Virtual Worlds: Learning and Teaching in a Digital Age

One of the things that I learned from last year’s SL project in Computer Sciences, was that I. Must. Take. Snapshots. throughout the process. Granted, last term I had to borrow a laptop from MACS, because my home computer was not able to deal with Second Life (good old reliable and yet now retired workhorse) and there is no way my university allows me to access SL from the network I am on (do not get me started on this short sightedness and seeming lack of understanding of educational research needs) and neither would my work laptop be capable of dealing with it (let’s insert a round of hollow laughter) and thus I need to do all my Second Life work from home – on a computer with rather high specs that I deliberately bought for this research project.

Well, now that this little frustrated rant is out of the way, let us get to the fascinating parts of the job. I was working on my presentation for the RSC & HEA Virtual Worlds 2008 conference and realising that I was lacking snapshots from last year (the talk is all about last year’s project, which one could see, in many ways, as a pilot project – at least from my side/for me) and thus logged into SL. Lo and behold, there was in fact a lab session going on, the ones that I usually observe on a Tuesday.

Thus I have now a good set of snapshots that show out students working on the island, scripting away, practising and learning, in the midst of their creative chaos. I’d like to share some of those images with you.

Note the wild number of dots on the minimap. The lab was busy. So busy, in fact, that I got thrown out twice, crashed thrice and was sunk into the terrain and had to reboot SL five times. Joy.

When rendering goes wrong, this student’s avatar was actually wearing rainbow coloured bell bottoms. When I complimented the student on the looks, I was told I was dressed well for a funeral. Touché!

This student had customised her avatar into a girlie dress, but of course, I have no idea, unless I were in the lab, if the student is actually female. Added: the lecturer told me that the student is a) indeed female and b) a very good programmer who was c) working on a rather advanced interactive script. There you go, girlie avatar clothes don’t necessarily imply anything.

A group of three students either working together or playing together, they certainly came up with beds, bubbles and headgear in rather rapid succession.

Last but not least, isn’t the creative chaos inspiring? I’m also skimming through students’ learning logs and there are some brilliant nuggets. There are, indeed, moments when I do think my job is/our jobs are the best job(s) in the word. Moments, folks. Moments.