JISC online conference e-books

Via the Learning From Online Worlds; Teaching In Second Life blog I notice that JISC have made available two e-books that contain the proceedings of their online conference 'Innovating e-Learning 2007: Institutional Transformation and Supporting Lifelong Learning' which was held earlier this year. I ran a session on Second Life as part of the conference.

The results of this session and the ensuing discussion are available in the Institutional transformation [PDF] e-book. I'm not sure who has pulled all this material together but they've done a pretty good job. Thanks!

Why...

...are there so many lighthouses in Second Life?

Machinima Commons

There's been a thread of discussion recently on the SL Machinima list about whether it is necessary to ask permission before filming on someone else's SL land. There doesn't seem to be a clear answer on this... which tends to make me think that it is probably best to ask when in doubt.

Some of that doubt could be removed by agreeing a mechanism for Second Life land-owners to explicitly state whether it is OK for machinima-making to take place within a given region and, if so, what conditions apply (non-profit only, attribution must be given, etc.). Hey, it sounds a bit like Creative Commons doesn't it??

I wonder whether what we need is a set of simple Machinima Commons 'licences' (MC) which could be added to the in-world description of a region. I suspect that we only need two:

MC BY - This region may be used in machinima provided attribution is given.

MC BY-NC - This region may be used in machinima provided attribution is given and the resulting work is used only for non-commercial purposes.

My attempt at an MC icon is shown above. This is available in various sizes from Flickr.

MC licences (if they existed) would indicate an allowable use of a region of land. They are not intended to be used as the licence under which the resulting machinima is made available - Creative Commons or some other content licence would be used for that.

There is now a machinima-friendly page in the SL Wiki which can be used to indicate that you allow filming on your sim. My suspicion is that this approach will not work very well - it will only ever have partial coverage and, like many registries, will probably go out of date fairly quickly. In general, it is better to keep this kind of information as close to the content as possible.

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.

Linden Lab, VAT, data protection and all that

I note, via Milton Broome's blog, that the University of Edinburgh have made available a draft set of guidelines for making use of external Web 2.0 applications (direct link to the PDF) within university teaching and research activities.

This document offers guidance to staff within the University on some of the issues which need to be considered before using such services for University purposes. The document is intended to be helpful for all staff, including researchers, teaching staff and support staff.

This document is not specific to use of Second Life but most of the issues are pertinent to its use in education.

One is kinda left wishing that things didn't have to get so legal sounding - but I suppose that they probably do. Whatever... this looks like a very useful document and one that I'm guessing will begin to be mirrored in other institutions.

There's a big section on the issues around data protection. Given that Linden Lab are now collecting UK VAT from us it would seem logical that they also have to comply with UK and/or European data protection legislation. Is that the case?

Bedfordia

In response to my recent post about the University of Bedford island, Marko Barthelmess left a comment pointing out that the University have two islands, of which the older one, Bedfordia, is their learning and social space:

the first of our two islands, Bedfordia, has been a collaborative effort among several other staff and a SecondLife builder, Yucca Gemini. Bedfordia is our virtual social learning space and as such, is much less of a representation of the real life campus, intended for socialisation, interaction and.... well, learning. If you had popped over to Bedfordia you would have seen some of the sculpture we have on display there and some of the ongoing work of our students.

I popped over to have a quick look round earlier on today. Good stuff, though I must admit I'd get more out of it if Marko showed me around... hint, hint.

Actually, I'm quite happy to be shown around other places as well! So this is an open call... if you're based in UK academia and you've built something (an island or some other kind of resource) and you'd like me to blog about it here, give me an in-world shout (a 'shout-in'?? :-) ) and arrange a time.

Thanks.

Virtual world growth predictions

Kzero has a nice little graphic showing predicted growth of various virtual worlds during 2008. I'll ignore the specific numbers since I have no idea what they actually mean but in terms of general trends it seems reasonable. There's a Slideshare presentation to go with the image.

Meanwhile, over on Second Thoughts, there are some predictions for Second Life in 2008.

I don't go in for crystal ball gazing myself - largely because I'm crap at it.