Drjulie's Weblog

Sloodle – Day 2 – Your Avatar and Your Classroom

drjulie — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 21:03:31 +0000

OK Sloodle junkies…here is what we learned today. If you don’t have open registration, you can’t register more avatars than students in class. (Yeah, I know Duh!) Remember if you have open registration anybody can register their avatar in your moodle classroom.

Small lesson….but it took a good hour to figure out. Gotta love doing things without documentation.

Julie

Building a Sloodle Classroom Day 1 – Blogging

drjulie — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 15:47:00 +0000

There is something to be said for testing new technology….I just haven’t decided if it is always good. Life is full of bumps and I hit a big one today. I started testing my first Sloodle class.

I jumped right in and registered by Avatar within my Sloodle classroom…so far so good. After one successful activity, I decided that a Blog entry would be an easy transition to see the flow of information across the technology. So blogging I began.

What I didn’t know was that there are 2 different types of Sloodle toolbars. Apparently, if you don’t use the customizable toolbar you blog goes off somewhere into Sloodle land. I was honestly expecting a test blog into my test classroom. Needless to say, this blog wasn’t the height of my intellectual powers. So I apologize to Sloodle land for posting incoherent gibberish into you blog library.

We are planning to use Sloodle for a class of Realtime Reporting students. (These are students learning to be court reporters or broadcast captioners.) While they are computer literate, they aren’t programmers. Installing the customizable toolbar and directing to the blog to the correct classroom requires some work. Although Sloodle does provide a note card to help, I think this may be a struggle for some students. I personally couldn’t get it to work the first time and had to trouble shoot my entry. We are currently testing a method that would allow us give the students the correct toolbar. I’ll let you know how that goes.

I’m off to create an assignment in Sloodle (I hope!)

Julie!

Becoming a native

drjulie — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 13:20:00 +0000

Ok. Maybe I can’t become a native. I just spent 2 hours on SL trying to make my shirt long enough to cover my avatar’s midriff. Which is sad, because my avatar’s stomach looks WAY better than mine does in my first life.

May have to work on this full acceptance of the 2.0 tools.

All Business In Second Life

drjulie — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 15:09:28 +0000

So here is my new problem. How do I get teachers to let go of their old ways in Second Life? I expected we’d hit some bumps along the way with new technologies and actually using constructivist learning tools but I had no idea of how deep the challenges were going to run.

I was blown away when one of my most progressive teachers told me she had bought a suit for her avatar. I swear I think she even put pantyhose on! She wants to make sure she is presenting a professional image for her students in second life. Now I admit I think we probably don’t need instructors running around in thongs and garter belts (I’ve seen it) trying to conduct classes in SL, but seriously a suit? How do we begin to relate to a group of individuals that are probably sitting in the bunny slippers and 3-day old dirty shirts doing their work when our teachers can’t let go of their old fashioned ways? I’m amazed how quickly we started building the walls that separate “us” from “them” within a world that should be engaging us all as peers with skills and information we can all learn from.

I think the small crevasse between the old ways and the future of my schools education just turned into the Grand Canyon.

Off to fight the never ending battle….Julie.

Second life better than first

drjulie — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 20:33:19 +0000

Ok. I admit it, I like my second life better than my first. I’ve been working to finding classrooms and buildings that I want for our campus site. I’ve been professional and I’ve been on target.

Then it happened. I found a batman shirt. I’m way to excited about the batman shirt. I’ve actually been signing the batman theme song all day. You know nananananana BATMAN! This is way too much fun to be work!

My Second Life Redemption

drjulie — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 18:20:38 +0000

I can be anything I want. My life is a clean slate and it is up to me what I become.

I know it sounds like I just came out of a session with my therapist…but it is better than that. I just bought (ok I’m renting….but don’t tell my parents) land in second life for my school. The problem is I have no clue what to do now. I’m a school administrator not a tecno dude but I’ve always been known for jumping in head first.

I’m excited about the possibilities SL presents to educators for personal reasons. I finished my doctorate through distance education so I have a real experience with the isolation of distance education. I didn’t even attend my graduation because I didn’t feel connected to any of the students and only a couple of instructors. I honestly don’t know if I would have used a tool like second life – but I do remember the anxiety of feeling very alone in the courses. Honestly, it couldn’t hurt and if you follow Tinto’s research…then we might just have found the social connection distance education students need.

While I haven’t figured out all the answers for today I do own a piece of land where I’m camping out….and that isn’t so bad.

Julie