Second Life + Moodle.

Second Life + Moodle.

by Paul Andrews -
Number of replies: 18

Hello! A few of us are trying to get Moodle working with Second Life to make a 3d interface for our favorite VLE and I was wondering if anyone else would be interested in joining in?  Looking for coders and teachers and, well everyone who uses Moodle really!

Go on.. 3D Moodle would be "a bit good" - plus Second life is already being used for some outstanding educational projects.

For more info (and to keep this post short!) please click here.

Cheers!

Paul.

 

www.sloodle.com

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In reply to Paul Andrews

Svar: Sloodle: Second Life & Moodle=TRUE! Welcome to Dev meeting!

by Anders Berggren -
Sloodle: Second Life & Moodle=TRUE!
Development is under way promising to
combine fun entertainment with serious learning.
So far I am thrilled with the expericence and
and excited about the pedagogic potential.

More info on how to get involved here.
Same link as in Paul's posting.

Today Monday at noon Second Life Time (about 9 hours
and 20 minutes from when this was posted) there'll be an
initial Developer's Meeting in SL and it will be about
the integration of Moodle and Second Life. Demos are
already in place. Everyone is invited.

At sloodle (you need to register and log in to see)
there's an agenda for the meeting as well as a
Sloodle Development Forum.

Sorry for not announcing this earlier,
hope to see some of you in this context
though,now or later.
Cheers, Anders

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In reply to Paul Andrews

Re: Second Life + Moodle.

by Martin Dougiamas -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers
I'd like to try it but SecondLife won't install on either of my main machines (Intel Macbook Pro and Windows Vista PC) sad
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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: Second Life + Moodle.

by Julian Ridden -
You installed vista? And have the nerve to call me bleeding edge ;)

I have it installed on my Mac G3. Maybe there is an intel issue sad
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In reply to Julian Ridden

Re: Second Life + Moodle.

by Martin Dougiamas -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers
Vista is actually already much more stable than XP wink And it's free (for now).
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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Svar: Re: Second Life + Moodle.

by Anders Berggren -
Some reflections about SLoodle
To me the core of Moodle's pedagogical
potential is about communication, collaboration
and creativity. In Moodle this is mostly textbased.
SL doesn't render text very well on graphical objects
though. Opening links and files (often indirectly in SL)
in the windows of all kinds of other applications is some-
thing that everyone is not going to be comfortable with.
It can be distracting, confusing and cause loss of focus.
I'm not sure this way of working mirrors how we
humans and our brains function psychologically either.
You can use text chat and notices within SL and that's
perfectly readable, but when this stuff comes up it's
difficult to see what's going on in the virtual environment...
You have to get familiar with those tools so that you can
move them around and get them out of the way easily.

SL excels as a social virtual reality, even if it's not photo-
realistic and the sounds you can make are few and even
though they are human, they are quite primitive. I like
meeting other people and chatting with them. What I
long for now however is voice chat in both SL and Moodle.
You can use Skype together with Moodle, up to five people
simultaneously and you can add web cameras as well. E.g.
GONG, yackpack and dimdim offer voice communication
tools and the COVCELL project are developing new standard
Moodle modules for this. There's also a simple Marratech integration.

You can use these tools to talk to, and with, the learners. They
can take notes in SL as well as in Moodle, the learning process can
be handled with the assistance of e.g. the calendar. SL could be
great for language learning. You could explore the environment and
meet native speakers of the language you're studying and you could
e.g. use the Moodle Project Module (third party) to perform joint
projects with people you meet in SL. It doesn't have to a pure language
course though, many fields of knowledge could be integrated.

If you want to explore Second Life it could be more interesting if
you do it in the company of others with similar interests. If you
you have a guide they can show you around, choosing the right
places - there are many...

Here we are exploring and chatting (chat is already integrated and
goes both ways including option to record) about a SL whiteboard
showing three mockups, one interactive, from a Moodle-site.

Lack of imagination can be the only limit here. wink
Anders
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In reply to Anders Berggren

Re: Svar: Re: Second Life + Moodle.

by Martin Dougiamas -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers
NOTE: you don't need 3D to implement chat, whiteboards and audio conferencing. wink

I've had a lot of experience with 3D ... my CS major was Computer Graphics and at one point I was even considering a PhD developing VR education spaces (like CAVE); I helped develop a VRML interface to a MOO in 1995, I ran modded Unreal Tournament servers in the late 90's, I was a beta tester for there.com) but ...

I must say these days I'm very skeptical of how useful 3D interfaces really are for education (after the initial "wow look at that" phase. The technology is still bulky and slow and error-prone and limited. Maybe in five or ten years things will finally catch up. For now, I'm much more concerned about getting good educational processes out of simple web pages (and there is a lot of work to do there still!)

I'll still be trying out Second Life when it works on my platforms, from what I read they seem to trying to do things a little differently (and yes, 3D is fun!)
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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Svar: Re: Svar: Re: Second Life + Moodle.

by Anders Berggren -
Hi,
You're right, 3D is still primitive and on
a prototype-like stage. A lot of people have
problems controlling their SL avatars and
handling the environment, and they may
think it's their fault. So much needs to be
done in terms of developing the technology,
usability, navigation etc. SL is a huge world
too, but I'm not interested in all the places
you can go and I guess some places are quite
primitive, static and inactive. The good thing
is you can do something about it yourself.

Advantages are that you are there as a human,
be it as a cartoon. You can meet people and see
their avatar and you can express yourself with
pidgin body language. I think that is a great
advantage but the performance is too clumsy
for now. So was the AMIGA in the 80s but with
it you could envision a future with things like
Moodle - and VR in it.

And Moodle is of course great as it is and I'm
sure it will continue to surprise us, also with audio
and visual affordances enhancing people's
options for communication and collaboration.

Cheers, Anders leende

In RL in Sweden we have 30 cm wet heavy snow
now that is freezing, becoming also hard to shovel.



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In reply to Anders Berggren

Re: Svar: Re: Svar: Re: Second Life + Moodle.

by Timothy Takemoto -
I think I asked somewhere else so pardon me for asking again if you responded there but, does Second Life cost money to join? I was of the impression that it does, in which case I don't think I will be able to afford it.

Are there places where Japanese students might go to chat in English and interact?

I used to take them to English language that moo, SchMOOze university  occassionally. List of Moo's. Despite the name similarity Moodle has no moo module. Or are the forums a Moo? Yes...

Timothy
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In reply to Timothy Takemoto

Svar: Re: Svar: Re: Svar: Re: Second Life + Moodle.

by Anders Berggren -
Hi TIm,
You can have a free SL account.
As a matter of fact you are even
offered Linden dollars for free
when you register. The costs
come if you e.g. want to buy
land or build restricted areas
for only you and your students.
You can use the basic SL features
for free but people also offer
extensions of various kinds, some
for free, others for a small fee.

If you want to hire a programmer
to provide something that you need
that is possible, it is mostly cheap.
There's a scripting language LSL and
as people have done with Moodle,
people can create integrations.

SL has 1,2 million residents so I guess
you could make all kinds of contacts.

Furthermore there are at least 20
educational landmarks and more can
be created, so I guess there are options
for your Japanese students.

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In reply to Anders Berggren

Re: Svar: Re: Svar: Re: Svar: Re: Second Life + Moodle.

by Timothy Takemoto -
Thanks very much Anders. I will try it out.
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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: Svar: Re: Second Life + Moodle.

by Tony Hursh -
Second Life is definitely different from the typical 3D world.

It's much easier for non-technical folks to learn how to construct their own objects than in any other 3D environment that I've seen, but at the same time advanced users can create nifty scripted objects (okay, the scripting language is a little ugly).

Essentially everything you see in SL is user-created. Social constructivism on a grand scale. smile

It's a shame it doesn't run on your MacBook Pro. It runs okay on my MacBook (or did the last time I checked it). I'd guess a video driver problem?

I saw a thread that indicates that Linden has an internal build that resolves at least some of the problems. The thread also contained some workarounds that others claimed would fix the problem, although they look somewhat voodoo-ish.

http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?t=142675&page=1&pp=15
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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Moodle is Second Life's perfect classroom partner

by Jeremy Kemp -

Hello Martin,

First let me say that I'm honored you have commented on this topic!

I support the sloodle.com domain and initiated the concept with Dan Livingstone of Paisley University in paper for the Second Life Community Convention.

See our proceedings: http://tinyurl.com/2xshje
And our specific whitepaper: http://www.sloodle.com/whitepaper.pdf

Our project's scripts in PHP and "Linden Scripting Language" are open source, free of charge - and will always be that way.

All lead developers on our project are university educators committed to helping students achieve their learning and life goals.

I agree with you 100% that 3D is too cumbersome to be of use in most general education classrooms. This will change. We are proposing a new way to scaffold learning in this wild frontier of sociofinancial 3D settings. And much of the excitement for our project (over 1000 accounts requested in three months) comes from the Moodle community.

IMHO most "classrooms" in Second Life now are merely decorative chat rooms. And, IMHO, this is not justifiable from a time-on-task perspective. (http://tinyurl.com/2gesy) Your typical student in a World Literature class, for instance, just doesn't get enough in return for all of the access problems, interface complexity and exotic overhead that comes with avatars and 3D modeling.

HOWEVER... Let me explain why this "mashup" is useful - even remarkable – and stands to benefit teachers in both communities immensely.

1) Second Life is not a game. I see it as the first in a line of open frameworks for content creation and sharing in a 3D space. World of Warcraft, There and Sims Online are obvious predecessors. But, upon closer examination, SL's closest relative is VRML. You will find no quests, the company doesn't filter user-created objects and social engineering is avoided for the most part.

2) Second Life is web-enabled. Millions of learning objects loaded on web servers and Moodle sites are portable for the first time into immersive environments REAL-TIME. This allows for stunning learning widgets. Connecting these objects and designing proper interfaces for them is a monumental task. Second Life needs Moodle in order to do this well.

3) Second Life is unstructured and offers meager scaffolding for teaching and learning. Thus Moodle is its perfect classroom partner. It needs Moodle.

4) The Second Life hype factor will fade and learning activities in the environment will normalize and be assessed for their outcomes. This assessment piece is lacking now. Simple quiz, file submission, asynchronous communication frameworks and grading tools are nowhere to be found. And so Second Life needs Moodle.

All this said, Moodle needs Second Life as well. Millions of "players" enjoy communities of practice, experiential learning and nearly addictive presence in Multi User Virtual Environments like WoW. Learning outcomes in these settings are clinically proven. Imagine a Moodle course that, if you wanted, could turn into a proper 3D interactive classroom with all your Moodle resources available to your students in the virtual world.

Sloodle was recently named one of the 'Hottest eLearning Technologies of the Year' by Sam Adkins, Chief Research Officer of Ambient Insight... http://ambientinsight.com/News/PR-20070112.aspx

Bloggers from a dozen countries have featured this development.

Dan and I are launching Sloodle 1.0 at Paisley University in Scotland on March 22nd. See: http://www.ics.heacademy.ac.uk/events/displayevent.php?id=142

I see our project as a perfect compliment to modules in the Moodle family. Educators in Second Life need Moodle. I hope you'll take a serious look at this development and help us as we struggle through this development effort!

--Jeremy

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In reply to Jeremy Kemp

Re: Moodle is Second Life's perfect classroom partner

by David Richardson -
I teach English at a small university in southern Sweden (we'd probably be called a teaching college in the US). The project has just become a junior partner in a Norwegian project which has just received approx. $50,000 for 2007 to create a learning environment in Second Life. We'll get at least the same for 2008, if we've done something with the money we get for 2007. The other two partners are Molde (in Norway) and Central Missouri State University.

A couple of us were brainstorming the possibilities of this environment the other day. One of the suggestions which came out was a course in schmoozing at conferences for Scandinavian post-graduate students and young researchers. Scandinavians tend to 'wait their turn' to speak in round-table discussions and are often reticent about pushing themselves forward at coffee breaks and around the dinner table … so they often get passed over when invitations to join research groups come up because they haven't made much of an impression on anyone. SL would be a good environment to run a course like this in.

Another one was a short course in oral presentation in English. Imagine a German businessperson who was going to a trade fair in Sweden. You could get her to dress her avatar in clothes she thought were appropriate and then to make her spiel (using SecondTalk linked to Skype), getting feedback from Swedes.

A further suggestion was for our teacher trainees to have their teaching practice mentors make short film clips of the trainee in action, which could then be posted on SL. Our trainees are spread out over an area which is roughly 100 kms x 200 kms when they're out, so they could then 'meet' in small groups in SL, watch the clips and then commiserate with each other!

None of these suggestions is particularly novel - it's just that we haven't had the technology until very recently (or perhaps we still don't have it). In the days of YouTube, however, even the third suggestion doesn't seem so sci-fi.

However, each of them really requires the social interaction of a wider course setting, mostly because you need to create the conditions where people really are willing to open up to a bunch of strangers. These course settings will probably involve many other elements than 3D, and will function in a context of text-based materials, grades, etc, etc. That's what you need a course management system like Moodle for …

We're not there yet, technologically, but, given the fact that we won't be ready for any real courses in this Norwegian-US-Swedish environment until 2008 at the earliest, we might well be ready to roll at about the time computers and students can cope. One, perhaps unintended, consequence of Vista is that the generation of current PCs, which generally can't do SL satisfactorily, will have to be traded in for ones that can - just in order to get Vista to work properly.
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In reply to Jeremy Kemp

Re: Moodle is Second Life's perfect classroom partner

by Bryan Williams -

Jeremy,

It would be most helpful if your email address were available. We are about to throw our hat (and resources) into the Second Life ring in a significant way and it would be nice to connect with you and your team offline.

Bryan

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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: Svar: Re: Second Life + Moodle.

by sam marshall -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
(This rant is rather late, but I happened to have a little time to kill. Please don't take it too seriously. It's certainly an attack on such projects but there's no reason anybody should care what I think about it.)

Martin is so right about 3D interfaces in general. 3D interfaces are a way of making something that, for many people, is difficult to understand - computer software and the Web - very much harder, slower, and clumsier. Second Life in particular is an overhyped mess.

It's another triumph of branding over substance - there's a misguided impression that it's something new. In fact, it's a poor 3D interface (and a few nice gimmicks) over something pretty old - fundamentally, a large MU*.

It's not even as large as their claimed numbers suggest. I wonder how many simultaneous users? This article has some insight. It seems that some of the larger IRC networks probably manage more simultaneous users, and that's a technology that was invented in 1988 and (sadly) is currently in decline.

Why did I use IRC as an example? Well, most people quickly come to realise that the 'crafting' aspects of MU*s, while briefly entertaining, are fairly pointless in the long term, and gravitate to the plainer, easier-to-use and more-focused world of online chat. Those who stick with MU*s are generally there for the roleplaying - more World of Warcraft than Second Life, and not terribly relevant to Moodle until somebody comes out with the orc-killing activity module.

Basically Second Life is yet another 'Web 2.0' media-hype scourge and I want to kick that ******* until it's thoroughly dead. smile Rather than being a real system that actually does something useful, and certainly rather than holding even a potential to improve usability in any way, it simply provides fodder for academics who need a buzzword on which to hang their next grant proposal; and for PR agencies looking to grab cheap publicity for their rock group/politician/country while they can.

--sam

PS Or should I tell you what I really think? smile

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In reply to sam marshall

Re: Svar: Re: Second Life + Moodle.

by Jeremy Kemp -
Hello Sam,

I yawn at your rant. smile

You are spot-on about the hype problem , PR flack abuses and UI difficulties. The other side of the coin here is a highly engaged community of teachers and learners, large companies making real commitments to develop learning objects and a UI recently gone open source.

You've taken the 20,000-foot perspective and written a broad refutation in general terms.

Can we get some specifics here? Something more like "I saw this at this location.. It said it was accomplishing this educational objective and it didn't because x,y,z." I have to wonder how much actual, hands-on you've done in this environment regarding teaching and learning.

I've never played World of Warcraft, but I do know that some hardcore WoW players bring their tactics and planning meetings in SL using mockups of quests. http://tinyurl.com/ys5mwo It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that useful simulation techniques in support of "communities of practice" are transferrable from the world of goblins into the world of professional training and higher ed.

See these videos of teaching objects about aerospace and astronomy content. http://tinyurl.com/y6s4sy I know personally that educators and managers from NASA's JPL are in SL and thoroughly engaged. Can you do this with an IRC channel? As professor John Bransford (edited 'How People Learn') said in his presentation, we are in the stone age with these tools. See: http://tinyurl.com/llys8

As for questioning number of users, I can remember a time very recently when a fledging open source learning management tool was dismissed because its implimentation numbers were miniscule compared with "mainstream" systems like WebCT. smile It is a good thing that a dedicated corp of developers judged Moodle on its potential instead of its install base.

What I'm suggesting is that the Moodle framework is a good partner to help solve the problems you're pointing out. Second Life by itself is a painful learning tool. But its Web connectivity give LMS tools a good opportunity to extend into immersive spaces for learning. The Web connectivity makes this tool a new breed.

--Jeremy
jeremykemp@yahoo.com
www.sloodle.com
www.simteach.com
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In reply to Paul Andrews

Re: Second Life + Moodle.

by James Ballard -
Hi

Has Sloodle stopped allowing new users? I get a "Sorry, you may not use this page." error when trying to signup.

Yours
James
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In reply to James Ballard

Re: Second Life + Moodle.

by Peter DeBruyn -
I just signed up. They seem to have a modified login page so that if you do not have an account - you input the username you want and password you want to have in the usual login boxes and are then taken to a user profile sheet to fill out.

Peter
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