Daily Spotlight on Education 04/22/2009
Kyle "G"'s blog about ReactionGrid & the Metaverse
Kyle writes about his netgened post mortem - what happened and his thoughts. Here are my thoughts to him:
"As someone said tonight about mountain biking "if you don't crash, you're not doing it right."
I think that students are a totally different avatar than anything seen in SL to date because they like to customize. Their behaviors are so different and we also had so many different time zones -- kids in australia were logging in at midnight, etc. So, there was no teacher to "coach" them on what to do.
For me, we got a great audio feed from it. We did get some machinima - we learned to stream, run presentation boards, etc.
Tonight I was in Second Life for an ISTE presentation and the audience was pretty much experts, many of whom I knew.
As we bring students in en masse as we did yesterday, they aren't really "noobs" per se because they are comfortable with the technology. I have never had to "teach" them to edit their appearance. They are really like snoobs in some respects -- "snobby newbies?" maybe -- they are prideful of their ability to customize -- hack at it, play with it, and they don't care that they are a beginner, they are going to make it like they want it to be! And that type of user is very different I think from those I come across in Second Life. The kids are just different.
So, I don't think we would have ever known this without the experience and I've heard so much that having the show FORCED them into virtual worlds -- their eyes have opened up to what can be done and they all LOVE IT.
Although it wore us out and you all worked so hard in ways that no one could appreciate. If and when you're brave enough or willing enough to ever work with us again, I think that there will be quite a few ways to improve it, as well as the natural progression of OpenSim itself.
I still truly believe that gsquared are the experts on OpenSim and will continue to sing your praises for what you're doing. My students LOVE the virtual worlds and we were back in there today taking pictures for theirE-Learning Journeys: Virtually Awarded....and more!
Julie's blog about the NetGenEd awards show
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
