In the run up to the first Intute Staff Conference in Nov 2007 the teams were asked to put together a presentation explaining who they were and what they did. The request came with a rather worrying stipulation; ‘no powerpoint’. A presentation without Powerpoint? What could we do? For my part I decided to make a short film, a machinima film, dealing with the work I had been doing in Second Life.
A little over a year ago someone at Oxford put out the call for people interested in Second Life who wanted to be involved in building a presence for the university in the virtual world. I was not, at that point, a user of Second Life, but I had been interested and involved in various other virtual worlds for some time. Besides the fun and relaxation element I was interested in the community building and pedagogic possibilities of such worlds. It was heartening to hear that others were thinking along the same lines and, of course, I signed up for a free account there and then. Since then I have been discovering that I am very far from alone in my explorations. Every day I hear of new projects by educators. Some build content, others build social connections. All are building bridges between what they do in the real and virtual worlds. Second Life has offered us the possibility of doing things that are not possible in the real world and to do them in a way which fosters the sort of collaborative endevour which is not always practical in the real world.
During my time working in Second Life I’ve been trying to establish the Intute brand amongst the educators I’ve met. In order to do this I’ve built a couple of gadgets; one to retrieve the latest records in a given subject and the other to get search results for a user configured search term. These are quite basic applications, but I’m hoping that they will lodge the name of Intute in people’s minds and associate it as an authoritative source of information. These gadgets have been used in a number of projects. Notably the Plymouth University Sexual Health exhibit and the Literature Alive Virtual Dante project. The possibilities for Intute go further than this. It might be possible, at some future point, to host virtual seminars in-world to teach internet research skills and to pass on the experience which Intute has in this area. If Intute were to establish itself with its own island this could become a base for such seminars and a potential place to host in-world events, either by Intute itself or by associated projects. Intute is in a good position now to position itself as a reliable source of information; the ‘authoritative mentor’. There is an opening for such a source as there is currently very little in-world which fills such a role. Intute could also make good use of the virtual world for its own organizational requirements. The Intute team is geographically fairly widely distributed and Second Life could be very useful for team meetings and such.
Tony O’Driscoll offers seven ways in which virtual worlds can help us go beyond what has previously been possible in terms of human interaction:
- The Sense of Self. In a world which offers effectively unlimited possibilities in terms of editing ones appearance, why is it that so many people end up with an avatar which look like their real life selves?
- The Death of Distance. The project to bring The Assisi Monastery into Second Life was done by three teams based in Italy and Spain. Visiting the monastery involves a few mouse clicks. To go from there to a party in Moscow, or a bar in Dublin or attend classes in New Orleans is just as easy.
- The Power of Presence. It seemed a little ironic to me that the recent UN conference on climate change was held in Bali and involved, I dare say, a great deal of carbon emission in getting everyone there. I was pleased to see, however, that it was possible to attend sessions at the conference in-world. In fact it could be argued that such meetings may be an effective way forward.
- Explorations in 3D. 3D models can convey aspects of an experience which are missing from the flat web page, the image, or even film.
- Collaborations. In real life I would never be able to design and build a large building; a library or a conference centre. In Second Life I can. This removal of barriers has lead to some fruitful collaborations between practicing professionals and inspired non-professionals in a number of fields.
- The Active Learner. The most common phrase to be heard on the chat channel of any virtual world is ‘How do I?’
- Freedom from physics. 3D modelling software has always offered people the chance to build and manipulate objects limited only by their imagination. With the other things virtual worlds offer, the freedom to create goes even further and becomes a communal experience.
At present Second Life is the most active of the existing virtual worlds in the sphere of education and it is where educators have been going in order to learn the language and establish the practices of operating in this medium. Second Life still has a few problems, both in its technical ability to deliver its promise and in establishing and enforcing rules of governance. In the end Second Life may not last. The seeds, however, are well and truly planted. The Chinese are investing in excess of $30bn in virtual world technology, while Korea counts some 46% of its population as members of a particular virtual world. It seems that some sort of collaborative 3D enviroment is inevitable. Linden Labs, the creators of Second Life, have been involved in work with IBM to transcend the current model. They are no longer talking about virtual worlds, but about the metaverse. Maintaining a presence in the metaverse will become akin to hosting a web server and avatars will be able to move between these worlds in much the same way that users currently browse web pages.
Search Intute for Second Life.
