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Holodeck & Notecard Projector
Members of the Education Coop gathered to discuss their ongoing projects in Second Life last night. North brought his holodeck and the discussions were moved to the meeting room inside the holodeck after a brief tour of the various rooms he has (ranging from a Zen garden to a bedroom). In Second Life the holodeck has some clear space saving advantages. All the objects have real sl physical presences, that is to say, if you see a chair in the holodeck it is possible to sit in the chair. So rather than building several different buildings, North can simply pull out his holodeck and switch between the various other settings. North also introduced us to another useful tool--the notecard projector. The notecard projector displays the text from a notecard, causing the text to simply hang in the air. In this ways notecards can be used for group presentations.
Posted at 12:31PM Aug 22, 2007 by David L Alexander in Cool Tools | Comments[0]
Summer of Love
Let's go back in time a little. Not all the way to 1967 when the original "summer of love" took place, but to the two day music festival held in Second Life on Aug. 3 and 4 of this year. While not directly related to education, the festival did highlight some of the technological capabilities of Second Life. Throughout the festival musicians were featured playing live music for the Second Life audience (there was also a professional dj in one time slot and periods of streamed music filling in when there were no live performances). Performers and guests came from various parts of the United States and Europe (possibly other areas as well). I can't speak to the actual technologies that made this all work, but it was pretty cool that avatars could gather in Second Life for a live concert and that streamed live music could be heard at my desktop. Having it on in the background certainly made my Friday at work go by faster. Beyond the music, it was an impressive demonstration of how Second Life can be used as a place to bring together people from remote for a particular event.
Posted at 03:35PM Aug 14, 2007 by David L Alexander in General | Comments[1]
Intellagirl on Web 2.0 Business Secrets
10 August, 2007: Sarah "Intellagirl" Robbins' seminar was made available through the Quicktime viewer. Several people in Second Life picked up the stream and broadcast it at their locations. People picked up on "wiki" when it was mentioned that it is a Hawaiian term, for example. I watched the seminar at Montclair State University's CHSS Amphitheater. There was some chat discussion taking place among the viewers in Second Life, but for the main part this was more of a traditional lecture based experience.
One of the tools mentioned was Mashups (see http://www.webmashup.com/). The example mentioned was using mashup to tie a map in with registration information to show where participants for a conference are coming from. I definately want to pass this idea on to the professional library associations I'm involved with. A couple other tools discussed were the Firefox Web browser (with Web 2.0 features built in) and LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com) networking tool.
I envision libraries one day hosting programming events and making them available to a wider audience in this fashion. Think of all the book talks and other programs held at individual libraries. If a consortium of libraries agrees to broadcast their programs, it could be like having a library channel on tv. Speaking of which, one of the groups in Second Life that I signed up for last night put out an announcement just before the end of the seminar. There will be a book talk this evening being in the Reader's Garden at Cybrary City in Second Life on the book Kite Runner by Khal Hosseini.
By the way, Montclair State is also home of the Edgar Allen Poe house. It is worth a visit if you are doing some exploring in Second Life.
Also, Sarah Robbins teaches Composition 101 in world in Second Life.
Posted at 11:10AM Aug 10, 2007 by David L Alexander in General | Comments[1]
Welcome Message
Hi and welcome to the Ronin Librarian Blog. The primary purpose of this blog is to document my travels in virtual worlds such as Second Life as I explore the potential use of Web 3.0 mediums for education.
Posted at 08:48AM Aug 10, 2007 by David L Alexander in General | Comments[1]