Micro-Learning Activity

Building an introductory learning module in SL would be determined by two main factors which are what are the most relevant skills for participation and interaction in SL and second what might be some specific needs for a pre-defined target group.

Reading through some of the micro-learning activities that have already been introduced there seems to be a common pattern for introducing people to the personalization of their avatar.
It looks like the personalization of the avatar identity is a skill that almost any newbie might need. Depending on your target group you might want to introduce different outfits and send them to different places for the collection of new items.

The way I would build this session would be the following

• Start with a brief introductory video that shows some of the personalization possiblities
• Show how to save the current outfit
• Check that everybody saved the current outfit
• Pass on a folder of new outfits to each participant
• Explain how to change clothes

Based on the same principle it would be possible ot introduce further micro-session on how to change hairstyle, shape and shoes.

Once people master those it would be possible ot have a module on how to create your own outfit.

But other than the personalization aspect I would also consider a very basic introduction on interaction. This would include content on how to

• communicate
• exchange objects
• add contacts

In this micro-learning activity I would introduce people to

- the use of the chat
- VoiP communication
- how to pass on notecards
- how to add contacts

SL being a virtual world which might be there perfect environment for interaction it might be really useful to introduce people first to the means of communication with other members.
I guess which one you choose very much depends on the main purpose/interest of people joining the virtual world.

Coming to Land

Having visited the orienation spaces a few weeks after my first experience in SL is kind of an interesting experience. I will have to consider how it was to come to land 5 weeks ago and which kind of help would have been useful.

My first impression on orientation island was positive as the information arrived just in time and in little chunks that made it easy to follow and to integrate the knowledge step by step. The amount of information was not overwhelming and let enough space for the learner to get slowly used to the virtual world.

I think in these first hours in-world that's what probably most new citizens would request, an easy introduction, that teaches you the basic steps. After that first experience I immediately got acquainted to the Muvenation environement and went only after a few weeks to some other orienation island.

One I particulary liked was NMC orientation island due to it's very explorative learning approach. The orientation environment is very well defined and represented through a series of little houses, which creates an inviting learning scenario.

The learner could go according to his own pace and curiosity to the different rooms and explore the content.

The amount of information is very well presented and organized and small modules.

Depending on the content the learner gets additional material either in form of notecards or links to external websites.

The whole environment is very creative and even the support is rather innovative. Here is an example of a video they show to explain how to use the camera control. How to use the camera control by NMC

Another orientation island that got my attention was "Virtual Ability".

Beside that fact that I went for the first time on a virtual swing I enjoyed this environment that is rather explorative.

Another positive point in this environment was the organization in different sections, one for beginners and one for "already advanced" users.

In general I think orientation island should be as explorative as possible and as guiding as necessary. By that I mean the learner should be able to learn following his own pace but also receive some guidance in terms of complexity of the learning modules in order ot avoid some cognitive overload and thus discouragement.

Professional Avatar

A professional Avatar?I think this brings us back to the whole question about identity. Should our SL avatar be somehow close to our RL person or should we rather select a radically different shape and look?This all depends on your approach to SL.
Will your SL be an extension of your RL or do you rather see it as an opportunity to experiment with a different identity?Looking at the question from this angle it would be entirely up to you to select the look of your avatar.But then remains the question, if there are already any norms established on SL that are different from RL or if we tend to reproduce a social framework that is closed what we are used in RL.So if these norms are close to RL then we could be thinking, yes there should be "professionally dressed" avatars in suits and ties for business meetings.If those norms are different, what are these norms. Are we allowed to dress differently, meaning we could wear jeans and t-shirt instead of a suit and a tie? Would we have to keep a human shape?What if we have a business meeting on SL? What do the other participants expect and what might be implicit rules?These questions are difficult to answer and only the experience with a certain target group might show some tangible results. I think the cautious way would be to start with an hypothesis about the target group and see how the "look" might actually impact the whole session.
My hypothesis would be that in general you have more freedom to select the look of your avatar than you would have in RL. But it might that in certain contexts you would still need to be compliant with a set of implicit norms. Eventually I would not call it a "professional avatar" but rather introduce some norms for the look in case you believe that is needed.

Second Steps - But with new shoes

What a nice surprise! Coming back to further explore the island, getting more and more confortable to move around I came across all kind of free stuff.

Notices, Links, Teleports AND AN ENTIRE BOX OF SHOES, CLOTHES AND HAIRSTYLES.

Absolutely Amazing! Never thought this would be possible. You take them, you try them and you adopt them! Really cool!

But without kidding, what could that possibly mean for a learning environment?

Human beings learn through interaction and adding different perspectives to the learning process help them develop schemes and adapt them to broader contexts.

It might be that with SL new and relatively unexplored perspectives could enrich the learning process and help analyze situations from a new angle.

And what seemed so far impossible will then appear as a new path for exploring and learning.

This was kind of nice discovery

From phia to PHIA

The arrival of "phia" on SL

Right after my first arrival in SL I felt that this character is not me (Girl from next door, who is that , everybody talks about her, but nobody actually knows her).
So before going any further I needed to adapt that look to something more suitable. Isn't that funny how you could immediately identify with this avatar? Seems that your avatar is probably more than the virtual representation of your look and the "want-to-have-look".
I guess going through the program I might get more answers to this hypothesis and understand For the time being I will concentrate on the actual introduction of those two avatars "Before" and "After".

So my first worries were already to adapt slighty the look of my avatar and that's how I finally managed to do my first steps on SL

phia becomes PHIA

A few days after my first experience with SL I had my first meeting in SL . Talking to my "RL" friends I got the advice to adapt my look in SL. So here you go! I did some free shopping and found great stuff.

During the actual meeting I realized that the size of my character was probably something like 1.20m in RL and I also had to adapt it.

So that's when phia became PHIA

My first meeting in SL

Only few days after my arrival I had my first meeting in SL about how to use and create holodecks in a virtual environment.

This was an absolutely amazing experience. I joined the session at 10 pm, kind of stressed on how it would be and if I would possibly be able to follow and interact with other people.

Then I saw all the people arriving for the session and funny enough you already feel like being part of community. And that is truly interesting, because giving the participants this feeling of "belonging" will help foster the learning process.

The time of the meeting almost flew and I can tell that sometimes even in a f2f context 2 hours might be a real long time....

Now talking about the content of the session I am actually still impressed about what I saw, with a fingertip you change the context, layout of your environment, you move from the Southpole to a Japanese Tea house in less than second. How could you possibly do that in a real environment.

I think in the future this will open many opportunities for creating learning environments that are perfectly adapted to the target audience and the content.

For me this was a great start and a truly inspiring experience and I am looking forward to more...

My first experience with Second Life

Phia Josephina or what' s the purpose of getting a SecondLife

When you start creating your "second" identity you already feel that there will be a connection between the real life and your potential second life. But what will it be and how come?
Why do you choose a certain first name? Why are you not happy with the list of last names they provide? I would prefer having the choice!
I kind of like "Phia" but for the surname the choice is limited...
Hmm, this won't stop me and even so I would have preferred a different surname I am kind of happy with "Josephina", at least it sounds good.
Once entered into SL there are more decisions to be taken.
How do I want to look like? Close to reality? Or somebody radically different?
Well, let's start with some "look-alike" avatat and then will see in the future if this is still suitable.
Once you start modifying your avatar you realize that this all about perceptions How do we see ourselves. Do we prefer to somehow "arrange" reality or we really close to the image we have ourselves.
Besides these fundamental issues I also got confronted to some more "down-to-earth" issues.
Oh my god, what did I do? My hair is gone? Oh no, these pants are too short!!
You see it seems that real life is not complicated enough, you create yourselves more problems in SL. And then you see all these people falling from the sky, some of them have exactly the same dress than you!! Can you believe that? She is wearing my skirt!!
No kidding, this first experience was really fun and I could hardly stop hanging around and exploring this new dimension.