Saturday 2 February 2008

SL and blogging experiences

Hi everybody,
I'm glad you (Heike) didn't get lost in SL - I certainly did. Whilst in the holothingy, I somehow got separated from the group and found myself all alone on a waterfall. I couldn't find my way out again so decided to leave SL. For me, it still is a confusing and instable environment. OK - I'm not the most expert virtual user, but I'm certainly more versatile than a lot of my students/potential students. For me a tool has to be easy to master (sort of fool-proof) and reliable, otherwise the frustration level is easily reached. I must admit I'm finding the whole tools and tricks sessions badly-structured and I think I'm missing some basic info.
The blogging session is certainly better organised. I'm sort of getting my way round in that, albeit with some small problems.

Friday 1 February 2008

Second Life Event on Friday, the 25th

Last Friday, a group of about 10-12 people met in Second Life at English Village. Dave Winet led the way. We went to the holodeck of English Village.


The holodeck of English Village is a single room which has a few pictures on the wall. When you click on the pictures, the room starts filling with these scenes. We tried the garden as you can see on the picture, then the barn and then the bus stop.

Dave mentioned that this is a great place to be with a bunch of students because you cant get lost since you stay all together in one room. So we had a few assignments, which as he explained could be similar to what you do with your learners.

The first was to group around the bench for a group picture. Then we learned to use the camera controls. They help you to view yourself and your group from the front so that you can take snapshots.

Then the next assignment was in the barn. We were asked to put clothes on which are typically put on in a barn. When I asked the others whether anybody had a pair of Wellingtons which he or she could share, they all started laughing a lot. Yes, in America the expression Wellingtons is not known.

Then we all started laughing so much, when I accidentally clicked on the holodeck link for the busstop. Just as we were all dressed up for the barn, the scene changed to the bus stop and one of the participants kind of got locked up in the bus. She didnt know how to open the door and asked to be released. Oh, I was laughing my head off.

Tuesday 29 January 2008

EVO Workshops

Dear All,

I signed up for three workshops in EVO: Teaching Technology in Adult ESL, Tipps&Tricks and Lesson Planning and Design.

It is quite different from the viewpoint of organisation and operation as what we had in Lancelot. Especially because EVO is using Yahoo Groups which are for me personally not so friendly to use. Foremost the messages system where you have bunch of different messages with different headings and you don't quite know where is the beginning and where the end.

The impression I got is from Lesson Planning and Design because it is simple and they are using Wiki which is quite clear and easy for beginners. In the other workshop I am struggling a little bit with too many data or something I can't even define properly. I will have to evaluate it more in order to know what doesn't fit. Or maybe I will find out that everything is perfect, who knows :)

Anyway, just wanted to give a little feedback althought I only have little data for now. I did almost all tasks for Week 1 except for Voicethread tasks where you have to leave a voice message (kind of hesitating on doing that but hopefully confronting it soon :). In the Lesson Planning and Design we were dealing with some introductory technical set ups and commenting some questions about planning a lesson, so that was good.

I hope I will be able to give you more feedback soon.

Cheers, Eve

Thursday 24 January 2008

Second Life Event planned Friday and Sunday

The Tips & Tricks'ler will meet in Second Life. I believe they will meet on EduNation, since this is where study.com's headquater is. They are actually neighbours across to our building. So, this will be nice.

The following is Dave's message.
1) Here are the links to the two live sessions we had last week:http://tinyurl.com/2gkxpk
http://tinyurl.com/2fs5r6(Note: sometimes the recordings loads immediately. If it doesn't, wait and try a bit later. You can use the slider to skip over stuff or replay it.)
2) ASSIGNMENT #2:Download and install Second Life (www.secondlife.com) . Then add me (David Delling) as a friend in SL or (even better) send your SL name to this YG and then everyone can add you as a friend.We will meet in WizIQ before going into SL, on Friday GMT 8 pm athttp://tinyurl.com/26l2qqand on Sunday GMT 6 pm athttp://tinyurl.com/ywma4e