Learning and Research in Second Life
Yesterday I went to a workshop at the Internet Research conference (IR9). The subject of the workshop was “Learning and Research in Second Life”, the workshop was organised by Jeremy Hunsinger and Jason Nolan. They had obviously a bit of difficulty getting to the venue and arrived flustered and a bit late, and so forgot to introduce themselves, but I soon worked about which was which.
The day was divided into 5 parts: 4 interactive sessions with us in groups talking about topics, we were asked to circulate so I got to meet most of the group of about 25 people who were present; the other session was a presentation by John Lester (Pathfinder Linden).
The two morning sessions were on Environment and Education. The other participants had some very cool work they talked about: presenting their students work, building models of the Panama canal, preparing for appraisal. There was quite a lot of discussion about other worlds, including a comparion of Blackboard and Moodle, with SL I believe likened to Blackboard and Open Sim to Moodle; the metaphor was extended to issues of interoperability.
Following lunch John Lester talked about Linden and Second Life. I felt he had got the talk spot on for the audience – well certainly it was a t the right level for me – neither too basic nor too advanced. Given his eloquence in this presentation I was surprised he was silent throughout the rest of the workshop.
The other two sessions discussed Research and Ethics. I think for most of us these topics became combined, and we spent time considering how in certain countries research is hampered by ethics committees, and whether avatars are people.
All in all I thought it was a good day, I made some useful contacts and have got some good ideas for future work.
PS I would put a link to the workshop page, but the frames on the IR9 site means this is not possible – the main site is: http://conferences.aoir.org/
