Second Life?

Carrie November 20th, 2009

My husband sent me a link earlier today to a BBC article about Second Life: What happened to Second Life? The article talks about Second Life’s surge in popularity in 2007 and questions the current relevance of the virtual world. This particular article focuses on business and social use of Second Life. I think it’s interesting that there’s no mention of Second Life in education, because in our world, Second Life is still alive and kicking.

Viewing a piece of artwork in the virtual Georgia Museum of Art.

Viewing a piece of artwork in the virtual Georgia Museum of Art.

Here at the CTL, we’ve been working in Second Life for a while.  We’ve probably posted before about our Georgia Museum of Art project in Second Life, which was completed earlier this year.  The GMoA is currently closed for renovation and expansion, but some of the museum’s permanent collection is still being displayed in a virtual museum that we created in Second Life. We worked with Jenny Williams and other Georgia Museum of Art staff to recreate the look and feel of the actual museum.  In addition to displaying various pieces from the permanent collection, we also included some audio narration about certain pieces of artwork. In the future, we hope to have additional curated exhibits in the space. You can read more about the project here at the Georgia Museum of Art’s website, or you can visit in Second Life by searching “Georgia Museum of Art” or by using the SLurl http://slurl.com/secondlife/UGA%20CTL%20/143/29/60/

So what else is going on? Our multimedia team is working with a Ph.D. student in the College of Public Health who is exploring the use of Second Life in survey research. We’ve already built a space on the CTL Island to host her surveys, and in January, she’ll move forward with collecting data for her research.  I’m excited about this project, because we could potentially gain some knowledge about who we reach in Second Life and what kinds of feedback we can obtain from the users.

Another possible project on the horizon is using Second Life as a tool in Reacting to the Past. (Reacting consists of elaborate games, set in a specific time and place, a critical moment in world history. Students play sustained roles in a structured 4-week game, speaking and writing in character on issues of the day. This award-winning pedagogy is being used in many different departments on campus at UGA.) Because of the interactive nature of Reacting, Second Life is  an ideal tool for Reacting – for example, connecting different Reacting classes on different campuses, providing a virtual space for Reacting students to interact when they aren’t in class, and possibly providing an avenue for distance education students to participate in Reacting courses. We hope to be exploring these ideas in the coming year.

So what happened to Second Life? It hasn’t gone anywhere! Maybe the media hype has died down, but educators are still exploring the possibilities in this virtual world.

Happy 30th Birthday, CTL!

Paul Quick November 19th, 2009

Today we mark the 30th anniversary of the founding of what has become the Center for Teaching and Learning. I know that when I was a PhD student in English here at UGA, I was incredibly grateful to be selected to what was then called the TA Mentor Program (which is now called the Future Faculty Program). What I found at Office of Instructional Support and Development (as it was called at the time) was a great help to me as someone who cared about teaching and didn’t want teaching to be just a way to pay for graduate school. What I found in the program and throughout the center were dedicated people–both staff who worked at center and faculty who frequented the center–who were incredibly invested in improving student learning through effective teaching practices. When I asked Katie Smith if I could stay on after my TA Mentor year to be her graduate assistant, I was showing more initiative than at any other time in my graduate career. I just didn’t want to be disconnected to the Center or to the programming. And I was fortunate to stay on for two years as graduate assistant, then as a post-doc, and finally as an academic professional. In that time I have had the good fortune of interacting with some of the giants in the life of this center: Ron Simpson, Sylvia Hutchinson, Katie Smith, and Bill Jackson. They have dedicated large chunks of their careers to the growth and development of this Center, and I can only hope that I can be help further develop what they started and grew. The existence of the Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of Georgia is a testament to the importance of undergraduate and graduate instruction as well as career-long professional development for academics from graduate students to emeriti faculty. Happy birthday, CTL!

Rubrics in eLC

Sherry November 19th, 2009

Do you use rubrics? If no, why not? If yes, then you might like the Grading Forms feature in eLearning Commons (Blackboard Vista 8). Grading Forms are rubrics that can be attached to eLC assignments, discussion topics, and grade book columns.

Interested in learning more about using Grading Forms? Utah State University has a great help doc available. Check it out!

>>Sherry

Barrow county meets Facebook

David Noah November 16th, 2009

Stories from:

AJC
http://blogs.ajc.com/get-schooled-blog/2009/11/13/facebook-flap-in-barrow-raises-troubling-fairness-issues/
(and see the comments as well)

ABH
http://onlineathens.com/stories/111409/new_516320164.shtml

Recently a Barrow county teacher was allegedly forced to resign because her administrators objected to pictures she posted on Facebook. Was she revealed as a member of the Nazi party?  No.  Did they show her molesting children?  Nope.  Voting for a Democrat?  Not even that.

Her crime:  posting photos of her European vacation, some of which showed her drinking beer.  Granted, Facebook and other social media applications are challenging our notions about public and private—and about private and professional.  But in this case, Facebook is challenging another kind of public/private split, the kind that sets rural and conservative cultures at odds with urban, liberal ones.

Sure, we’ve had reports from this culture clash for a long time, at least since H. L. Mencken covered the Scopes trial nearly a century ago.  But now the friction between cultures is made more intense, and more visible, because both are rubbing shoulders in our new techno-commons.

It’s easy to forget, while one is pondering the finer points of constructivist pedagogies, that school is always political, even if teaching and learning are not.  I’m resisting the temptation to quote Mark Twain on school boards, but I can’t resist imagining the following, entirely fictional, scene.

Board:  You’ll have to resign, of course.  We can’t have teachers setting a bad example for our students.

Teacher:  But I was just drinking a glass of beer in the photo.

B:  That’s promoting alcoholism.

T:  I was in Europe at the time, where a glass of beer with a meal is considered normal.

B:  That’s promoting foreignness.  We don’t like that either.

T:  It’s none of your business what I do in my free time.

B:  You have free time?  You must not be working hard enough.

T:  So a teacher must be a model of what—the social fantasies of the most conservative elements in the county?

B:  We like to call those elements ‘voters’.

T:  Then school equals Sunday school?

B:  Every day of the week.

T:  You know, social media applications like Facebook are forcing us to re-think the line between public and private.

B:  OK, then we’ll require all teachers to stay off Facebook.

T:  And MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter, and every other kind of social media?  We can’t contribute to the book reviews on Amazon?  We’re not supposed to have any kind of life outside school hours that isn’t modeled on the life of Jesus?  Who, BTW, was pretty handy with the wine trick at a party.  Should we just be asking ourselves, what would Jesus tweet?

B:  Why do you hate America?

CTL and social media in the news

Carrie November 13th, 2009

Happy Friday! I have a few links to share with you:

  • Students, that tweet may be your professor : our very own David Noah is quoted in this article from today’s Athens Banner-Herald. The brief article discusses social media being used at UGA. The author of the article, Lee Shearer, attended yesterday’s  Social Media and the Classroom discussion (facilitated by David Noah here at the CTL.) You can check out other upcoming CTL events by visiting our events calendar page. If you’re interested in a certain topic or event, be sure to let us know by leaving a comment here or emailing us at ctl@uga.edu – we love to schedule new sessions, and we’d like to know what you’re interested in!
  • and, on Wimba.com, you can see Sherry Clouser’s smiling face right on the home page. UGA uses Wimba on campus for online classes and collaboration, and, as Sherry said, it allows for m0re collaboration in an environment where some students are face-to-face and some are online.

Have you read anything about social media and education lately? Share your links in the comments!

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