Hi.
I am a High School teacher and a new Moodle admin. I also have experience withy PHP that is one reason I choose Moodle.
Our Moodle will move from Beta in August. Right now we are piloting classes and developing customized tutorials.
Recently I read some info on 2nd Life/Teen 2nd Life.
Aside from all the problems with security etc I would like to know how you would use 2nd Life with Moodle - http://www.sloodle.com/ - in a normal High School Setting.
Please look at the scenario below if you have time.
----------------
The highschool has about 400 students. 80 of them are in various IBO programs including IBCS . But most do not take IT after their Junior year due to the IB requirements they need to meet. And only about 5% have beyond HTML programming experience.
We currently have 6 IT courses and are adding 4 more next year: Digital Photography, Video Editing, General IT Basic Web, Advanced Web- HTML CSS XML Javascript, Intro to Progarmming- Java Script XML/ Ajax , IB Computer Science (Basic Java), Flash, and Robotics (Lego + NQC Programming).
In addition many of the teachers are using Blogs and Wikis. We are hoping Moodle can help provide a campus wide solution. Also all the IT teachers in HS and MS are setting up google personal pages (google.com/ig) with the students. This has been a huge success. The students like the flexibiliy of Google-IG plus the IG can embed RSS from anywhere.
I feel like we are doing alot with IT. So my first question is, what could we do with 2nd Life that we can't do now?
The 3D Modeling is looks very novel but our Design Tech students are in the IB program and they normally use Industry Standard software such as AutoCad. I am not sure if the SL modeling meets the IBO requirements. I have no idea on that. Maybe you do?
Would you see a need to be using 2nd Life during class? And if so what would you think the investment in Teen 2nd Life should be in order to be successful? A private Island? simple individual accounts?
Let me know what you think about any or part of this.
Tony D.
Unless I'm mistaken, adults aren't allowed on the SL Teen Grid under any circumstances, and there's easy way to transfer information back and forth to the adult grid (by design).
That might make it problematic to assess student work, or to interact with your students in any kind of live fashion.
That might make it problematic to assess student work, or to interact with your students in any kind of live fashion.
Make that "no easy way"; I dropped the "no" somewhere between my brain and my fingers. 
They have a way for teachers to get registered although it seems expensive. It reads as if each teacher needs to buy an island. Or maybe the school.
http://secondlife.com/businesseducation/education.php
Not sure. Second Life has alot of hype right now, but for K-12 I cannot see much of an advantage to it.
If it supported audio conferencing - maybe.
More opinions please.
___________
Tony D
http://secondlife.com/businesseducation/education.php
Not sure. Second Life has alot of hype right now, but for K-12 I cannot see much of an advantage to it.
If it supported audio conferencing - maybe.
More opinions please.
___________
Tony D
Right.... if you have the money for a private island you can do more or less anything you want.
One of our professors had an island for a while, and did some pretty interesting work.
You can get one-way audio into Second Life by setting up a (free) Shoutcast server on a spare computer, but two-way is problematic.
If Linden makes good on their claimed plans to open-source the server as well as the client, schools could set up their own "islands" on their own hardware. That's when things would start to get interesting, IMO.
Have you looked at Croquet, by the way?
One of our professors had an island for a while, and did some pretty interesting work.
You can get one-way audio into Second Life by setting up a (free) Shoutcast server on a spare computer, but two-way is problematic.
If Linden makes good on their claimed plans to open-source the server as well as the client, schools could set up their own "islands" on their own hardware. That's when things would start to get interesting, IMO.
Have you looked at Croquet, by the way?