Slides used in a lecture in IT College, Estonia

1. Social Media Tools and apps in
Higher Education: the case of
Second Life
IT College, Estonia | 06.04.2009
Luís Pedro, Carlos Santos, Pedro Almeida
Dep. Communication and Art – Univ. Aveiro

2. 1
Second Life and Education
MUVEs and Second Life brief overview
2 Second.ua project – Univ. of Aveiro SL presence
3 Pedagogical activities

3. MUVEs and Second Life brief overview

4. What is Second Life? [1]
Metaverse (Snow crash – Neal Stephenson)
Social and economic interaction
Avatars
Technology (evolution  integration)

5. What is Second Life? [2]
Developments:
 The Metaverse (MOO) – Steve Jackson Games
 SnowMoo – SenseMedia
 Active Worlds
 WoW
 Croquet Project
 Second Life
 Kaneva
 There
 PS3 Home
Emphasis in social networking development, in content creation and in interaction
with collective/institutional purposes

6. What is Second Life? [3]
Business – money and transactions
Marketing –institutional presence, product launching...
Society– parties and events…
Technology  Web 3D?
Education

7. Pedagogical build-up
Flexible environment (time, space and technology)
Distance learning
Professional training (role-playing and serious games)
CSCW
Simulation
New Media
Content (?)

8. Some numbers
Numbers:
15.000.000 registered users
~ 735.000 logged in the last 30 days
US $1.300.000 worth transactions/day
70.000 avatars simultaneously logged-on

Europe  54% of users

9. Business [1]

10. Business [2]

11. Business [3]

12. Business [4]

13. Business [5]
Marketing
Product experiencing  usability, tryouts, ...
Direct sale
Institutional presence
Finance
... and media splash

14. Business [6]

15. Para onde vamos?

17. (from left to right)
Pedro Almeida Antero Eun Samuel Almeida Sanko Voom
Luís Pedro Zes Garfield Simão Oliveira Marca Falta
João Delicado Supermaxi Paine Pedro Correia Neozgul Rossini
Carlos Santos Carlosss Lukas João Vasco Zen Wilder

18. What is it?
Conceptualisation, development and exploration of an University
presence in SL
Curricular research project launched by the social media research
team

19. Motivations?
Institutional presence in Second Life
Multi-purpose environment for teachers, students, reseachers and staff
(communication, etc..)
Technology hacking (3D modelling and scripting)

20. How was it born?
Informal meeting with students from a
Masters course;
Experience Results
 Challenge  Project

21. Concept

22. Functional requirements
InfoZone  meeting point, info point
Aularium  regular classrooms
Showroom  exhibitions, scientific dissemination
Second Caffé  informal meetings and events
Auditorium  shows, lectures
Scriptorium  private meetings
and... soccer stadium :-)

23. The future?
Perpetual beta: LUA, AAUAv, ...
New spaces result from new pedagogical approaches (ex: serious
games), new needs, new technologies, ...
Inter-institutional partnerships

24. Shall we visit?

25. pedagogical activities

26. Which tools?
LMS
Blogs
Wikis
Social Bookmarking
Aggregation/RSS
… Second Life

27. SL used in curricular activities?
Lots of problems :-(
Processing problems
Graphic cards
Broadband

28. Slow start
Weekly informal meetings
Debates about non-curricular themes
Talks with specialists to enrich discussions
Informal learning mechanisms !!

29. The meetings
Several themes
Several sims
External staff to enrich and motivate
At night :-)

30. Some themes
Web 2.0
Interaction design
SL 3D modelling and scripting
Multimedia Communication MsC
SL in educational contexts
Usability tests
Social relationships in SL
Cef^SL Workshop cef^sl
...

33. nada vinculativo
... the blog
nadavinculativo.blogs.ca.ua.pt

34. Results
Informality
Participation
Dilution of traditional roles and ranks
Enthusiasm
Less time to sleep...

35. Thank you
Luís Pedro | Zes Garfield | lpedro@ua.pt | nitratodocaos.blogs.ca.ua.pt
Carlos Santos | Carlosss Lukas |carlossantos@ua.pt| napraia.blogs.ca.ua.pt
Pedro Almeida | Antero Eun | almeida@ua.pt | intouch.blogs.ca.ua.pt
Dep. Communication and Art
University of Aveiro