Swinging Along in the Mid-Term...

Well here we are. It's past eight weeks into the CCK08 Connectivism course. I have to admit that, although I was pushing hard to stay on top at the beginning, this has now been pushed aside in my struggle to find a job to pay the mortgage!

Isn't that sad? What I have been doing though, is spending some time with the SL Experiments group, run by Nergiz Kern. This has been enormously interesting to me and I can see how powerful education can be in an application like Second Life.

So I have spent a little time there, and I have also been doing what I do best on my own website and also on Nergiz's Second Life Experiments Wiki site. I can say quite unequivocally that I really love creating web pages! I could spend my entire life doing this. It is wonderful to know what I enjoy doing. It is entirely another matter to secure a job that pays enough for me to be able to sit back and really do this for the rest of my life!

I cannot say that I haven't noticed some stuff about Second Life in passing through the portal as it were... for one thing, they have some situations which they haven't managed to fix which are still happening after a long time period...

There is a lot of "unwritten" stuff going on. A "newbie" can enter SL with a lower than standard computer and have a miserable time with "lag." Also, there are little things like the following situation: if you teleport somewhere from a sitting position, you will look crippled somehow well after you have arrived at your destination, even though, you, the person it is all happening to, cannot see this! I am told that this has been a problem for some time. Another thing, I was in an area this afternoon and I was walking along a road. Before I could do anything about it, my legs and thighs were sunk down in the road and it looked like I was wading along!

It is obvious that there are several basic things which have to be learned, before anyone can really benefit from the experience in Second Life. Apart from the usual allurances which would entice anyone into the environment and perhaps make them stay in spite of the obvious problems with the experience they are having, it is a very exciting environment, where absolutely anything goes, but virtually! Having said that, there are two levels in the main "grid" - PG and Mature. Linden Research saw fit to create a Teen Second Life too, probably to siphon off any problems with underage membership. Be that as it may, it only serves as a separation point, the cut-off age being eighteen years of age.

But the really complex stuff must come later, like making your avatar move in a special way, growing wings or attaching objects. I saw a fascinating demo of a whiteboard, given by a software developer who is well-versed in JavaScript, which is fed by an external site off an iFrame. This is advanced manipulation of the Linden grid and very useful for education. I have to say that the simple things, like learning to make your avatar dance, is really very easy. What would be interesting would be to learn how to make the avatar interact physically with other avatars. And I know that this is possible. It's simple silly little things which I don't understand, like this: if you are dancing and want to IM someone at the same time, or even in Local Chat, how can you make the avatar carry on dancing as your keys leave the dance activation keys (F9 F10 F11 and F12) to type the message? Perhaps you have the avatar programmed to dance on a joystick gesture/mouse gesture and all of this is automated? Perhaps you have a speech-to-text programmed so that your fingers never have to touch the keyboard anyway... I don't believe this is what happens. Because I have heard people talking and using Local Chat and IM all at the same time as they are making their avatar do incredible things!

Apart from that, it is still a very interesting environment which I would still like to explore some more...

I'm Still Slammed! So Slammed!

Nothing much to report this week. I attended the Elluminate session this morning. We discussed quite a lot of stuff, but it really seemed pretty inconclusive.

On the bright innovative side, I researched the Second Life and Teen Second Life Virtual worlds, and wrote an article about it on IT Toolbox (http://it.toolbox.com/wiki/index.php/Second_Life_Virtual_World)

So not a lot to tell you... Hopefully next week we'll see some changes take place!

If you read this - go out and vote!

The Game of Virtual Pilot...

I wanted something new to do so I played Lufthansa Virtual Pilot here:
I did very well. Let's see how well you do.... OK?
Have a terrific day!
:)

Whew...! I'm Maxed Out...!!!

You know, I just don't have time for anything.

So I am just going to post this little short piece and then maybe things will change by Friday. Right now I am slammed with a massive writing project. If I don't complete this, I will have a major problem....

So, dear readers, be patient... I will be back! :)

The Five-Week Wonder, or Discovering What I Have Learned So Far

You know, there are many things about this course which are not immediately apparent to the eye. One of these is the truly international flavor of the course... We come from all over, not just Canada, Australia, USA and the UK.

There are subgroups meeting in SL which belong to Spain, Argentina, Turkey, Israel and Korea. These subgroups are trying to do the impossible, have a class at all different time zones! This is the point. We relax in a beautiful area of SL surrounded by palm trees and gentle breezes, totally oblivious of the real FL environment which many of us may be in. This is what makes it so special! We set all of the reality aside to bask in the imaginary world, wherever physically we may be. And it is remarkably alluring. It is a magic environment, full of magic beings.

Getting Down to IT...

So much has happened since the last entry. I have entered the fifth week of Connectivism and Connective Knowledge CCK08. I had a wonderful SL experience on Friday. Here we were, educators sat around a balmy patio in a beautiful villa... What more could anyone want? We discussed methods and learned about each other. It was interesting to see that we had all been brought together: I had emerged from California, United States, and the others were from Argentina, Mexico, Israel and the United Kingdom, a meeting of world minds, but appearing in the same room in SL!

I will probably add to this later on today. Right now, I have rather too much to do...

The Deeper Meaning of Networking

To align truly with this week's focus, that of the History of Networks, I thought I would add a few lines in my blog about how this strikes me...

We have seen how people interact and that a group of people or entities, who have an effect on each other constitutes a network. The networks of all time, over eons and ages, were formed by similarities of thinking and focused viewpoints. Let's take Socrates, for example. He had a network of friends, but because of his association with the local community, he was accused of corrupting the youth of that community with his ideologies.

I was led to think about networks of people who have lived and who have already passed on and who presumably belong to a different age, and I was struck particularly by a line or two from a historic novel about seventeenth century Venice. This quote comes from Barbara Quick's novel, "Vivaldi's Virgins" and tells a story about the agelessness of music even though by definition, the statement she makes paints a completely different picture!

"What more can a mere musician possibly hope for?
Music cannot be kept or captured. It unfurls in one miraculous moment in time, and then it's gone. The glorious sound of Marietta's voice in a cantabile aria will be forever lost after she is dead and all of us who ever heard her are dead, too. No matter how well I manage to play, my playing will be forgotten when all those who have heard me have died." (Quick, Vivaldi's Virgins, 254)

This really rings false in this age of shared music, royalty hearings and other copyright legislation, doesn't it? But the network to which Anna Maria belonged had none of the instantaneousness of today's world. Life was indeed slower and possibly more predictable, but nonetheless a valid network of like-minded individuals, having an effect on those people who were around them.