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[August] - [September] - [October] - [November] - [December] - [January] - [February] - [March] — [Upcoming]
UPCOMING
Mar 25, 5-7pm, BGSU Virtual Campus
MARCH
Mar 11, 5-7pm, 1026 Fine Arts Center
Overview of the meeting: The meeting focused on age verification and security issues as well as the OLN Winter Expo presentation.
FEBRUARY
Feb 26, 7:30pm, BGSU Virtual Campus
Overview of the meeting: The meeting focused on the OLN Portrait of Practice report for the upcoming OLN Winter Institute 2008 as well as the "text
vs. voice chat" debate.
Feb 12, 5-7pm, 1026 Fine Arts Center
Present: Unknown
Overview of the meeting: Professor of Computer Science Lance R. Williams from the University of New Mexico gave a demonstration of his work with the
programing language Scheme in Second Life to the BGSU SL Learning Community.
The learning community was thoroughly impressed with Mr. Williams work with "distributed computation in the area of CS which
deals with dividing the pieces of a computation up and distributing them across many computers which communicate over a network."
Williams has been working in the BGSU sandbox to test his scripts. "SL is an ideal testbed for research in dist. computation
because of its programming model... scripts are tiny...and limited to 16K, which is many thousands of times less memory than
most comp. scientists are used to working with." Each 'virtual machine' uses parallel data structures and algorithms in order
to increase the level of computing power.
Williams showed off several of his working projects, each of which contained scripts that spoke with each other. Learning
community members were very interested in the artistic nature of what Williams calls the "reification" of the programs, or their visual representations. One of the works used fish as the main visual component which swam around
as the visual representation of the virtual machine.
JANUARY
Jan 15, 5-7pm, 1026 Fine Arts Center
Present: Anthony Fontana, Bonnie Mitchell, Radhika Gajjala, Cassandra Jones, Richard Anderson, Chris Wammes, Montana Miller
Overview of the meeting: The Ohio Learning Network Second Life Learning Community in Northwest Ohio met in their first meeting
of 2008 and discussed recent projects in Second Life. Radhika Gajjala is working with two graduate students on the a bi-lingual
educational exchange project (English and Japanese). Cassandra Jones is teaching "Women in Sci-Fi," an American Culture Studies
class. She is using Second Life to explore fandom and the many ways in which people express their interest or participate
in fandom. Cassandra lead the group on a field trip to the Star Trek Museum of Culture in Second Life. We were also joined by Montana Miller, Richard Anderson from Psychology and Chris Wammes from ITS. A portion of the discussion
was focused on creating a survey for students using Second Life. What sort of initial reactions, experiences, or change in
online practice did Second Life facilitate? Perhaps these responses change over time as the students become more familiar
with the virtual world.
We also dedicated a short amount of time looking at:
DECEMBER
Dec 18, 5-7pm, 1026 Fine Arts Center
Dec 4, 5-7pm, 1026 Fine Arts Center
NOVEMBER
Nov 20, 5-7pm, 1026 Fine Arts Center
Nov 6, 5-7pm, The Center for Teaching and Learning Technology
Present: Bonnie Mitchell, Anthony Fontana, Radhika Gajjala (SL), Montana Miller, Chris Wammes, Cassandra Jones, Linda Mandlebaum,
Nick Schroeder, Greg Wark (SL)
Overview of the meeting: We began with a discussion about security on the BGSU virtual campus. It was decided that a volunteer security force, made
up of trusted faculty, staff, and students, would be given the title "BGSU Falcon Force" in Second Life and granted permissions
to 'Eject' troublesome avatars and objects from the island. Linda Mandlebaum presented her recent use of SL in the classroom,
in which she interviewed the owner of "Wheelies," a Second Life social space for people in wheelchairs. The interview was
conducted using text chat when Mandlebaum typed questions submitted by her students and projected the virtual environment
on her classroom wall for the class of 60 to see the exchange. Finally, the learning community was led on a field trip to
the New Media Consortium island by CTLT Faculty Consultant Nick Schroeder. Nick pointed out several areas of interest: the
easy to use overhead map teleport hub at the NMC entrance and their "Tour HUD". A HUD or "heads up display", is a versatile
component in SL, able to show images, play sound, and even teleport the user, all in a window-like display only the user can
see.
OCTOBER
Oct 23, 5-7pm, 1026 Fine Arts Center
Overview of the meeting:The Learning Community attended the Tech Trends lecture by guest speaker Sarah "Intellagirl" Robbins in the BTSU Theatre.
Her lecture was titled: "MUVEs and Web 2.0: Using Second Life to Create Real World Learning". Sarah Robbins lecture was co-sponsored
by the Information Technology Committee and the Second Life Learning Community.
Oct 9, 5-7pm, 1026 Fine Arts Center
Present: Bonnie Mitchell, Anthony Fontana, Montana Miller, Radhika Gajjala, Linda Mandlebaum, Kay Strong, Chris Wammes, Brian Scavo
Overview of the meeting: The focus was on synchronous communication (voice chat and text chat) while also introducing the LC to streaming media (video
and audio). The discussion portion of this meeting centered on future LC goals.
SEPTEMBER
Sep 11, 5-7pm, 1026 Fine Arts Center
Present: Bonnie Mitchell, Anthony Fontana, Radhika Gajjala, Montana Miller, Madhu Rao, Kay Strong (Firelands), Gerry Davis, Linda
Mandlebaum, Chris Wammes, Greg Wark
Overview of the meeting: Anthony and Bonnie gave the LC a thorough tour of the BGSU virtual campus. They talked about planning and introduced Greg
Wark, a digital arts student who has been hired to do 3d modeling in Second Life. The creation and development of the BGSU
SL virtual campus is supported by the Office of the Chief Information Officer. Greg showed off the new Vertical Gallery which
hosts exhibits of student artworks. Bonnie talked about the Arcade V show which would be hosted in the Secondary Gallery (yet
to be named) and co-hosted in real life in Perth, Australia. Anthony showed the LC how to make a PowerPoint like slideshow
object. Discussion topics ranged from mobility issues in SL, interface usability, and machinima or machine made cinema (video
animations made using SL as the graphics engine). Montana, Gerry, and Anthony investigated events in SL focused on 9/11 memorials.
The LC asked Anthony to make a machinima video tutorial on how to make a PowerPoint object in SL.
Sep 25, 4-6pm, 1026 Fine Arts Center
Present: Bonnie Mitchell, Anthony Fontana, Radhika Gajjala, Montana Miller, Linda Mandlebaum, Gerry Davis, Chris Wammes, Cassandra
Jones, Kay Strong (Firelands), Sharon Collingwood (OSU)
Overview of the meeting: We met up at BGSU virtual campus and introduced new members,Cassandra Jones and Sharon Collingwood from OSU. The LC then
took a field trip to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) island; a very immersive and diverse environment
full of asynchronous learning objects. Some of these objects are HUDs, or Heads Up Displays, and interactive "rides" (planes
and weather balloons), while others linked back to internet based information. Discussion topics focused on the strengths
of SL: 3d objects and environments and community. Some debate of which fields would benefit by utilizing SL asynchronously
vs. those that needed to be synchronous called for a more dedicated examination of synchronous activities in SL.
AUGUST
Aug 28, 5-6pm, 1026 Fine Arts Center
Present: Bonnie Mitchell, Anthony Fontana, Radhika Gajjala, Montana Miller, Madhu Rao, Kay Strong, Gerry Davis, Chris Collins (UC),
Chris Wammes
Overview of the meeting: We began with introductions and announced the format for the meeting (which would be the format for all meetings to come):
1 hour in-world, meeting at the BGSU virtual campus in SL most members are on computers in the Cave lab in the Fine Arts Building,
then 1 hour discussion in real life, at the Medic Circle Lounge in the Fine Arts Building. Anthony and Bonnie presented the
goals and mission of the Learning Community. In-world communication options, such as voice chat and text based chat, were
weighed. Due to the inconsistent nature of voice chat at this time, it was agreed that text based chat would be our standard
mode of communication (voice chat had just been introduced). Radhika offered to type what was being said. In the discussion
segment topics ranged from business in SL being based purely on "wants" and not "needs", immersion and escapism and the human
need for them being age-old (dating back to cave paintings), and how the teacher becomes a moderator in a space like SL and
not the sole source for all knowledge.
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