Teacher+Blog

12/13/07
Korprof Tomorrow Since our collaboration in SL has now ended, I am trying to look back on the experience and attempt to make sense of it all. I enjoyed the chance to work with all of you, and think that SL offers great educational potential, on many different levels. I think the collaborative, group-oriented, problem-based approach can work very well. I think our program had some difficulties with actually getting students together, but it was, as Elmo stated, a productive learning experience for us all. I think this type of collaboration should be tried again, with some modifications and perhaps stricter guidelines for the students. I have already received tentative agreement to plan a class for SL in our teacher training program next term. So I'm already thinking of news ways to utilize what we've learned. Hopefully some of us can work together again in the future.

12/7/07
Elmo Wilder As the official exchange part of this class is winding down, my students were given an assignment sheet and tasked with interviewing up to 4 strangers in SL. It was a successful day for language practice and learning. I was surprised at how smoothly everything went. I really didn't have much to do all day other than monitor their activities and answer occassional questions. They have all the requisite skills already to accomplish the task. It makes me think about the first few hectic weeks of the class in which I lost my voice every week by the end of the day. This is truly a student centered class at this point. I provide the tasks but the students have extraordinary flexibility in how to complete the tasks and are in control of their own learning.

The exchange lacked sufficient synchronous communications, but was certainly a great learning experience. SL is an excellent medium for language learning and cultural exchange, and I look forward to continuing the pioneering journey into learning how to best leverage this platform for our students. If there is anything else I can do over the next few weeks please let me know.

By the way, the slides and video of my Tokyo presentation are posted on the JALT Presentation page. =1/28/07= Pecot Laval May I ask you all a last favour... To ask your students to go through their Teams' Wikis to read the translated version of Design Concepts that my students have prepared for them to read, and to get their feedbacks. That will create a new cycle of design, and communication, allowing more integration of cultural aspects into the proposed designs. There is a social hours planned tomorrow (Thursday) at 5:00pm SLT (Outreach), from where my students will be present to do visits of their projects. Elmo, can we make official this social hours on the Wiki? Thanks, Pecot.

11/7/07
Elmo Wilder It looks like frustration reached its peak this past week but we are now back on track. Our SL meeting was very productive and helped clarify things. In reviewing the team communications, 3 problems stand out. 1. The students were often not clear about or had a different understanding on what needed to be done. Some students thought they must meet and conduct all communications in SL so they ignored the wiki. Other times, our instructions to students differed somewhat and that led to confusion. 2. Students didn`t know how to communicate properly. Some students wrote down thoughts but failed to write their name and the date of post. 3. Students posted things haphazardly. Some posted from the bottom, others from the top, others in the middle, others on linked pages, and others in the discussion. In other words, there are no Wiki Norms.

The above led to confusion and frustration in many teams as students couldn`t get responses to their posts and felt that their teammates were ignoring them or not participating. I think the above occured in the teacher team to some degree as we sometimes failed to provide a clear unified message for the students to follow. Part of this was due to the novelty of the class and the need to adjust on the fly to communications issues. Imperfect communications was another cause. Even when we thought we were all on the same page we sometimes were not. I think a good example is Pecot`s recent request to clean up the land. We agreed to do it...but when? Pecot probably thought our decision meant right away but I was thinking "sometime soon but no rush". Also I have been sending out WUE Teacher notices to update teachers and get everyone on the same page but that has been only partially effective. We all get so many communications throughout the day that some things can easily be missed or forgotten. I think clarification e-mails that require the recipient to confirm understanding is a good idea moving forward. If you want someone to do something (even if we already discussed it and confirmed in some way), I think it would helpful to remind the person in an e-mail and ask for a confirmation of understanding or completion of the request. I think this kind of double-checking has been lacking. In addition to wiki posts and SL meetings, I will try to facilitate understanding through confirmation e-mails.

Elmo Wilder
==I think Korprof has some good points that need to be discussed. I`ve certainly been thinking about some of these issues as well. There are some things that we can improve and other things that we are going to have to accept and work around.==


 * 60% of my student are able to use SL at home. I assume the situation is similar in Korea and the US. Perhaps worse. This means that 40-50% of students are hightly limited in their ability to use SL outside of the classroom. In the future, one obvious solution is to pre-select students that are defintiely able to use SL from home. This would make for a better exchange but it would also drastically limit the types of classes that could participate in the exchange. In many situations it just wouldn`t be possible for the teacher to create such an elective class. All general required courses would be out as we can`t select our own students. I may be able to get such an elective class accepted by my department, but I curently have no approval for that. NOTE: this will not be such a problem in 2-3 years as SL connectivity will become less of an issue for a number of reasons. But for now, it is perhaps the greatest issue.
 * If pre-selection is used, then set SL meeting times outside of the classroom could also be enforced as these times could be communicated to the students before they register for the class.
 * Thinking forward, I also think it is important to foster a much larger university student community so that students would be able to log in any time and most likely be able to interact with someone who is either directly part of the exchange or a more looser particpant.
 * Probably a hybrid exchange would work best. A core set of participants who have all been pre-screened for their ability to access SL and willingness to meet at designated times outside of the classroom AND a larger looser set of participants who can act in a less stringent auxillary way to enhance the exchange.

But none of the above addresses the concerns of Korprof right now. Personally, I am basically at my limit as to what I can have my students do. My students are in-world during class from 9am -3pm Japan time. This is the only time that I can guarantee they will be there. I can also have a social on Sat night Japan time-that usually brings in about 25 students. Also, the Canadians and French are almost always in-world Fri night Japan time. I am not certain when the Americans are in-world and available to meet- perhaps Desi could help clarify that. I think we should re-double are efforts to arrange meeting times but probably we will need to reduce expectations for the amount of simultaneous interactions in SL this semester. It IS happening, but not as much as we hoped. The wiki is experiencing substantial communications though. Let`s discuss this further in-world over the next few days and see how we can maximize everyone`s experience.

10/31/07
Korprof Tomorrow I have been interested in reading how other classes are doing in SL. There appears to be some optimism regarding student activity. However, I am not really feeling very positive at the moment. Although some groups do seem to be moving forward (slowly), there is a general feeling that not much is being done. Meeting with teammates in SL seems very difficult, particularly for the Asian and American students. In class today I explained once again the importance of posting on the wiki, under their team pages. Several students told me it was the first time they really understood what to do. That is quite astounding, given that we have talked about this for weeks now. So I think it is imperative that students be reminded continually to communicate using the wiki

There also seems to be the impression that all the classes (and professors) have their own agendas, and attention really isn't being given to the exchange part of this project. I don't have a problem with everyone running their own class-that is to be expected. But if we set up a project which is primarily based on the idea of meeting and exchanging information, then we really need to focus on that. I feel as if the exchange part is falling apart-there doesn't seem to be much community building among the students. My MA class is very unhappy with the lack of progess. Some of them are very active, and would like to develop their projects. But they can't seem to meet their teammates, and wiki communication is slow and seemingly ineffective.

On the home page, we have not updated the group projects past the third week. I know that some groups are having problems just designing a flag, but we need to move on. Those groups that are able need to have new projects to work on. I think it would be helpful if we could map out the complete plan immediately (at least in rough form). Then I have something to work on together with my students.

I think that our project has a lot of potential, and some positive student communication has occured. Overall, though, I think there are some serious problems we need to address quickly, or the whole project will sort of fizzle out, with few results to show for all the work. I don't have all the solutions, but I think we need to talk about it and take some sort action.

As teachers, we had talked about modelling all the student projects ourselves. Do we have a plot of land, where we can actually develop something? I think that would be a good first step.

10/29/07
Elmo Wilder 5th week of classes The classes were spent focusing on the wiki. The students were asked to read through their team pages carefully and make sure that they weren`t missing any communications. I told the students to be very clear in explaining what they wanted to build on their team land and to post sample pictures of their ideas when possible. Many of the teams were able to successful articulate their ideas and add pictures. Hopefully this will help move the teams forward a bit. It seems necessary to focus student communications on the wiki as synchronous communications in SL for most teams are too sporadic to be reliable given time and schedule differences. It also may be helpful to choose team leaders. I didn`t want to do this originally because I figured it would probably take a month for the teams to just decide on a leader and that the Japanese students would never volunteer to lead. At this point, it is probably pretty clear to most groups which members are actively participating. For those individuals that feel that their team is moving too slowly or not responding, I think we should encourage them to take a leadership position (but I don`t think a vote would be helpful as it would just drag things on for weeks). I thought I made this clear to the teams when I encouraged individuals to "take action", but perhaps it should restated that the teams shouldn`t be stuck waiting for responses from slacker teammates. "TAKE ACTION with those who are active and post your actions to the wiki".

In the third class of the day, team 23 was able to meet up with American teammate Rodderick in SL. I lent the team my headset and they had a great conversation (voice and text). I posted a video of some of this interaction below and on the Social Pictures page. Among other things, Maria (Japanese team member) inquired as to where Rodderick got his machine gun. He explained it to her and helped her acquire the virtual weapon. Later on in class, she asked me what happens when an avatar dies. Apparently she mowed someone down with her newly acquired machine gun and was concerned about the victim. Leave it to the Americans to introduce guns, violence, and death to the Japanese students!! (I`m American so I guess I can say that). Of course, I told her that the victim would have to log in again and that she shouldn`t shoot people. I didn`t think I would be explaining such things in class, but it`s difficult for me to be displeased with unscripted authentic interactions like this. The students were engaging in activities outside of the proscribed assignments because they were just enjoying interacting with their foreign teammate. The students were more than just conversing. They were sharing experiences together in shared virtual space. Rodderick directed them to the location to get the gun in SL, and then was an accomplice (I assume) as Maria unloaded her weapon on an unsuspecting avatar. Not the most ideal shared experience but my students were immersed in an English speaking environment, highly engaged in authentic dialogue on their own, and having fun. Fundamentally, this is why I want to use the SL platform as a tool for language learning.

To input comments about the video, please click on "Type" below. (you will be prompted to join-it just takes a minute). media type="custom" key="262567"

10/24/07
Pecot Laval Hi, yesterday, my students presented in-situ and handed over their documentations on SL, namely about Education, Economy, Architecture, Socialization, Art&Culture, and Geography. Have a look at SL Documentations or at [|Finc.AV]. pc

10/22/07
Pecot laval As I see it, there has been a lot going on during the last two weeks in the WUE project as a whole and students in architecture have make some substantial progress in getting in touch with their teammates and starting to build things… We did took a couple of good decisions that help students get together such as, combining teams in pair, planning social hours (there is one today who is call by the students themselves…), and asking students to use systematically the wiki to report what they are doing and planning… The teams (pair of students) between Québec and Toulouse has been formed and they have now a weekly 3 hours of synchronous design collaboration each Friday at 5:00 am to 11:00 am SLT. To ensure that my students talk to each other in studio (yes that was not the case…) and that the design efforts will be done at the 3 scale levels, i.e. plot, site and inter-site, I've created 3 Design Teams for each site, Outreach, Film and Present. Each Design Team has a leader (not always the same student) that report to me on a weekly basis on their Team Design strategy and we discuss also how to combine, link the 3 sites. Design Team members discuss design strategies for their whole site (for integration purpose) and share what is discussed in their respective WUE Team… So, things will start to show up on each site from those discussions and exchanges… the goal being to integrate as much as possible design ideas from all the participating and active WUE Students… So that, the notion of "critical thinking" will come into play for students in architecture as well, being confronted to the other WUE students' demands and wishes… Two weeks ago my students had a great opportunity when Eloise Pasteur come along to give them a 3 hours advance lecture live in SL on how to build and texture prims and geometrical objects. That was really great and it went very well, thanks to Eloise's sound competence who did answer to all 30 students' prepared questions. We all learn a lot in the process. Have a good week… Pecot

10/19/07
Elmo Wilder 4th week of classes. We spent this class entirely in-world. A few foreign teammates showed up and those teams had good discussions. There were also some foreign students who came by but couldn`t connect with their teammates (wrong time) so they spoke with other Japanese students. It seems that whenever the students are able to connect in SL, they have a great time and get really excited. Desi dropped by one of the classes and there was great excitement again by her visit. One person from Brazil, unconnected with the exchange, dropped by and invited a group of students to his favorite beach hang out. While this activity was unrelated to our planned exchange, the students were using English and having a great time so I didn`t interfere with their interactions on a distant island somewhere. One student stayed about 10 minutes after class to continue a conversation she was having with an American student who was part of the exchange but on a different team. Some of the students requested information about building, so I introduced them to some building basics. They became very excited as they began to understand the ease with which they could create the environment in which they were interacting. Overall, the students are getting accustomed to SL and really enjoy it. They understand that this needs to be an English only environment and have been using English exclusively even to chat with each other. I often find my students wondering around Outreach (in the evenings outside of class) looking for someone to chat with. From my perspective, this kind of engagement by the students in their learning is a tremendous success.

As you know, the greatest challenge is in getting the students from different time zones and schedules in-world at the same time. It would be easy to blame the "other teammates" for this situation. While there are definitely some students trying much harder than others, time and schedule differences are truly a challenge. I had my students in-world for a total of about 6 hours on Friday (Japan time) but only a handful of dedicated foreign teammates came by in spite of many announcements. It would be easy to just blame everyone else for a lack of effort but this is not the reality. On Fri evening, Outreach was full of Canadian and French students but almost none of my students dropped by. I think this is something that we will need to think about for future semesters. Certainly the asynchronous wiki exchange greatly alleviates time and schedule differences. But it is the collaborative nature of the 3D immersive environment that SL provides that we all wish to leverage as a means of enhancing our pedagogical goals.

I think there are a number of options available wrt future exchanges in alleviating this problem. For now, though, the new larger teams seem to have enough traction for moving forward successfully. I am really excited to see what kind of structures the teams decide to build and how these builds take into account their neighbors.

10/12/07
Elmo Wilder 3rd Week of classes. I felt like there was real progress this week. The students understand the basics of the wiki and what needs to be done. Other than an occassional clarification, I don`t think I will be spending much time explaining the wiki. I will mostly use it in class as a tool to display examples of good communications. I used team 5`s pages this week as an example. In particular, the very active Flag ideas page. I could finally spend a good part of the class in-world with the students. They are picking up on the basics of the interface fairly quickly. I taught them how to teleport, use their camera with Alt, take pictures, a little about the inventory, and a little about building. Desi and Eloise dropped by for the first class and handed out free goodies. That was really exciting! You guys are awesome!

I think all the students are really ready for interaction. We just need to give them as many opportunities as possible to meet their overseas counterparts. My students will be mostly in-world during my classes from now on so I hope many of your students can drop by during classes which start from 5pm SLT on Thursdays and end at 11pm. The socials are also great chances for interaction. Many of my students will be showing up for Social Hour on Saturdays 6am SLT. I think it would be good for all the educators to have a fairly set weekly Social Hour.

Many of the students have begun to express real excitement as they become familiar with the basics of SL and I can see the beginnings of what I (we) hoped for - the creation of a persistent shared space in which students engage in the learning process by co-creating their own learning experiences outside of the classroom.

10/9/2007
An awesome thing happened today. Roderick S., a student from DeSales, logged on to start creating his team plot. He set out a dance floor and wala! He had an instant dance party with the students from Canada. Check out the pic page on social events. What was amazing was that this was a student generated event, and was pretty successful. Also, Claudia Linden stopped in to say hi and meet the students. VERY cool seeing that she is wicked busy!

10/6/2007
The Students seem to be doing a really nice job on the wiki, and I think it is great that we are adding comments, as well (panopticism at its very best). My staff wants to host a Halloween dance party for the students. IS that ok with everyone? We could do a harvest theme, too, if that is more suitable.

Des

10/5/07
jpg Flow sm flow ENSAT- Li2a

Here some comments about our third section with students : - One student leave the seminar (no academic autorisation of inscription), one student arrive : there are 11 students

- Our foccus on this section: - Modelisation of primitives: how to use "Hollow" and "Cut" - The flexible attributes: how to make a flag - Following the tutorial of Professor Pierre Côté (online) : how to make a sculpture/texture in Rokuro sotware, to import in sl, and to make a sculpty-prim - Formation of the teams EAUL-ENSAT; TP to each team's land; exchange of comments about the EAUL' realizations

We asked our students to contact teammates.

10/5/2007
Elmo Wilder

I had my 3 SL classes today. I was often shocked by the total lack of computer ability and understanding. Every little detail needs to be explained--over and over. I spent most of the class going through the wiki again. I had numerous students that couldn`t even figure out how to access the e-mail accounts that I made for them. Quite a few lost the cards with all the key info that I handed out the previous week. Roughly half were able to download and use SL from home. I explained to the remaining students that they would need to use the computer lab on campus to meet with their teammates in SL. My focus for this lesson (their 2nd class) was to clarify the exchange and change their mindset. The students are just not accustomed to taking self action. They are stuck in the mindset of -go to class, occassionally do some homework the night before, and I can pass. I made it crystal clear in this lesson that I would teach them the various tools for communication in the class but they had to use these tools to communicate with their teammates primarily outside of class. They were to told to check the wiki EVERY DAY, EVERY DAY, EVERY DAY and that they must make and maintain contact with their teammates always. Specifically, I told them to post their schedules on the wiki and try to set up SL meeting times. I think they finally understand what this exchange is about--maybe. Except for one team- I had to explain 3 times that their team included not just the three of them but included other members around the world as delineated on the team wiki page. This was the team that Desi (thanks) reminded that there was a need to hear everyone`s opinion.

I think I have perhaps one more week of dealing with technology and misunderstanding type problems and then I can really focus on the core of the exchange. The students spent very little time in SL during class but actually SL has been the easy part. They seem accustomed to the gaming type interface, and experiment and learn well on their own. The main SL skill taught today was "making friends". There just wasn`t enough SL time today, because I really wanted to focus on the mindset problem and make sure they could connect on the wiki first. I`m hoping this coming week will be a big week for the students wrt asynchronous connections and the beginnings of some student meetings in SL. I get the feeling that week 3 is when we really get this thing rolling on the SL side. And like Desi said, the team wikis are really shaping up. I love what the non-Japanese students are doing. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel wrt technology preparation and I`m psyched! Go team!

10/5/2007
Desi Stockton

The DeSales students were inworld today and wrote on the team wikis. They started the assignment of creating a team name, flag, and community standards. I just looked at the team wikis and they are AWESOME!!! My students are on Pacer break on Monday and Tuesday, so we won't be back inworld as a class until Thursday. The students should be able to build on Present and Film; I will check the permissions.

=10/5/2007= Korprof Tomorrow Thanks Pecot for the technical advice. I'll pass it along to my students. As of last night, none of the students in the WUE Students group had build privileges on any of the WUE land. Is this intentional, or an oversight? I had one very eager student who wanted to practice building, but couldn't do anything. I also checked out the boxes of free supplies, but couldn't seem to get anything to work. (Of course, that may be due to my own stupidity). = = =10/4/2007= Pecot Laval Hi Korprof, about video card, u need to look at the latest driver from ATI. If the computer are new and run under Vista, then the same, first Be SURE to get the latest drivers < http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Graphics_Drivers >. If that doesn't work let me know will go furher. Pecot.

=10/4/2007= Korprof Tomorrow

I am having some technical problems with computers in Korea. The school lab computers and my personal computers (4 different ones) all work on SL. Some of students, however, are not being allowed to log into SL. A crash log dialogue box comes up when they click on the SL icon. Then nothing else comes up...they can't even attempt to log in. The crash log does not give any message...just a box. Does anyone know why this may be happening. The video card is a Radeon XPRESS, which is listed as an unknown and untested card on the SL website. Are there other things we could try? Several of these computers are very new, so should be usuable for SL technology. Any advice would be helpful.

= = =10/3/2007= Desi Stockton, et al

The DeSales students were in today and were able to meet some of Pecot's students. The students were SOOOO psyched! One of the Canadian students asked my student if he spoke French, and all the girls in the class ran over to his computer and wanted to "hear" them speak French (poor Theo does not know French, but he liked the attention, nonetheless).

I will clarify the confusion over the wiki in class on Thursday; truly it is my fault, as I hyperlinked the wiki. I will add a Team Page link and note for each bio page; that should clear up the confusion.

You will notice that I dropped off little boxes on Outreach (and will drop off the rest tomorrow). Those are for the flag building project, and the Canadian and French students can start looking at the contents. There are also freebies in there, too. These items were donated by TUI.

I have listed a location for social events, but am working on getting a better location (the one listed is the Literature Alive! HQ). It can handle a lot of avatars, and that is the major challenge in finding a venue. Does anyone know if Allen wants to host his party at Crimson Island?

Remember that Daliah and Neveah are here to help your students get clothing, find fun things to do in SL, and to navigate SL.

Overall, I feel really good about the project, and I agree that we should also operate as a team.

=10/2/07= Elmo Wilder (Steven Moinester)

I thought our 10/1 meeting went well. We seem to be developing solid asynchronous communications through the wiki and WUE teachers are making extraordinary efforts to be available for synchronous SL meetings. Whether it means waking up early, staying up late, having to multitask mutliple meetings, or otherwise inconveniencing oneself, WUE teachers are coming through. Thank you all! Really. Trying to bring so many different students together from so many different time zones is quite a challenge. But I can feel the dedication and enthusiam within the WUE Teachers and it energizes me. We have a truly extraordinary group of educators assembled!

Our backgrounds, teaching styles, pedagogical goals, and personalities are all different and that is a very good thing. It is this diversity that will help us learn, develop new teaching methods and grow as educators. I would have been extremely disappointed if you all thought like me. We all have exceptional talents in different areas and I hope this exchange provides an environment that maximizes everyone`s talents so we can all learn and benefit. However, we will need to develop and maintain a fairly uniform means of how we explain the exchange and the means of interaction to our students. I think we are clearly developing this unified understanding among the WUE Teachers and continuous asynchronous and synchronous communications should help us to avoid confusion among students moving forward.

WIKI- the wiki is being used a little differently among teachers and students. This provides us an opportunity to learn from each other but may also lead to confusion among students. This is not a serious problem but I do see some students moving away from their team pages. For example the CoreyTobias page is being confused with the team page and a PUFS student is adding info to someone`s personal page. Other team members won`t know about that page and communications will break down. We need to make sure that students understand where their team page is and that everything should flow from there. I think after that we should let their imaginations do the rest.


 * SLACKERS**- Around the third week or so, I think we should identify slackers within the student teams and develop a solution so that the other students can enjoy a successful exchange. I think this solution may involve moving team members around or combining teams.

Proposition:
 * TEACHER HW**- Whatever team HW we assign the students, we should do as a group as well. This means that we should also agree on a team name, 10 rules for interaction, and a team flag. This will both act as a sample for students and give us insight into what the students must go through. So I will add a team page and link for teachers. Go team!

=9/30/07= sm Flow/Sandra Marques jpg Flow/Jean-Pierre Goulette ENSAT (École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Toulouse, Li2a - Laboratoire d'Informatique Appliquée à L'Architecture)

Comments: - We had our first contact with students last friday (9/28/07). There were10 students (but the list is not complete – next week we will probably set up a final list). - After showing to students our general calendar (seminar finc-av) and a briefly explanation about the work context for this semester (to conceive virtual architectures in the context of second life) they started experiencing Second Life; - We showed how to subscribe to WUE students and to FINC-AV groups; - We showed how to change their appearance; to control their inventory, movements, camera controls; - They went to a sandbox and began experimenting various building functions on their own; - Students seem very excited about the idea of working on Second Life, mainly, about the architectural challenge that it means. They are also motivated to participate and to share their ideas with WUE students. However they are a little bit worry about the time difference (in case of synchronous collaborative work). - I hope we will have a very rich experience… thanks Elmo… thanks to all WUE teachers and students.

=9/30/07= Pecot Laval/Pierre Côté EAUL - École d'architecture Université laval

Comments: Last Friday morning EDT, the students at EAUL reach to meet their WUE homologues… Without great success – My fault, I did miss calculate Elmo's class logging time that was 13 hours earlier and not latter then our, as I thought first :O). Anyway… They were able, however to identify their SL names and also visited and work the terrain of their assign plots… By the way, would it be possible to grant them the permission to edit the wooden sidewalks, e.g. to change their height… and also the fence walls surrounding Film and Present sites. I asked them to get in touch with their team-mates for next Tuesday. And I know that Desi did asked her students to do the same… so let see, I'll report on that. Toulouse students had their first studio Friday pm CEST, SL's names are popping up in the ENSAT Students pages. Few others will join tomorrow, Monday (1) so we will be able to finalize the teams.

Thoughts: I haven't received feedback about the "Lost" tv series analogy (Well! May be I should ask: did you receive it?)… In particular to make the whole SL sim's the NEW "unexplored planet" to be explored and ours and students' spring of resources… So I'm coming back with it, as I intend (if you agree) to follow that scenario to guide my students. Already they could rezze theirs VA gazebos… because when they crashed, they have it on their inventory… Pecot.

P.S. I find it very rich this Teacher Blog, thanks Elmo… In particular, reading about Kurt Vonnegut's novel "Harrison Bergeron", and not because it is a québécois name, thanks Desi...

=9/30/07= Alex Asylum/Alex Reid SUNY-Cortland

Comments: My online class is a little like herding cats. Most of them have gotten into Second Life and sent me their avatar names. The students I have in my face-to-face class are all in. I have instructed them to join the WUE Student group and invited them to join the Wikispace. The online student thing is a little frustrating for this type of work as it is very difficult to coordinate their activities. The students here have little experience with online course and little experience working in groups. They certainly have no experience working collaboratively online. That's really the focus of this course, so we'll have to see how it goes. = = =9/30/07= Desideria Stockton/Beth Ritter-Guth LCCC/DeSales University

Comments: The students at DeSales have been inworld for a few weeks. Students are now assigned to teams on the wiki, and were assigned two tasks for the weekend. First, they were asked to create biographies of themselves to share with team members. They will be recording these as podcasts, as well. Second, they were asked to try to meet up with team members by using the wiki. I agree with Elmo and Korprof; we should stretch this week until Friday. I think it is worthwhile to get the students to try to meet up, connect, and build community.

Thoughts: In an effort to be as transparent as possible, I am going to also log my personal thoughts about the project. At times I am entirely frustrated with the technology avalaible to my students, but truly believe that will be resolved this week. My own connectivity was an issue this week, and that, too, was frustrating. The difference in communication and teaching styles is interesting, as well. My teaching philosophy is fairly hands-off, I am a lot like "Crush" from Finding Nemo. I teach my students to swim and then I see what they can do when they get out into the stream. Not everyone teaches this way, though, and some are more hands on. In our group of teachers, some are like Crush and others are like Marlin, the Dad of Nemo. Neither way is wrong or right, but they are different approaches. It will be interesting to see how the differences play out. Also, I think it is interesting to see how we react to situations. Eloise and I are very fast builders, so we can communicate well and get a job done fairly quickly. So, we don't panic when we have something to do in a short amount of time because we know that it can be done. For example, we had the plots quartered and numbered within about 5 minutes. In hindsight, I can see that it might be frustating to someone who hasn't seen our work to know that we can take care of things fairly quickly, and so we probably added undue stress by not having the plots numbered sooner. So, we will try to better communicate the "we have it under control; don't worry" message. Also, we all meet with students on different days and in different time zones. I had to assign my students to groups, but could not do so until Thursday. Since I have 200 students in SL this semester, I could not use my groups to figure out the DeSales students, and I had to have them type their names directly into the wiki (to capture accurate spelling).

In the end, everything worked out perfectly, and I think we will have an AWESOME semester!!!! =9/30/07= Korprof Tomorrow/Bob Snell PUFS

Comments: I did much as Elmo did, preparing my students for entering SL. They've already been in for several weeks, and seem to be able to handle most of the basic functions. We've tried very basic building (construct a chair) and a kind of scavenger hunt (I sent them to two SL sites and had them look for information and fill out a worksheet). Despite their several weeks of practice, some seem quite clueless. I stressed that they connect witht their team partners this week, but I have a feeling they may not do well. I only see them on Wed and Thu, so the week will almost be over by my next class. I agree with Elmo that this week may only succeed in getting everyone signed in and hopefully in touch with one another. We may need to push out the assignments by one week.

=9/30/07= Steven Moinester (Elmo Wilder) This week is likely to produce minimal effective exchange. There are still many WUE students that have not joined the wiki or the WUE Students group in SL. About 48 hours into the exchange we have a handful of KGU and PUFS students that have begun a minimal dialogue on the wiki, about 6 KGU students have notified me that they were able to download and access SL from home (the rest just have not notified me yet one way or the other--that was part of their HW). Also, due to 9/28 being a Univ holiday with only the English Dept open, there were many absences (16 out of 75). I think we should probably accept that this week is really about just trying to find a way to connect and trying to understand and MAYBE create the rules of engagement for the students. My guess is that very little will be accomplished this week and that we will probably need to extend the team assignments of week 1 into week 2.
 * Thoughts:**

While my students are still trying to get themselves setup with SL, it would be great if all WUE students communicated through the wiki asynchronously. This would certainly be a good start. = =

=9/28/07= Steven Moinester (Elmo Wilder) KGU - What I did:
 * Preparation**
 * Set up yahoo e-mail addresses for all KGU students.
 * Set up http://worlduniversityexchange.wikispaces.com wiki.
 * Put all course information on the wiki including syllabus and class schedule.
 * Created team list page that lists team members according to University and team number with links to team pages for the 24 teams.
 * Sent invites to all KGU students to their e-mail to join the wiki.
 * Contracted with SL consulting company to have all Avatars for students created in advance with the same last name which is unique to SL (their last name is WorldUE)
 * Prepared each avatar so that they would start on WUE land in the same area and joined them to 3 SL groups that would help facilitate communications (KGU Students, WUE Students, World University Exchange).
 * Printed out business card sized cards with all the key information the students would need for their e-mail, wiki, and Second Life memberships (including password).


 * Classes (3) of Friday 9/28**
 * Divided class into teams of 3 each (more of less).
 * Handed out cards with all the key information including their **avatar names** and my e-mail address.
 * Told the students to use their avatar names at all times to avoid any privacy concerns.
 * Assigned each team a team number.
 * Recorded the students` avatar names and their team number for my records.
 * Had the students go to [|http://yahoo.com] and log-in to their e-mail account. (Step by step explanantion)
 * Had the students open their e-mail invitation to http://worlduniversityexchange.wikispaces.com and had them log-in to the wiki.
 * Showed the students how to find the course information and explained briefly about the class.
 * Showed the students how to find their team wiki page and how to post to the page. They posted the names of their team members (KGU students only) to their page as a test of their understanding.
 * Explained their homework as stated in the class schedule.
 * Moved the class to the Second Life computer lab (III-304). NOTE: (Prof Tijerino had all the computers on with the Second Life program loaded and ready showing the log-in screen--THANK YOU!)
 * Had the students sit together as a team with one team member logging-in (there were extra computers but this seemed like the best way to learn for the first day).
 * Students gasped and squealed as their avatars with their avatar names appeared and they saw their classmate avatars appearing all around them. They quickly found a way to move around and some even began to fly around. There was a great deal of awe and excitement.
 * I activated the students Movement Control and Camera Control panels and made sure all students understood how to move, fly, and use the camera view.
 * I showed the students the Mini-map and explained how to use it to show one`s location and direction.
 * I showed the students the Chat function and the students demonstrated their understanding by typing in messages to those around them.
 * I showed the students how to change their Appearance and the students began experimenting.
 * Many students began clicking on various functions and experimenting on their own.
 * Wrapped up by explaining the homework again and reminded them that they should e-mail me with any problems.

Overall, a very successful first day. Due to massive preparation, the key technologies necessary for the course were introduced and all used on the first day. Many of the students are technologically challenged and have little experience other than sending e-mail, writing a Word document, and saving to a USB memory stick. Some students required repeated step by step instructions. Following simple instructions was difficult for some students. For example, when I asked them to write their avatar names on their team page, many students used all lowercase letters without capitalizing the first letter. The need to be painstaking clear in my instructions became evident. It made me wonder about the lack of technology training for students as these are second year, second semester students.
 * Thoughts:**


 * What I could have done better:**
 * Technologically, at this point I don`t know what else I could have done given the time constraint of 90 minutes.
 * I feel like I could have done a better job explaining the course and the nature of the exchange. Time pressure led me to focus more on nailing down the technological tools necessary for the course.
 * I should have made 2 copies of the business cards with all the key info on them. About 4 students out of about 60 for the day left their card in the classroom. They have no way to access their e-mail, the wiki, or Second Life. Even contacting me will require them to ask around. My guess is that they will walk into class next week and say "Sorry, I lost my card so I could`t do anything". I should have had them put one card in their wallet right away (or perhaps have them sew it to their underwear!) and had them use the other copy during class.
 * I also should have emphasized the importance of getting started on the HW immediately. If they wait until the day before class, then they will not be able to contact their foreign teammates. Everything takes time and requires proper planning. This is obvious to me, but many of the students probably won`t take another look at what they need to do unitl the last minute which is already too late and they will have wasted the first week with no effective dialogue with their foreign teammates.