Second Life - Train for Success - Virtual Worlds Discussion

I participated in the Train for Success weekly session today for the first time. Anders Grondstedt was traveling, but Eilif did a great job giving the attendees a quick review/update of the Virtual Worlds Conference held recently.

You can get directly to the Secondlife location from his SLURL here.

Read more about virtual worlds and learning in 2 of the elearning guild reports - Immersive Learning Simulations, Synchronous Learning.


DevLearn - The eLearning Development Conference & Expo
Co-located with the Adobe Learning Summit
November 5-9, 2007
San Jose, CA

Educational Second Life: An Overview

AWESOME! Still unsure about SecondLife? Take 5 mins and watch this. Let me know what you think.

Karl Kapp gets a great plug in this very well done video. Karl also sent me this link for a list of great educational locations in Secondlife.

Hooray for the Second Life backlash!

Well, its about time. You know you're in the right space when the hype wagon tips over.
I like Dr. Kapp's thought on this here. Here's to "plodding along"...and I'll drink to that!

Thanks Cammy...for getting back in there and giving Second Life a second try.

Knowing where to go and how to get there is half the battle. One thing that helps, but is HIGHLY underutilized is SL links: Special URLs that take you directly to a certain location "inworld" from a normal webpage or email.

HOMEWORK for EVERYONE: When you find a cool educational place in SL, create a direct link and blog, post it, email it, whatever. Spread the word.

SecondLife is about PEOPLE! USA Today cites 300 Universities implement SL

So, at the risk of restating the obvious let me say this...

If PEOPLE don't have a reason to be in SecondLife they will NOT go there!

For those of you that have gone in and been disappointed (See the WIRED article from last month) and find yourself not getting it, then don't worry about it. YOU don't have a need for it...yet. If you were still in University and went on campus at 6pm to Building X and there were no classes scheduled would you be surprised if NOBODY was in the building when you walked in?

You are probably not attending one of the 300 Schools that, in fact, have found a need for it and engage students on a regular basis according USA Today's article.

"Joe Sanchez, an assistant instructor in the School of Information at the University of Texas-Austin, studied an English class of 19 students using Second Life. He found they don't like it for activities that can be done in a real classroom, such as lectures or slide shows. But they do like to use it to visit new places or do group activities."

Well, no duh! Use the right tool for the job. SL does not make all other forms of learning and delivery obsolete. It's a beautiful supplement for the doing things never before possible with people never before known in your RL (Real Life).

Employee guidelines for virtual worlds? Intel? Huh?

IBM leads the way in utilizing SL within the corporation as a viable tool. IBM has embraced the possibilites of emerging technologies as a tool for internal employee productivity and development. But Intel? I don't think so. This just in from Virtual Worlds News:

"This week IBM will release a set of rules for its 5,000 employees who use Second Life and other virtual worlds. Intel is working on a set of voluntary classes and guidelines to follow suit."

I think Intel may have 5 employees ALLOWED to access Secondlife certainly not 5,000. Intel marketing might consider throwing up adds in SL, and buy an Intel Island. And the software group might also support their external software communities, developers, etc. within a fun little SL conference room.
(Actually, the one I experienced was quite nice) But Intel will NEVER allow their rank and file employees to participate in emerging technologies like SL. No Intel team members from different geo's will ever meet in a SL area for training, project meetings, etc.

Oh good grief. If ANY company in the world was going to create useless guidelines this early in the life of a technology I should have known that it would be Intel. Only the Paranoid Survive, right Andy? Let's figure out if Second Life is even going to be a viable corporate tool before we turn on the paranoia machine.

I wonder if any of those Intel employees are aware that they can't even get into SL from with in the corporate network. So, now corporations are creating guidelines for activities that can ONLY occur on your OWN machine on your OWN free time. Somehow that just seems wrong to me on so many different levels.

Can anyone from an Intel training function with an internal customer base comment on this? Did the IT department actually cave in, and open all the UDP ports (or whatever they're called)? I was told for years that there wasn't a snowball's-chance-in-Arizona of ever getting UDP ports opened.

With all that said, YES, I think tools like SL have the ability to become (are) extremely, EXTREMELY useful learning environments. And apparently so do many of my learning colleagues as well. I would encourage my colleagues to check out what Proton Media has to offer...VERY cool stuff!
And from The eLearning Guild's data we find "93.8% of members believe that immersive learning simulations are BETTER [than other elearning offerings]." Check out the Immersive Learning Simulations report if you want the ammunition to get those software guys to open up Intel Island for internal training use.

SecondBrain + SecondLife = um, SecondBody?

Just discovered another online tool in its preview release phase called SecondBrain. I'm waiting for an invitation to test it out.
The introduction movie shows quite a few features that look promising.
It looks like social networking meets PLE (Personal Learning Enviroment).

This app and other new tools such as MyLifeBrand drive home the reality for me that we really are developing a sense of "self" online that is both directly and indirectly shaping our FirstBrain and FirstLife "self".

So who are you? Are you different online than you are off? Do you feel new and improved in your first life since you started engaging with others online?

Proton Media - Corporate Virtual Worlds

One of the big surprises at the eLearning Guild Conference was seeing the many improvements over at the Proton Media booth. Lots of buzz amongst my colleagues in this space. The integration of many Web2.0 tools directly into the virtual 3D environment is very slick, and compelling.

but I'm scanning my feed reader and notice this little company...UNISFAIR (via Read/Write web).

At first glance it does not look like UNISFAIR has the same integration of collaboration tools because its focused on the events market. But Training Events are big business. I just discovered Ron Burn's blog from ProtonMedia, so I'm hoping he can add some insight to this conversation. It looks like he was as the Virtual Worlds conferece recently prior to attending the eLearning Guild event. So I'm looking forward to his next posts.

I must say that I'm a big fan of opensource tools, but coming from a decade with Intel I do see the benefits and reasons why an integrated "enterprise" solution is preferred over a free consumer app (i.e. secondlife). It all depends on your needs, and what your trying to accomplish.

Tony O'Dricoll - IBM - Welcome to the learning bloggosphere

Clark Quinn from Learnlets welcomes Tony O'Driscoll to the learning bloggosphere. And so do I...in a BIG way!!!
I'll have to agree with Clark on the long post concern, but what the heck...we're just glad your hear Tony! I actually like the long thoughtful posts...its inspiring to read what I'm thinking, clearly. His blog titled Learning Matters! at wadatripp.wordpress.com
Tony's answer to the February BIG QUESTION is right on the money. You gotta read this one. A lot of us are echoing these thoughts but Tony has genius, and clarity in his writing style that is quite enviable.
It's all awesome, but here are some snippets:

"Too much emphasis has been placed on how we do what we have always done and not enough has been placed on what the fundamental value proposition of learning is to the organization."

"In the future Content may be still be king but Context will be the Kingdom. All of us need to become far more adept at creating contexts that engender true generative learning experiences. 2L is a true Context Creation platform. Let’s promise each other not to leverage 2L or any other 3Di platform for what it is and not just apply this incredible technologty to create fancier 3D page-turning environments."

"The outcome is clear though….we are investing more in the place where learning happens least and in so doing we are leaving the informal learning to chance."

That's only a small piece of it. Tony's got 4 posts up so far and every one is worth the time. I sense a book on the horizon. Great stuff! Oh, yeah...and Welcome!

Collaborative Building in Secondlife - amazing video!

(via Oehlert)
File this one under "yeah, what he said!"

For those of you still unsure about virtual environments and their viability as learning tools:


Stop telling me that all I talk about is the future. This stuff is here now!

RSS Marketing takes a look at SecondLife

I've often talk about the similarities between learning and marketing. I have a handful of marketing related RSS feeds that browse periodically. One of them is RSS Marketing.

The author Roy Hrastnik finally took the dive into Secondlife in search of marketing goodness in the virtual world. His posts are great lists of the corporate activities going in Secondlife:

Second Life 1: Does Second Life Hold "Real" Marketing Value?
Second Life 2: How Can Marketers Take Advantage?

Reality Growing in Virtual World - Secondlife

Reality Growing in Virtual World is the title of an article in the Startribune from Minnesota.
The learning community's Mark Oehlert (aka ChuckNorris Mission) is quoted and the article highlights some of the big work being done in Secondlife by the likes of IBM and others.

"We're really at the very, very bleeding edge of companies doing this," said Mark Oehlert," an associate at the Booz Allen Hamilton technology consulting firm in Herndon, Va.

"For one thing, I think people are still trying to answer, 'What can we do better in Second Life than the other ways we're already doing them?' "

IBM's interest is significant, he believes, because it brings instant credibility to this frontier.

SECOND LIFE GOES OPENSOURCE!!!

I just saw this...so no comment yet...from Techmeme.