It is often a struggle to convince administrators, policy makers and educators that virtual worlds in general and Second Life in particular are valuable resources for education.

Educators I know have worked in their own time, fought the battles with IT to unblock ports and find a reasonable space and afterward, even if they get results, they STILL have to keep on struggling to gain recognition for their work. In short, making a case for the educational benefits can be lonely work.

People like Joanna McKay or Jokay Wollongong in world who aggregate information and provide much needed advice, conferences and playspaces are a God-send to educators eager to learn. Her SLeducation Wiki has been a source of information and inspiration for years.

So your notice to her that she has to re-name her site because of her use of SL which you’ve apparently trademarked is not only counter-productive to educators wanting to use your site, is not only a killer of a site that markets your services for you by its very nature – it is a slap in the face to your community.

I’m assuming you’ll be gunning for SLoodle next?

Oh, and  please tell Phillip to stop with the tale-spinning that Second Life, founded on the concept of the Burning Man festival, is an environment about sharing creativity built by and for its “residents”. It’s clearly hypocritical. It’s an environment by and for Linden Lab.

But I do thank you for the wake-up call.

I hope that others – educators, businesses, entrepreneurs – hear that wake-up call too: you must diversify your explorations of new technologies so that you are not reliant on a particular platform or provider.  Because SLack marketers who are too SLow to consider the community of passionate users that grow up around today’s platforms and brands will SLash their own wrists in an effort to control what they feel is theirs.

Sincerely,

KerryJ

aka Pandora Kurrajong
Second Life user since 2007
ReactionGrid / Open Sim user since 2009

Spam stunt in World of Warcraft

Some spam is easy to spot – like the spam stunt pictured here in World of Warcraft or the unwanted emails you get when you open your in-box.  Others are more subtle.

I’m a regular Twitter user – I treat it like a virtual coffee break where sometimes people can get silly, sometimes they’re profound but because I choose the participants (for the most part) they’re people I know or are friends of friends.

Twice now, I’ve had these friends of friends “recommend” books to me based on a topic I raise and I have found the link goes to a site that gives them money for people who buy from the sites.

I honestly have nothing against people trying to make a buck.  Or should that be I have nothing against people trying to honestly make a buck?   But when someone recommends a product they are in essence selling in a forum that is not retail in nature but trust-based — isn’t some sort of disclosure appropriate?

Something like “I onsell a book about X, DM me if you’d like the link. If not, NP” or “I onsell the sevices/products of this site – let me know what you think.”

A person whom I’ve met and who arranges get togethers for geeks recently suggested a site that helps you artificially boost the number of people who follow you on Twitter.  Big turn off here. Trying to rort the system in an attempt to create social status is dishonest.  And it cheapens it for everyone else.

So can social media and marketing mix? I think it can, but it is not about spam.  I think it’s more about developing trust relationships and listening. And I feel that when a marketer shares personal information and asks after my health and then doesn’t disclose that he or she will make a buck if I click on a link they suggest, my trust has been violated. And as for the lady who is going to try to artifically boost her crediblity — consider it lost.

The issue of risk management in virtual worlds as with so many other virtual spaces stems from the fact that there are people there we don’t know.

Would closed-off virtual worlds created within a school or institution solve the issue of risk while allowing for many of the pedagogical affordances such as collaboration, role playing, simulation building and modeling? Is there value in creating a safe space?

But just as we don’t settle for a LAN or a closed off portal alone to solve the issue of viruses, scams and annoying people on the internet — settling for a localised virtual world cuts learners and educators off from their most valuable learning resources: other people and their ideas and information.

These closed off environments also create funnels — someone other than the individuals using them decides what is relevant and valuable. If we’re truly going to move towards learner-centred teaching — then allowing a centralised authority to limit access to tools and information and decide what goes on a narrow portal is a ball and chain that has to be severed.

Virtual worlds are 3D representations of  web sites.   Each personal plot is a blog or MySpace page in 3D.  Each island or simulation a web site or a series of smaller web sites.  Some of these destinations whether 2D or 3D are fluid, unique, wonderful, valuable and some are dangerous, scary, spammy and flawed.  Why are they this way? Because they are created by PEOPLE and that’s what people are.

So, opting for a virtual world that is limited just to one institution is creating a LAN or a closed portal – not a virtual world experience.

If educators and learners are limited to password protected virtual portals or LANs — on the net or in the virtual worlds space — they are shut off from a universe of original thinking, unique experiences andopportunities to broaden their worlds.  Plus, it prevents both groups from learning the digital literacy skills they need to have to be fully realised as citizens of the 21st century.

Virtual worlds like the 2 D internet offer a wealth of experiences – one institution or jurisdiction cannot possibly create them all. And if they did, what a homogenous world it would be.

PS: You may be asking yourself – what’s up with that photo? It is of a group of valued friends/colleagues  (and our waiter) that are an important part of my life and constantly enrich it with their insights, knowledge, friendship and laughter.  I got to know them all in Second Life. So glad I didn’t get limited to a LAN or portal or single closed off island.

"no, but you are MY STUPID HUSBAND" CC (by) nayrb7 http://www.flickr.com/photos/nayrb7/3044673793/

The session was about social networks and viral systems (no, not going to name the conference or the session or presenter, this isn’t about dissing).  Because viral content spreads across channels, my first question was – what’s the tag for this session?  The presenter told me to ask a conference organiser.  The organiser said there was no tag.  Okay, some people don’t think of this stuff – but in a session on viral marketing, gotta say I expected it.

The lecture progressed on interactivity and social networking and the instructor failed to engage with the text chat in a constructive way.

Some people in the audience complained that the text chat was distracting them and was blocking the powerpoint on effective interaction.

If you’re not laughing yet — let me explain why this is sadly funny:

• A session on interaction where interaction is discouraged and/or dismissed
• A session dealing with social networking that did not allow for cross-channel seeding via tags
• A session on social networking that compared Facebook and Second Life — two completely different tools – and made judgement calls because one was not like the other.
• People attending a session on social networking who don’t like it happening and find it distracting
• A session on social networks and viral marketing where avatars sat in chairs, faced front and the presenter did not build in any time for interaction and social networking

What if we’d gone to this session on social networking and he’d removed all the chairs and replaced them with rings or platforms with different keywords or interests and asked us to pick one, meet three people, move to two others?

What if he’d canvassed a wider variety of social networking tools, explained there are horses for courses, asked how we used them?

What if he threw out his opinion or findings or whatever they were that Second Life is NOT a valid social network because 1 million people can’t be on at once and we can’t use our real names and asked us to challenge it?

Finally, what if he’d been using a social networking tool during his lecture and invited us to interact with him there as well as in SL?

The thought process this irritation set in motion sort of hooks into a blog post I wrote a while back about people at a tech conference complaining about others who were Tweeting.

There are multiple tools available to us all – for group learning, collaboration, communication.  Viral communication works best when it’s organic.  And as different people are drawn to different tools or communications channels — communications jumps channels. I find out about great YouTube videos via Twitter.  I find out about great web sites via me.edu.au, or Second Life, or Twitter, or Flickr or Diigo. I can start a conversation in Twitter and it will end up in Second Life or Skype.

And it’s easy to find conversations when they are tagged with keywords that would stir my interest or that are unique and shared across networks.

In creating learning modules and sessions on interaction, communication, collaboration, engaging learners — in short, all the faboo ways teaching and learning is being transformed — shouldn’t we ensure that we model those teaching and learning practices in our modules and sessions???

At two other sessions today, presenters standing in front of rows of avatars while standing on stages said we have to get rid of the sage on the stage mentality. *sigh*

Anyone – care to design a conference where PowerPoint, whiteboards, chalkboards, flip boards, butcher’s paper, videos, stages and seating that faces in one direction are outlawed?  Where there are NO presenters or presentations – but facilitators in the truest sense of the word? We could do it in Second Life — I can get us some free space.  We could do simultaneous sessions in Skype.  Maybe Elluminate.

It CAN be done.  It doesn’t mean anarchy.  I worked with Jo Kay and the Jokaydians last year to lead educators through tours of Second Life that taught them a helluva lot more than any PowerPoint could have. Jo shows, tells and offers opportunities to get hands one.  A role model.

Frankie Forsyth of Pelion Consulting, a consutlant from Tasmania, facilitated sessions for educators that drew information out of the participants in a structured way to achieve a common goal using an online classroom. She introduces research summaries, has questions where participants write out free form replies and then presents all the answers given and leads discussion.  She’s another of my role models. Because she takes it out of theory and puts it into practice.

I attended an Elluminate session on Friday sponsored by Edublogs on how to engage audiences using interactive tools and guess what? The presenter used interactive tools and we interacted and fed back what we thought and how we could use those techniques in our own sessions! Wow! Another role model!

So — are you a role model?

Image license is CC (by) – http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

I started my work blog because I wanted to write about the projects in which I am involved in at work. That others I work with blog about my projects fired me up. I wanted to instigate conversations. I kept my personal blog for more nuts and bolts, off topic and opinion pieces.

But that line is starting to blur for me and is leaving me in a quandry. I won’t give up this blog or let it go dormant because I own the IP to all that I write here. That is not the case with the company blog.

I think that my company blog is higher profile because the RSS feed appears on the company web page.

Even though I get washed out of the stream fairly quickly by more prolific bloggers, I’ll bet I get traffic from that (as my stats are not hooked up on my company blog, I don’t know for sure.).

And while respected aggregators like Stephen Downes have commented on posts I’ve made on my work blog — he’s never commented on blog posts from this one.

So in the end, I thought I’d publish this morning’s post to the higher profile blog, even though I lose control of ownership on the content so that I could generate the discussion I wanted to start.

But lately I’ve been looking at how I think about social media – including blogs and twittering. I was asked to write up my thoughts on policies around it for the organisation so that everyone had guidelines. And it strikes me that how organisations vs. individuals use these tools is changing the landscape for me.

Do I need to blog as an individual in two places? I don’t think so.

I blog to have conversations and to get my thinking down somewhere where I can easily access it. I’m not chasing stats. So what if Stephen Downes only ever comments on my education.au blog posts — if I want to be noticed, I’ll get off my bum and do more to move my blog out into the world.

Should I keep my company blog to have a voice in what I’m doing for work? I’m leaning toward yes on that because I want to share the mindset and experiences behind what I do for and with my organisation. The question is –would readers want to subscribe to that?

Just as I only read blogs that inspire, amuse or educate me — would someone want to subscribe to the blog of a woman who was just talking about the work she does? I suppose if it were relevant to their interests the answer would be yes.

And what about my Twittering? I’m sometimes silly, sometimes talking about work. Should I keep my personal Twitter account for silliness and have another or create a joint company Twitter account to advise of outages, answer client tech questions and promote events? I’m starting to think yes.

While I don’t openly complain about my place of work on my Twitter account — I express opinions that aren’t in line with the company’s stakeholders’ trains of thought. So by using Twitter to communicate about work issues — am I now a representative of the company on Twitter? It’s hard to write a disclaimer AND express an opinion in 140 characters or less.

And what about my video sharing accounts? Long ago I realised that I can’t post videos with company logos on them to the same site I post machinima with dance music tracks and videos of my cat. So I set up company accounts for that.

Slide sharing? My SlideShare account is about my presentations — no cat content or dance music there, so that was easy.

LinkedIn is about me as a professional so that was easy.

GMail is also all about me.

But when I comment on blogs – what signature do I use and when?

Do I use my “official” signature with my company name and title and contact details? Sometimes I do. Especially when commenting on the company dollar. For more radical sites and opinion pieces, I use my personal signature. But I’m always KerryJ — so does it matter WHICH signature I use? Or do I have an over-inflated sense of my own importance?

Hmmm. The more I look into a an online communications plan for our organisation, the more I realise I need to write one for myself.

How do you handle yourselves? Do you draw an online divide between your professional self and your private self? Do people who whinge about work on their personal accounts deserve to be fired if they are easily traced back to their place of work? Should people using professional accounts use the 2-drink rule after hours?

However, this quest got me thinking about my blog theme — 3 columns seems a bit much.  I tend to use my blog as a testing ground, but over the past year it was resembling not so much a blog as the Las Vegas strip.

So I started the quest for a unique WordPress blog theme – widget-ready, 2 columns, reasonable level of customisation.  I ended up finding inexpensive software that allowed me to create my own.

Artisteer (http://www.artisteer.com), created by Extensoft (http://extensoft.com) , allowed me to create a standards-compliant WordPress theme with a drag and drop interface that was fun and really easy to use.

At this writing, the software cost $US50 for a home/educational version for one user (you can use on one desktop and one laptop computer).  It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of the standard version, but will certainly do the trick for me.  Pros can buy the full version for $125 and they company is planning to release an editor for Joomla and Drupal along with Blogger, Sharepoint and other CMS packages.

I had to do a bit of tweaking once I’d uploaded the theme — for me, I have to have the RSS/subscribe info at the top of the page.  I’d also have liked to add my sub page names to the editor and do tweaking on the sub page template, but it’s early days and I can use the theme editor in WordPress to upload header images for sub pages.

This could be a real time saver for you pro-CSS coders – I know that for a complete CSS n00b like me, it has saved me literally DAYS of time.  Even searching for free themes costs time — so this little baby has paid for itself on the first blog for me.

And in the interest of full disclosure — no, I do NOT get a kickback from the company and the links I am providing are NOT via any affiliate program.

All in all – I’m very, very happy with my ROI.

Don't filter me

“I’m not exaggerating when I say that this model involves more technical interference in the internet infrastructure than what is attempted in Iran, one of the most repressive and regressive censorship regimes in the world.” Colin Jacobs, chair of the online users’ lobby group Electronic Frontiers Australia, as quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald, 24 October 2008.

Nope, this isn’t a post about China or a dictatorship (at least, not an official one) that’s the subject of this blog post.  It’s the Australian government’s short on detail long on self-righteous rhetoric approach to “protecting our children”.

I don’t know why suddenly everyone is shocked.  Internet filtering at the ISP level has reared its ugly head on both sides of the Australian Parliament.  The latest effort was in March 2006 when then-Labour-leader Kim Beazley pounded his fist in righteous indignation “for the sake of the children”. Of course that led to the then Howard-government’s disastrous filter for every home mail-out that then year 10 student Tom Wood cracked in less time than it takes to watch an episode of that soft-core porn TV fav “Big Brother”.

In January, Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy Stephen Conroy resurrected the cause and attempted to stifle debate on the issues, as I blogged in the post “Disagree and you are an anti-Australian pervert.”

Things seemed to go quiet until April with the government introducing amendments to the Telecommunications act that would reportedly “force all telecommunications providers to facilitate lawful data interception across fixed and mobile telephone systems, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), Instant Messaging (IM) and chat room discussions”

Now it’s on again — time to educate yourself and choose a side.

This Thursday 30 October, the Hon. Stephen Conroy will be intereviewed on ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) radio national’s Media Report program – 8:30am AEDT, repeated 8pm.  His interview will immediately be followed by one with respected futurist, educator and programmer Mark Pesce. Hopefully the audio and transcript will be up on the Media Report site not long after.

If you’d like to do some homework in advance, WA Greens Senator Scott Ludlam’s web site provides a transcript of a conversation he had with Mr. Conroy in an estimates hearing — http://scott-ludlam.greensmps.org.au/content/transcript/cybersafety-net-filtering

Read up, listen in and take a stance.  Mr. Conroy says it’s early days yet – so we all have time to feed into this debate.

Finally, despite the fact I am not a Greens supporter, I have to say how blown away I was by Senator Ludlam’s blog and the Green’s site.  It’s the antithesis of Senator Conroy’s deadly boring web 1.0 pixel ghetto and proves who is in touch with how the internet is used and who gets “briefings”.

Waiting for time to pass - CC (by) Orange42 Flickr

In his post, he mentions complaints he read about a recent conference.  It seems some attendees thought that others who used the free wireless available to blog and tweet during keynotes were somehow rude.

I started writing a response because the obvious irony of people attending a conference on how to integrate ICTs into education and learning who object to the use of laptops, PDAs and mobile phones to text during a presentation made me snort and shake my head.

Then an image arose — of empty vessels who should passively wait to be filled — and of the image here of a bored student who is just sitting there, waiting for time to pass.  And it made me angry because isn’t that what we’ve been trying to break through?

Here was what I was going to post as a comment — until it got so long and I got so fired up I figured it was worth a blog post:

I question the value of lining us all up in chairs facing forward to listen to someone talk over slides — especially at a conference where the concepts of collaboration and new ways of teaching and learning are supposed to be the focus.

How much more engaging would it be to be pointed at a pre-recorded presentation to watch in advance of the day — then come prepared to actively discuss, debate and evaluate the concepts presented?

That way, the wireless connection is not a way of spewing out the highlights but to use to research and collaborate during the live discussion?

We wonder why people new to the concepts of collaboration and decentralised knowledge have problems incorporating them into their teaching and then we provide conferences and PD sessions that are still structured with one font of all knowledge in front of a “class” of empty vessels waiting to be filled.

Can we PLEASE start practicing what we preach?  Is there a conference coming up in the near future where the organisers and keynote speakers are willing to send out the materials in advance to allow people to become conference PARTICIPANTS rather than conference ATTENDEES?

With experience, that self talk speeds up and becomes less of a consious effort.  You can blast the radio, drink a bottle of water and enjoy the view without danger of going off the road.

So how can you accelerate that process for newcomers to online environments?

I’m working on a landing pad for newcomers to Second LIfe as part of my work with education.au and as a learning journey for myself as a trainer and learning object creator.  So I’m going to use my social network and put out an appeal to you:

Please leave a comment on this post sharing your top 3, 5 or 10 second life tips/discoveries that really flicked on a lightbulb for you or helped you flick onto auto pilot. I’ll incorporate the top 10 into postcards/slides for newcomers to look at and learn from.

Here are mine:

1) Use the arrow keys in conjunction with the mouse for smoother movement.

2) Play with gestures and assign hot keys to your favourites.

3) Use Page down for smoother landings.

4) Alt + arrow keys give better camera control.

5) CTL ALT D opens advanced menu options.

6) Torley Linden’s video tutorials ROCK

7) Use Make Outfit in Appearance menu to save favourite looks in folders

Use CTL Shift Y to turn on the sun

9) Use CTL Shift H to teleport Home if in an uncomfortable situation

10) Use Instant Messaging IM/Call button to talk privately or leave messages for friends not in-world