I attended a scripting class in Second Life today. I did not register beforehand, but the instructor let me observe the class as a student to get the full effect. Handouts existed of images that you had to touch in the front of the classroom to download to your profile. He did not allow me to download them, but I asked one of the students privately what they were. Since he was going over basic scripting, he gave the class a copy of the images that he was using for the course.
To give you an idea of what this course looked like, I am pasting a snapshot that I took while sitting in the class. (That's me in the blue dress in the center.)The instructor communicated with the class by text, not microphone which I found surprising.
What I learned from this Second Life Event:
1. That participants needed to know at least the basics about how to navigate Second Life including how to teleport, use PK pads to beam from various locations in their school, sit, touch images and accept handouts.
2. Images used in Second Life instruction need to be larger than normal with relatively minimal text. Luckily, the instructor gave the students a handout of what was on the board. The text on the board was too small for me to see - and yes, I did move up closer to try to see it.
3. A new educator in this medium can easily get overwhelmed. I was IMing him privately to ask if I could observe, other students were talking to him and he was trying to distribute his materials. There were about 12 people in the course. In person, the other students could have formed a queue of sorts to ask questions. Online, it all comes to you at one time.
I would like to try my hand at teaching one class online in Second Life about something simple to experience this medium as an instructor. Any suggestions? Anyone want to join me?
Image from my class:
That's a good idea- i'm game if you have something in mind. What i see with big presentations is that the speaker (often famous person) has voice streamed to the audience- the audience uses chat - and a moderator collects/monitors the questions- and sort of acts as chat cop- so the speaker can run with it and then answer questions as appropriate.
ReplyDeleteGetting a handle on all the communication windows is tricky- voice, local chat, remote chat, group chat- and knowing how to view the chat history and leave it open, instead of letting it appear and fade out - which is the default behavior.
Any plans to do anything with the TLT?
d.i.