Sloan-C SL-NET Brown Bag – Jan. 9

I’m hoping to revive SL-NET this spring.  I haven’t had time or energy to do much with it the last year because of my mother’s illness and death.

Our first activity for 2009 will be a brown bag discussion on Fri., Jan. 9, at 11:00 a.m. SLT (PST) at my castle.  We’ll plan to end at noon.

I thought we could discuss Twitter and other microblogging tools:  what they are, how they work, and how they can be used for classes and professional development.  If you have other ideas, let me know.  We can certainly pick another topic that day.

Request for Participation from Sloan Consortium

Members of SL-NET and other educators using Second Life (SL) have been invited by the Sloan Consortium to participate in planning and developing their two new islands in SL.

The intial meeting is scheduled for 1:00 p.m. SLT on Tues., Aug. 26, on Sloan Consortium 1 in SL.

For more information, go to the main page of SL-NET’s Ning social network.

SL-NET also has a mailing list and a group in SL:

Mailing List:

• To subscribe or unsubscribe and turn digest or vacation modes on and off, go to http://www.freelists.org/list/sl-net.
• To post on the mailing list, send an email to sl-net@freelists.org from the e-mail address you used when you subscribed.

SL Group:

• To join the SL-NET group in Second Life, use the Search function in SL to find the group, and then click on the Join button. There is no cost for joining.

SL-NET Roundtable Discussion: Teaching Online

Fri., Apr. 4

12:00 noon PDT

Floria’s Castle (IM Floria Beaumont for a TP.)

We can discuss different course management systems or how to adapt a traditional course to an online or blended format.

Decorating for Christmas

I decorated my castle (in the sky above my cave on Logres) for Christmas and held a couple of open houses for SL-NET members.  Not many people came to the one today.  I’m thinking of scheduling a couple more before the holidays end.

SL-NET’s First Professional Development Session

On Friday, SL-NET held its first professional development activity. Shaun and the other committee members did a great job pulling it together. CDB Barkley and Max Chatnoir talked about what educators are currently doing in Secondlife. At one point, we had about 35 “people” present.

There are more pictures available at the SL-NET website.

Ning in Education

I’ve been really impressed with Ning social networks since I started using one for Sloan-C SL-NET. The primary advantages over Blackboard or Moodle are its public visibility, the ability of members to start forums and form groups, and the accessibility of RSS feeds. I’m using a Ning site for a hybrid technical writing class I’m teaching this fall. (It’s private for the obvious reasons.) I’ve also joined a social network for educators who are using Ning in education.

Sloan-C SL-NET First Activity

SL-NET had our first activity Friday night, a dance party at the Sloan-C site in Second Life. The picture gives a good idea of the set up and shows one of the avatars the chair of the Social Networking Committee wore during the evening.

Progress with Sloan-C SL-NET

After the meeting on Aug. 3, it was clear that some people were interested in organizing groups based on topics of mutual interest in addition to committees for organizing events.

It seemed logical, then, to divide groups within SL-NET into two categories: committees, which are responsible for organizing and facilitating the group and its activities, and research or study groups, which people can set up to pursue their interests.

We have three committees already:

• Social Networking–to plan and organize strictly social activities
• Professional Development–to plan and organize discussions, classes, etc., related to the use of technology in higher education
• SL Skills Workshops (name TBD)–to plan and organize workshops to train members in SL skills like building, scripting, and so on

I’d like to have one more committee that would be responsible for communication, outreach, scheduling, etc.

At the meeting a lot of people were interested in a group to research effective practices. I expect to see some interesting things come from them.

As a result of the meeting, it was also evident that we needed some way of facilitating our organization and discussion in real life beyond the mailing list. It was suggested that we use Moodle forums on the Sloan-C web site, but another member of the group recommended that we look at a Ning social network. The Ning network has advantages over Moodle because it’s publicly visible, and members can create their own groups and forums as well as customizing individual pages.

Because a couple of people had trouble with the SL-NET social network the day I set it up, we’re doing a “beta test” by anyone who is interested to see if it there are any problems using it. So far, it seems to be okay.

As of this morning, we have 30 people in the Ning-based social network, 44 in the SL-NET group in SL, and 67 in the mailing list. I expect that we will be using the social network, and I’d like to move all discussions to it, leaving the mailing list for announcing events and any urgent situations like the one Friday where a member of the group was doing a presentation on SL and education to a group of legislators in the afternoon and requested suggestions for sites in SL to show them.

SL-NET Communication

To facilitate communication within SL-NET and with people outside it, I set up a mailing list hosted by FreeLists, started an SL-NET group in Second Life, and created a Google calendar for scheduling our events.

Anyone can subscribe to the mailing list by sending an email to sl-net-request@freelists.org with ’subscribe’ in the Subject field.

Someone can join the SL-NET group in Second Life by using the Search function to find the group, and then clicking on the Join button.

The Google calendar is public. Anyone interested in our events may open it in a browser or subscribe to the feed.

We’re also looking into ways to provide forums for RL discussion.

SL-NET Meetings

I think both meetings of SL-NET (Second Life – Networking Education and Technology) this last week went pretty well. I took the snapshot at the brainstorming session Wednesday night. People had a chance to meet and discuss topics of interest. One thing that came out of the meetings was an enthusiastic group of members interested in effective practices using SL and other technology. I hope to see some interesting things come from them.

Nearly twice as many people as I expected showed up for the organizing committee meeting on Friday. I think we got a lot done, but it’s really hit home how different holding a meeting is in SL compared to RL. I’m waiting for reports from some of the committee chairs before I send out a report.

I wasn’t able to take any snapshots at the meeting Friday. However, Topher Zwiers did, and he’s posted about the meeting on his blog. There’s a link to more pictures near the end of his post.