Sloodle

http://www.slideshare.net/stevenw/virtual-spaces-second-lives-what-are-the-potential-educational-benefits-of-muves-presentation


Sloodle
Creating a learning environment in Second Life or any MUVE (multi-user virtual environment) is an active learning experience. Students can interact in real-time and have diverse experiences.

If you would like to create a course in Second Life, there is a new project which is pairing Second Life and Moodle, and it's called Sloodle, which stands for Simulation Linked Object Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment . Here are some interesting features of Sloodle that can assist with educational objectives:

Sloodle Presenter: Allows you to create presentations for use in Second Life or Moodle.

Sloodle Webintercom: Tool that allows in world chats in Second Life to be logged and transferred to Moodle.

Sloodle Toolbar: Toolbar will be displayed in Second Life so you can perform actions quickly. One of the main functions is to access your blog in Moodle with one touch of a button. It can also allow you to make gestures in Second Life as well.

Sloodle Quiz Chair: Allows users to take quizes in Second Life and receive visual feedback. This is an actual chair that will go up or down when students answer questions correctly or incorrectly. Answers and scores are stored in Moodle for convenience.

Sloodle Pile on Quiz: Students can take quizzes in Second Life that were set up in Moodle. The answers to the questions hover above the pile.

Sloodle Prim Drop: This is for students to submit assignments in SL.

Sloodle MetaGloss: Allows access to moodle glossaries from SL.

Sloodle Choice: Allows instructors to bring choice activities from Moodle (such as polls, questionnaires, etc) into SL.

Sloodle Vending Machine: A way to distribute items to your students in SL. Can be done directly without having students log into SL.

Instructors can design their classrooms to fit their courses.

Second Life Revisited

Second Life is a 3D virtual world which is owned and created by the users and is free to download. It was made public in 2003 by Linden Labs. Each member of Second Life creates an avatar, which is a virtual persona. Residents can also buy and sell property and build on the land. Colleges and Universities can actually buy private islands and build virtual campuses for their students. Generally the price for a college or university to buy a private island is around $980. However, Linden Labs will also let an instructor try out Second Life for a class for free. They will be provided a free piece of land for the duration of the course. Second Life can have many educational uses because it allows for interaction that is more involved than discussion boards or email. It is real-time interaction where students can voice chat and look up web resources at the same time.

Best Practices
It depends on how much interaction you would like your class to participate in using Second Life. Some courses are completely desinged in Second Life where there are weekly class meetings and course content is uploaded, or some just have a few semester meetings in Second Life. However, either way it is important to have an orientation session at the beginning of your course to show students the details of getting around in Second Life. Below are a few tips I got from one of my instructors when I first joined Second Life:

Tips for moving around in Second Life:

• Click hold means you click on something but don't release the button
• Click move means you click and hold, then move the mouse while holding
• Hold together means you press at the same time
• Click move mouse to look up down and around
• Scroll wheel to zoom view in/out, including into your head
• Escape key (hit twice sometimes) returns you to default view
• Four arrow keys walk/fly you in the direction pressed (1 or 2 at a time)
• Right click on things (yourself, others, objects) to see what you can do
• Home key starts/stops flying
• Page up/down flies up/down (and lands if you're flying down)
• Hold alt key and click on something to center/focus on it - scroll to zoom, move mouse to zoom and rotate horizontally
• Hold down ctrl-alt and click move to focus and rotate around an object from all directions
• Hold down ctrl-alt-shift and click move on things to pan across it

Top Tips for using Second Life in a course:

1. Have an orientation the first week. This will allow students to be more comfortable if they are new to the program and you can give them the suggested list above.
2. Set up a classroom or campus so students have a place they can be comfortable using. SL is open to everyone, and not everyone has an educational objective.
3. Make sure you are comfortable using SL. The more the instructor knows, the more they can pass on to their students.
4. Keep it structured. Not every student will feel comfortable expoloring this virtual world.
5. Establish objectives for the use of SL in your course.  

How does Second Life benefit education?

• Social Interaction
• Visualization
• Contextualization
• Informal Learning
• Immersion
• Simulation and experential learning
• Role play
• Community
• Content Production

Consider using Sloodle-accompanying Moodle with Second Life.

SecondLife:
http://www.secondlife.com/ 

Educational Uses for Second Life:

http://sleducation.wikispaces.com/educationaluses 

Sloodle:

http://www.sloodle.org/moodle/

SLED (Second Life in edcuation):

http://www.sl-educationblog.org/

Encyclopedia of Educational Technology: Multi-user Virtual Environments in Education:

http://coe.sdsu.edu/eet/articles/muveseducation/index.htm

http://www.slideshare.net/stevenw/virtual-spaces-second-lives-what-are-the-potential-educational-benefits-of-muves-presentation