Feedback from our Second Life Theorist Project

Bill sent an email to us after the SL project unveiling. Here is some feedback:

Bill,
The presentation last night was fantastic. The student/designer/builders should feel very good about their work. It was great to be able to chat with them as I experienced the learning theorist spaces. I think that doing the project in SL probably engaged them with the learning theories more deeply than some alternatives (like writing a paper).
Are there any plans to install the work in a public area? The project is truly an exemplar of effective teaching/learning in SL. I would like to be able to visit again -- and bring some friends!
Thanks for sharing!
Rex Thursday Xu (SL)

Bill - I missed this... But I hope it went well. I have my Ed.D. in Ed Tech from Pepperdine, finished in 2003. Missed SL, but we did a lot of other great online stuff. I'll swing by sometime to look at the exhibits (I'm assuming they'll be up for a while). I have access to the Island. Way to get Pepperdine's name out there! Laurie Ralston

I would like to add my congratulations as well. What an engaging exhibit! I really appreciated the opportunity to visit the island, look at the theorist projects, and then fly around the island and view the overall set up of the sim. Thanks for the inspiration, Debora (SL Devorah Corvale)

Oh, YES!
You can add my voice in unison to what Rex/Thursday just said…a marvelous build, an awesome example of an effective (and fun!) learning space. This SHOULD be opened up again and in perpetuity for educators and other students to be able to appreciate!!
Have a great day!
RP

I'd like to add my voice here also - I am very interested in visiting, but was unable to. Are there any alternative possibilities? Thanks!
Beth Wellman
(Ivy Innis)

He said we've created quite the buzz in the SL education community. :) We are pleased!!

The Comedian

I wish I had the opportunity to schedule the viewing of The Comedian with my cadre-mates, but unfortunately I will be away from Internet access until about Sunday evening beginning tomorrow.

This is going to be a strange experience. Throughout this program thus far, my attachment to my computer is unreal! The idea of not checking email or logging on to CNN is something that I can't wrap my brain around. Speaking of technology, I was writing on the Distinguished School committee today and I was designated by other members as being the most computer savvy. If you would have asked me 4 months ago... I would have had skills, but not to the polished caliber I feel I am at now. I have A LOT to learn, but I am proud of my achievements. Even the small steps have proven powerful.

Yesterday's unveiling of the Second Life theorist project went marvelously. I really saw a lot of value in a student-run project that did not result in a paper that was written. I had some great conversations with visitors and educators who I normally would not have the opportunity to interface with. My only downfall in learning: I don't feel like I spent enough time holding myself accountable to learning and making connections with other theorists. Having our own rooms allowed for creativity, but it stripped us from the collaboration aspect in many ways. I simply placed a teleport ball in my room, but really had to dig for connects to that theorist as the reason I placed the teleport ball in the first place. I included information on my notecard about Csikszentmihalyi and information about connecting theorists, but never spent a good portion of time consulting about learning theory with those other theorist experts (can I call them that given our knowledge of Surpassing Ourselves?). Demonstration of learning can be brought about in so many ways... I need to be doing more of that and less of the paper/pencil assessments in my own classroom. The only concern is... would others view me "too easy a teacher?"

Back to The Comedian. I will speak further about this once all of the cadre has viewed the movie, but would like to add some information I found regarding communities of practice. First, the most fascinating this I observed throughout the documentary was amount of uncertainty that professionals possess in their "skill." Going back to the expert definition, I don't believe I would qualify any of those men as experts in the field, but ever changing expert-novices (re-word?). Although they are comedians, they are never the same comedian. (Hmmm... but then again, I am a teacher... so does that make me a changing novice too? I believe so... always adding more and revising the tools in my toolbelt). Much of the lifestyle they live is isolating and difficult. The irony that interlies is that we envision those who make us laugh to be free-spirited, well-rested, and fun-loving characters. Orny Adams certainly did not seem too terribly fun-loving or free-spirited. As a matter of fact, I researched his website, http://www.ornyadams.com/ and it said he did finally make it to Los Angeles as he "dreamed aloud" about in the film. In fact, he is a frequent of the Comedy and Magic Club right here in Hermosa Beach, just 9 blocks from my house. I run by it every week! I went there recently to see Jay Leno.

I digress, as a community of comedians, there is a single bond they carry and the same struggles that drive one, drive all of them (despite Cosby who is a living comedian God). The frustrations, struggles, praises, excitements, and turmoil they go through occurs in such a small bracket of time and their work is not nearly as praised for its efforts as the likes of non-talented pop star teenagers. The resounding word however, was... within your community support system, keep what you love alive, as no one can do it for you. It's a one man show... with a body of supporters.

... although, I don't feel too terribly sad for Jerry Seinfeld who flew around in his private jet. Tough gig, really.

ExxonMobil award night - Torrance, CA

I attended an award night to accept the monies for my SmartBoard & Projector that was held by ExxonMobil. I always see many teachers I know in the district... especially those who work hard to write those grants!

It was great... such a rewarding experience to be a part of developing children's minds about the world around them through the Internet. See more on the WP blog site.

At the award ceremony, I saw Kristen Zukley from cadre 9. It was good to catch up with her... every once in awhile we run into one another (literally, I was out for a run one afternoon and passed her!).

Teaching, Grad School, Thanksgiving update

I am feeling very excited about the culmination of our 1st real semester in grad school! I don't feel like the summer semester counted too much as it was really short. I am enjoying learning so much... and never being bored. Haha.

Teaching has been fine... except that I am never actually teaching. My principal has placed me (and the other 2 competent teachers at our school) on multiple committees which means we are never in our classrooms! We are either at the district for trainings or we are writing for our California Distinguished School award. We finished the rough draft and are now going to peel it apart, connect ideas, etc. We are also recruiting one of my students' parents who teaches at our feeder middle school to edit for us.

Funny classroom story for the week: One student was absent and I had another student give her the words for her spelling test. My kids are awesome at spelling... so it's almost a joke. About 25 of the 31 have an A+ in spelling. Anyway, I had a boy give her the test... and he took a peek at the upcoming test's bonus words. These words are selected by me... just randomly from whatever we learned throughout the week. Anyway, he told the rest of the class in private... thinking I'm never going to find out. Turns out I have ONE honest kid who emailed me with this information. I never busted anyone... just simply changed my bonus words to INTEGRITY, HONESTY, UNACCEPTABLE, CHEATING. Too bad I had a sub yesterday. I would have loved to have seen their faces. :)

For Thanksgiving, I am driving up to N. Cal with my parents and Elliot. During this nice 12 hour trip, I plan to bring my laptop and do some serious revisions to my lit. review.

I am close to being done with the conversions of videos for Gary's class and I worked very hard on the SL project for Bill's class... that I am looking forward to presenting on Monday. I need to work for Margaret's class and design my ARP plan and clean up my lit. review this weekend/through Thanksgiving.

I'm also looking forward to watching The Comedian! :)

Second Life Project, Learning Adventure #6, ARP project... updates

The SL project is going well... although slow. I have never in my life spent so much time building things in virtual environments. I swear it took me a few hours to get walls to line up. Regardless, what my room has come to is something I am proud of. Todd and I teamed up with Papert and Csikszentmihalyi (although Todd is the master and has essentially taken the Papert room on his own) and has helped me with the scripting for my room... and the game idea.

I am proud of how hard some people are working at this project. The structures are impressive... but even more impressive is the amount of single-handed work that some are placing on the project. I tried my hardest to create everything in my room. I love to see what others have done as well.

Learning Adventure #6 sounds cool... but it's hard to get a lot of this done in a distributed learning environment like this one. Again, being in a VirtCamp setting is such an easier way to handle these types of team projects. We are meant to find presidential campaign clips download them, find a conversion/compression/storage ability for next year's group to tackle. I can't wait to read their blogs about this and see what they come up with. The perks of the OMET program and how learning doesn't stop upon the diploma. I can already see myself becoming addicted to their thoughts, reading their reflections, etc.

The ARP is slow right now. I was pretty discouraged at Margaret's comments on my Lit. Review. I know there was plenty to be corrected, but I guess I saw this project as more of a constructivist writing/research/action project that I wasn't going to be judged so heavily on the writing part. Considering I know my strengths and weakenesses as a writer, I didn't enjoy the feedback much... but I never really do. That's part of my reflection here... learning to handle the heat, (I guess). I also see writing and research as a subjectivist activity where the writer is not always seen as great in some eyes, and wonderful in others. Could be why some people like certain authors and others can't stand them.

It gives me new light in offering criticism to my students on their writing.

Trecking along... feeling a bit overwhelmed and know I still have many months to go! Looking forward to getting pumped up again in January at the FETC conference.

Writing for School Awards...

For the past few weeks, myself and a few other teachers have been writing to receive a California Distinguished School award. Now, it's a long shot for our school who is in a high socio-economic area and has really no special needs or programs.

Regardless, we are writing on this committee. Sub after sub going through my classroom... and I happened to miss the last committee meeting for another math conference at our district. When I returned today, the document we were writing on was no longer on one computer and a flash drive, but on 3 different computers! It was even more frustrating to find out that all computers had versions saved on them, but were all in pieces. The old fashioned way of sharing the work turned into a nightmare that took about 1.5 hours to sort out before we could re-convene and start the writing process.

I suggested, and will continue to suggest Google Docs as a method and insist on using it for upcoming committee writings. Until then... sticking with the nonsensical many computers.

Second Life, Theorist display construction

I worked really hard this weekend to committing myself to this project. It took me hours to just get ahold of creating a room... just a room! It does go to show that others have a knack for things like SL and others have to struggle, like in anything.

I did, at one point get frustrated to the point of signing off... right smack in the middle of building. Brent was being ever so patient to help me use the focus key (which now I've come to love) and link my parts. For some reason, I have had the most problems with linking my parts together. One of those buggers always gets away unlinked. Well, I then consulted the SL manual, never thought I would... and low and behold, there was a way to drag an edit box around all of your OWNED pieces to link them. I knew this before as Brent has mentioned it, however, I could not figure out how to not link other people's objects together with mine. There was always a bush or tree in the way. Finally... using the SL manual, I figured out that there is a box under the tools menu that allows you to only link YOUR items. Phew.

I've also created a theorist poster in the main gallery to go with Csikszentmihalyi's room in which I am constructing. Todd and I were both doing Papert and have agreed to do two collectively as this would help out the team. And let's be honest... Todd would do Papert more justice than I... sad to say. I believe Rita sent over the information to create posters in SL. I am now the proud owner of $587 Lindens... great. ($2.50 real bucks. I'm a big spender)

With the help of Samiya and the scripting information sent over by Todd and Karen, I was able to create script that linked the visitor from the gallery to my room, and back. Successfull, although not without mistakes. Somehow I got the coordinates wrong and when Todd tried to leave my room, he got stuck in a wall and was kicking like a baby. :) All fixed now... changed up the coordinates just a bit.

As I was trying to add furniture to my room, I accidentally unlinked something, because when I tried to delete a chair, I deleted my whole room. No big deal because it was in my inventory, but the I had to go back and re-do my script for my teleporting.

I've also added some rugs to the main gallery to break it up a bit and add a little pizazz.

So far... that's the progress. I am excited to move forward with the actual interactive learning part now. :) Hm.... "flow"....

Don't have a title.

I've hit a wall with this number Microworlds 3n problem. I often work hard at something in the beginning and as it wanes on, I lose interest.

I also have an issue with the lack of effort on the parts of some cadre members. A little over half of our cadre work their butts off (well, in certain mediums, like SL, Todd and Brent thrive best)... while the other half are often a day late and a dollar short. While I know teamwork is hardly ever the entire team... that only would occur in a perfect world when everyone's priorities were synchronized... it still should be expected in an intense distance learning program such as this. I'm paying way too much to be a passive learner...

Regardless, I have a hard time caring at all when some members respond a week later to something I've already considered old news. Anyone else agree?

Alright, off to try and figure out/reflect on the 3n problem. Wish me luck.