Call for Abstracts/Participation

Please join us in a workshop on Learning and Research in Second Life on October 7, 2009 in Milwaukee at Internet Research 10.0 (http://ir10.aoir.org/).

** Abstract Deadline August 7th.  **

Second Life(R) is a 3d virtual environment created by Linden Lab, which has captured the attentions of researchers and teachers from around the world from a variety of disciplines.

This workshop aims to improve the understanding of Second Life as a Learning and Research environment. It will bring 35 researchers and professionals together to collaborate, discuss and workshop diverse topics related to research and learning in Second Life. The workshop will be a full day workshop, from 9am to 5pm.

Layout of the workshop

We’ll start the workshop with “speed networking”, after which we’ll work on the two main topics of the workshop: learning and research in Second Life. We’ll try to answer questions like: How can we better enable learning in this sphere? How can we better enable research? What kind of features do we need from virtual environments for our work? What can we do to help develop virtual environments even further? The goal of this workshop is to create a roadmap of future use of virtual environments for research and teaching. As a highlight, John Lester (Pathfinder Linden) from Linden Labs will give a keynote at the workshop. The talk will be broadcast to Second Life.The workshop is a live exercise of learning and working simultaneously in RL and Second Life . This workshop will be simultaneously organized in Second Life and the two workshops will meet at key points during the day. In order to facilitate interaction between the RL and Second Life groups, all participants of the live workshop in Milwaukee are encouraged to take a WiFi-enabled Second Life capable laptop with them. All participants are asked to update the Second Life profiles, as these are printed and used as “calling cards” at the workshop.After the workshop participants are invited to collaborate in writing an article Roadmap for Next Generation of Virtual Environments for Research and Teaching, which will be based on the outcomes of the workshop.

Submissions

We encourage researchers to submit abstracts and short biography which will be distributed amongst participants before the workshop. First invitations will be offered to those who provide abstracts or full papers for consideration. Subsequent invitation will be made based upon research/teaching statement and biography. If you are interested in participating, please send an email containing your abstract/paper and biography (pdf, doc, rtf, odf) to isto.huvila(a)abm.uu.se.  Indicate in your mail also whether you are applying to participate the workshop in RL in Milwaukee or in Second Life.

Decisions will be made by September 1st, barring incident.  There is a limit of 35 participants at the physical meeting; the event will be simulcast into Second Life.

We welcome professionals, faculty and graduate students to participate.

This workshop is organized by Kim Holmberg (Åbo Akademi University, Finland), Isto Huvila (Uppsala University, Sweden and Åbo Akademi University, Finland) and Terry Beaubois (Montana State University, USA). Questions may be sent to secondlifeworkshop(at)library2pointoh.fi.

Movable Life is the first successful attempt (that I’ve seen) to integrate Second Life into a web browser. Movable Life allows Second Life users to log into their Second Life accounts and chat with their friends, send IM, teleport on the map and so on, but without the 3D and any of the graphics. And this is the problem with it. When you leave out the avatars and all the 3D elements, what do you get? Another IM application.

I’ve been using Second Life in my courses for about a year soon and one of the problems that we have faced is that not everybody has a computer that would run Second Life, at least not without any hickups. It has usually been down to the graphics card. This is especially a problem for Open University students that mainly use their own computers or computers where they work. As educators we can’t demand that students upgrade their computers so that they can take part of the lectures inworld. Or can we? This is why we need alternative ways to access Second Life, alternative ways to take part of the inworld lectures and group assignments. Integrating Second Life into a web browser could be a solution. But the solution is not Movable Life, at least not yet.

Several blogs and news agencies have written articles about the second official embassy to open in Second Life, the Estonian embassy (Sweden was the first). In the article on TechCrunch however, a small error had slipped in to the text. Estonia is not celebrating it’s 90th anniversary of independence this year. Finland is, today actually. Although Estonian have “borrowed” the national anthem from Finland and although the two languages, Finnish and Estonian, have some similarities, they are still two different countries, two different neighboring countries. Estonia is celebrating their 90th anniversary next year, in 2008. But back to Second Life.

In my opinion the interest towards Second Life has tipped over during this fall in Finland and I think the same goes for the other Scandinavian countries as well. A year ago when I first talked about using Second Life in teaching at my university the respons was not very enthusiastic. People found it more amusing than useful. But that has changed now. Every university and every school wants to know more about Second Life, they want to know how they could use it. I think we can expect some very rapid development on that front. Several universities in Finland have already expressed their interest in starting some activity in Second Life. And I believe that Estonian embassy in Second Life is a proof of same kind of development in Baltic countries.

The main purpose of the newly opened Estonian embassy is to provide information about Estonian history, politics, economy and culture to a world-wide audience. Currently the embassy’s only full time employed is a traditional Estonian dog breed, an Eesti Hagija or an Estonian retriever (roughly translated). This retriever is a bit smarter than your average retriever, as it can not only retrieve the news to you but also read Estonian news to you.

Virtual Estonia can be visited through this SLURL.