This is a mixed use and mixed institution educational area, with a number of plots used by a range of Universities, coverages and academic groups. There are a number of "classrooms in the sky" on various levels.

• http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/EduNation/219/231/74 (Castle to Overlook the Region)
• http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/EduNation%20III/136/127/900 (High Dive Platform)

On arrival and initial exploration, the area is not well described or signposted.  There is no obvious entry/arrival area and no note cards are offered.  Looking round though it was clear there were specific institution and class areas set up for specific subjects.  A veterinary studies area had sculptures of horses, and posters and displays related to horse anatomy for example. It had some nice teaching and presentation aids. There was a nice interactive "Artboard 2.1" using prims for marked lines.

To find out more about the area and its uses, a Google search on "EduNation Second Life" leads to http://heyjude.wordpress.com/2007/02/05/edunation-secondlife/ which has next to no content and no one has posted comments... it's full contents are:

The Consultants-E are proud to launch the first private island simulator in Second Life dedicated to online training seminars and conferences, and the use of Second Life in Education. EduNation is a 65,000m2 island in the Second Life virtual world with seminar, powerpoint, audio and videocast facilities. Use of the seminar facilities is free. More information at EduNation (http://www.theconsultants-e.com/edunation/edunation.asp)

That URL leads only to "Server Error - 404 - File or directory not found. The resource you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.

This is rather typical of educational regions that are not well managed or owned by specific stake-holders.  The area should be considered as one that lets people set up individual classrooms and areas and is not meant to have a cohesive design or allow for random exploration and discovery.

A good example of it in productive use by educators, and the reason I chose this region to explore, was a recent demonstration of a new version of the SLoodle module for the Moodle Victual Learning Environment.  The demonstration organisers set up a new area well up in the sky and rafter landing at a simple initial meeting space, they dynamically rezzed large platforms nearby to show  the facilities. and even rezzed a bridge to let the visitors walk over to that newly created facility. I attended a briefing about the new SLoodle 2 toolset on the EduNation III region of Second Life on Sunday 18-Sep-2011 by Paul Priebsch (avatar name: Fire Centaur). About 30 other educators were there. A feature of SLoodle 2 is the ability to set up "scenes" an rapidly rezz them in and around a classroom for a lesson, and then tidy them away so the ability can be re-used. This was demonstrated live on the EduNation regions. The SLoodle quiz chair can be set up to give rewards to students, or "penalise" them for failure... including dumping them in a shark filled pool with realistic screams!

A blog report of that demonstration is at http://holyroodpark.net/atate/weblog/6149.html. Full size versions of some images of the demo meeting are gathered at http://openvce.net/sloodle

Its tricky to know which is the "real" avatar...

We have been held up for a while in our experimentation with Moodle/SLoodle since the new versions (2.1.2 as at 10-Oct-2011) required a later version of PHP than our servers were set to.  Apache/PHP changes are strictly controlled in the School of Informatics to address securuity issues, so its not something we can change quickly.  Our main servers should be updated within the next month, but meantime, we updated a test server and now have a working Moodle 2.1.2 with a standing "course" for OpenVCE experimentation.

A new PhD student has started with our group, Punyanuch Borwarnginn from Thailand, having just completed the MSc in AI here.  Her work will be in the area of Intelligent Learning  Environments, and she will start with looking at aspects of Moodle, SLoodle and virtual worlds-based I-Room technology. Her blog on initial ideas is at: http://openvce.net/ile-proposal

My two OpenSim avatars chatting away together. Part of an exercise for the Digital Cultures EDC11 Digital Artifact exercise: http://atate.org/ai/ai/res/2011-10-09-chat-log-ai-and-be.txt

At least they don't bicker like some recent chatbot to chatbot chat experiments: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnzlbyTZsQY

I want to make some observations on the use this week of Twitter for the Edinburgh MSc in e-Learning IDEL11 class discussions about core readings and topics. Obviously one purpose is to test a variety of tools and modalities of interaction for distance education purposes, so I will give my experience as a student in this case. 

Twitter is a valuable "push" short messaging and trending platform.  Due to the volume of material appearing on it, lack of archiving facilities, lack of search over long periods and lack of good clustering methods in most tools it is unsuited to discussions which by their nature are threaded and need linearity in reading posts from multiple participants.  The tweeter should not assume the group members see every (or even most) tweets, and there is no confirmation of what they have and have not seen.

Shortened URLs are frequently applied by tools when tweets are posted, and this loses much valuable context for the citation or reference given.

Public accessibility and possibly permanent online availability and reposting by others of the tweets also may preclude argumentation more suited to a closed audience or group.

Seeking to use Twitter to follow 4 #tags on 3 MSc in e-Learing courses is impractical on most Twitter interfaces, including the official Twitter.com provided web site and mobile apps.  I found only TweetDeck for Desktop as recommended for the Digital Cultures course (but not the mobile versions of TweetDeck)  suitable for such uses... but that is disruptive via its new tweet arrival notification mechanism when trying to concentrate on other work.

My use of Twitter was also on low bandwidth and error prone 3G connections, and using small screen mobile devices, but I think my observations are valid even without that limitation.

I found the threaded discussion forums on WebCT much easier to follow while travelling, and the times at which they can be checked and inputs given can be managed better and more asynchronously.

Where shall we to begin to unravel the drivel in the paper by Roszak.  Let’s start with his use of language... humans have minds and think... with no "quotes" on the words. Computers are "data processors" which "regurgitate" from "memory" with heavy use of quotes.  Their proponents are "data merchants" - you can almost hear him spit as he says it - and they promulgate a "cult of information" - my quotes. Human memory is the "invisible psychic adhesive" - give me a break.

Then we get pages on "ideas" which humans "think" about, and how those differ from what "computers" can "process" - and Rosak helpfully explains that these are generalization mechanisms based on experience of more or fewer instances.  Pity he seems to not know about explanation based generalization systems in computers which have worked for many years to find and refine categories in the taxonomies in many knowledge-based systems, and then used to great effect to advance scientific knowledge in astronomy, genetics and drug discovery. These systems have been around for well over three decades, so if he was speaking about generalisation, you think he could have looked it up (suggested keywords: "computer" "AI" "generalization").  But then again perhaps (neo-)luddites cannot do proper research if it involves using computers.His poor use of the Logo Poetry generator program, which included an element to ensure some randomizing phrases and vocabulary was introduced into the generated poems, was introduced as his example to illustrate the level of computer "simulation" of human "originality". This really is such a poorly related example I could not believe it got through peer review even in a philosophy paper.

He begins to go off into the void with references to the self reflection and how the mind is such a wonderful thing because it cannot fully model itself... but can (of course) completely understand its own creations. He asserts that it is "impossible to invent a machine that will be the mind's equal". Well maybe we can try to go for "mind" rather than mind and we might succeed. He does like his "quotes".

Roszak, T., (1994) "Of Ideas and Data" from Roszak, T., The cult of information : a neo-Luddite treatise on high tech, artificial intelligence, and the true art of thinking pp.87-107, University of California Press.

A Wordle word scatter diagram of my blogs for IDEL11 on Holyrood Park and for EDEDC11 on edc11.education show that the work I did to create a "Life Wall" at http://atate.org/ has been my top focus in the first couple of weeks of the MSC in e-Learning.  I very much like Wordle diagrams to show threads for work over a long period... and have used them for some years on my Publications sites at

• O-Plan Programme Publications - 1983 to 1999 - http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/project/oplan/documents/
• I-X Programme Publications - 1983 to present - http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/project/ix/documents/

A way to display good quality text is important in the classrooms.  Shared Media/Media-on-a-Prim (MOAP) allows a small number (say 4-6 simultaneously active) feeds from web pages, video, Flash, etc. to be visible on prim surfaces (like screens).  This can include dynamic content from Moodle and other content management systems on the web. Note that many feeds from URLs can be set up... but only a few can show at once, the others simply turning off when not in view or when too many are in view.

But it is possible to show much more on screen when textures are rendered in world or images are uploaded and shown i world directly from the asset data base.  This is is how most presentation screen have workled in Second Life and OpenSim until recently when Shared media/MOAP appeared.  The trick is to use BOTH mechanism in a classroom - using uploaded images and displays where possible, but using the small number of MOAP feeds for dynamically delivered shared content.

But what if we could show dynamic text content as well using previously uploaded content via fonts in the asset data base, with display of characters from those fonts on prims set up as a display/blackboard.

Nexii Malthus in Second Life (previously an active member of the Second Life Teen Grid, and now on the main grid) has created a very nice text display using inworld font textures to do just this. Details at https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/NexiiText2

The elements of the Life Wall have been encouraging me to dig out all sorts of stuff that was buried away, and recall events and dates (sometimes with the aid of my wife and others) which were already only dimly there.  But they have been brought back to vivid life through developing my personal Life Wall.  I assume everyone will want photos of them when very young on their Life Wall... there are few events in life as important as being born! The baby photos of me at a few months old and age 1 year are up there now. Did I look cute then?

The live Life Wall is at http://atate.org - Hover a mouse over a tag or clipping for more detail. Click on the thumbnails for some larger versions of the images.

Life Map

I had already added a link to a "Life Map" on which I think a lot of life's experiences could be noted through places visited and dated events.  I feel this element of the Life Wall could be so valuable, that I have adjusted the clippings column that will map to one HD screen of presentation to allow for an embedded Life Map directly on the main display.  There is a link to a larger map which could then be shown over 2 X HD displays when clicked.

Life Wall Pro

The Life Wall idea and presentation could also be adapted to professional purposes, e.g. to collect together and present a researcher's entire scientific contribution. It could allow then to look at their work and relationships. They could bring in professional contacts and the mappings between people, projects, organisations, tools, etc. Displays could include professional social network and project relationship diagrams (e.g. CMU Catalyst), FOAF, knowledge asset roadmaps (Macintosh, Filby and Tate, 1998), etc.  I am developing this aspect now.  As for Life Map Personal I hope to make the approach reasonably general and create an empty life map web area which other can copy and adapt to use themselves.

Reference:

Ann Macintosh, Ian Filby and Austin Tate (1998) "Knowledge Asset Road Maps" Proc. of the 2nd Int. Conf. on Practical Aspects of Knowledge Management (PAKM98) Basel, Switzerland, 29-30 Oct. 1998, (U. Reimer, ed.). Available from http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/project/oplan/documents/1998/98-pakm98-roadmaps.pdf

I have been inspired by the WallWisher and ideas for creative media in some of the course guides for the MSc in e-Learning... and have begun to think of ways to explore the use of tags and clippings to let someone tell their life story in unstructured, time line and narrative ways.

I wanted to look at the idea of your life in 2 x HD screens of display space.  My trial setup is called 2 x HD x bat (my initial and long time computer login name). Spoken in a spelled out way as "two" "times" "h" "d" "times" "b" "a" "t".

More details are at http://atate.org/life-about.html