August 08, 2008
Chatlog for Tab Scott Posted to Wiki
The chatlog for the Tab Scott event is finally up at the wiki, with my apologies for the delay. The event had been rescheduled for Jun 20th after tech problems interfered with the original date. The event was exceptional, ranging across such topics as:
* Teaching Cultures
* Cost of Success
* Student Collaborations
* "There is no Collaboration without Communication"
* Tech Challenges
* Croquet
* Take-Aways
Second Life @ University of Michigan: Brown Bag Chatlogs: 2008/06/20 Tab Scott: http://slum.wetpaint.com/wiki/slum/page/2008%2F06%2F20+-+Tab+Scott
Posted by pfa at 11:37 AM | Comments (0)
June 20, 2008
Brown Bag Chatlog: Fleep Tuque
The chatlog from last week's fascinating fireside chat by Fleep Tuque has now been posted to the wiki.
http://slum.wetpaint.com/page/2008/06/13+-+Fleep+Tuque+on+Education
NOTE: Wetpaint is being weird about the link, so you may need to navigate to the page:
Home > Brown Bags & Community Events > Brown Bag Chatlogs & Notes > ...
Topics ranged across this eclectic set:
* Fleep's Background
* SLEDcc
* Presenting RL Events in SL
* Teen Grid & Gaia
* SL Education Activities, Planning & Examples
* American Chemistry Society
* Second Nature, NOAA, and More
* Salamander & Tours
* Inventory Management Tips
* Recommended Classes
* Web Searching Tips for SL
* Using and Finding Calendars
* Twitter for SL
Posted by pfa at 10:43 AM | Comments (0)
June 13, 2008
Chatlog from Tintern Abbey Available
The chatlog from last weeks tour of Tintern Abbey is now available at the wiki:
2008/06/06 - Tintern Abbey with Pipsqueak Fiddlesticks
Highlights of the discussion include the economics of creating the space, student activity design, and the use of audio in the space. The chatlog is divided into sections to facilitate browsing for specific topics.
Posted by pfa at 10:42 AM | Comments (0)
June 02, 2008
Chatlog available for Working with Students in Second Life Discussion
The chatlog from the May 30, 2008 Brown Bag is now available on the Second Life @ the University of Michigan wiki.
SLUM: Brown Bags: 2008-05-30 Working with Students in Second Life
http://slum.wetpaint.com/page/2008%2F05%2F30+-+Working+with+Students+in+Second+Life
Posted by annepz at 03:21 PM | Comments (0)
March 26, 2008
Chatlog Available for Joop Zuhal & Scot Jung Presentation/Discussion
The general consensus of attendees was that the brown bag last Friday was the best so far, with a really amazing discussion, both practical and philosophical. With the permission of all present, the chatlog has now been posted to our wiki. You can find it at:
SLUM: Brown Bags: 2008-03-21 Joop Zuham & Scot Jung: http://slum.wetpaint.com/page/2008%2F03%2F21+-+Joop+Zuhal+%26+Scot+Jung
Posted by pfa at 10:43 AM | Comments (0)
March 03, 2008
Brown Bag Notes: February 29th
ATTENDING:
Gillian Oh
Kaiya Qunhua
Perplexity Peccable
Memetic Projects
Vitesse Vella
Gyokuran Enzo
Pattyb Contepomi
Jeanette Markova
Alethia Miklos
Hello Marksman
Philomena Flanagan
Brunopesto Contepomi
Robyn Sciarri
Moriz Gupte
On February 29th Ramesh Ramloll (avatar: Moriz Gupte) of the Idaho State University faculty provided a tour of the Play2Train sim in Second Life which was created to support table top exercises for emergency preparedness.
We all put on our HUDs and toured the facilities. Play2Train is composed of 3 Islands: Asterix, Obelix, and Getafix. Asterix and Obelix host the town and hospital. The hospital is a replica of a real world hospital, Elks Rehabilitation Hospital, built according to blueprints. They have evacuation drills in the hospital.
The bluemed medical facility an example of a mobile quarantine unit deployed in emergency situations, especially in a surge situations.
The hospital library has movies playing and anatomical models such as a lung sound ausculation simulation which lets you select a specific disease condition and the student gets to hear various parts of the torso and they have to make a diagnosis.
Play2Train provides emergency preparedness training for responders through "a virtual training space in SecondLife designed to support Strategic National Stockpile (SNS), Simple Triage Rapid Transportation (START), Risk Communication and Incident Command System (ICS) Training." You can find more information, including a video of the sim, at the web site http://play2train.hopto.org/ .
Ramesh is happy to work with the University of Michigan community if we would like to use Play2Train for training. There will be an exercise from folks based at Seton Hall Univ on March 7th that we are invited to pop in and watch.
Posted by gmayman at 11:38 AM | Comments (0)
February 22, 2008
Brown Bag Notes: January 18, 2008 - Research in Second Life
ATTENDING:
Perplexity Peccable
Memetic Projects
Vitesse Vella
Kaiya Qunhua
Gyokuran Enzo
Kinderella Bright
Bridget Jennings
Rudolfo Woodget
Seluj Pelous & Friend
Vic Novi
FREEBIES:
UM Block M Sweater, appropriate for the cold and snowy weather we were having.
Teachers starter kit from Desideria Stockton
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
InfoIsland Tour w/ Rolig Loon
Blog: http://mblog.lib.umich.edu/slum/
DISCUSSION:
* Research issues in Second Life
- Research intense sims
* Nanotechnology Island
- Teaching research skills
* Genome Island
- Using SL to do actual research
* Virtual Hallucinations
+ "They created a build that teaches awareness of what it is like to be schizophrenic by simlulating the hallucinations. You walk through and experience a little of what it is like."
+ "The voices creep me out."
+ "they also WARN people clearly what to expect and how to turn off the voices if they bother you."
+ advocacy / consumer health education / intervention / research
+ Pretest / posttest
+ model for social science research in SL, well done
- IRBs and SL
* Description of research project proposed, modeled partly on Virtual Hallucinations for advocacy and information about facial difference
* Some places, they are having trouble explaining SL to the IRB folk
* Linden Lab's research approval process: http://www.simteach.com/wiki/index.php?title=Second_Life_Research
- How are RL researchers using SL?
* teaching about research
* remote attendance at events (meetings, presentations)
* sharing / socializing / collaborating
* doing actual research and accumulating data, usually in the social sciences
- Collaborations:
- Why SL?
* Why use SL for research?
+ "work needs to be done before survey instruments & data collection processes can be adapted to SL"
+ "e.g. in Cognition & Perception research, a lot of instruments depend on subject reaction time"
* Why are you personally in SL? What do you hope to get from it?
+ meet people from around the world
+ attend conferences and presentations
+ learning and personal development
+ interested in using SL for education, search instruction classes
+ "looking for ways to make the distance learning environment better than powerpoints with audio"
+ engagement
+ alternative to webinars
+ "I feel less compelled to multitask while attending a SL event, compared to a Centra/Webex conference"
* SL Cons
+ "I get a little bored when I am just typing and reading in SL."
+ "learning curve for second life is difficult also and you can't really get people who have not used it before to become efficient enough to attend"
+ "is it realistic to attract people who have never used second life to attend classes there?"
+ "trying to set things up to do stuff is so much harder on the teacher"
* Could we have students do research in SL?
+ simulations / collaborations
+ what resources would be needed?
+ discussion of Genome Island
+ "team project work (game design, softtware engineering, user interface design) many teams have both in class and distance learning students on them"
+ collaborative problem solving (divided teams: half do planning, other half do building)
+ many places using powerpoint for instruction, just like in RL
+ "research projects in using immersive environments to provide interfaces to information repositories"
* What about voice chat?
+ "I don't like it"
+ "found it confusing"
+ audio problems:
- with conversations -- voices overlap near and distant and it can be confusing
- wonderful for presentations, bad for discussions
- unable to configure it to work on a mac laptop with a small keyboard
- folks in voice utterly ignore all IM and chat communications
- Takes a really high powered set up to archive in the way chatlogs are archiveable
- I've been places where someone accidentally hit their trigger key and broadcast a private conversation from RL into SL
- I haven't ever attended a voice presentation where someone in the audience didn't complain about the audio
- "so there are no "moderator" type controls, like in telephone conference calls?"
- "If everyone was crystal clear on the mechanics, and agreed to follow Robert's Rules of Order, then it would probably work well for discussion."
Posted by pfa at 11:37 AM | Comments (0)
January 27, 2008
How to ... Make Basic Clothing
This blog entry contains the content of the brown bag session for January 11th, taught by Perplexity Peccable, based loosely on the NCI Class on Making Basic Clothing taught by Afon Shepherd. Afon's class is class is recommended, and is offered by New Citizens Inc - join the group for more information.
Please note, all images will enlarge when clicked.
STEP 1:
Right+Click on yourself. Choose "Appearance" from the pie menu.
STEP 2:
Look at the APPEARANCE menu.
Clothing items listed that you can create are:
Shirt
Pants
Shoes
Socks
Jacket
Gloves
Undershirt
Underpants
Skirt
These are worn in layers, which are important in the garment design process.
* Torso & Arms:
Inner Layer (by the skin) - Undershirt
Middle Layer - Shirt
Outer Layer (arms) - Gloves
Outer Layer - Jacket
(NOTE: Jacket will cover Gloves)
* Hips and Legs
Inner Layer (hips) - Underpants
Inner Layer (legs & feet) - Socks
Middle Layer - Pants
Outer Layer - Skirt
(NOTE: The Jacket is the only item which may sometimes cross the waist and appear on both halves of the body. If wearing a long Jacket, the bottom of the jacket will cover the top of pants, but may not show if worn with a skirt.)
These can be used in layers to create the effect of a single complicated garment, when really it is a combination of several basic garments. The layers for various body regions works like this, from the head down and the skin out.
STEP 3:
Make new underpants.
a. Click the Underpants tab
b. If you are wearing underwear, click the "Take Off" Button. (bottom of Appearance menu)
c. Click the "Make New Underpants" button. (near top of menu)
d. When asked in a pop-up dialog window if you want to wear the garment being created, choose YES.
Make a new undershirt.
a. Repeat steps a-d above, only starting by clicking on the Undershirt tab.
STEP 4:
Now that you are wearing new sets of default underwear (which are quite modest), you may remove your other clothes.
For this class, remove the following items:
Shirt
Pants
Socks
Jacket
Gloves
We will not be making shoes in this class, so you can leave those on. While we won't be discussing each of these individually, you may wish to use any of these layers in designing your outfit.
Now that you have removed your outer clothes, this is what we should look like.
STEP 5:
Let's start with the undershirt we are already wearing. Let's tint it a different color so that as we move on to the shirt we can see the difference between the two.
a. Click on the Undershirt tab.
b. Click on the Color/Tint square (This is the bottom of the two squares that are white when starting a default new garment.
c. Choose a color
d. Click the SELECT button
STEP 6:
Now let's make a shirt. You should have the general idea by this point - Click the "Shirt" tab, and make and wear the shirt.
You've probably noticed the small pictures or images that fill the right side of the appearance menu . Beneath each pair of images is a slider. Start with the sleeves, and try moving the slider from one end to the other. Watch your avatar and notice what happens.
Stop at a point where the sleeves on the shirt are shorter than the sleeves on the undershirt. Afon pointed out that if you stop the slider at 2% the shirt appears like a two layer dress blouse, with a bustier and sheer upper layer. This is appropriate for evening wear and dressier ladies garb.
Choose a new color for the shirt - different than the color you chose for the undershirt. Your screen might now look something like this.
This is a good example of the layering mentioned earlier. Now, please set your shirt color back to white before we go on. If you really like the color combination you have, you may save your shirt and make another new white shirt before going to the next step. If you particularly like your colored shirt, you may wish to save it. If so, be sure to give it a distinctive name.
STEP 7:
For part 2 of designing your shirt, let's choose a texture.
You start just like for choosing a color, but click instead on the top white square that is labeled "Fabric."
This opens a dialog box to allow you to navigate your inventory to find the texture you want. You will already have textures in your inventory. In "My Inventory", you should have a folder named "Textures", and you will also have one in your "Library" folder.
If you choose light colored textures, you may also wish to tint them by choosing a color.
Now you can experiment with the various choices and options, textures and tints, until the garment looks the way you want. At this point, always SAVE the garment with a name that describes it so you can find it again.
STEP 8:
Following a similar process, click on the other tabs and make other garments, remembering to experiment by combining layers for special effects.
STEP 9:
When you have made at least a shirt and a pair of pants, or have combined a number of garments into a look you like, and have saved each garment with its own name, you are ready to make an outfit.
a. Click the button "Make Outfit"
b. Check the boxes for the garments you made and included in your new look.
c. Change the name of the Outfit to something distinctive. I like to start mine with the first name of my avatar to make them easier to find in my inventory.
d. Click SAVE.
e. The clothes will appear in your inventory in a folder with the name you chose.
You can wear your new outfit easily and quickly, even if you have changed into other clothes. Find the folder in your inventory. Right+Click on the folder. Choose either "Add to Outfit" or "Replace Outfit".
WARNING:
1. If you choose "Replace Outfit", this will probably remove your hair, any jewelry you are wearing, your shoes and socks, etcetera.
2. If you choose "Add to Outfit", it will not remove all of these other items, but you may find what you were wearing doesn't look very good with the rest of your outfit, and you may need to take off pieces of your old outfit.
MORE IDEAS:
Here are some pictures showing garments made with layering, tinting a texture, and other techniques. See if you can figure out how the outfit was made and assembled. Make up your own ideas and outfits, and have fun!
Posted by pfa at 08:30 PM | Comments (0)
January 09, 2008
Brown Bag 2007-12-14 (Notes)
ATTENDING:
JJ Drinkwater
Perplexity Peccable
Kinderella Bright
Philomena Flanagan
Memetic Projects
Vic Novi
Gillian Oh
Brunopesto Contepomi
Rudolfo Woodget
Trallfazz Vilas
Gyokuran Enzo
Ted Welles
INTRODUCTIONS
Departments:
4 - HSL
1 - Kinesiology
1 - Alum, School of Information
2 - Public Health
2 - Med School
1 - Dearborn (teaching writing)
RL Locations:
1 - League wireless
2 - Office
1 - home (not in Michigan)
3 - Public Health
DISCUSSION:
* Announcements
We received approval to distribute UM-logo apparel to our community in SL, and to set up a UM Spirit Shop. Location and inventory to be decided later.
* Proposed Structure for Brown Bags
A rotating schedule, including these types of topics in roughly this sequence:
- Skills
- Locations / Places / Tours
- Issues
- UM (i.e. managing the UM presence)
- Show and Tell / Swapmeets (share landmarks, freebies, where to find the best X)
- NOTE: Last Friday of the month will always be the Swapmeet / Show and Tell week.
* Possible Events and Brown Bag Topics
- tours of educational places
- about stereoscopic and/or 3D SL [NOTE: Trallfazz Vilas offered a dual-projector setup in Geo as space to explore this topic.]
- How To: streaming audio/video for live events (meetings, workshops, orientations, invited speakers)
- How To: creating animations (NOTE: Poser was recommended)
- Anatomy tools and resources (show and tell skeleton avatar)
- How To: making notecards and displays for education
- How To: Herding Cats 101 (how to teach in SL)
- How To: hosting events in SL
- How To: making exhibits without making problems
- Finding land for educational purposes
* Invited Speakers to Contact
- Tour of InfoIsland International with Rolig Loon, a foreign language and culture learning facility
- JJ Drinkwater on teaching in SL
* Goodies Shared
- Freebies: Basic Body Parts
- Full perms "Welcome Newbie" notecard, from JJ Drinkwater
- Moddable demo HUD distributed, by JJ Drinkwater. Shall we ask for a DFE student to create tour HUD? NOTE: HUD = Head's Up Display
* Desiderata
- Collect introductory information for students, faculty, and staff who are interested in joining SL generally and our community specifically.
- Post sign saying chatlogs being recorded
- Create Brown Bag Facilitators Kit
- Welcome to our Brown Bag Series - notecard in giver
- Market via local print publications, ie. The Record
- Market via other SL groups, NMC suggested
- Repeat tour in February; market widely. Repeat once a semester?
- Create group blog
- Build an inworld library of useful freebies and educational resources [NOTE: Where to put this?]
- Real World silkscreened tshirt for our group
* Policies
- There should be a stated 10 minute welcome period while we wait for Michigan time
Wiki/Blog:
- Create wiki/blog (open, reskinnable)
- Collate best bractices, getting started, etc. [NOTE: Berkman Center guide was recommended]
- Collect chatlogs
- Schedules, sessions, events, moderators
GROUP NAME:
Second Life @ the University of Michigan = SLUM
Slogans?
- Let's go SL-UMming!
- Welcome to the SLUMs
DEFINITION:
Official collective plural of wolverine is now "a maize of wolverines" (proposed by JJ Drinkwater)
Posted by pfa at 03:50 PM | Comments (0)
January 08, 2008
Brown Bag 2007-12-07 (Our First)
Meeting minutes from the first inaugural brown bag session of the Second Life community of the University of Michigan.
DATE:
December 7, 2007; 12:10pm
ATTENDING (most, not all):
Bridget Jennings
Brunopesto Contepomi
Gillian Oh
Gyokuran Enzo
Hello Marksman
Kaiya Qunhua
Kinderella Bright
Memetic Projects
Mizzuga Dawg
Perplexity Peccable
Philomena Flanagan
Sladly Nieminen
Snotball Snoats
Ted Welles
Titus Darwin
Vitesse Vella
Wrenaissance Jewell
MAIN TOPIC:
Planning future brown bags and community building events for UM in SL
Freebies from this meeting was a large collection of T-Shirts. Unplanned freebie was roasting marshmallow on a stick to toast over the campfire.
Where were folks located:
- Public Health (7)
- home (2)
- LRC (2)
- office (2)
- Dearborn (1)
AGREED:
- Meeting weekly
- RL location for December 2007 will be Public Health, 2615 Crossroads
- Send topic of discussion in advance, via email and to UM Secondlife group inworld (if possible)
- Make a wiki to share chatlogs and facilitate discussions
- SecondLifeEd folks will promote Brown Bags to students in their schools and departments
POTENTIAL RL LOCATIONS W/ SL CLIENT INSTALLED:
- CAIDENT, in School of Dentistry (ITCS lab, open use)
- 2615 Crossroads, SPH (Classroom, requires reservation)
- Language Resource Center, LSA, Mac Classroom
FUTURE TOPICS:
General:
- how to decide on future meeting topics
- identifying land that could be used for educational purposes
- where can students exhibit and share and create work?
- a checklist for event planning and preparation
Skills:
- voice configuration
- safe places for newbies
- best places for education
- who and how to ask for help
- finding professional attire
- getting dressed, making outfits, making clothes 101
- building tutorials
- scripting tutorials
- how to stream audio/video for events
- things to do with textures
- building tours or HUDs
- tips for combined RL/SL events
- capturing class sessions for asynchronous viewing
- machinima
- using mouseview and taking pics in SL
- things to do with your Profile
- lag and how to prevent it
- finding/using animations
- creating custom animations
- navigation in SL, tips and tricks
- inventory management skills
Education:
- examples of uses of SL for education (UM and other)
- best practices in SL education
- tours to educational places + discussion/conversation
- tour of Wolverine
- SL for distance learning
- Herding Cats 101 (how to coordinate a class moving around SL)
- developing mentoring system for new teachers in SL
- bootcamps for new teachers in SL
- what is the learning curve like for new students in SL?
- do we need an alternative orientation for our students? (different from the regular SL orientation)
- what types of SL instruction and class activities best work with new students?
- what alternatives exist to the SL orientation?
- teaching in SL, lessons learned
- managing student accounts w money
- conducting constructivist learning activities in SL
- market penetration of SL in our student populations
Issues:
- voice or not
- rules or guidelines for effective use of voice
- checklist for event planning & preparation
- tech requirements for effective RL spaces for SL teaching
- is there too great a learning curve for classes to use easily?
- learning curve vs. learning cliff: does SL keep changing too much to be effective in education?
- do we need a real world pre-orientation before students enter SL?
- providing or getting tech support for SL for UM activities
- Doing field research in SL, getting started, logistics, etc
- marketing SL to managers and department chairs
- finding funding for SL projects
- do we want to have an open brown bag for non-UM folks maybe once a month?
- promoting open events to students and community (ie. http://hungryhungrycoeds.com/umich - lol)
Speakers:
- guest presenters on projects going on
- Giorgio Massei's Italian class in SL Winter term
Experimental Techniques Or Tools:
- group tour bus
OTHER ITEMS DISCUSSED:
- Getting permission to use UM logo on tshirts (etc) for our community
- Getting permission to share UM-branded freebies with broader SL education community
- Including alums and community in our discussions
- A freebie store for UM Merchandise on Wolverine
- Alumni should ask to join the group Wolverine-Community
PROPOSED WIKI TOPICS:
- what might be potential projects for School of Information DFE (internship) experiences?
PROPOSED FUTURE EVENTS:
- Enriching Scholarship: series of daily workshops in SL
- Inworld Workshop series with invited speakers from around SL with areas of special expertise (building, scripting, etc.) (Ted Welles offered to help pay to hire folk to do these sessions)
Posted by pfa at 01:13 PM | Comments (0)