Group items tagged

Collective Tagging of Places in the Multi-user Virtual Environment of Second Life

Life is a multi-user virtual environment, i.e., a world made up of virtual places and avatars that move among and interact in those places. Thirty-one users of Second Life were surveyed about one place in which they are members: Terra’s Nude Heaven, a virtual nude beach. The purpose of the survey was to determine what types of terms users would select if they could tag a particular place and how these terms correspond to the tags actually assigned by the owners of the place. The questionnaire data was also analyzed for difference in tag selection by gender, educational level, age, and country of residence. The data indicate that keywords rated as most important by the users of a place differ considerably from the keywords selected by the owner of a place. The data, moreover, demonstrate that the choices of the study population remain consistent across groupings by gender, educational level,age or country of residence.

poured out my heart from a place of loneliness and grief. Click click went the computer keys, like the staccato beat of my heart. Clack clack went their replies, their empathy and their own tales of triumph and woe. Via my avatar - the persona I'd created to engage here - I was participating in an "anxiety support group" in the free, virtual world of Second Life.

As I write those words, I can hear the scoffing. Pathetic! Escapist! Are you addicted to computer games? Do you have no friends? Second Life? That place is just about weird sex fantasies!

No wonder analysts at Gartner, a leading technology research company, predict that three years from now 8 in 10 Internet users will work or play in virtual spaces.

companies should try to spark user-to-user discussion -- a surprisingly cost-effective option on Second Life.

West's epiphany came about by accident. One day, she was sitting on a Second Life art-gallery couch, talking to people from all over the world, and she had their rapt attention. "At that moment, I could have sold my couchmates on anything," she says. "I realized how powerful one-on-one engagement could be."

hypercreative users who wanted to interact.

How did the media go wrong in coverage -- and participation -- in SSL, and what went right? It was a typical hype-and-backlash scenario, as I detailed in a previous post on MediaShift. Some journalists simply tired of SL, as so many people tried it and then bailed because of its steep learning curve and high technological requirements. But the journalists that have been more enmeshed within the world have been rewarded with plenty of cultural and sociological (and yes, business) stories.

John Lester leads customer market development for education and health care for Linden Lab, which runs Second Life. I met him in-world and had an instant-messaging chat with his alter-ego, Pathfinder Linden, about how the media has covered SL over the years. My SL name was Lynx Wickentower: Lynx: Did media miss the bigger story of Second Life? Pathfinder Linden at the educational meeting in SL Pathfinder: That seems to be a typical pattern for the human species, yes? We did it with all the previous mediums. We'll do it again in the future. We always misunderstand new mediums, initially treating them like pre-existing ones (e.g., treating the web like print media; treating television like radio). But then we learn new ways of seeing the tools and new ways to leverage them.

As for Reuters' coverage of SL, they did better than most journalists who did drive-by stories with a day or two of research in-world. The bureau lived for more than two years. Still, James Wagner Au, who writes the excellent New World Notes blog about SL said they could have done better. "Their writers, Adam Pasick and Eric Krangel, are fine journalists, and did some great external business-oriented reports, but at the same time, I don't think they were ever passionately engaged in the medium or Second Life's community on an experiential level," Au told me. "Consequently, their reporting very much had a distanced, 'outside looking in' flavor that caused them to often miss the big picture, in my opinion."

this post is her detailed look at keeping new male residents engaged in SL

Right, where was I? Oh yeah, the learning curve. I’m supposed to be telling you about “The lack of encouragement for new male residents to stay in Second Life”, but since I’m, err, female — does a quick check, right, okay, definitely female — I decided to conduct an Extremely Unscientific Survey among male residents to see what they had to say. 16 male residents responded, and the general consensus is that… [drum roll] … friends are generally the greatest form of encouragement for new male residents to stay in SL. “I came and went my first year. I hung around when I finally started making some friends and started going places and doing things with them,” says Dyami Jameson.

“I think men in Second Life are more motivated by ‘goals’ and scoring systems, which makes SL less attractive to them than women, who are more attracted to the social aspect of the metaverse,” comments Prad Prathivi. “Guys are naturally competitive and aim to lead the pack, which is harder and less obvious to achieve in SL.”

The Massively crew has spent a little more time hammering away at Google's new virtual artifice, Lively. By now, you've probably seen all sorts of news reports calling it a rival and competitor to Linden Lab's virtual world, Second Life. Technically, that's what we call bollocks

Describing Lively as a rival to Second Life is like calling a conference center a rival to a library. They're just not servicing the same needs, and the comparison is fundamentally nonsensical. Lively is tightly focused, and fails to intrude on the bulk of virtual worlds space.

Movement is accomplished by double-clicking on a spot to teleport your avatar there, or clicking and dragging the avatar with the left mouse button to walk your avatar. Don't try to drag your avatar past the border of the camera view without repositioning your camera first, or you will get unsettling jumps and find your avatar in strange places.

For many people outside of the "virtual worlds industry" the terms "virtual world" and "Second Life" are still more or less synonyms. This is especially funny, as many people in the industry seem to have written off Second Life because of many disappointing developments in 2007 and the big negative hype in the press.

It is not a secret, though, that Linden Lab's management and investors still believe that the Second Life technology will be the (or a least "a") corner stone of the future Web3D. Is this totally unrealistic? And would would Linden Lab have to do, to make this come true if it isn't? Making the platform more stable is a simple answer - and certainly a pre-requesite. But what about other decisions? More control? Or less? More openness? Or a tightly controlled product? And a product for which target groups? Based on what business model?

Both will tell you, that Linden Lab indeed has a rather profitable business model, is expecting significant growth and is targeting markets way outside the current user base (actually alienating large groups in the current user base).

The NMC Campus is an experimental effort developed to inform the New Media Consortium’s work in educational gaming.

Now fully operational, the NMC Campus has been carefully constructed to provide researchers and students dozens of prebuilt settings for experiments in social interaction in 3-D space. Expressly designed to encourage explorations both formal and informal, traditional and nontraditional, real and surreal, and serious and playlike, the spaces are flexible and will lend themselves to additional uses, yet to be defined. The campus has a variety of places for these interactions, from the serious to the fanciful, each designed to support an optimal group size; these range from 2 to more than 75. The campus also supports a wide variety of traditional media, including posters, PowerPoint slides, photographs, charts/graphs, videos, and weblinks, and these resources continue to be added on a regular basis as a core component of the project. All of these resources are available to NMC members who may wish to bring classes to the campus for a visit, as part of a research project, or for a full term. Complete details on using the campus are available on the NMC Campus wiki. Also available is the complete Second Life toolset of sophisticated building tools and the LSL scripting language, with which all of the NMC Campus and Second Life has been created. These allow the creation of virtually any simulated situation, process, or environment, and the incorporation of sophisticated interactivity. For the latest information on the project, see the main pages in this blog,

one idea for a gateway activity might be a show-and-tell for clothing and avatars, so people see what is possible

the personal communication really teaches more than signs and object chat [9:24] CDB Barkley: What do you think will be the impact of the voice capability? Have you tried the beta? [9:25] Ravenelle Zugzwang: so as Teachers leading your students into SL, you can relieve some of the new enviroment anxiety by familiarizing yourself and being there as a connection for you students when they come in? [9:25] Ilene Pratt: Voice is going to be very interesting! It works remarkably well! It'll be like an Elluminate session but you'll really BE there with others!

[9:25] CDB Barkley: If you had to share 1 or 2 top places with a colleague new to Sl, where would you send them? [9:26] Lizzy Saintlouis: Edu Island and Info Island [9:26] Ravenelle Zugzwang: I think people will be nicer to one another when they can hear the others intentions through voice inflection, or not but more opt to be polite. Text is really misread often [9:26] Robins Hermano: NMC, NOAA, Terra Incognita [9:26] Ilene Pratt: The International Spaceport Museum is great! [9:26] CDB Barkley: But text is so much more information dense

[SL] Best Practices For Education in Second Life The following best practices were developed by Global Kids, Inc. through the summer 2006 Camp GK in the teen grid of Second Life. Over four weeks, 15 teens spent three hours a day, five days a week, participating in interactive, experiential workshops about pressing global issues. Over the course of the program the teens picked a topic of concern -- child sex trafficking -- and built a maze to educate their online community and inspire them to take action. In its first eight weeks, the content-rich maze was visited by 2,500 teens, amongst whom over 450 donated money to an international organization committed to eradicating this global crime against children. Below is a review of general concepts. For more details download the pdf. Best practices for working in TSL 1. What happens in the teen grid stays in the teen grid. 2. Create multiple places of meaning. 3. If you build it, they will come. 4. Go beyond TSL. Best practices for bringing a youth development model into TSL 1. Build, build, build! 2. Don’t just build; design and manipulate avatars. 3. Think globally, act locally. 4. Know when teens know best. Best practices in workshop design and facilitation in TSL 1. Use real world content when addressing real world issues. 2. Don’t wait until someone has the floor to start typing. 3. Don’t fear multiple communication channels. 4. Incorporate processing into the activity, not just as a final step. Best practices in program design for TSL 1. Employ effective, rigorous, targeted recruitment. 2. Replace the dominant TSL culture with the GK Island culture. 3. Carefully design and build the tools required. 4. Ensure the program is designed for the recruited participants

We’re excited to be able to offer and host a new workshop that will take place in Second Life. Dan Undertone, a.k.a Dan Zellner in real life (Northwestern University), will lead this 8 session workshop that will use the new theater and studio on NMC Campus, the Machinima Building on the Learning sim. We had a small taste of this last October, when Dan led an activity that was part of the Symposium on Digital Media. Participants in a movement activity led by Dan Undertone, October 2006 Here is the information for the new workshop Dan is offering. Description This workshop will focus on using improvisational theatre games and other drama techniques to familiarize users with Second Life and its creative possibilities. Participants will plays the roles of author, actor and audience as various games are played and scenarios created.

n January 2007, Eslteacherlink.com constructed English Village,  an immersive 3D simulation for language learners and teachers across the globe!  At English Village teachers meet students in REAL TIME, using an avatar, Virtual white boards, VOICE, 3D objects, and role playable holodecks to provide 21st century learning.

Futuristic, yet Practical Instead of keeping our island flat, and having the majority of our buildings  on the ground level, we have situated 13 glass classrooms along a 120 meter high, horse-shoe shaped mountain ridge. Below the steep mountain ridges, lies a welcoming sandy beach that reaches out into a c resent moon shaped bay area. This large open space is used frequently by our teachers for special learning activities, such as market place and carnival role play scenarios.

The Onion Our meeting area is in the shape of an Onion, and is constructed of 100% virtual pink stained glass.  We actually never planned to use a giant onion as our central meeting area... but it actually does a great job of representing  the organic nature of our island ~ We build. We make mistakes. We learn.... and sometimes we cry!  So.. an onion - is perfect. Everyone begins in the onion. When an avatar teleports to our island for the first time, thats where they land - smack dab in the center beautiful pink wonder.  Around the edges of the onion are several multi colored hamster tubes sprouting out - connecting to each holodeck classroom. Inside the hamster tubes are convenient People Movers - you know, the ones you see at the airport.  Here, avatars just click on the red loading ball, and they are instantly moved along the pathway 100 meters to their destination.  This saves virtual transport time.

Today Angel Learning, in conjunction with the Second Life Educators Community (SLED), will unveil a brand new island in Second Life dedicated toward educational experimentation. Campus Technology had a chance to teleport to the new island ahead of its May 15 public debut to bring you this exclusive preview.The idea behind Angel Learning Island is to provide a space for educators to experiment with learning scenarios, meetings, and other kinds of interaction with students (and each other) in a virtual world. The island is free for all (not just Angel LMS customers), so educators can learn about Second Life--the basics, as well as advanced techniques--before investing any campus resources and before committing to any one particular approach to learning in a virtual environment.Ray Henderson, chief products officer at Angel Learning, told us he thought that educators did not need "experimentation in isolation, but more open places where there's a ladder up, so to speak, a way to [educate instructors in the ways of Second Life] so they can do experimentation on their own."

Second Life features hundreds of fascinating locations for learning and teaching. This is the list of "top" locations as decided by Wiki consensus. Feel free to add and subtract from the list but let's keep this to 20 places - this format ensures the most up-to-date list. Click the "history" tab at top to see previous versions.