The Road to Morocco

Boudica (Sally), Tere (Teresa) and Bascule (me) started our work on Module 1 Activity 3 today. We'd individually stuck our hands up in the Group 2 Forum 'Blue' realising we were the only people likely to be active over the week-end. We have two other potential collaborators who couldn't be around, so decided to push on in the hope others would run with it.

Actually, I've done an awful lot of metaphorical running today; the activity grew like Topsy...

Boudic, Tere and Bascule got together on MUVEnation Island; sitting around the campfire for an in-world chat about Activity 1. This was my first real experience of a Local Chat conversation in SL, or at least, my first real attempt at getting something in particular done. It turned out to go rather well. Local Chat lacks the nuance of speech; things have to be said clearly and succinctly, which actually seems to help the planning process. Although we only sat and talked there was a real sense of ‘presence’ that helped the conversation along and, to my mind, made the ‘directness’ of purposeful Local Chat somehow easier.

We quickly agreed to concentrate on practical examples of good teaching in SL, across any subject area. Tere and Boudica suggested some search terms: best practices, interactive learning, problem solving, and creative thinking. We decided to look both in and off world, and to meet back in a few hours to see what we’d got. Reviewing the chat log the meeting took about 45 mins. You can see the whole log, together with Tere’s reflections on the meeting, in Tere’s blog at http://mvn08.edublogs.org/2008/12/14/sl-sally-steve-and-teresa-meet-at-muvenation/

In the end, I got not much further than typing ‘Second Life’ and ‘Best Practice’ into Google. One link led to another… and I was spoilt for choice. At least, spoilt in the sense that there seemed to be a lot of discussion ‘about’ best practice. I had to poke around a bit for Ding an sich examples... sticking to the brief, here are my two best:

At the UK Education Island site I found this nice example of learning and teaching with Virtual Quests. There’s an introduction, a walk-through, and an example of the finished article. There’s also a link to a few more examples on http://www.sleducationuk.net/

One great thing about Virtual Morocco is that you get to wear a Fez! Your Info Fez, available free from the InfoFez kiosk, gives you information about Morocco as you explore Virtual Morocco, finding out about both the history and contemporary culture. There’s lots to find out, lots to do (including bellydancing), and lots of information to collect as you go - so lots of follow-up if you want to. I thought that this was a really good example of the possibilities of learning through exploring in SL. http://slurl.com/secondlife/Casablanca/135/87/27 . You can find out more about the project behind Virtual Morocco at http://casablanca.life3solutions.com/

Asides from these two in-world examples, I found a nice off-world example of key pointers to working in SL from Global Kids, who'd produced 12 note cards highlighting ways to approach learning and teaching in SL. Short, wise, and a bit wacky (so a bit like Tere…). You’ll find the cards in the blog sidebar or can see the original at http://www.flickr.com/photos/holymeatballs/sets/72157601198270790/

At the end of the day Boudica, Tere and Bascule met up again at the campfire to discuss what they’d found and what to do next... talking while the sun went down over MUVEnation bay... We’d done about 4 hours work each, and only got through half the the first activity... still, we're learning as we go...and things are getting interesting...