YAOEE - yet another orientation experience for educators

Linden Lab and ISTE have combined forces to launch a new educators pilot programme - essentially a new SL registration and orientation experience, targetted at educators.

Quite nice... though I'm slightly struggling to understand how it differs from the work that NMC put into their education orientation experience?

Here's my latest alt - Hughling Wulluf - created using the new facility (note that checking whether your chosen name is already in use is slightly tedious using this interface because you have to re-supply your password (twice) each time - I wanted Howling Wulluf but it wasn't available).  Hughling is watching the introductory video in the new ISTE orientation area.

Good to see that the Sloodle tools are available in the resources area :-)

As I mentioned when I reviewed the NMC orientation experience, one of the problems with this kind of generic approach (less generic than the main SL registration admittedly but still pretty generic) is that it doesn't cater well for national (or more local) requirements - there is nothing here specifically for UK educators for example.  Should there be?

One final thought... the most valuable part of any orientation experience is meeting and chatting to helpful people.  When I used this new facility there was no-one around to talk to.  So although the content I found was education-specific, the experience overall was rather disappointing.  IMHO the most useful thing that these kinds of initiatives could do would be to create a rota of willing educational volunteers - people who are happy to hang around welcoming new avatars to the world.  My guess is that doing so would have much more impact than new builds and resources.  That said, I appreciate that setting this kind of thing up isn't going to be easy.

First buzz of the year

The first NMC buzz session of the year took place last night. It was set on NMC's new(ish) orientation sim but timed for midnight (UK time) which probably put off most UK participants.

After a welcome and introduction from NMC's CDB Barkley (aka Alan Levine) we were left to explore on our todds, re-gathering for a group discussion in the Waterside Cafe area after about 30 minutes (see pic).

There's a decent summary of the meeting on the NMC Campus Observer so I won't repeat it here.

Following the meeting I asked CDB whether the NMC orientation experience is open for use by non-US institutions - e.g. would it be acceptable for UK universities to use it as their default?. His answer:

Yes and yes. The NMC Orientation is not restricted to who can use it, and UK unis are more than welcome. The registration form that uses it is: http://sl.nmc.org/join/.

We've worked with at least 2 other institutions that set up their own regAPI but we provided coordinates so their new avatars land at NMC Orientation, and we can do that for others.

I think this is something that we should strongly consider in the UK. We all know that orientation is a critical point in the life of an avatar. It seems to me that the network effect of collaborating on an educational orientation area outweighs the potential advantages of each UK university building a bespoke solution. And surely none of us really want to inflict the standard orientation experience on our students and staff? NMC's is vastly better IMHO!

Feel the buzz...

NMC are starting off 2008 with an impressive array of in-world events including several Teachers Buzz sessions. One of these (at Jan 7 4:00pm PST) will focus on their new orientation experience which I blogged about before Christmas.

Good stuff...

NMC Orientation

I was reminded recently about NMC's bespoke Second Life orientation experience and decided to try it out for myself. I like it.

Web registration is more streamlined than with the standard Second Life registration pages and once in-world, the orientation area is less confusing, at least initially - though I must confess that at the point that the orientation split into multiple paths I felt somewhat bewildered about which direction to take.

Here's a picture of my newly rezzed avatar, Alrightme Ansome (to be pronounced with a strong west-country accent) reading some of the initial orientation signs.

Overall I'd rate it as a much better way to get started with Second Life, particularly for educators, than the standard orientation.

My only concern was that at the time I did it there weren't any other residents around to share the experience... none... nada . My gut feeling is that for this to be a truly useful orientation there have to be meeters and greeters around.

Now, I was joining on UK time - I can't quite remember when - early evening I think. It may be the case that NMC have people around during US hours? Perhaps what we need to do is firstly, encourage the use of the NMC experience for new UK education residents and secondly, organise a rota of UK meeters and greeters on UK timescales?

PS. If anyone, prefereably of a conish persuasion, would like to take over the controls of Alrightme Ansome, you are welcome to him. I probably won't make much more use of him. He's been carefully used twice and has never left the NMC orientation area. Get in touch if you are interested.