$25,000 Grant to Develop Courses in Virtual Worlds

The Chronicle of Higher Education's Wired Campus Blog announced this grant by Blackboard.

Blackboard Greenhouse Program

NEW: We have created a special Greenhouse Program™ grant, The Greenhouse Grant for Virtual Worlds, to foster greater educational innovation with virtual worlds such as Active Worlds, There and Second Life. Blackboard is funding a single $25,000 (USD) grant for initiatives that promote the integration of virtual worlds into teaching and learning. We seek initiatives that will:

* Enhance the student experience

* Leverage existing teaching and learning strategies and best practices

* Integrate virtual worlds and Blackboard Enterprise Software [1] through Blackboard Building Blocks™ and Blackboard PowerLinks™

* Make results/output available to the Blackboard client community

Good and bad reasons to be in Second Life

Is it worthwhile for a library to invest time and resources in a Second Life presence? I think it's still safe to say that the majority of librarians involved in the SL libraries are doing it on their own time. But what if you are trying to make a case for SL in your library that involves actual money?

In her blog Librarians Matter, Kathryn Greenhill (Emerald Dumont in SL), a librarian at Murdoch University, has been investigating SL. She wrote a couple of great posts a few months ago;

Ten very good reasons why your librarians should be in Second Life

Six very bad reasons to have a library branch in Second Life

Among her good reasons to be there are:

• Learning - a new interface, how to relate to your patrons into gaming, how to code
• Collaboration and networking - on SL projects with other librarians, breaking down professional isolation, accessing people with expertise in all fields, not just SL
• Flexibility in thought and learning

I can say that I've experienced every advantage she mentions. I have learned from librarians, archivists, and information professionals all over the world. I have learned a new interface where I am now at ease.

The thing that I find interesting is her distinction between librarians and libraries. She says:

"There are great benefits to librarians in getting a Second Life. There are limited benefits to our parent organisations and to our users - at the moment."

and that many of her reasons

"depend on creating and maintaining social networks within Second Life."

As I have watched the tremendous amount of time and energy that the Info Island librarians have invested in Second Life, I still wonder if this translates into direct services or benefits to the patrons of their real life libraries yet.

Kathryn's post about "bad reasons" includes:

• It's where users are
• Corporations like IBM are there
• It's Library 2.0
• It provides access to more people
  
• It doesn't take much time or skill
• We need a separate service just for our users

She ends with one very good reason: to provide access to Second Life to the library's patrons. The biggest obstacles to SL being a useful tool for everyone is lack of the technical resources and know-how; a workstation and connection adequate to run the program.

Virtual World Librarianship Courses in SL offered by University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign

New Virtual World Librarianship Courses/UIUC and Alliance Library System

Starting in September the Alliance Library System and the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign are offering 2 six-week classes on virtual librarianship. There are 3 sections of each course, which will be held in Second Life at Info Island.

The courses are:
INTRODUCTION TO VIRTUAL WORLD LIBRARIANSHIP
Week One: Introduction to Libraries in Virtual Worlds
Week Two: Second Life 101
Week Three: Collections, Resources, and Exhibits in Virtual Environment
Week Four: Reference and Information Services in Virtual Worlds
Week Five: Managing and Working in a Virtual Library or Department
Week Six: Skills Needed by 21st Century Librarians in Virtual Worlds

INTERMEDIATE VIRTUAL WORLD LIBRARIANSHIP
Week One: Overview of Virtual Worlds Including Second Life & Others-What Libraries are Doing in Them
Week Two: Library Programs and Events in Second Life
Week Three: Introduction to Building and Scripting Items in Second Life
Week Four: Virtual World Library Services for Teens and Young Adults
Week Five: Introduction to Machinima - Creating Films in Second Life
Week Six: Immersive Learning Environments and Libraries


You can learn more at: Continuing Professional Development: Virtual World Librarianship

Info Island this week

July 14 - 22

This week announces the opening of a new residential area; Mythica, which also is the home of the Griffin's Nest library that houses a collection of myths, legends and fairy tales.

The Lawspot has an exhibit on court cases related to virtual worlds.

Sunday July 22 - The Director of the Caledon Library, J.J. Drinkwater and Colonel Exrex Somme of the Caledon Militia will engage in a duel of compliments as a fund raiser for the benefit of Relay for Life.

Sunday July 22 - The grand opening of the Globe Theater on Renaissance island will feature fireworks, a dance and discussions by Shakespearean scholars.

Etiquette for Academia in SL

The recent hullabaloo over the deletion of Woodbury Universities island by Linden Labs illustrated how necessary it is for an organization to publish and enforce a code of behavior for its members in Second Life. Penn State's Virtual Worlds Project has published its own SLEtiquette for Penn State. Besides listing SL's own community standards, it lists a guide to interacting with other avatars.

Learning in virtual worlds: Future or fad?

Educators now have several years of conducting classes in 3D virtual classrooms behind them and are beginning to publish more and more good material on this environment. One publication devoted to this environment is the journal eLearn Magazine. A recent feature article
Another Life: Virtual Worlds as Tools for Learning discusses the special qualities of the avatarian experience in Second Life, and answers the question, "are virtual worlds a breakthrough technology that will forever reshape learning and business? Or are they this season's over-hyped fad?"
The article asks us to look at the technology with fresh eyes, and look for what are the special sensibilities and opportunities of the virtual environment. The article identifies five "sensibilities" special to the Second Life environment:

• The Sense of Self
• The Death of Distance
• The Power of Presence, Sense of Space and the Capacity to Co-create
• The Pervasiveness of Practice
• The Enrichment of Experience

The article is well worth the time it takes to read. Or you can view a video by one of the article authors discussing the same concepts; Virtual Social Worlds and the Future of Learning

Michigan Library Consortium's Grand Opening in Second Life

"MLC invites you to the grand opening of our new virtual building in the 3-D virtual reality, Second Life (Cybrary City II 167,51,21)! The celebration is on Thursday, July 12, 2007 from 4:00-6:00pm SL time (NOTE! That’s 7:00pm-9:00pm EDT). Please join us in Second Life for virtual music, dancing and refreshments!" (the rest)

Woodbury University Island Deleted by Linden Labs

On Saturday, Woodbury University's Second Life campus was vaporized. Not by mis-behaving Second Lifers, not by technical difficulties or incompetence, but by Linden Labs as a disciplinary action for Terms of Service (TOS) violations. In March Dr. Edward Clift paid Linden Labs for a six month lease and built Woodbury Island. In early April the region was suspended for 3 days for various abuses. Later in April Linden Labs contacted him by telephone to warn him that the island would be discontinued if the problems continued. According to Dr. Clift, that was the last communication he received from Linden Labs. "There was never any communication from Linden until the disconnection as to whether they thought we were doing a good job or not and certainly no chance to take corrective measures in any kind of cooperative fashion."

The island was yanked on July 1 with no further warning. From the Linden Labs notice:

Many members of the Woodbury University group (which controls the region) have been detected before and after that date causing severe problems in Second Life, in violation of the terms of service. These problems include incidents of grid attacks, racism and intolerance, persistent harassment of other residents, and crashing the Woodbury University region itself while testing their abusive scripts. Due to the ongoing problems, Linden Lab has no option but to immediately close the Woodbury University region.

The main events have been covered by the Second Life tabloid The Second Life Herald, and has now been picked up by The Chronicle of Higher Education. The Herald's article comments are full of the bickering back and forth between the (ir)responsible parties, and illustrate what can happen if an organization does not take a firm hand in policing itself.

After reading the articles, interviews and comments, I gather that Woodbury U. was naive and negligent in monitoring the island it provided, and that Linden Labs is very bad at communicating to its customers about problems. Anyone who has land where avatars are allowed to build or script could face the same situation, including the Info Islands, Cybrary Cities, EduIslands, or Harvard. An educational sim designed to expose its students to the tools of Second Life must allow its members to build and script, but that also makes it a magnet for SL jokesters and griefers. You may not like it, but those are the facts. It appears that Woodbury U took a hands-off approach to management of their sim. It appears that the lack of communication by LL led them to believe the problem was under control. And it appears that LL has no clear protocol or progressive process in place to warn its institutional customers about terminal violations.

There are at least 150 colleges and universities with a presence in SL, many with their own islands. Perhaps they have assumed that their status as educational and non-profit institutions gives them a protected status and more latitude for students who are pushing the limits. Evidently they are wrong. I would suggest that there are some steps each institution should take if they want to protect their SL assets:

• Restrict building and scripting to their own groups
• Restrict the groups to their own students, and require that student accounts be verified
  
• Require anyone who joins their group to agree to a code of ethics and behavior
  
• Have an administrator available at all times to enforce the code
• Form an association of SL educational institutions and demand from Linden Labs a protocol for communicating about and resolving problems

Griefer U (April 22, 2007) The Second Life Herald
Woodbury University Island Destroyed (July 1, 2007) The Second Life Herald
Interview with Woodbury University's Edward Clift (July 6, 2007)
The Death of a Virtual Campus Illustrates How Real-World Problems Can Disrupt Online Islands (July 6, 2007) The Chronicle of Higher Education

Library Journal: SLIS Program at San Jose prototyping virtual graduate school?

San Jose SLIS Embraces Second Life
Last year SLIS San Jose received a grant from the Souros Foundation to purchase and create an information island in SL. Several of its classes now include labs in using Second Life.

Info Island this week

Alliance Second Life Libary one of six Sirsi-Dynix Building Better Communities Award at ALA
Alliance Library System was one of 6 winners of Sirsi-Dynix's Building Better Communities award for its Second Life Library.

Seminar: Self Esteem and Empowerment Seminar at Health Info Island.
For all SL educators and helping professionals
June 29, 1 & 3 PM PST
HealthInfo Island 130, 140, 22

Virtual Classrooms at Harvard

I'm both intrigued by and skeptical about using SL as a virtual classroom. There are certainly a significant and growing number institutions holding classes partly or entirely in SL. Several of the Library and Information Science classes I have taken at Wayne have had a significant online component, using Blackboard, as well as synchronous and asynchronous broadcasts of lectures. While grateful for the convenience, it's difficult for me to develop a sense of involvement with either the instructor or the students, and for me, that's central to a good class. So a well conducted class in SL could create a compelling online classroom. What would that look like?

Harvard Law School has boldly pioneered in this area. The Harvard Extension School is offering a class in SL this fall, Virtual Worlds, and here's the course description. Wish I could take it!

The instructor is Rebecca Nesson, who was one of the instructors for Harvard Law School's first SL based class, Cyberone. Ian Lamont publishes an interview about teaching in SL on Terranova (Teaching in SecondLife). Several things she mentioned didn't surprise me; at first the environment was chaotic. There was "culture shock" at first for those new to the environment.

The surprises? "a text-based environment has a whole lot of advantages over the face-to-face environment that I just hadn't anticipated." Rebecca found that "problem of students not participating in class discussions just totally disappeared". And that "we didn't have any trouble with students who dominate the discussion". Chaos was not a lasting condition as people developed new classroom norms. Who had the hardest time? Those who were "comfortable writing traditional response papers" who were not comfortable with the spontaneity of the SL classroom. She actually says "So for me the idea that I would actually end up almost preferring to run a class in a text-based environment to a voice-based environment, that was a huge surprise."

Read the interview here.

Indiana University's Synthetic World's Initiative

Indiana University has a research center devoted to the study and development of virtual worlds; The Synthetic World’s Initiative. Their purpose is to “promote innovative thinking on synthetic worlds ". They hold bi-annual conferences (the “Ludium”) and are developing Arden, a virtual world based on the life and works of William Shakespeare. At the Ludium II Conference “Attendees were charged with hammering out a well-considered platform to guide virtual world policy.” The result is:

A Declaration of Virtual World Policy

made by representatives of law, industry, and academia, assembled in full and free convention as the first Synthetic Worlds Congress.

Among the ten clauses in the declaration are calls for a player’s bill of rights, universal age verification, net neutrality and the statement that “fair use may apply in virtual worlds”. The declaration can be read here at TerraNova SWI's Declaration of Virtual World Policy:

Today’s Chronicle of Education’s Wired Campus makes note of the conference in the article Public Policies for Virtual Worlds.

Chronicle of Higher Education: Online communities changing online activism?

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur foundation has given a $550,000 grant to the University of Southern California's Center on Public Diplomacy to "examine the role online communities can play in fostering real-world activism". (the rest)

Paper: Creating Museum Content and Community in Second Life

This paper was presented at the conference "Museums and the Web 2007", and is a fascinating look at how one museum is using Second Life. San Francisco's Exploratorium has created "Splo", a virtual museum in Second Life. The paper details several of their exhibits that could only be done in Second Life.

Creating Museum Content and Community in Second Life

Robert J. Rothfarb and Paul Doherty, Exploratorium, USA

http://www.exploratorium.edu/worlds/secondlife/

Abstract

Brick-and-mortar interactive science centers offer fun and educational experiences for visitors of every age. But in a virtual world, many of the constraints of the real world can be overcome, offering experiences that transcend reality. Exploratorium staff members have created just such a space in the massively multi-user, three-dimensional world of Second Life. In the virtual museum called the 'Splo, we’ve been experimenting with the social, contextual, and educational possibilities of a world in which people can fly through the solar system, scan their own bodies, and change gravity so they can bounce off walls. In mixed-reality events which combine live media programs with the virtual world, visitors can watch a solar eclipse while sitting next to someone on the other side of the earth. What does this mean for other museums interested in creating their own virtual environments? In this paper, we share our own experiences, and offer some thoughts and recommendations.

(the rest)

U.S. Government Agencies use Second Life for Education and Outreach

NASA, NOAA and the National Institute of Health already have established themselves in Second Life, and feature some impressive simulations. This article from News Blaze, describes how government agencies are using Second Life.

U.S. Government Presence Grows in Second Life Online World

Agencies use virtual reality environment for education, outreach

Since early 2007, more than 6 million virtual residents of the online world called Second Life have had new neighbors - a handful of U.S. government agencies that are exploring possibilities for education, collaboration and outreach in the popular real-time multiverse.
(the rest)

The Chronicle: Wired Campus Blog:

The campus has been in construction for several months; now it is officially open. This posting from The Chronicle's Wired Campus Blog has a link to YouTube video that is one of the best short presentations I seen so far on what educators are doing in Second Life.

San Jose State Library Celebrates Opening in Virtual World
May 11, 2007

Never mind that the celebration will exist only digitally. San Jose State University's School of Library and Information Science will put on a big show for the May 16 opening of its campus in Second Life, an online virtual world. (the rest)

Daruma Picnic at the Second Life Library Art Gallery

Daruma Picnic’s first name comes from the Japanese dharma or wish dolls. His first work of art in Second Life was his own skin, a full body tattoo of his own drawing of a Daruma doll. Since I met him soon after he arrived, I’ve seen all the phases of his SL career so far: “Avatar”, “Architecture”, “Darumas”, “Imported Painting” (his shortest phase), “Floating Overlays”, “Click Color” and now “Interactive Music Sculpture”. It has been interesting and exciting to watch an accomplished artist take on a new medium. It has also been great fun to see the inspiration meter go off when Daruma sees something that gives him an idea, and to see him working through it. He will be displaying many of these works at the Second Life Library Gallery (Library Gallery, Info Island (32, 117, 33).

For years he has been making layered studies for his gouache paintings in real life. His initial studies are drawings in felt-tip pen, which he layers in Photoshop. He has imported these studies into SL to create “floating overlay” paintings with many layers, “inspired by the ubiquitous SL waterfalls with their transparent layered prims and animated textures”.

His “click color” paintings are created entirely within Second Life through layering of transparent prims (primitive shapes, the building blocks of Second Life). The viewer can play with the interaction of colors and layers within the piece.

Daruma found particular inspiration in the interactive sound sculpture of Adam Ramona (Ramonia, Marni, (219, 198, 23) . Daruma says "Adam's interactive sound sculptures are simple in appearance, fun, intelligent, and immersive. ...Adam's work is mesmerizing and sparked my interest in interactive sound." Adam guided Daruma through the process of writing a script where collision of avatar with prim plays sound. He recorded the voices of 3 singers singing a variety of notes. The result is “a sort of free jazz work”. Multiple avatars can play notes within the sculpture at once to create music in Second Life.

The show opens on Saturday, April 28 at 6 PM PST and runs through May 28.

Reference Services Review - Esther Grassian on Second Life

Grassian, E., & Trueman, R. (2007). Stumbling, bumbling, teleporting and flying … librarian avatars in Second Life. Reference Services Review, 35(1), 84-89. Retrieved March 27, 2007, from http://proxy.lib.wayne.edu:2436/Insight/ViewContentServlet?Filename=Published/EmeraldFullTextArticle/Articles/2400350106.html.

This paper by Esther Grassian (UCLA) and Rhonda Trueman (Johnson & Wales) takes the form of questions and answers to provide an overview of the benefits and challenges for libraries in Second Life.

At NMC this week: EDUCAUSE Focus Session on Immersive Learning Environments

This session is taking place in real life in Raleigh, North Carolina, and will be streamed into Second Life at the NMC Campus. If you can only catch one session, I'd recommend the 10:15 (1:15 EST) session with Sarah Robbins (Intellagirl).

Tuesday 3/27 -
11am to 12pm (SLT)
Generation G and the 21st Century
Richard Van Eyk (University of North Dakota)

3/28 -
5 to 5:45am (SLT)
Cognition, Learning, and Literacy in Virtual Worlds, Constance Steinkuehler (U of Wisconsin-Madison)

6:00 am - 6:45am (SLT) Cyberinfrastructure-enabled Learning Environments for Gen-Z, Gary Bertoline (Purdue)

7:45 - 8:30am Virtual Learning Environments in 3D, Phil Long (MIT)

10:10 - 10:55 (tentative): Immersion and Engagement in a Virtual Classroom: Using Second Life for Higher Education, Sarah “Intellagirl” Robbins (Ball State)

12:00 pm - 1:00 pm The Bar May Not Be As High As You Expect: Considerations in Implementing an Immersive Learning Environment

More information is available at the NMC Campus Observer blog.

Info Island this week

Last week, Kitty Pope, Director of the Alliance Library System, announced that the ALA has given it the Information Today Inc. Library of the Future Award.

Tuesday 3/27 -
8am SLT (11 am EST) -
NO-CONCEPT CLASS: BUILDING
at Eduisland 2

Thursday
3/29 -

8am SLT: Info Island Tour by Jilliana Susei - meet at the Welcome Area

6pm SLT
Discussion: Catch the Librarian Buzz
Discussion of services and programs for teens at Eye4You - location to be announced
There is also a discussion here about the new Eye4You Alliance Island, and what it will have to offer.

InfoIsland