$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

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

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)

Purpose, community and virtual reality

Events in my own life and community this week have submerged me into a time of mourning and reflection.

A long-time friend, Robert Busby was murdered last week. The impact of his death ripples far beyond the loss to his family and close friends. He worked for nearly 30 years to realize his dream of creating a center for culture and arts in Lansing’s Old Town district. When he bought his first building on Turner Street in Lansing’s decaying original downtown his first gallery, Two Doors Down, was named based on its proximity to the infamous the Mustang Bar, which set the tone for the neighborhood.

His gallery became a non-profit community endeavor, supported by the work of a group of artists who worked to bring real art, music and poetry to Lansing. Robert subsidized this in large part with his own labor and day job working as a model builder at GM. He had the same resources most of us have and had, but somehow he managed to be a patron of the arts. Arts and artists were not an interest or priority for the majority of leaders in Lansing (the then mayor, demanded the removal of a nude drawing at a Lansing Community College student art show to protect his wife’s sensibilities), so Two Doors Down was more then just a space to hang pictures. It was the place where the conspiracy to feed the soul of our community took root and grew into the place it is now.

Two Doors Down was laid to rest in 1989, but another gallery sprouted up down the block, then another, and another. Meanwhile, Robert continued to adopt dilapidated buildings, uncover their beauty, and turn them into working, living and playing spaces. The last building he bought was ready to be condemned after a fire gutted it. He loved it back into life, creating the Creole Gallery and his home there. His retirement from GM allowed him finally to concentrate all of his attention and energies on his gallery and the Old Town community.

Last Wednesday night hundreds of us gathered outside of the Creole to hold a vigil for Robert. Each person could remember many shows, concerts and performances they had been to there, and always, Robert in the center of it, inviting people in to the circle and making them feel part of it. In this way he made many, many friends, who continued to build, patronize and enjoy Old Town. Now it has become ours to carry on.

Robert’s death brings to a point a long internal debate I have had with myself over Second Life, its value and meaning, and what it says about us. Second Life is a virtual reality, an immersive experience, a complicated and time consuming exercise that only contains the meaning you bring into it. I admire and enjoy the landscapes and buildings created by its residents, and I value the friendships and connections I have made there. I think many residents are doing meaningful work there. But I wonder how many of SL’s residents are participating less in their real lives in order to learn and explore it? At what point are we contracting because we are mesmerized by our digital lives? Participating less in our own communities, seeing less of our friends, not supporting our local art scenes, in favor of a digital existence?

Second Life is only good for me to the extent that it serves my purposes in life. There are many ways in which I think SL is an improvement over television, or even reading a romance novel or mystery. But virtual reality is far inferior to almost anything my real life can offer. I would far rather meet my Second Life friends in the flesh for a real beer, concert or gallery tour. The technology, and therefore the seductiveness of the medium will only improve over time. So those of us who are exploring its uses need to keep the bigger picture in mind before we lead others into it, and surely that means first learning to use it in a skillful way ourselves to expand our own lives, relationships and communities.

Qualities of Online Environments

Sarah Robbins is a rhetoric and composition PhD candidate at Ball State University. Her interests and research are on using online tools for teaching. Her blog Second Life Education Research, where she is known as Intellagirl is both thoughtful and based on real experience and research. In this posting she shares ideas from a book chapter she is writing, "CVE, MUVE, MMOE, MMORPG…What’s the difference?’: Virtual Environments as Compositional Models".

"In the chapter I attempt to delineate between different types of digital environments in which communication/composition can happen. In effect, what I’m doing is laying out the qualities that an instructor may be looking for in an online environment for a specific educational goal. Because the audience is largely readers who have never explored such environments, I’m hoping to lay out the most important differences to help light the way to informed pedagogical decisions."

It does a very good job of doing this, and includes a table that makes it even clearer. The post is here.