22/11/2008 by lizit.

I guess I should start a blog entry on the conference even though I haven’t really had time yet to assimilate much, if any of what I heard and experienced.  Perhaps the biggest highlight of the whole conference was the high quality of so many of the presentations - thought provoking and lots of evidence for conclusions throughout - not a load of case studies and icing sugar. Although the most mentioned virtual world, perhaps inevitably, was Second Life, there were presentations based on other virtual worlds including World of Warcraft - is WoW a virtual world or a game or both? An excellent presentation by Sarah Robbins focused on the development of a taxonomy of virtual worlds - in my opinion much more thought through than the recent JISC review of serious virtual worlds - I must read the paper and look at the slides!  Another presenter dealt with the necessary issue of what standards do we apply to our research in virtual worlds - and how do these compare with work in the ‘real world’; a number of research tools were considered alongside ethics and informed consent - remember there is a human behind every avatar (very few non-player characters in Second Life at present).

I have a lot of reading to do if I am to assimilate the content of the presentations I saw and also get a flavour of the many I was not able to see.

An interesting observation on my presentation from Mike Hobbs - he hadn’t considered using students to facilitate change in his institution before.  Even though I had left change from the table on my presentation and had said we did not consider ourselves change agents, Mike has a point.  We were engaged in a change process and maybe I am failing to notice the obvious - the effect of being involved in this type of project on the attitudes and practices of the staff involved. Moves into the world of psychology.  I need to think more about this!

Looking at the blogs and twitter feeds, it is clear people enjoyed the conference - and frighteningly are talking about ReLIVE09! It even seems as though some might be considering offering some funding!  For the moment, I need a good rest and an opportunity to recuperate before thinking of going near organising any more conferences!

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16/11/2008 by lizit.

The EndNote training was useful and convinced me I might as well go with that as any of the other software options, especially as there is also a web version that will synch with the installed version.  It is possible to attach notes and there is also space in the tool for including notes within a bibliographic description.

Friday I had a dry run with the ReLIVE presentation.  From my perspective I made a bit of a meal of it - not helped by getting ’stage fright’ and ‘drying’ for the first time I can recall.  Very strange suddenly being at a complete loss for words and not really being able to make sense of what I had written down. I think there were a number of contributory factors which included not really owning what I was saying (following a pattern rather than doing my own thing), an awareness there was a lot of material to get through and I wasn’t completely sure how to pace it, slight discomfort with the technology - that monitor needs a longer cable (!), and, perhaps most importantly, an awareness that the people in the room are folk I will be working with for some time and I wanted not to appear incompetent.  In the event, I did manage to get into the subject matter and got useful feedback both on the content and on how I might rejig the presentation slightly both for my comfort, but also to avoid possible misunderstandings.  Probably being less than happy with myself was positive in realising what a supportive group of people I am working with.

I’ve spent some time over the weekend revamping the presentation and playing with EndNote.

At the research group meeting on Tuesday in SL, somebody mentioned the “hype cycle” - a take the Gartner Group have on uptake of technology and a very different curve from Rogers - might be worth looking at that some time in relation to SL.  The other concepts that I’ve heard a couple of times recently are immersionist and augmentalist, used to describe different users of virtual worlds (those that get fully immersed and create there own place witin the virtual world and those who see it as a tool to be used alongside other tools) - other stuff worth exploring a bit further.

This next week will be busy with ReLIVE 08 and a staff development day in Birmingham.  Then, theoretically at least, things quieten down and I can focus on DPhil related stuff.

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11/11/2008 by lizit.

I’m feeling quite tired this evening - well I guess it is 9.30pm and that is the kind of time when one is allowed to be a bit tired!

I’ve read the JISC report, published last Thursday, on serious virtual worlds.  A lot of interesting content and areas identified for exploring.  Some interesting typologies worth re-visiting and thinking about. Interesting to read about some of the other virtual worlds (despite the very large number - 80 - only a few are examined in any depth).  The two that sounded interesting to me are OpenSim, which I have been curious about for some time, and Croquet, which I had heard of but knew nothing about.  I would quite like to get both of them installed and take a look.

This evening I’ve been working through some of the articles and papers in the Educause virtual worlds edition.  Interesting how many of the authors I have heard of and how many of the references I have already encountered - or have encountered something else written by the same authors.

Hoping the EndNote training will be useful tomorrow and that I will be able to decide what I want to do about bibliographic stuff.  I need something more satisfactory than just having electronic or paper copies of lots of stuff even if that means I have the bibliographic data attached.

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10/11/2008 by lizit.

Yes - just what did I do last week?

Some time has been taken up with preparing a couple of presentations - I really do need to learn an easier or quicker way to create graphics - or maybe there isn’t one!

A lot of time spent reading and getting involved in the JISC online conference.  3 strands with some focus on virtual worlds plus other interesting stuff about Web 2.0, mobile learning, transformation, etc.  I need to grab copies of some of the discussions and papers before they disappear.

Saturday was OU staff development day.  Good to meet colleagues and catch up, but content in general less than riveting.  Ended up tired and a little fed up.

I don’t feel the last week has been particularly productive, but looking back maybe I did more than I realised even if there isn’t much to show for it.

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02/11/2008 by lizit.

Trying to get my thoughts in order over what I’ve been doing during the last couple of weeks and what I need/want to talk about on Tuesday morning.

On the practical front, there is a need to start getting clients for ILE09 - it isn’t far away and there is quite a lot of work to do - finding clients, briefing them, agreeing contribution, etc, etc.  We also need to think about where in SL we can do the contruction elements - is there any budget this year?  If not, what can be begged or borrowed -and where from?  Given the nature of the SL education network, I am much less concerned about resources than clients.  We also need to think a bit more coherently about how SL is presented to students and what input they need in how to use it.  It makes sense, in my mind, to again ask them to register and familiarise themselves with the environment over the Christmas recess, but being realistic this is unlikely to happen.  This means, the first session of the course could again involve registering avatars and getting students into SL.  Perhaps need to think a bit about wiki resources that may be useful in explaining more about SL as a learning and teaching resource.

Moving from the practical, what have I been doing? It feels a long time ago, but the National Workshop on learning in immersive worlds occupied a lot of my thinking and time. I found it a very positive experience.  It was good to meet a number of people I have known for a long time online and to share ideas in a real world setting.  Interesting too to find that experiences of working with students in SL were not dissimilar - there isn’t a need for lengthy orientation for most it would seem. I am looking forward to continuing conversations at ReLIVE in a fortnight.

I’ve spent some time thinking about what it is that interests me about SL.  Some of that is recorded in other postings in this blog. I tried to draw a system map a couple of weeks ago First System Map to understand context I am working in and I’ve also jotted down some questions Brainstorming some of the issues that interest me in SL that might be useful to explore further.

In between times, I’ve done quite a lot of reading.  Not really recording much and need to develop a system for doing that.  Really want to find a way of keeping bibliographic data and notes together, but also need to do some connecting up ideas - maybe spray diagrams would help.  Need to get it into my head that although it feels as though ILE 09 is bearing down at a rate of knots, I actually do have the time to think rather than just doing.Some things I am reading are sparking ideas though -light bulb moments when I realised the link between owning one’s own knowledge, KOLB and constructivism - Duh!

Other helpful thing over the past  week was the writing workshop at MK. Good to see colleagues I know well (helpful when still - and probably inevitably - feeling a bit at sea at Sussex).  It was really useful to have a day focussing on getting stuff on paper and really quite amazing how much I know without having to refer back to various papers. Very different approach from my usual style of polishing and editing as I go - to be told to write for 20 minutes without reading what I had written! It was also useful brainstorming blocks to writing and finding everybody felt the same.

Less sure about the exercise for the Research Methods course - that got me throwing my rattle out of my pram a bit.  I think the problem was trying to write a research proposal at the wrong time - I don’t know what I’m interested in and I do know what I’m interested in and I don’t know enough and I know too much for the exercise.  In the end I have done something by being focused and by recognising this is only an exercise which may have little or no bearing on what I am meant to be doing.

So, what do I want out of Tuesday:

• a project plan for sorting out the practicalities about ILE 09 - who doing what, when, etc.
• an opportunity to share the buzz I felt from the Coventry workshop
• Practical thoughts on how to record ideas and thinking on an ongoing basis
• To clarify expectations of supervision - probably really about laying ghosts and recognising difference between supervision in a managerial context and in an academic context and in a counselling context

What don’t I want out of Tuesday:

•  Going over stuff which I’ve noted here

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