Connecting with Educators in Virtual Worlds
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As educators, our professional connections are crucial for sharing ideas and knowledge, as well as support. Virtual worlds enable us to connect with people inexpensively, at all hours and seasons, all over the world, adding to our PLNs (Professional Learning Networks). Some of the information in this presentation is intended for newcomers, and some for more experienced users.
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Connecting with Educators in Virtual Worlds
- 1. Connecting with Educators in Virtual Worlds Beth Ghostraven VWMOOC18 - August 27, 2018 https://www.slideshare.net/booklady9/connecting- with-educators-in-virtual-worlds
- 2. Essential Question How can we best use our professional connections to benefit our teaching and learning?
- 3. A little about me
- 4. Profiles
- 5. Virtual World Colleagues: Browsing Profiles SL Viewer Firestorm Viewer
- 9. VSTE VE PLN Virginia Society for Technology in Education Virtual Environments PLN
- 10. ISTE VEN International Society for Technology in Education Virtual Environments Network
- 11. VWER Virtual Worlds Education Roundtable
- 15. VWBPE (Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Conference)
- 17. Finding Group Notices SL Viewer Firestorm Viewer
- 19. Google Calendar: Week View
- 20. Google Calendar: Day View
- 22. Facebook Pages
- 23. Facebook Groups
- 27. Group Websites
- 28. SL Bloggers
- 29. Selby Evans’ Virtual Outworlding Blog
- 30. SL Destination Guide: Education & Nonprofits
- 32. Teaching and Learning in Virtual Environments
- 33. Let’s Connect! IM or notecard to Beth Ghostraven Time Zone: Eastern Book & Tankard Pub, Victoria City, Caledon Email: booklady99999@gmail.com
Editor's Notes
- Welcome to “Connecting with Educators in Virtual Worlds”. As educators, our professional connections are crucial for sharing ideas and knowledge, as well as support. Virtual worlds enable us to connect with people inexpensively, at all hours and seasons, all over the world, adding to our PLNs (Professional Learning Networks). This presentation will be in both voice and text. If you have questions, please type them into Nearby Chat and I’ll answer them in text. These slides are available online at https://www.slideshare.net/booklady9/connecting-with-educators-in-virtual-worlds. Some of the information in this presentation is intended for newcomers, and some for more experienced users. I’m going to be skimming over a wide variety of resources in this presentation. Please don’t be overwhelmed. I would suggest picking just one new thing to start with.
- Our essential question is: How can we best use our professional connections to benefit our teaching and learning?
- My initial goal was to learn to use Second Life to attend VSTE meetings and professional development sessions online. (VSTE = Virginia Society for Technology in Education) I learned so much more–my professional and personal worlds have been expanded exponentially. When I started using Second Life (SL), I had a steep learning cliff to conquer. It took me a week to learn how to move my avatar around effectively, and a month before I learned how to change my clothes. I persisted because the people I met here were so helpful and welcoming that I wanted to participate in the communities that I found. I got frustrated with trying to find information about the various events, so I wound up doing publicity inworld, and on social media, for many of these groups. I consider myself a liaison between all of these groups, and I do lots of cross-postings of meeting notifications among all of them. I like being able to connect people together, and to help create community. My professional connections have gotten deeper and more numerous over the past few years. I thought about saying “my *virtual* professional connections”, but although the meeting places are virtual, the people and the connections are real. In many cases they extend into other social media, and into physical life. I make friends wherever I go in virtual worlds. The result of all of these connections is that when someone is telling me about their project, I can often think of someone else who might be able to help them, resulting in more connections within the education and library communities.
- But, enough about me. Let’s find out about each other. How can we find kindred spirits? Browsing profiles! By the way, the images in this presentation are from the Firestorm viewer (http://firestormviewer.org), but the Second Life viewer has similar options. You can also use the Firestorm viewer to access OpenSim virtual worlds like Kitely (http://www.kitely.com). . Look around at the profiles of the people in this room. Don’t be afraid of appearing nosy. Profiles (for most people, anyway) are meant to be read. Here are some things to look for in profiles when you’re seeking professional connections: - 2nd Life: Education-related group(s) A lack of unprofessional-sounding groups - Picks: Education-related place(s) A lack of unprofessional-sounding places - 1st Life: Indication of RL education job or interests (while still protecting privacy) . When you find someone you’d like to connect with, chat with them a little (in Nearby or IM) before sending them a friend request. It’s nice to break the ice first. . Here are some other things to look for when you’re seeking professional connections: - Appearance Professionally dressed avatar Human avatar helpful, but certainly not necessary Clothes, shape, and hair fairly conservative - Speech Professionally appropriate (in chat, and in voice, if used) Uses IMs and Nearby chat appropriately . Appearance is probably the *least* important of these. Sometimes experienced educators are just new to SL; they may look like newbies here, but in the education field, they’re not. These things are all just clues about how trustworthy the person behind the avatar *might* be. You can use these ideas to make yourself look more professional, too. Often people will have an avatar for professional stuff, and an alt for play. [Shameless Self-Promotion Alert] I have long been frustrated looking for decent professional clothing to wear to education events, so I finally opened my own shop. Thanks to some talented and generous friends, I’m able to offer a one-stop shop for clothing and hair for ladies and gentlemen, with more on the way. Visit Ghostraven Professional Attire in Second Life at http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/VSTE%20Island/104/163/21.
- Profiles look slightly different depending on which viewer you’re using. The SL Viewer is the default viewer made by Linden Lab, and the Firestorm Viewer is one of the most popular third-party viewers. This slide shows the difference in how profiles look in the two viewers.
- This long list of friends can be quite unwieldy. I plan to make use of Firestorm’s Contact Sets, which I learned about in one of their Tool Tip Tuesday videos. (http://www.firestormviewer.org/ttt-contact-sets-to-organize-friends-people-lists/).
- Go here http://booklady9.edublogs.org/professional-resources-in-virtual-worlds/ for a resource list titled “Connecting with Educators in Virtual Worlds”. This is also available as a notecard in Second Life, at my shop. The resources are sorted alphabetically, including SL groups and places, websites, and social media sites. I’m going to tell you a little about each one, but first let me show you how to join any of these groups. The top of the list tells how to join groups in Second Life.
- Virtual Pioneers was the first place where I felt at home in SL, thanks to Serena Offcourse and Spiff Whitfield. This is a group of people who are interested in exploring historical sims. Most are educators, but not all. We have tours every other week. The upstairs of headquarters contains a gallery of free historical clothing from different eras, and a wall-full of information from past tours.
- VSTE is where I got my start in SL. It’s a state affiliate of ISTE, and as far as I know it’s the only state affiliate in SL. Virginia has an amazing group of educators. We have a lot of fun together, but we also get a lot done to further education in virtual worlds. We have a whole island, which includes a historical simulation of the Jamestown Colony.
- ISTE VEN (International Society for Technology in Education, Virtual Education Network) (formerly ISTE SIGVE, or Special Interest Group for Virtual Worlds) ISTE is probably the largest educational technology organization in the world. The VE Network is the largest special interest group in ISTE. We have weekly events on Tuesdays, and we participate in the annual RL conference in June.
- VWER (Virtual Worlds Education Roundtable) This group has met weekly in SL since 2008 to discuss education. Some weeks are Open Forum, when anyone can bring up a topic for discussion. Most weeks have themes set in advance. The meetings are in text, so it’s easier to keep up. A few meetings feature guest speakers, and are held in voice, with text transcription. The official transcripts are posted online at http://vwer.info. Kali Pizzaro and Sheila Yoshikawa run the group.
- Community Virtual Library When I first got to Second Life, I was looking for my people, but I couldn’t find the American Library Association anywhere, as their sim had closed. I did find the CVL, or Community Virtual Library, and even better, I found a librarian to help! The CVL is a great help to newcomers and oldbies. Volunteers are always appreciated, but even if no one is working when you go, there are plenty of interactive resources. Since then I’ve found quite a few other libraries in SL, but that’s a whole different topic.
- NPC (TechSoup’s NonProfit Commons) The Nonprofit Commons in SL is sponsored by Caravan Studios, a division of TechSoup Global. It offers free office space for nonprofits. Rhiannon Chatnoir organizes interesting topics here every Friday. I always learn something new, and as in all of these groups, meet wonderful people. Nonprofit Commons offers lots of resources for nonprofits, both inworld and out. You have to have a parcel to be a member of the Nonprofit Commons, but the TechSoup group (next) is open to all.
- The following slides show some different ways that you can publicize your organization, in and out of SL. OSCC (OpenSimulator Community Conference) The OpenSimulator Community Conference focuses on virtual worlds outside of SL, with a variety of speakers, with a variety of tracks. It's organized by AvaCon, Inc., which is also run by Rhiannon Chatnoir. It is usually held in the fall. More information is available here: http://conference.opensimulator.org/.
- VWBPE (Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Conference) This conference incorporates many different kinds of virtual worlds, including SL. The next one will be held March 29 – April 1, 2017. I’m privileged to serve as the Communications Chair for this conference. During last year's conference, we found that SL notices were the most effective way to reach our audience with conference information. Other social media avenues also helped. More information is available at http://vwbpe.org/.
- Group Notices Second Life group notices are found in the upper right-hand corner of your viewer, in both the SL viewer and the Firestorm viewer. When you click the little square, the notices will drop down. Once you click OK, the notice disappears. You can find it later in the group profile. OpenSim groups work the same way Second Life groups do, although they’re not used as often. If you have your IMs forwarded to email, your group notices will appear there too.
- Finding Group Notices The other way to find group notices is in the group profile. You can enable and disable notices and chat for that group here, too. The left side shows the Second Life viewer--here the Notices tab is the third one down. In the Firestorm viewer, shown on the right, the Notices tab is at the top. You can sort the notices by date to bring the most recent ones to the top of the list. If there is an attachment (a notecard, landmark, etc.) you can click Open Attachment to add it to your Inventory. To post group notices, you need to have a group role that is able to do that. When you click the "+ New Notice" button, a blank form opens. There is a 509 character limit for SL notices. More information on publicity is explained in a presentation that I did here a few years ago: https://goo.gl/2gVW3.
- Virtual World Events Now--how do you find out about the many events for educators in virtual worlds? There’s information at the top of the resource list (here: https://goo.gl/xn8Jms) about how to join inworld groups and find notices. The resources on the document are in alphabetical order. This slide shows the ISTE Virtual Environments Network’s Massive Open Online Calendar, found at http://venetwork.weebly.com/calendar.html. This is a Google calendar, embedded in a web page.
- Google Calendar: Week View My Google+ calendars help keep the train on the rails. I have my own original calendar, several others that I’ve been given edit rights to, and a bunch more that I just view, all in one place. Shawnkmaloney of Craft-World has this tutorial on how to add other calendars to yours: http://goo.gl/Dh1M0y. You can toggle calendars on and off to see events, and color-code them so it’s easier to understand. This slide shows a week, with some of the calendars not showing.
- Google Calendar: Day View This slide shows a single day view. You can add an event by clicking any blank space. Make sure you check which calendar you’re adding the event to--I have (very briefly) added my hair appointments to the ISTE calendar.
- Google+ Community Events Google+ Communities can really facilitate off-grid communications. Google also doesn’t mind if you set up an account for your avatar. I recommend setting your community as Public, with "Yes, anyone can ask to join". The Events button is in the left navigation bar. If you use the updated Google+, you won't be able to access Events for your community. You'll need to revert to the older Google+ interface. Once you create an event, you'll need to share it to Public before others can share it to their communities. Then you also need to share it to the Discussion page of your community. In order to do that, you need to have added at least one other page to your community. Once you've added an event, it will appear on anyone's Google calendar who has responded Yes or Maybe to the event.
- Facebook Pages Facebook is not avatar-friendly, and tends to be much more cluttered with postings. However, more people are on Facebook, so it can be helpful to post things there, too. Facebook Pages are one-way communication; you can post events and information, but others can’t add to it unless you make them a moderator. Pages can only be Liked, not joined.
- Facebook Groups Facebook Groups allow for two-way communication, and can become filled with unwanted spam unless you keep an eye on it. Groups can be Public, Closed or Secret. Events can be created here, too.
- Twitter Depending on how many people you follow, Twitter can get quite crowded too. It’s the best medium for quick one-way bursts of information that can be targeted to a group. If your tweets get re-tweeted, you’ll reach even more people. You or your group can have a profile (@vwbpe, for example). You can give access to the people responsible for tweeting for you.
- Twitter Hashtags You can also use multiple hashtags to enable similar tweets to be searchable (#vwbpe, for example). A hashtag begins with the hash symbol (#) followed by a short phrase, with no spaces. Hashtags can also be used in Google+ and Facebook. In a Twitter Chat, the same hashtag on different people’s tweets enables a conversation to be followed.
- SLED Listserv The SLED List (Second Life EDucators) has been around for awhile and is not used as much, but can still be helpful. Go to this Web page to sign up: https://lists.secondlife.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/educators. Anyone can post something to this email list.
- Group websites Quite a few virtual world education groups have websites, and of course you can find and distribute information through these, too. The sites shown here are Virtual Pioneers and VWER. Some group websites are included on the resources document. They can be created at no cost using Weebly (http://www.weebly.com), WordPress (http://wordpress.com), and other blog sites.
- SL Bloggers Several bloggers can be very helpful in promoting virtual world events. Check out the SLEnquirer (http://www.slenquirer.com/), PrimPerfect, run by Saffia Widdershins (http://primperfect.net/blog/), Daniel Voyager's Blog (https://danielvoyager.wordpress.com/), and Inara Pey - Living In a Modemworld (https://modemworld.me/)
- Virtual Outworlding ThinkererSelby Evans’ Virtual Outworlding blog (http://virtualoutworlding.blogspot.com/) provides a huge number of resources and connections for anyone exploring education in virtual worlds. Thinkerer keeps his finger on the pulse of what’s happening, and shares it with all of us.
- SL Destination Guide Let’s not forget the basics: the Second Life Destination Guide has a section on Education & Nonprofits here: https://secondlife.com/destinations/learning. More subcategories are in the left-hand navigation bar. I don't know how you go about getting your organization in here. If you know, please share! :o)
- SL Events When you log in to your SL account on the web at https://secondlife.com/ you'll see an Events choice on the left side. Two of the categories are "Charity/Support Groups" and "Education". Creating events requires that you have that right in the group that owns the land where the event will be held. When you click "Submit New Event" the Event Posting Rules come up for you to read. After you click "I Agree", you can click the dropdown menu for Location to see where you are allowed to post events.
- Teaching and Learning in Virtual Environments [Shameless Self-Promotion Alert] This presentation is adapted from my chapter, “Professional Education and Library Connections in Virtual Worlds”, in the book Teaching and Learning in Virtual Environments, currently scheduled for publication in September, 2016 by Libraries Unlimited. It's horribly expensive; if you're interested, maybe you can get your library to order a copy. More information is available here: https://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Learning-Virtual-Environments-Libraries/dp/1440841748.
- Contact Information Send IM or notecard to Beth Ghostraven in SL Time Zone: Eastern US Visit me inworld at the Book and Tankard Pub in Victoria City, Caledon SLurl: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Caledon%20Victoria%20City/75/150/23 Ghostraven Professional Attire SLurl: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/VSTE%20Island/104/163/21 Email me at booklady99999@yahoo.com These slides are available online at https://goo.gl/3A6D27 Thank you all for coming! I’ll see you around the metaverse!