SLENZ Update, No 146, October 27, 2009

Australasia’s first “complete” virtual school

South Island  schools  to take  trade

training to  the world – virtually

A New Zealand Virtual School classroom developed by SmallWorlds.

A group of  South Island, New Zealand, secondary schools, with training partnerships and associations nationally,  is to establish Australasia’s first  virtual,  online school,  New Zealand Virtual School.

To open in 2011 it will  cater for Year 9 to 13 children and adults from across the country and around the world.

The group,  which is already running a “pilot” virtual aviation programme with students from across the country and as far away as Africa,  has been named by the Minister of Education, Ann Tolley, as one of five  successful applicants from a field of 113 to become  New Zealand’s first trade academies. The other successful trade academy applicants were: Northland College; the Wellington Institute of Technology; the Taratahi Agricultural Centre; and a partnership between the Waikato Institute of Technology and Cambridge High School.

The Catlins Area School’s bid in  conjunction with  South Otago High School, Tokomairo High School, Blue Mountain College and Telford Rural Polytechnic,  was the only application accepted from the South Island but it  will provide the only fully virtual, computer-based “trade academy” service throughout the country, using Skype, specifically-developed 3D graphics from New Zealand -based SmallWorlds – a  virtual world that runs inside a web browser; combining media, web content, and casual games, created by  Auckland’s  Outsmart - podcasts, video conferencing, specialised MMORPGs and other online features.

Others associated with the New Zealand Virtual School include 10  Industry Training Organisations (ITOs), among them AgITO, ESITO, ATTTO, JITO, MITO, Creative trades iTO, GlobalMet, InfraTrain NZ, and EXITO, as well as Enterprise Clutha and Air Fiordland.

New Zealand Virtual School  project  manager Allan Asbjorn Jon,  the Deputy Principal, eLearning and International Student Director at the Catlins Area School told the Southland Times “We now have the opportunity, here in Southland and Otago, to be at the forefront of the virtual movement in New Zealand. It could become a very big educational project in Australasia.

“We are trying to put together a platform to assist young people more towards trade training and trade careers with greater ease.”

Funding on per student basis

Noting that the project, which he has spent many months on, was still evolving Jon said that the governance, structure and  final funding  decisions would be made during discussions with the New Zealand Education Ministry  scheduled to take place on November 4. It is presumed funding would be on a per student basis.

Under the NZVS programme students will get three days virtual study and work placements  for up to two days a week so they can also learn “hands-on”. They will also be able to participate in “block camps” likely to be run at RNZAF bases in both the north and south islands. The RNZAF, according to Jon, has been very supportive of the project.

Jon said programmes were being developed across a wide range of subjects including aviation, tourism, travel and museum studies, joinery and glasswork, stonemasonry, painting and decorating, automotive, mining and drilling and civil engineering. Courses will also cover entire NCEA qualifications including  English and maths.

The virtual school (Facebook link here), he said, had the benefit of being able to cater for the needs of an individual – programmes could  be designed specifically for them.

Classes begin 2011

Although a pilot programme has been running with  about  70 students, enrolments for the new school will be opened  towards the end of next year with the first classes to  begin in early 2011.

Announcing the virtual school choice as a trade academy, Mrs Tolley said every student should have an education system which worked for them and met their needs: the New Zealand Virtual School based in the Catlins would help deliver that.

“Trades academies are part of the Government’s Youth Guarantee programme,” she said in a statement. “They’ll provide more career choices for 16- and 17-year-olds and give them greater opportunities to develop their knowledge, skills and talents through trades and technology programmes.”

Six other proposals from around the country are still to be developed with a view to them also becoming trades academies.

The NZVS team: Front: Gavin Kidd, Principal, The Catlins Area School, Allan Asbjorn Jon,

Deputy Principal and Project Manager,  NZVS; Wayne Edgar, Principal,  Tokomairiro High

School; Nick Simpson, Principal,  South Otago High School; Back: Dave Evans, Aviation

Industry Training Advisor, ATTTO; and Kevin McSweeney, Principal, Blue Mountain College.

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SLENZ Update, No 145, October 23, 2009

Online-gaming: a mind-altering strategy from Big Red Sheds?

Warehouse CIO  launches  “virtual games”

strategy to improve  Kiwi  life outcomes

There is  now a considerable and growing body of evidence that  on-line gaming   and the use of virtual worlds can  be mind altering, leading  to development of  different life skills, either good or bad, as typified by the Proteus Effect, first described by Dr Nick Yee, in  his PhD dissertation, and based on research into  World of Warcraft player psychologies.

Now the baton has been taken up in New Zealand by the Warehouse CIO Owen McCall (pictured left) who is the promoter of the the Life Game Project, which aims to use immersive games technology to “develop life skills and positive lifestyle choices” for New Zealanders aged five to 19.

He has assembled a small group of companies and individuals based on their specific expertise, who are collaborating in getting and creating  the components needed to get educational life games out to children and youths in ‘under-served’ communities.

The life games will be designed to  teach youngsters how to cope with various issues they may have to face growing up in their community, including  physical abuse, exposure to alcoholism, drugs, gang pressure and/or some other problem where education may make the difference between a youth sinking or swimming in life.

Others involved in initial discussions of the  Life Game Project last month included: Aden Forrest, of Salesforce, John Blackham, of XSOL, David Gandar, of Delta Software and Parikshit Basrur, of First Mobile, Nicole Fougère,  of Litmos and a representative of the University of Auckland.

“Big, hairy, audacious goals”

Divina Paredes, writing in CIO New Zealand,  earlier this month, said the group had “big, hairy, audacious goals”  for completion by December, 2012. They included: Measurably impacting  the lives of 2000 Kiwis, their families and friends through the programme; establishing  50 effective games delivery operations; and developing two immersive games for the local communities and for sale globally.

In the short term, Paredes said, the group planned to have at least one such community  centre with six to 10 PCs set up before Christmas this year, in an under-served community.

McCall, who is also a coach for StepUp, a programme  that assists underprivileged teens, says the group chose to harness games technology on the premise that the more immersive and involving the technology, the better the learning experience and learning outcome would be.

“It really springs from a belief that most people will make good choices in their lives if they have the skills and the capabilities,” McCall told Paredes, as many online games were driven by participants’ decisions and their ability to complete specific quests or tasks. “You can teach them or allow them to learn and experience through the games what good choices and what skills and capabilities they require to be successful.”

McCall says his favourite example of helping society’s victims turn their lives around is the Delancey Street Foundation in the US, which has  helped substance abusers, ex-convicts and homeless persons through peer support and mentoring.

“Pretty amazing results…”

“Anything you can do to support that learning at anytime in someone’s life, you get some pretty amazing results,” he told Paredes

Fougère,  general manager of online learning company Litmos, described the initative as “ambitious” but added that the real issue  could be  internet coverage in the areas to be served,  an issue  for most Kiwis accessing virtual worlds anywhere outside of the main commercial centres.   She told  Paredes, however, that  the group also concluded during the initial meeting that putting the PCs in a community house would be preferable, as it would hopefully encourage social interaction and culture around the activities, and better security.

It is not known whether the ubiquitous Sony Playstation – popular even in  underprivileged areas -  and its Home virtual world and/or other games consoles  were discussed as possible vehicles for the LPG games.

Ian Howard (pictured right) a consultant, facilitator and coach,  who has been appointed team lead for the LGP Project, said the LGP Group was  keen to provide LGP Supporters with satisfying bite-sized opportunities to participate with the LGP.

“As we move forward with various pilots and then into production, there will also be many opportunities for LGP Supporters to join a LGP Project Delivery Team as an Owner, a PM or ‘What can I do to help’ member,” he said. “These are the essential ‘customer facing’ people at the sharp end who will collaborate with the LGP Support Teams to facilitate, drive and support the delivery of the right LGP Games over the appropriate Infrastructure to specific Under-served Communities.”

SLENZ Update, No 144, October 14, 2009

The Virtual World campus

250+ US universities now  offer

degrees linked to ‘virtuality’

Video game/Virtual World design courses boom …

… and at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School too. (logo AFTRS)

The fact that more than 250 of the United States colleges and universities in 37 states are offering degree courses this school year, involving video-gaming and virtual world technology, demonstrates just how mainstream computer-based “virtuality” is becoming, at least in the developed Western World, if not quite yet in New Zealand

The figures are up 27 percent over the previous year, according to a recent report by Mara Rose Williams in The Kansas City Star, quoting the Entertainment Software Association, which monitors the US video gaming  industry

According to the  association’s Rich Taylor, video-game design is the fastest-growing industry in the United States. “A generation that has grown up playing video games is entering college. Schools are responding to that.”

At a time when students are graduating into a shrinking job market,  the video gaming industry is flourishing, Taylor told Williams.  Last year, games and game consoles reached US$22 billion in sales, he said, with 68 percent of people of all ages playing video games, with video game consoles in almost 50 percent of US households  and 95 percent of young people playing them. He added that more than 80,000 people today are employed by the video-game industry.

“Schools realizing that video-game design is a viable industry,” he told Williams, a statement which resonated with me when I visited a leading New Zealand University earlier this week, to find it didn’t have wireless on campus, and a session on Second Life on one computer on  the university’s Broadband system had to be booked three months in  advance.

The realisation of the necessity of moving into the virtual age in the US,  if not in New Zealand, was underscored last month with the report in Scientific Computing that   Northern Kentucky University, with a gift of US$6 million, had joined South Dakota State University and St. Paul College in Minnesota – miles from the virtual world hot seats of California and New York -  to create an US$7 million virtual world informatics center complete with a computer assisted virtual environment (CAVE). The facility, scheduled to open in fall 2011, will be named Griffin Hall.

Griffin Hall, designed to be a key real-world virtual-world research unit, will house NKU’s College of Informatics, which consists of three academic departments as well as an outreach unit, the Infrastructure Management Institute.

The US, however, is not the only place where there is considerable movement on the virtual world education front.

In Australia,  the Sydney-based Australia’s Film Radio and Television school has announced it will offer a Graduate Certificate in Video Games and Virtual Worlds next year. The course will concentrate on the development of original concepts for virtual stories, games, social worlds and innovative gameplay.

And with more than  80% of Higher Education institutes in the UK already  users of Virtual Worlds for educational purposes, Glasgow Caledonian University, in Scotland, announced some months ago it was  creating a 3D Web project with a “complete, integrated module” that would teach students everything they needed to know to get a 3D virtual world up and running. The skills will include hosting, managing and creating real estate, and user interactivity. The course will be taught in the realworld but also will be supplemented by elements in Second Life and will also use OpenSim.

The university is already active in Second Life with a number of its schools using the MUVE for such things as visualisation, clinical training, support, and training on a virtual x-ray machine in the Schools of Engineering and Computing, Nursery, Midwifery and Community Health, and Health and Social Care.

“In 10 years it will be as normal to navigate in and between virtual worlds as it is to open a Web site today,”  according to Ferdinand Francino, course designer, on the university Web site. “The new module will ensure our students are at the forefront of technology and are fully equipped with the skills they will need in future.”

Will we in New Zealand be ready for the day when:

Virtuality will permeate all corners of our life …

For instance “retail therapy” …

Well, this is one way  CISCO thinks virtual reality will develop.

SLENZ Update, No 143, October 8, 2009

THE SLENZ WORKSHOPS AT

Teaching and Learning/eFest 2009 -2

MUVEing towards collaboration – the benefits and pitfalls of working as a collaborative teaching in a Multi-user Virtual Environment,” and “In-world, meets the real world – the trials and tribulations of bringing Second Life to an ITP,” presented by Merle Lemon, lead educator in foundation learning, and lecturer at Manukau Institute of Technology and Oriel Kelly, manager of MIT’s Learning Environment Support Technology Centre.

SL foundation learning students

“do better” than f2f learners

Real Life assessment finding

Merle Lemon is her SL alter ego on screen at Teaching and Learning/eFest 2009

Foundation Learning students who used the SLENZ pilot foundation learning programme in Second Life to hone their interview skills  did  better in real life assessment interviews than  those students  who had not been through Second Life, according to SLENZ lead educator and senior Manukau Institute of Technology lecturer Merle Lemon (SL: Briamelle Quintessa).

The  result came from  all foundation learning classes in interview techniques – both from those students who  used Second Life and those in face-to-face classes – being assessed in real life interviews by an assessor who did not know who had attended which classes.

Although Lemon is the first to admit the test was “not scientific” and that the results “might have  been confounded by individual class teacher ability” the results point to the benefits of  a properly- designed  virtual world  learning programme used by itself or as a valuable  adjunct to face-to-face learning.

The result, even if anecdotal in nature, was across the board with students four  the  four SL classes  doing better in the real life interview assessment  than those from six face-to-face-only classes.

Lemon reported the result as an aside to virtual world teaching workshops she conducted  at last week’s annual, national Teaching and Learning/eFest 2009  tertiary education conference  at UCOL in Palmerston North, New Zealand.

Introducing “MUVEing towards collaboration – the benefits and pitfalls of working as a collaborative teaching team in a Multiuser Virtual Environment”,  Lemon  paid tribute to the SLENZ team and  to the support she received from her foundation learning pilot members and fellow educators -  MIT’s Tania Hogan (SL: Tania Hogan) and  Maryanne Wright (SL:Nugget Mixemup); NorthTec’s  Martin Bryers (SL: Motini Manimbo), Vicki Pemberton (SL: Sky Zeitman) and  Clinton Ashill (SL: Clat Adder), as well as Oriel Kelly (pictured right),  manager of MIT’s Learning Environment Support Technology Centre and MIT’s IT support staff  “although they were somewhat reluctant at first.”
“We tried  to get the  educators into Second Life as quickly as possible after the project started,” Lemon said. ” We tried to keep everyone on the same page all the time and largely succeeded.

“But  we had to keep the lecturers motivated. They had to realise they were not going to be alone when they were going into SL.  For this we used mentors and we linked up for meetings together in SL and with other educators in SL. Volunteers from ISTE ( International Society for Technology in Education) and the University of Arizona helped out a lot in SL.”

Highest praise for ISTE, Jo Kay

On an international collaborative basis she paid tribute for outstanding help – I publish her list in the belief it may be a help to other educators -  to  Second Life’s MNC  (New Media Consortium), CCSL (Community Colleges of Second Life), Google Teacher Academy,Second Life Mentors, Second Life Education, and Second Ability Mentors (for the disabled).

She also found the  VWBPE (Virtual World Best Practices in Education  conference) run virtually in  February  this year as being invaluable both from a  learning and networking point of view and received help from  the Education Coffee House, Virtual Pioneers and Media Learning – Danish Visions, the Kiwi Educators group, and COM Educators in Second Life.

She reserved some of her highest praise for   The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) which she described as “the trusted source for professional development, knowledge generation, advocacy, and leadership for innovation” in in-world education and Australian Second Life educator and researcher Jo Kay, of Jokaydia, the Jokaydia annual Unconference , Jokaydia News and Info and   Jokaydia Educators-in Rez.

“Inadequacy,” “panic”

Lemon said among the difficulties experienced by her  team  were: wavering support and/or a lack of commitment;  exacerbated by feelings of  “inadequacy” and sometimes “panic”;  communication problems and the loss of some team members as the pilot progressed. There  also was a problem initially with student non-attendance and  a lack of computer literacy but this had been overcome with the establishment of a “buddy” system. This had sometimes turned into a problem of keeping track of students: “Make sure they are in your group and are on your friends list,” she said.

However, in the five classes taken into SL, there had only been one student who had “resisted” the idea, not for computer or virtual world issues, but because of “privacy” in connection with the other students.

In deciding to move learning into Second Life, Lemon said, educators, rather than  initially spending lots on their developments etc, without proper research,  should consider the existing resources within Second Life and  whether they could use these  resources, and what needed to be added to them to make them useful for a particular purpose.

She recommended, based on her experience, that the lead educator or “champion” of any on-going  education project in Second Life should  Motivate, Motivate, Motivate team members.  She noted that in the Second Life context “knowledge is power”.

She added that any  education team should  hold regular meetings in world and members should lock  themselves into the relevant Second Life groups. But, she added, team members must take time to have fun in SecondLife.

Technology issues

On Technical and Learning Technology Support Issues, Oriel Kelly, who presented  this paper with Lemon, said at MIT, they had  found,  that Second Life barely ran on a computer with an Intel Core 2 Duo; Motherboard: Intel DG35EC (G35 Express); CPU: Intel E8400 (2Ghz); Memory: 2GB (800mhz) RAM; GPU: NVIDIA GeForce 9500 GT. On the question of network and bandwidth,  latency was an issue  with computer lab  sessions needing 416kb/machine. Firewalls had also been problematic because Second Life’s  SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) is non-standard  and needed to be passed without being shredded by SIP aware firewalls or declared an  “illegal operation”.
On the question of access MIT  had had problems with  single IP NATs (network address translation) registering more than two avatars.
“We had a lot of technical problems, ” Lemon said,  adding that the major complaints from students had involved  technical issues.

Many of the problems, Lemon said, could be overcome by involving the technical staff in-world in the Second Life experience.

“Once in there and involved in the experiences they are sucked in,” she  half joked,  adding that previously the technical staff hadn’t been able to see why anyone would want to teach in-world.

SLENZ Update, No 142, October 6, 2009

THE SLENZ WORKSHOPS AT Teaching and Learning/eFest 2009

Five lessons from the creation of

education pilots  in Second Life

SL’s Arwenna Stardust and RL’s Dr Clare Atkins make a point.

The five SLENZ Project workshops attended by mainstream tertiary educators at  the  annual, national Teaching  and Learning/eFest 2009 conference, at UCOL, Palmerston North, New Zealand, last week,  provided some valuable tips for  the administration and creation of virtual world education.

I thought the lessons  important enough to provide summaries of some of them for educators and administrators who could not attend the conference. The first  summary is below.

The SLENZ Project team members who presented at the conference  included, SLENZ Project co leaders, Dr Clare Atkins and Terry Neal; Merle Lemon, lead educator  for the foundation learning pilot at  Manukau Institute of Technology, and  Oriel Kelly, manager of MIT’s  Learning  Environment Support Technology Centre;  Lead developer, Aaron Griffiths, of F/Xual Education Services;  and   Todd Cochrane,  a SLENZ developer  and lecturer at WelTec.

Funding for the SLENZ Project was provided by the Tertiary Education Commission of New Zealand, a Government body.

1. “Working effectively in a virtual team”

[Presented by  SLENZ Project co-leaders, Dr Clare Atkins, of NMIT, and Terry  Neal, of Blended Solutions.]

The core team was made up of two parts:  students, educators, learning designer, Project Leader Second Life, (Atkins)  and the developers,  in one box, and the evaluator, communications and Project Leader Real Life (Neal) in the other. Although theoretically all the  roles  were to have worked together in practice they overlapped.

The core team was supported by a project administrator, literature reviewer,  web developer, other educators (10), IT support (4), video makers (2),  the steering group (9) and the friends of the project who sometimes attended meetings  on the Second Life island of Koru or provided advice via email or other means.

Forming: The creation  of the project evolved out of Dr Clare Atkin’s network through one-to-one phone conversations, the formulation of a Project Execution Plan and a face-to-face meeting at which modifications were made. Those modifications included the addition of a communications role. In Second Life the “forming* of the SLENZ Project included the creation of avatars, support for  newbie players on the team and the formulation of  agreed meeting protocols.

Storming: The design and development phases of the project  included a process to agree process, the agreement on process,  open versus closed interaction, the learning design – considering access or focus on in-world experience, and discussion of the implications of creative commons licence, which will eventually lead to the team’s Second Life work and builds being made freely available with full permissions.

Norming: Communication and problem solving  was done  through weekly in-world team meetings on the island of Koru, weekly Skype calls by Neal, weekly development team meetings  led by Atkins,  a weekly catchup/review by Atkins and Neal, and  the provision of publicly available documentation through all stages of the project.

Performing: The project proceeded with the ongoing use of established processes,  celebration of milestones and  achievements – something often missing in virtual projects -   and the linking in of educators, through the lead educator in each of the pilots,  and the linking in of the evaluator  by Neal.   Extra  team roles were developed with the appointment of a web developer and video developers.

Adjourning ( or the winding down and completion of the project): A final face-to-face team meeting will be held, with the team sharing what it can over the final three months to the winding up and clear finish.

Keys to success: According to both Atkins and Neal the keys to the success of the Project were/are: the establishment of a clear prupose, clear roles, the use of  multiple communications methods, including a variety of online tools and text and voice communication; dual project leadership, and constant monitoring of the progress and well-being of the team.

Next blog:  MUVEing towards collaboration – the benefits  and pitfalls of working as a collaborative teaching in a Multi-user Virtual Environment,” and “In-world, meets the real world – the trials and tribulations of bringing Second Life to an ITP,” presented by Merle Lemon, lead educator in foundation learning,  and lecturer at Manukau Institute of Technology and Oriel Kelly also of MIT.

eFest unconference workshop demos

SLENZ co-leader Terry Neal (right) gives an

unscheduled demonstration of SLGriffiths  points out a detail to a polytech lecturer.

Educators Trevor Forest, of Rotorua, and his wife watch

a demo by SLENZ ‘adviser’, Warren Masterson

SLENZ Update, No 141, October 6, 2009

THE SLENZ PROJECT

SLENZ teams finds new ‘acceptance,

enthusiasm’  at    education  gabfest

… Need seen to retain team skills, post-SLENZ Project

Almost full house … Aaron Griffiths details a Developer’s work.

as the SLENZ Lead Developer/builder.

Growing “acceptance” of Second Life as an education medium  and a new  “enthusiasm” for  virtual world education  was demonstrated in Palmerston North, New Zealand, last week by the  number of mainstream tertiary educators  who attended five  SLENZ team workshops at  the  annual, national Teaching  and Learning/eFest 2009 conference .

The growing interest in virtual worlds also was demonstrated in an unscheduled,  eFest unconference workshop before the conference proper and the fact that the  eight members of the SLENZ team who attended the conference were constantly pulled aside by attendees, wanting to learn more about virtual world education  or wanting to know how to become actively involved.

It was the third annual mainstream conference at which  the SLENZ Project  has been promoted but  its acceptance was very different from previous outings.

As Lead developer Aaron Griffiths (pictured) (SL: Isa Goodman), of F/Xual Education Services, said, “It was  like a coming of age. At the first two conferences we could only tell them what it  could be like. With this conference we really had something to show them. We could show that education in virtual worlds can work and be both economic and effective.”

The success was such  that a number of educators  attending the workshops and  in private conversations later suggested that the SLENZ Team,  due to complete  the SLENZ Programme  by year end,  should be retained  so that  the  skills learned and honed on the project would not be lost to  the New Zealand education community. The suggestion was even made that the project should be set up on a permanent, collaborative  basis with funding from New Zealand  tertiary institutions who wished to employ the team’s skills in setting up their own virtual education units.

Commenting on this, SLENZ Project  joint co-leader,  Dr Clare Atkins (SL: Arwenna Stardust), of NMIT,  said it made sense for  New Zealand’s tertiary institutions, and particularly its Polytechnics to  co-operate and work collaboratively in virtual worlds, rather than individually. In that way they could make effective, economic  use of the available advice, skills  and lessons already learned as  well as ensuring  that each was not going through the costly exercise of trying to reinvent the wheel, independently.

After the conference, co-leader, Terry Neal (SL: Tere Tinkel), of Blended Solutions, said  that the Project would consider setting up a virtual world roadshow  for those Polytechnic educators and administrators who had expressed  interest in learning more about education in Second Life and other virtual worlds.

The Polytechnic educators at  the four-day conference at UCOL who appeared most interested  in virtual world education for their students included  those involved in  nursing and paramedic training, anatomy and physiology lecturing, foundation (bridging) learning,  trade and industry training and  agriculture, including viticulture,  all areas which the SLENZ team has worked in  or has looked  at working in.

Dr Clare Atkins and Terry Neal .. working effectively in a virtual team.

The SLENZ Project team members who presented at the conference  included, Dr Atkins and Terry Neal; Merle Lemon (SL: Briarmelle Quintessa), lead educator  for the foundation learning pilot at  Manukau Institute of Technology, and  Oriel Kelly, manager of MIT’s  Learning  Environment Support Technology Centre;  Aaron Griffiths;  and   Todd Cochrane (SL: Toddles Lightworker),  a SLENZ developer  and lecturer at WelTec.

The SLENZ workshops, which will be the subject of a separate posting, looked at, “Working effectively in a virtual team,” “3D as an everyday medium for teaching, ” “MUVEing towards collaboration – the benefits and pitfalls of working as a collaborative teaching in a Multiuser Virtual Environment”, “In-world, meets the real world – the trials and tribulations of bringing Second Life to an ITP, “From  Real World to Virtual: Actualising Virtual World Education.