Derby Second Life Teaching on BBC News

DERBY UNIVERSITY ON BBC TV

Our teaching and research in Second Life was featured in a series of three news articles on BBCs East Midlands Today program on television recently. SL-Labs and John Sear's Games Programming students from Derby University were highlighted as one of the cutting-edge uses of Second Life.

Myself (Simon Bignell) and John Sear (Derby University) were interviewed both in real life and in-world.

The East Midlands Today web page is HERE and you can view the clips below. Derby University students working in Second Life constructed a replica of the East Midlands Today TV studio. The report featured our students at work and showed how the platform can be used for all kinds of educational use.

The journalist (Brady Harron) said: "The bureau is modelled on the main EMT building in Nottingham."

"It even has a replica of our studio so anyone can come in and sit on the famous white chairs usually occupied by Anne and Dom."

The virtual bureau also has links to BBC East Midlands content, including all radio stations and websites. Brady added: "Hopefully any Second Life visitors will have a look around, and maybe get in touch about stories in their first or second lives."

The bureau was built with help from University of Derby students Matthew Brittain and Chris Butler. You can view their work in Second Life at our island called 'Games at DerbyUni'.

View the clips here:
1/3 Second Life and Virtual Worlds

2/3 University of Derby and Virtual Teaching

3/3 On-line Virtual Worlds

Voice Now Active on Derby SL-Labs

Good news. We have now activated and fully tested the voice function on SL-Labs (our Psychology teaching and research facility on Education UK Island).

The Second Life voice function offers many advantages over the old Ventrillo system that we were using.

This provides the next big leap in teaching Psychology in Second Life and will very much enhance our students learning experience. Teaching is scheduled to start in September 2007.

Some fun

Click to enlarge.

By Tateru Nino (Accessed on 6th August 2007 from http://www.secondlifeinsider.com/2007/08/03/comic-I-am-not-making-this-up/)

Some Foundations for Second Life Pedagogy

An excellent article has recently been created by Neil LaChapelle (University of Waterloo) on the 'Educause Connect' website. The article is titled 'Some Foundations for Second Life Pedagogy' and provides a nice reflection on teaching methods in SL and some thoughts on its best uses. Neil writes,
"...the combination of:
- Empathy
- Encounter
- Exploration
* Rules (Logic, conceptual/factual structure)
* Play (Learning activity, processing)
* Culture
...does offer a foundation for some pretty rigorous work on the educational uses of the Second Life platform. It's not the whole story, but it's a great place to start." (Accessed on 6th August 2007 from http://connect.educause.edu/blog/HiredEd/somefoundationsforse/44785?time=1186397357)

It's a good article and well worth a read if you are interested in the educaional use of Second Life. Thanks to Eloise Pasteur's blog post for putting me on to this.

Improvements to SL-Labs

We've added an additional structure to the SL-Labs build on Education UK Island. A large gazbe with room for up to 8 poster boards will host the Psychology Skills session information. The gazebo is also equipped with seats for students to sit and read through the information provided by the posterboards. Alternatively this information can be taken away as a notecard or it is also possible to 'jump out' to the web and view the 2D module information. A number of activities are palnned that will involve both solitary and small group work in SL. Oh, and did I mention, we've also improved the landscaping and put in a relaxing pond area to sit and read the module materials. Further improvements are palnned over the next few weeks. Please visit our SL-Labs teaching and research space in world whee you'll be able to access additional resources such as RSS feeds and streaming video and audio.