More from Melanie

At the very beginning of my journey with Muvenation I signed up at this Sloodle registration booth. I didn’t have much of an idea then what Sloodle actually was.  I did know it was a tool that connected the web (via Moodle) with Second Life in some way. The only other time I had seen or heard about Sloodle was at the Second Life Languages conference where I had attended a really intesting session on language learning with Sloodle.  On this day Tempest registered to interface with the Muvenation Moodle course, not really understanding what would happen with it next.

Little did I know that much later in the course we would be challenged to both create our own Moodle courses and to master several Sloodle tools. This module was optional and I contemplated not doing it all since I had no experience with either Moodle or Sloodle. One of my Muvenation colleagues, Jaime Alamo, led this section of the course encourgaing us all to gain some valuable knowledge by participating, even if we were complete novices.

Jaime (pictured here as his avatar Alpha) asked us first to set up a new Moodle course in readiness for the Sloodle activities. He suggested those of us who were not administrators of an existing Moodle server create an instance of Moodle on a free hosted Moodle Server at Key to School. Setting up Moodle this way was suprisingly easy.

 The next task was to collect a Sloodle rezzer and rez a registration booth on our Muvenation sky platforms followed by each of the tools needed to complete the activities:

#0: The SLOODLE controller in MOODLE
#1:The Registration Booth (matching identities)
#2 The MetaGloss (Glossary Tool)
#3 The WebIntercom or ChatLogger
#4 The Choice Activity
#5 The Distributor (or Vending Machine)
#6 The PrimDrop
#7 The last sloodle tools: Quiz_Chair and the Presenter
#8 Postcard Blogger in Sloodle or Freemail 

Setting up each of these tools was challenging. The version of Sloodle I had caused me the first of my problems. I began with Sloodle V6, upgraded to V8 and finally ended up with version V11. Authorising the tools as also a little tricky and Jaime gave me quite a bit of help to get some of the tools working properly. I became quite familiar with resetting the various Sloodle objects and their scripts too, as I had to do it so often. Now after some strugglesI have at last completed the tasks feeling quite a sense of accomplishment and a huge sense of gratitude to Jaime for all his patience and help.

Today I co-presented some educational tools that feature in the MUVEnation educational exhibition on MUVEnation island for the Webheads in Action Online Convergence 2009. I was lucky enough to do this with my MUVEnation colleages Gloria Gómez-Diago, Maximo Eames (SL) and Ruy Shippe (SL). It was really rewarding to show off the tools to other interested educators and to have them see the wonderful exhibition the MUVEnation participants have created. It features presentation devices, evaluation tools and many more.

Max even put together this nice prezi of us all in action.

This set of six basic and essential skill challenges was set by our fearless leader Margarita Perez-Garcia. This was a last minute addition to the proram but a much needed one as everyone had such different skill bases. Most of us had just learned by doing and were building in time-consuming and inefficient ways. I was really pleased to practise with all these quick brush-up activities.

Building basics #1a – Snapshot of avatar

Building basics #1b – Snapshot of avatar with interface

Building Basics #2 – Create prims of different shape and size.

Building basics #3 – Arrange prims by adjusting co-ordinates.

Building basics #4 – Create identical and equidistant prims, perfect duplicates.

Building Basics #5 – Adjust prim rotation.

Building basics #6 – Turn on local grid and position your avatar under the grid.

I loved this challenge. We we given the option of creating a tangram animal, inspired by a site like this one. Although my finished statue didn’t look exactly like that, the task did challenge me to align my prims perfectly. I wasn’t able to line all the prims up to perfection but I got it close.

For Module 2 of the MUVEnation course we were issued with a 2 in 1 production Holodeck generously made available by Margarita through Loki Clifton (SL). Yes, I know what you are thinking, Holodeck is that thing in Star Trek where they can create any place. I only managed to create nightmares with mine, well at least with my first few attempts.

We were allowed to play with the holodeck at first which came with a bunch of pre-made scenes and was really easy to use. Then we were set the slightly more tricky task of creating an educational scene in the holodeck. Something like a workshop scene that could be used for teaching a class was the idea. Although we were given a whole lot of instructions and two very good tutorial guides I still could not manage to make my scene work although I understood the basic principles.

The major problem for me was that I had rotated my holdeck to sit in symmetry with my sky platform (it’s home) however whenever I rezzed my scene it turned 90 degrees to the location it was built. I was puzzled and exasperated after several attempts. So I finally had a chat to both the wonderful Jokay Wollongong (SL) and Loki Clifton (SL), the creator. Both concured that I should alter the rotation of my holodeck to zero degrees. I changed the rotation and rezzed my scene and it all worked like a treat! what a wondereful thing it is to have friends and people willing to help you. So here it is. a snap of my finished, and much sweated over educational scene in a holodeck.

I have not long finished delivering my first workshop in SL. We were set the task by MUVEnation of delivering a class in a SL skill. I chose an inetermediate class on customsing your avatar which I called “Dress to impress”. It was nerve-wracking to say the least, trying to predict and allow for the things that might go wrong and wondering what my colleagues would make of my effort. Overall I think it went better than I expected, with only a few small problems.

Samu Lorefield (SL) kindly agreed to be a critical friend and give me some useful feedback to reflect upon. Just as well he came actually, as my first problem came when all the particpants arrived and couldn’t access the class supplies I had put out because of a problem in the script. Each time they touched the class supplies object, the contents were delivered to me instead. I tried frantically to correct the problem, but I am not the best scripter and I was conscious of starting the workshop on time.

In the end Samu gave me the object he had used to deliver his class supplies and I modified to suit my needs and added my contents. Thanks Samu for helping me out!

After that things went well. I had set-up the class with a large screen for which I prepared a series of screenshots to illustrate what I was going to demonstrate. As it turned out, everyone who came was quite exprienced in building techniques, however I wasn’t sure if less experienced participants would come and I thought this would help them. I laid out a chatrange mega prim which I coloured green so participants could easily see where to stand to be in chat range. I also set up a chair with a notecard reader script kindly given to me by Afon Shepherd, head of educational services at NCI, which I added to a teachers chair.

The first part of the workshop ’editing objects’ demonstrated how to attach objects to different body parts. We examined this by firstly by attaching a party hat to our avatars and discussing why those of us wearing some, lost our prim hair. We then detached and re-attached the party hat to our chins and edited it till it was in the right position so it could be worn at the same time as our prim hair.

I was able to see visually where everyone was up to and tried to provide lots of opportunities to ask questions.

I attended this class with my fellow MUVEnationer Cvetka Nacht (SL). I was really impressed with the set-up design and delivery of the workshop. The task was quite complicated and so suitable for only intermediate+ builders. To build the shoe required knowledge of all all the building basics and these pre-requisite skills needed were displayed clearly in the event listing. Class supplies were given via an object situated at the start of the class and provided in a clearly labelled folder once taken into inventory.

The workshop had obviously been carefully planned. It had a screen at the front of the classroom space with illustrations of what the shoe would look like in it various stages of building and assembling. Each participant was given a well laid out mat with a kind of target texture added to indicate where to rezz objects during the workshop.

The instructor gave clear directions via a speak easy style HUD supplemented with local chat to answer questions as participants created the objects/pieces needed to build the shoe. The fact that we were directed to colour each piece as we went showed a lot of forethought. The instructor was easily able to direct us to alter co-ordinates or move a particular object by referring us to the corresponding colour.

We created the shoe at a large size to make assembling the pieces a much simpler process. When the whole thing was complete we resized it to fit our avatars foot and then took it into inventory.

Participants were asked to provide feedback via a well established website. It wasn’t till after the workshop when Cvetka and I stayed back to chat to the instructor that I realised the instructor was Afon Shepherd, Head of Educational Services at NCI. I have been to other workshops run by Afon and they are always run in the same professional way.

All in all attending this workshop gave me much cause to think carefully about how I was going to prepare my own. Afon’s workshop had given me a strong sense of the need for visual’s to supplement text chat as well as to keep the task simple.

I had long wanted to know about sculpted/sculpty prims. Attending this beginners workshop on the topic was a great chance to observe another class in action whilst learning on what works well from an experienced presenter.

The space was set up with seats for each participants (including some small ones for tinies I noticed) and an adequate building area in front of each seat. The instructor was seated in front of the class from where she could see the building each participant was undertaking. She delivered instructions via a speak easy style HUD and requested that nobody IM her during the class because it was too difficult to answer at the same time she was teaching.
There had obviously been a lot of preparation put into the delivery of this class which the instructor mentioned had been run by someone else for a year prior and that she was now running for the first time. Class supplies were delivered via a sculpted prim object at the front of the class and saved to inventory in a clearly labelled folder. The concept of what a sculpted prim actually is was explained very well and there was opportunity to ask questions in local chat as we worked through the workshop content.One aspect I found difficult during this workship was the introduction of Rokuro software. I had never seen this before or really explored 3D modelling in any way other than through basic building in Secondlife. Therefore, the brief overview that was devoted to creating texture maps using Rokuro was a little too short for my liking. Nevertheless. I did learn a lot of useful information and gained confidence to experiment with something I previously knew nothing about. Follow-up was suggested with the more advanced sculpty workshops. Feedback was encouraged via a website given at the end of the class. The instructor very generously allowed me to interview her after the class via IM explaining her tips or a successful workshop including not using voice or IM during instruction and being prepared with notecards and a speak easy HUD.

For the first activity in Module 2 of the MUVEnation programme we were asked to get ourselves along to as many SL workshops as possible and to evaluate you them using a grid that worked through design and planning and preparation, delivery and finally recall and transfer or learning. The idea of course was to gain a better understanding of the actualities and nuances of running a workshop in SL so that for the next activity we would be better prepared to run one of our own.

I had attended numerous workshops prior to this, all of which have helped me gain knowledge and confidence little bit by little bit. The task was however to start with some nice fresh workshops and participate as fully as possible whilst reflecting and trying to gain a little insight. I love Bex Mavendorf’s (SL) reference to the task as being a secret squirrel, cause it did have that kind of feel about it. I went in thinking particularly of trying not to be the painful student who interrupts or asks too many questions and also with a deep desire to fully particpate as much as I could.

The first workshop I chose was building basics, offered through NCI’s very generous free program of classes. It was set in a non-traditional classroom space where particpants could position themselves anywhere although instructor had set up a screen with screenshot images and  pointer so there was a kind of “front of the classroom”.

Instructions were very clearly given via a Speakeasy style HUD and teacher asked for questions but the pace of the workshop meant that there was not much time to ask or for the teacher to reply. The approach was very results oriented and didactic. We were told how to create a basic prim, change its shape and texture and finally to link prims to create a 3 part ’snowman’.

Although this was a fairly simple task, it took an hour and there was no provision for differentiation of any kind due to the time constraints. I have built before so I was able to add some eyes and a kind of orange carrot-looking nose to my snowman for decoration. Newbies would have only ended up with 3 white balls linked together if they were able to keep up with the instructor, which by my observations a few could not.

Looking at this workshop with a critical eye made me aware of a few points. 

• It is best to keep objectives fairly simple unless you provide workshops of a longer duration.
• It is difficult to “demonstrate” some things as the teacher and you are constrained in the variety of ways you can overcome this need.
• Provide for differentiation where you can.
• Try to provide adequate time for people who are struggling to ask questions and get a bit nore assistance whether this is done personally or through some kind of peer to peer mentoring. 

This is the tree I have built for the MUVEnation ‘plant a tree’ exercise. The idea was to populate an empty part of the MUVEnation Sim with a variety of different types of trees, not necessarily realistic ones. This task was to challenge our building and scripting skills and to encourage us to seek help from our peers and mentors, something we must do as true lifelong learners but also to survive in Second Life.

I chose to build a Surrealist Tree. It is made up of a number of odd objects I collected and found and is designed to be interactive. Clicking on one part of the tree plays a sound, whilst clicking on another rezzes an army of lemmings who spontaneously self-destruct after a few seconds. Touching the trunk of the tree gives out a giant banana phone -which seemed appropriate. I have also added a butterfly emitting script to a celtic sword tree branch for a little more wierdness.

The building of this tree provided plenty of challenges. Firstly figuring out how to script the various elements I needed was a trial and error process. I was unable to remove hover script from a recycled prim after I had deleted its contents. I called upon the fabulous members of NCI (New Citizens Information) where there are many experienced builders and scripters happy to help those learning. Several of the members of the NCI group suggested I use a scrubber script to clean the prim. This worked very well and I was delighted to find out such a script existed as I had never heard of it before.

I also discovered that linking the prims to form a tree before I was finished editing and resizing the individual elements was a very bad idea. I managed to unlink the finished tree to work on one part of it only to realize that this caused me problems of all kinds. One multi-prim object I tried to modify, once linked to the main tree and then unlinked ceased being a single item and returned to it’s original state of being about twenty prims. This made it difficult for me to move and add a script to it, so I deleted it bit by bit, only to find later that it was not a copyable object and that I had lost it forever.

The size and perspective of the tree made it tricky to work on. I constantly had to adjust camera angles and move backward and forward to see how the finished product was looking. Some objects seemed to rezz at a giant size and I’m not sure why that was?

My final problem was that I had created interactive parts to the tree, however, once linked they lost their interactivity. A wonderful mentor of mine, Jokay Wollongong gave me a tip about the interactivity of the tree. She suggested I start with an invisible prim as my base object. This way linked interactive prims should not interfere with each of the other scripts in the neighbouring prims.