Teaching 203/128/48/0

Nice athmosphere, beautiful carpet, brick walls and a wise looking owl under the roof. What more do you want for your teachers and students in-world. A good place for teaching, especially when they cannot or will not come to the institute in Pennsylvania. Many colleges have found their way to second life for an extension of their presence in RL, but what else could be the purpose for this?

Relaxed

My job is nice, it is interesting, it stimulates thinking about learning, you meet wonderful and very bright people and it can be done in a relaxed way too. I usually meet in my office or in a chair at their place. Ellie served me tea a while ago. Laelia offered me a comfortable couch to sit on. It was a good and very informative interview. Thanx!!

MS Island VUmc 224/154/21

The Medical Centre of the VU University of Amsterdam and several partners opened a location for people that have multiple sclerosis. A disease that has a serious impact on your life and will limit your possibilities a lot. The site is meant as a place to meet and to obtain information about the disease and its consequences. A great initiative and a nice building.

Music

Music in Second Life. It was an unexpected surprise in my interview with Kate. She enjoys listening music in Second Life. Concerto's and all. Why? She says it is like attending a concert with very young children. People 'talk' using IM: 'Is this Mozart?' Walk away from their keyboard for a glass of wine. Dance to the music. Chat with each other about other things than music. Enjoy themselves as a listener and still not tied to a chair and hushed to shut up! Listening in SL lowers the threshold to the concert hall.

Major grant during session

My interviews go smooth, little problems. Sometimes a technical hiccup before or during a session, but not many or often. During my interview here however I was disturbed by a very happy occasion for a researcher. My contact heard that a major grant passed. There was no way to continue the conversation as the person must have danced through the room in real life. We 'll get in touch later, cooled down, the two of us.

Jeremy and I

He opened our meet saying: Shoot, my friend. I didn't as I am not a hunter. Maybe he is not aware of the risks he is taking. A nice guy to meet too. We sat down for an interview, Jeremy and I. As you can see in SL it doesn't matter what you look like. You could be a white male or an animal of any kind. What counts is where the mind meets. And they did.

University Ulster Magee 229/110/38

HarmonyHill and I sat down 'as students in learning' in the auditorium. He showed me around in what students had developed as an assignment. Replica's of the Ulster University, built in small groups, evaluated on quality, collaboration and result. SL has some means to show what each student contributed to a group result. We discussed to what extent 'play' in construction maybe a part of the successful use of SL for learning. Nice guy, good session.

First results

The first results on the interviews I held. So far I ve interviewed 20 SL - residents, a third of the number I target to question the coming weeks. When I put the results in Bernie Dodges' equation the spreadsheet gives a score of 24. Now this may seem very low to you at first sight, but if you test the equation in a spreadsheet, you might conclude otherwise. I will keep you posted!!

Impressed by a Giants Job

I wrote about VIT yesterday. Today I visited the location again and downloaded the viewer and the file with the VIT - mindmap in it. Almost a megabyte of clustered information on virtual information technology: websites, people, applications, .... a world of information on the subject. A tremendous effort to organise, order and visualise the subject in all its aspects. Still growing although the application is making funny noises bearing the load. Click the image to get all info.

VIT World

Butch made a huge and beautiful mindmap of virtual information technology data. The VIT project also built a 3d-image of it in SL. I will not trouble you now with mind- and conceptmapping but please go and have a look at it when you can. It is well worth a trip. I hope you meet the maker of this, he is nice, friendly and has a creative mind.