Moved to WordPress

I've moved this blog to WordPress. If you want to continue reading about my adventures in educational technology, please go to http://4rxt.wordpress.com/.

Presenting at Conferences

I've been thinking lately that I'd like to try presenting at a conference or two next year. There are a few scheduled that I should be able to attend:

• Colorado TELECOOP, April 16-18, Breckenridge (proposals due January 26)
• Colorado Community College Conference on Composition, April 18, Greeley (proposals due January 31)
• Teaching with Technology Idea Exchange 2008, June 5-6, Orem, Utah (proposals due Feburary 1)

Obviously, I'll have to choose between the TELECOOP Conference and the 5Cs. Why did they have to schedule them at the same time?

Hallelujah!

Our team has finished our presentation for IT 6750. It was great working with Alex and Blake to analyze the trend of using virtual worlds, specifically Second Life, in higher education and corporate training.

Another Presentation on SL in Higher Ed

Muve'in On Over

From: intellagirl, 3 weeks ago

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Presentation for the 2007 Serious Games Forum at Purdue University


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Presentation on Second Life and Education

I have to confess that I haven't watched the presentation yet, but I'm sure that if Laura was involved, it will be very informative.

From: sorry.afk, 1 day ago

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CSI: New York and Second Life

I finally got around to watching the episode of CSI: New York from last week that was supposed to portray Second Life. One question kept going through my head: Had anyone involved in producing the episode actually ever been in Second Life? It certainly didn't seem so.

The avatars and sims did look like ones that could exist in Second Life. However, the CSI characters' avatars did things that I've certainly never seen avatars do: find out from a white rabbit (or anyone else) where a particular avatar is currently located, walk off in synch while holding hands, teleport together to a different location, assemble a crowd on the spur of the moment for any kind of activity, pick something up with a hand.

I'm afraid this show is only going to make it harder for educators to convince administrators and students that Second Life is different from violent computer games.

Twine

I read about Twine in a post on Read/Write Web. It looks very interesting. According to the About page, "Twine is a new service that intelligently helps you share, organize and find information with people you trust." In addition, "Twine uses the Semantic Web, natural language processing, and machine learning to make your information and relationships smarter."

I've requested an invitation to try it in beta, but I haven't heard back yet.

Review of Renaissance Island

Sherpa Voyager at Second Seeker reviewed Renaissance Island in a post yesterday. Her review was generally positive. She wrote that she was "was delighted to find myself in a community that has some claim to historical accuracy." The most exciting thing was seeing my place, the Poet's Corner, in the first picture.

Book of Poetry

For a while, I've been putting a different one of my poems on an easel outside my house on Renaissance Island. I finally put them all together in a book and put it outside. The price is L$100. I've been thinking about creating books of some poetry from Tudor England as well.

Co-Author at Tek Trek Blog

I'm going to be co-authoring the Tek Trek blog with Bethany Bovard. I hope to post my first entry next week.

The Crystal Cave

About a month ago I finally bought some land in Second Life (from a private party not Linden Labs). My property is on an Athurian-themed sim named Logres, which is one of the historical names for Arthur's kingdom in England. I bought a cave with crystals, so, naturally, I had to name my lot The Crystal Cave, after Mary Stewart's novel about Merlin.

Successful Renaissance Festival

At one point there were close to 50 people on Renaissance Island for the festival last Saturday. I got to be the queen's lady in waiting. (Floria is in the red dress in the picture.)

The jousting went quite well, and a lot of people want to do it next time.

List of Podcasting Tools

Thanks to the Savvy Technologist for pointing out this great list of podcasting tools at Mashable.

50 Ways To Tell a Story

Alan Levine is using a wiki to prepare workshops for his cross-country tour of Australia this month. The first workshop is titled "50 Web 2.0 Ways To Tell a Story." Participants in the workshop will use one of 49 Web 2.0 tools to create a story.

In another workshop titled "Precious Web 2.0 Gems," participants will select a tool from the "Web Gems Starter List" or "Web Gems Other Lists" to try. He's used the tag "webgems" to identify these tools on del.icio.us.

His other two workshops are still "on the drawing board," but I intend to check back later to find out more.

Emerging Technology Applications for Online Learning

According to an e-mail message sent to the SLED (Second Life EDucators) listserv this morning, the Sloan Consortium "has embarked on an initiative to help online educators gain a better understanding of how the technologies available today can help make their classrooms better." To accomplish this, Sloan-C has launched a new website. The site was designed to support Sloan-C's upcoming conference on emerging technologies for online education, but the site and its forums are open to anyone interested in this subject, not just people who attend the conference.

SL-NET's First Professional Development Session

On Friday, SL-NET held its first professional development activity. Shaun and the other committee members did a great job pulling it together. CDB Barkley and Max Chatnoir talked about what educators are currently doing in Secondlife. At one point, we had about 35 "people" present.

There are more pictures available at the SL-NET website.

Blog vs. Wiki

Since last January, I've been using a blog for my classes at Red Rocks Community College. I post what we've done in class, so the students don't have to try to get in touch with me if they miss class or forget. I also have links for each class.

It finally occurred to me this week that a wiki might suit my needs better, so I've started one at PBwiki, though I don't have anything in it yet.

I guess it seemed logical to use a blog because I was making regular chronological posts about the classes. However, the students aren't commenting on the posts--at least no one has to date--so I don't really need that feature. Another problem with the blog is that during times when I'm not teaching a particular I can't save the related links in the sidebar except by leaving that element on the page. In the wiki, I can just hide (or not link to) a page I don't need during a semester, but the content is still there. With the wiki, I can also embed a widget from Box.net for the folder with the files for the class rather than just linking to the page.

Too Little Too Late for Wikipedia

I just read in a post on the Socialtext blog about an article in the Telegraph, which states that Wikipedia "is to stop people from editing entries after a series of questionable updates cast a shadow over its accuracy and reliability." Does anyone really believe that Wikipedia has ever been accurate and reliable? This is certainly a case of too little too late. I won't let my students cite an article from Wikipedia in any papers they submit. I know of some faculty members who require their students to use Wikipedia but only to demonstrate how inaccuate and unreliable it is.

Citizendium, an encyclopedia project that aims "at credibility and quality, not just quantity," and Scholarpedia, a "free peer reviewed encyclopedia written by scholars from all around the world" are already traveling on the path that Wikipedia seems to want to take.

Article on Naming of Ship

This week's issue of the Metaverse Messenger has an article (starting on p. 22) about the christening of the Gloriana on Renaissance Island on August 18. I was mentioned and pictured in the article because I submitted the name that was chosen for the ship in the contest.

More on Ning

As I mentioned before, I'm using a Ning social network for my hybrid technical writing class at Red Rocks. Each week the students have to do an online assignment, most of which will be in site, where they can post in forums or on their own blogs.

Their first assignment was to join the site, post an introduction, and respond two at least two other people's instroductions.

In class yesterday, we talked about tools for technical writing, primarily rhetoric and technology. Here is their second assignment, to be done this week:

On the web, find a free or trial version of a software program or web-based service that may be used for creating documents, communicating, and/or collaborating (as discussed in Chapter 3 of the textbook). Test the program or service. On your "My Page" create a blog entry in which you tell where you found it (be sure to include a working link to the website), explain what it does, and discuss its strengths and weaknesses. Use the name of the program or service as the title of your blog post.

I've also joined another Ning social network. This one is called College 2.0, and it's for people in higher ed who are interested in online education and Web 2.0.