Review of our second live session!

Have just finished the second live session in Second Life with our students. I felt it was a much smoother session this week – we had fewer technical issues and it all seemed to run well.


We started off with a live lecture about Ethics – written by Deanne Gray, and given by Lucille (Meg). We had some discussion scattered in amongst the lecture.

We then hopped down from the elevated lecture area in the sky, and walked over to four large boxes – each containing a notecard with a separate ethical dilemma attached. We discussed two of the scenarios tonight.

Here are a few thoughts I had:


TechnologyI was intending to use WeGame as the screen recording tool, but I gave up on it in the end as I couldn’t seem to record the ‘in-world’ sound. So I quickly downloaded and bought the full version of Fraps (it was only $50.00 so not too pricey).
The free version allows you to record up to 30 seconds but if you want to record more than that you need to purchase the full registered version. It all went pretty smoothly from then actually (in terms of recording).

Camera angles
Camera angles and techniques are a separate matter!!! Actually upon review there are a few nice shots but a fairly obvious point to record here is, whoever is actually doing the recording needs to only concentrate on that! It would have been good to plan some shots and angles but we would need more time and resources (ie people!) to do that properly.

Unnecessary sounds!
A few other things to remember when recording – I should have turned off the keyboard / typing sounds – as I could tell it was a little distracting for Meg (Lucille) as it sounded like someone was asking a question, when it was just me pasting the text of the lecture in the chat. On that though – I think that worked reasonably well – timing it was interesting – do I paste a whole sentence at once… or two… or just a phrase….? :-). We’ll get feedback from the students as to how helpful the lecture text being pasted into chat was.

Lucille’s mic worked today which made a huge difference I think to the smooth running of everything – although having said that, my mic didn’t work when I was recording – but I didn’t need to issue instructions to students so it was fine.

I figured out what I did wrong with the notecards last week - I created three objects and attached notecards to them but had only dropped the notecards into the content of one of them! This week I created four objects and four notecards and it all worked perfectly. Was satisfying to have another chance to figure it out and then get it right. I don't THINK I'll forget that, but I'm recording it here just in case!

Overall
I felt the students seem to be reasonably engaged – both Meg (Lucille) and Jason (Ariki) did a great job of checking that the students were all still actively participating.

I’m very tired though! Intense scripting (although basic!!) and building (ok yes still extremely basic!), planning and preparation, then running the session – have been sitting here intensely concentrating since 2.30 and it is now 7.00pm! It’s apparent how much the three of us (Missy, Ariki and Lucille) are all learning though and I’m looking forward to the next session next week. We have a few students creating some Machinima scenarios (animated movies made in Second Life in this instance) for this group of students to view and discuss (if I can actually get the media player working!!).

Cheers
Trudy (Missy Oximoxi)

Session 1 reflections

Summary
Points to note
1. Have back up mics/machines/internet connection :-)
2. Fully script lesson AND post into chat as well as talk live
3. Check the technology such as scripted objects
4. Def use SL for content delivery and discussion.
5. Have back up mics/machines/internet connection :-)
6. Was helpful with a small group interacting in a chat. But larger
group and a chat log over differnt topics makes the convo confusing. Need to think through the chat logger use

Our first 'live' session with the students was tonight!

Have just finished the first live session with the students. Great to be through with the 'first one' ! Here are some of my thoughts:

I'll start with the frustrations so the blog post ends on a nice note :-). Although let me say from the outset, I think that overall, it went well.

Technical issues - I personally had so many it was almost funny! I was frustrated with the issues I was having prior to and during the session - my mouse wasn't working - the wireless one went flat, and the plug in one wouldnt register, my headset was working, then not working, I couldn't log into the internet to begin with, then Second Life crashed 3 times before I could log on. Then I couldn't record the sound using WeGame ! I got 4.22 minutes of the session as a movie. So with that going on - I didn't feel I helped Jason and Meg a lot - and when it was my time to speak I was occupied with a number of issues, and helping people log on, get there via IM etc etc. And for some reason two of the notecards I had attached to objects didn't work - but they worked when I tested them just prior to the session (I created them just prior to the session!!) so not sure what happened there.

We also had some audio issues but once everyone stopped using the handsfree mode, the echoes stopped and it was a lot easier - although not for Lucielle (Meg) who didn't have any sound at all so couldn't speak to us or hear us!

Some technical notes (as opposed to issues!):

The Sloodle chat logger worked well after I actually logged in to Moodle and opened up the chat session there - but I didn't think I had to do that - but at least I had tested it enough to be able to figure out what to do when it wasn't working so I was grateful for that!! It also didn't capture chat that was happening as an Instant Message (private message between avatars) so that is good to know for the future. The activity we had set up was for the students to work in pairs to discuss the information found in the notecards (placed in 3 different areas on the island). So the chatting was a bit hard to follow I think.

Overall though, Sloodle tools worked well. For this session we only used the Chat Logger (Web Intercom) and the Reg Enrol booth (to register everyone's avatars in Moodle).

Personally I found it hard to just 'be there' for the students as I was trying to fix technical issues - but I think Jason and Meg did a great job interacting with the students and keeping everything running - especially Jason - it all fell to him really due to Meg (Lucille) not having sound and me working on technical issues!

However - all of that said, I enjoyed the whole process and am looking forward to the next session so we can build on what we all just learnt together. And really, this session was about induction and I think the students did really well to fly, move around, and manage their avatars, speak, chat, dance some brilliant crazy dance moves (!!)(thanks Matt) - as well as dress themselves! So overall I'm happy with it!!

A little 'ah-ha' moment :-)

After quite a technically frustrating day (problems with Second Life, Moodle AND Sloodle), I finally got something to work!! The Sloodle Web Intercom (chat logger) - is now working for us. The 'ah ha' moment was the realisation that a student is still able to participate in a chat session even if they had trouble getting on to Second Life. They could still participate and communicate via the Moodle chat window as though they were there in Second Life. A really useful tool should students lose connection in the middle of a session too. This is all possibly really obvious to those that have been using Second Life / Sloodle for a while - but having just discovered the two way functionality and tested it - and knowing that it really does work - is a nice moment :-). So I'm going to celebrate and have lunch now!!