Merlot Conference, Second Life for Education, etc., etc.,

HI all,

I have just returned from the Merlot Conference in San Jose! I have to say that my head is spinning there is so much going on at Merlot that it is not possible to sum it up in one blog post, but I will start with some general observations.

John Willbanks provided the opening Keynote. John is from the Creative Commons (http://creativecommons.org/) a non-profit organization that provides "edicated to making it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright.

We provide free licenses and other legal tools to mark creative work with the freedom the creator wants it to carry, so others can share, remix, use commercially, or any combination thereof." (retrieved from http://creativecommons.org/about/)


I had committed myself to facilitating four Second Life tours with the presenter in world, I was apprehensive to say the least! It was a trial and error/pilot project! While I think the technology worked beautifully there were certain things that I learned I could not do such as opening people's profiles, going in to mouselook, and doing searches while having my screen projected to the meeting room. If I did any of these things my computer locked up and I had to totally reboot the computer.

Saying that though I do believe the tour of Virtual Ability was well received and special thanks to Gentle Heron and especially Eme Capallini for Virtual Ability and conducting this presentation. I was pleased to see so many new people just coming in to Second Life at the conference..and doing so well as they got their "virtual world bearings" and were getting teleported and participating in the sessions. I hope they go back to Virtual Ability and participate in the orientation.

The next presentation was from Jonathon Richter, Wainbrave Bernal, who gave us a tour of the Merlot Campus and a presentation on the new CLIVE hud developed by SIFY...let me say this technology is amazing. This innovation in Second Life really had folks at the conference buzzing about the use of Second Life as a means to access Merlot resources!

On Saturday we had an excellent presentation from AJ Kelton Director of Emerging Instructional Technologies at Montclair State University. I give AJ a hard time but he is really the one who introduced me to the use of Second Life as content for learning, creating a learning environment and learning experience in world. The Theorist Project at Montclair State does just that.
Finally we toured Sci Lands, Jim Zeigler of Northern Michigan University introduced us to the Speech and Language Center in Second Life. With a larynx that an avatar can walk through, interactive quizzing, and more than life size ear that can be toured this is an amazing build. The person who built this learning environment is top notch and I encourage you to contact Jim for more details. His contact information is on the NMU website. As I checked NMU's website I see there are many innovations occurring in Second Life by educators there.

IN addition to this I would like to point out that some of these sessions are not so much about the build itself but what can be done and how it can be done in Second Life. Hopefully people picked up tips on navigation and communication through these sessions. In addition to this I hoped that they learned something about resources on the web regarding Second Life and how to use those to learn more about the program.



I would like to recognize the Elluminate sessions I also facilitated. The technology worked great but I learned a lot..it's best to block off a whole day for presenting these sessions rather than individual blocks of time for each. We did trials runs with each presenter prior to the session and that seemed to work fairly well.

I was thrilled with Judy Greaves presentation on the Library of Commerce there is a great deal of quality resources there to incorporate into your course and it is well organized and indexed. Other presentations using Elluminate included Turning Technologies on gaming and Ramona and Carmen on Web 2.0 tools application to teaching.

Overall a great conference I was honored to go and in spite of the technical hiccups I hope we see an expansion on the virtual conference next year!

Book discussion The Big Switch by Nicholas Carr

Sometimes a good non-fiction book can be even more engaging than a good fiction and such was the case for me when I read Nicholas Carr’s The Big Switch, Rewiring the World from Edison to Google. Nicholas Carr also wrote Is Google Making us Stupid?

This book provides an analogy between the development of electricity to the development of internet, computer applications and technology as a utility. Based upon this analogy we are on the precipice of seeing computer and internet services as ubiquitous. It is a new age that is both exhilarating for information junkies like me and can be extremely frightening as we consider the data gather capabilities and the privacy that we are giving up as we create a “web based” identity.
In Carr’s comparisons he views the Internet as follows:
1. As utility
2. As disruptive technology
3. Change to how we work
4. Change how businesses operate
5. Change in business models
a. What previously took 1000’s of employees now may only take a handful
b. Advertising—revenue is generated by clicks on ads not by content or service
6. Web content is not generated by “experts” but by users and amateurs and peer reviewed by users for credibility.

When Carr wrote this book Cloud Computing was not the buzz word of the day . Today there are many variations of defining this term:
Wikipedia: Cloud computing is a style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet.[1][2] Users need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure in the "cloud" that supports them.[3]

IBM: Cloud computing focuses on the user, and offers highly efficient acquisition and delivery of IT and information services. Cloud computing is defined and characterized by massive scalability, superior user experience, and new, Internet-driven economics.

Martin McBrown’s Blog: Grids and cloud computing share many of the same features - large sets of computers that can be used to handle 'work'. The distinction between grids and clouds is that in a grid you tend to have a huge array of computers working on a single tasks or purpose..
whereas in a cloud the computing power is a general resource that we can use for pretty much anything.

Carr gives a fascinating illustration of how companies such as Flickr, YouTube, and others handle millions of videos, photos, and other media with relatively small staffs, accessing resources of companies such as I BM and Amazon, and demonstrated how these companies welcome their use. Second Life uses services from Amazon to manage their log-in services.
Reading this book you begin to notice a trend though. This means your activities in the “cloud” are not anonymous, not just with Flickr, YouTube, or Linden Labs. These service providers may be accessing and storing data on user activities in a variety of areas.

The world is changing, it seems at a quick pace, however it started with Edison and electricity as a utility.

Merlot Conference

I am attending the Merlot Conference in San Jose this week. I have been involved with Merlot for the past year, it is related to my job in coordinating the online programs and services for the six public universities in South Dakota/
Merlot provides an avenue for faculty to peer review learning objects. According to the Merlot.org website:
Merlot is a leading edge, user-centered, searchable collection of peer reviewed and selected higher education, online learning materials, catalogued by registered members and a set of faculty development support services. MERLOT's vision is to be a premiere online community where faculty, staff, and students from around the world share their learning materials and pedagogy.
MERLOT's strategic goal is to improve the effectiveness of teaching and learning by increasing the quantity and quality of peer reviewed online learning materials that can be easily incorporated into faculty designed courses.
A learning object is a resource, usually digital and web-based, that can be used and re-used to support learning.
Wikipedia offers the following definition of learning objects:
Learning objects offer a new conceptualization of the learning process: rather than the traditional "several hour chunk", they provide smaller, self-contained, re-usable units of learning.[1]
They will typically have a number of different components that range from descriptive data to information about rights and educational level. At their core, however, will be instructional content, practice, and assessment. A key issue is the use of metadata.
Learning object design raises issues of portability, and of the object's relation to a broader learning management system.
As a member of the Merlot leadership committee and someone who has an interest in virtual worlds, specifically Second Life I saw a connection between the services that are offered by Merlot, the learning environment offered by Second Life and learning objects/ In essence the learning experiences offered by Second Life are learning objects or a series of linked learning objects.

Because of the conference, my experiences with a virtual conference in Second Life I thought it would be a great experience to offer a virtual conference for Merlot, or some type of virtual world experience. As I started to put out some requests for information I learned that others, specifically Jonathon Richter at the University of Oregon was actively involved in developing resources and a link between Second Life and Merlot. With Jonathon’s help, and the assistance of individuals from Dakota State University, and Front Range Community College we toured and reviewed sites for the conference.

Four Second Life sites have been selected for tours for the Merlot conference, these include Virtual Ability Island, Montclair State University’s Theorist Project, Sci-lands, and Merlot CLIVE.
Merlot Clive is, according to the website;
The Center for Learning In Virtual Environments (CLIVE) is a collaboration between The Center for Advanced Technology in Education (CATE) at The University of Oregon, Sun Microsystems, and MERLOT to create two complimentary spaces - here on the World Wide Web and also within 3D space - for comparing, contrasting, and informing educators about the potentials and challenges for learning and teaching in Multi-User Virtual Environments. CLIVE is partnered with The Media Grid's Immersive Education project - an initiative to develop a universally accessible open source interface and repository for educational learning materials developed in 3D Virtual Worlds.

Virtual ability also has a website and from their website they:
Virtual Ability, Inc. helps people with these kind of challenges (disabilities) get into, and become successful in virtual worlds like Second Life.
The Theorist Project is:
The Theorist Project is a learning area and working classroom currently focused on Counseling Theorists. Current exhibits include Adler, Gestault, and Rogers (content provided by students) and Freud's Office and Iceberg.

SciLands is a science related sim that is comprised of 32 islands with a science focus:

• Island reservations in a pure Science region, with shared resources and other Science-based organizations, initially centered around the Space Industries and the acclaimed International Spaceflight Museum.

The Merlot Conference is rich in information, not only on Second Life but also information on initiative in education and projects that are faculty are applying to b e effective in their teaching. Information on the conference can be found here http://conference.merlot.org/2009/ and more information can also be found here ttp://merlotconf.wordpress.com/.