AUT@SECOND LIFE
AUT University has land inside the Second Life environment where students can experiment with making virtual classrooms, create objects, and upload files. We experimented with various techniques so that we could become familiar with the second life tool.
My previous experience with virtual worlds has been in creating virtual classrooms to help my students take their learning beyond the classroom and utilise peer support when they are in the real world. So, I was very interested to see what Second Life could offer.
To be honest, I wasn't very impressed. We already have a classroom, so spending time making a virtual replica of the class is not very useful. I am more interested in the affordances that technology can offer. The biggest problem is affording space to rent. AUT generously let us use their space, so we could learn the technology. However, if I were to use this in my own teaching, I would have to buy land in the Second Life world, and purchase the computers to access it.
Next we experimented with uploading documents to Second Life that could be viewed by any user. It was relatively difficult to do compared to, say attaching a file to an email. First you needed to create the sand box which you would use to do work. Just getting this to be the right size, angle, and opacity was a struggle in itself. Then you would need to fill that space with your document. I often found the document to be unusable, because of the shape of the object I had created.
Some other users have posted documents that are rather critical of Second Life.
This user has successfully uploaded a ppt file and it is fully functional within this space. I wonder how long that took them. Apparently, we will need to perfect this practice in order to pass the course.
These long shots show some of the objects that we created using the editing tool. These proved very difficult to create as there were so many different options to choose. Not only did we need to position the objects for correct height and width within the 2D world, but we also had to consider angles and vectors. I often found that I would resize an object so that it expanded towards me and engulfed my avatar. Then I would lose all visual reference points and become disorientated to the point of becoming physically sick. Perhaps my brain just can't operate in this kind of world.
The AUT learning environment is on an island somewhere in the Second Life universe. The island is owned by Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology ("NMIT")You can assess this site from this address: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Koru/212/41/24
Complete
No comments:
Post a Comment