Ice Skating at Mandalay Bay

Alicia posted the following message at our MUVEnation Moodle forum:

Do you want to have some fun while trying a new activity and practicing your camera skills? Then head off to the Ice Skating Rink and experience skating a wonderland of ice forests, tunnels and castles. Visit the Ice Skate Rink at Mandala Bay http://slurl.com/secondlife/Mandalay%20Bay/243/200/24. Buy the free skates at the vendor and try one of the animations for single and couple ice skating.

So I decided to check it out and as she said it was great fun. Check the following:

Online peer collaboration

Post in your blog about the collaboration in your sub group. You may want to think about some of these issues.

· Was it easy to define objectives and criteria?
· How did you distribute the work?
· How did you feel about your own participation?
· How did you feel about other participation?
· Were there any problems, or misunderstandings?

Collaboration is the basis for bringing together the knowledge, experience and skills of multiple team members to contribute to the development of a new product more effectively than individual team members performing their narrow tasks in support of product development.

Kenneth Crow (http://www.npd-solutions.com/collaboration.html)

First of all, as I have already posted in

MUVENation Course

Activity 1, section 3, module 1 - group 1.3 – Chestnut,

as all the Chestnut members seemed interested in the topic Teaching in Second Life but belonged to different fields, it was suggested to define subtopics according to our professional fields. So I searched for educational places related to teaching English in SL, Stefan searched for places related to Maths teaching.After searching for the places, I and Stefan met inworld and created our notecard / travel guide with two places each of us found. Unfortunately we forgot to take snapshots of our collaborative work inworld!

Then we agreed that Stefan would present it inworld as I had to be at school during Monday, 22nd December.

I think that we all would have participated more in another time of the year as we all were very busy with our professional duties and if we all belong to the same time zone. Nevertheless, I and Stephan managed to work in a cooperative and collaborative way. And, in my opinion, it was very meaningful and enriching as we shared our knowledge, helped and learnt from each other.

Taking into account this experience, next peer activity will be easier :)

Season greetings!

Wishing you all a Happy Holiday:)

Here are some thoughts about this time of the year!

Oprah Winfrey

Cheers to a New Year and another chance for us to get it right.

Edith Lovejoy Pierce

We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called "Opportunity" and its first chapter is New Year's Day.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

What can be said in New Year rhymes,

That's not been said a thousand times?

The new years come, the old years go,

We know we dream, we dream we know.

We rise up laughing with the light,

We lie down weeping with the night.

We hug the world until it stings,

We curse it then and sigh for wings.

We live, we love, we woo, we wed,

We wreathe our prides, we sheet our dead.

We laugh, we weep, we hope, we fear,

And that's the burden of a year.

Have a great New Year!

Exploring educational places

MUVEnation Course
Activity 1, section 3, module 1 - group 1.3 - Chestnut

As all the Chestnut members seem interested in the topic Teaching in Second Life but belong to different fields, it was suggested to define subtopics according to our professional fields.

Then the search began. First I used the search engine Google. I used the key words “Teaching English in Second Life” and I accessed some interesting articles about the topic such as it can be found in the following links:
http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2008/03/using-second-li.html
http://esl.about.com/b/2008/11/05/teaching-english-in-second-life.htm
http://thegridlive.com/2007/08/29/teaching-english-in-second-life/
But there were no indications of SLurls.

Delicious wasn’t very helpful either or SLbrowser. Only with the search facilities in Second Life was I able to find the following SLurls that I advise people to explore.


So, I chose Teaching English in Second Life. I selected three islands as follows:

1- Virtlantis 122, 115, 23
This is a place where anyone can improve his/her English according to one's needs in an
autonomous way. All the island is worth visiting. For example: We can find a BBC Grammar
Challenge (Quiz, audio, grammar explanation)

2- Education UK 239, 52, 21
This island is also an educational place where we can find virtual WebQuests. It helps people
to design virtual WebQuests based on Bernie Dodge's work: a structured learning activity
which develops into several phases: introduction, task, process, resources, evaluation and
conclusion. They are suited for almost all subject areas.

3- English Village 140, 118, 110
It's a sim for language teachers where people can learn English in a very varied way: watching
a movie or TV, attending an event, going dancing (...) or just engaging in a chat. All in English.

To see some pictures of these inworlds, please go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/morgenstring/

Avatar appearance and identity

Assignment:
In your blog, describe your experience playing with your avatar’s appearance: do you feel comfortable with your new appearance or is it going to take more work – share your reflections on this। How do you feel the changes you made to your avatar have affected your digital identity? How do you think your appearance affects your interactions with others and their interactions with you?

I think it’s funny playing with our avatar’s appearance. We are free to be whoever we would like to, to dress up the way we want, to have any kind of wigs, tattoos or piercings that in RL we wouldn’t have in formal contexts; at least I wouldn’t as I have a traditional, conservative image in RL.
I don’t think that the changes I made affected my digital identity because my purpose in SL is to see how it can be used for educational purposes so I never pretended to have a different identity from mine in RL.
In my opinion, our appearance affects the others’ interactions with us, at least in my particular case it happened.
When I created my account in SL I chose a default avatar, the professional woman. I wandered through several landmarks until I met an avatar who was very friendly and asked me to try a different skin. As I agreed , he offered me a skin, shape, hair and told me where to find clothes and accessories for free. When I saw myself with the new avatar, fancy clothes and accessories, I didn’t want to try anything else because I thought that avatar was like a piece of art, i. e. it was really beautiful ... :() The feedback I got from several avatars reforced my opinion :)
To sum up, I strongly believe that the way we project our social presence in SL affects the way we interact with other avatars and vice-versa. Nevertheless, until someone helps me to create an avatar that resembles me in RL, I will stick to the one that Victor offered me :)

The Story of my first steps in Second Life

Please share here your stories about your first hours if life in Second Life। Reflect on your experience: How would you describe your first steps? What were the technical issues, if any? What did you feel about the avatar you chose? What was orientation island like? Could you find help as needed? Where did you go? Did you speak to other avatars? What would improve the experience, if anything? What previous knowledge and skills helped you?

My first hours of life in Second Life

After creating my account I was directed to the Orientation Island where I learnt the basic skills of navigating in SL, though I was a bit disappointed because I was hoping to have more information than the one provided.
Then I explored some landmarks. I met some avatars who gave me information on the way SL worked.
The avatar I chose was the professional woman. I would like to change it but I didn’t know how. Fortunately, in Vestibular Brasil I met an avatar with whom I talk about this issue and he gave me the shape, skin and hair that I’m wearing and explained to me how I could get free stuff inworld.
One of my favourite places is Shakespeare company. There I met some avatars who loved reading and the idea of creating a reading group arouse. The Bibliophiles Anonymous was born but my main problem is getting time to read for pleasure...
I think that one of the most positive aspects of SL is the fact that most avatars are friendly and helpful. However, SL should be more friendly user because it can be difficult to understand instructions in a foreign language and it is worse if you aren’t familiar with language programming, scripts, and so on.
In my opinion, there should be a kind of SL for educational purposes under the philosophy of Moodle. It should be opensource, free and with no need of language programming. For instance, in your inventory, you would have objects that you could edit easily as a chair with a pose and so on. At the moment, that’s one of the difficulties I feel. I was lent a space to train but I have difficulties in creating objects like a new floor, walls, and so on, so I hope to learn that from our activities inworld.

C। Do you see yourself as a pioneer? Do you think you are more innovative than others in your organisation? Do you think your organisation is lagging behind? Tell us how you feel about this.

In a certain way, I can consider myself as a pioneer because I like trying new digital tools with my students and I am open to change. At the moment, I am working with some students who need reinforcement in some curriculum topics and they are using Wikis to record their work and progress.
In my opinion, it is very important to use Web 2.0 as a way of helping students to develop competences that will be required in the 21st century, in our knowledge society as it is dominated by digital technologies.
Quite often the problem is that our schools don’t have the required infrastructures, equipments or resources to promote an active, digital learning with our students.
It is urgent to create the necessary conditions in schools and also train teachers to use these Web 2.0 tools and MUVESs (for instance, the computers at school don’t have the requirements to run SL. I have to use my personal PC when I want to work with it) in the most effective pedagogical way.