the body of your blog entry!