Sea Change

Today I presented my final project for a graduate level course I am taking in Second Life, Teaching and Learning in Virtual Worlds. My final project was to recreate the arrival of the first Africans to Jamestown in 1619 on VSTE Island in Second Life. This exhibit joins the English ships, James Fort, Powhatan Indian Village and First Landing already existing in VSTE Island’s Virtual Jamestown settlement. The purpose of this recreation is to explore the use of virtual reality for teaching and learning about key historical events as content resources for educators.

This exhibit’s recreation included a ship, the White Lion, a British pirate ship flying a Dutch flag. The tiered dock was designed to be used an interactive classroom.  This area has been parceled to allow media, both audio and video, to play for a variety of presentations.  A media screen can be raised over the ship to view streamed videos. Currently the parcel’s media is set to play an audio podcast I created. The tobacco storage house is texturized from photographs taken at the real life Jamestown settlement recreation in Jamestown, Virginia.

Instead of having visitors gather a number of notecards from the various displays and information signs, I used a Touch IM script which whispers the information from a notecard located in the objects content folder into visitor’s local Second Life chat window.  Links to web resources are live in visitor’s opened chat window and when clicked, open in the web browser.

One notecard is made available for educators outlining the essential knowledge all Virginia students must understand about this period in history—Virginia Studies (VS.3e): The student will demonstrate knowledge of the first permanent English settlement in America by identifying the importance of the arrival of Africans to the Jamestown settlement. Essential understandings include:

• Jamestown became a more diverse colony by 1620.
• Africans arrived in Jamestown against their will.
• It is believed that the Africans arrived as baptized Christians and therefore were labeled indentured servants for a period of 5 to 7 years.
• The arrival of Africans made it possible to expand the tobacco economy.

Research was done to provide content information for educators. The story of the first Africans to arrive at Jamestown in 1619 was recorded as a podcast that plays in the exhibit:

It is 1619 in Jamestown, Virginia. The first representative assembly in the Americas, the House of Burgesses, had just convened for the first time in Jamestown when the first African slaves arrived.

A colonial shipping document uncovered in the late 1990s identified a Portuguese slave ship called the San Juan Bautista with a cargo of 350 slaves bound for Veracruz, on the east coast of modern-day Mexico.

This Portuguese ship was robbed of its human cargo off the coast of Mexico by two British pirate ships, the Treasurer and the White Lion, which was flying a Dutch flag.  Each took 20 to 30 slaves before the San Juan Bautista continued on to Veracruz.

The White Lion landed first at Jamestown and traded 20 Africans for provisions. The Treasurer landed four days later and traded its human cargo for provisions also.

Virginia’s first Africans spoke Bantu languages. Their homelands were the regions of modern-day Angola and coastal regions of Congo. Both regions were conquered by the Portuguese in the 1500s.

The Africans in these areas mined tar and rock salt for a livelihood, used shells as money and highly valued their children.

Most of the first Africans at Jamestown were likely to have been baptized as Christians. Many of these Africans were literate. Some historians believe this Christian background may be one reason why some of Virginia’s first Africans won their freedom after years as indentured servants.

Finally, in the Teacher Resource Center located on VSTE Island, educators can find an interactive lesson plan to use with their students in the classroom.

I belong to the VSTE in Second Life group and I am one of four VSTE Island managers. Recently, VSTE’s executive director and owner of VSTE Island asked the four of us to define our purpose and follow our passion when it comes to operating VSTE Island.

This prompted me to examine why I am willing to spend time and money in Second Life, a virtual gaming world, with all my real life obligations. My answer comes down to where my passions (what I enjoy doing), my purpose (what I care about), and my talents (what I am good at doing) all come together in Second Life and the common denominator I found was building. Building is visual and appeals to my kinesthetic learning style. So much can be done with geometric-shaped building blocks, called “prims” (short for primitives) and I have only begun to scratch the surface in developing my own Second Life building skills.

Here is how I see the connections from my real life to my Second Life:

1. Second Life is a place where I can follow my passion to learn by teaching, by demonstrating, by observing, and by just trying things out for myself.
2. Second Life is a place that provides me with the opportunity to meet people with completely different perspectives to connect, collaborate and create for a common purpose.
3. Second Life gives me a place to explore my talents as a designer and a builder of small-scale models not restricted by what can only exist in the real world.

As building is a universal skill that has the potential to bring all groups of people in Second Life together and the demand for building classes from our VSTE membership appears evident, I organized the VSTE Island Building Institute that took place this summer. It is my hope that this will become an annual event on VSTE Island.

The institute kicked off on Monday, July 13 with how to create transparent, phantom prim trees which I facilitated. Two guest builders were invited to participate in the institute: CoolestBean Brunswick led lessons in using Scratch4SL to create scripted objects and SculptyPaint to create sculpted prim objects and Pikskate Clip demonstrated how to construct flags with wind and how to build a flag pole for the waving flag. Finally, I facilitated another session based on Brian White’s (Author of Second Life, A Guide to your Virtual World) essential collaborative building skills.

All sessions were well attended and there were lessons learned. We learned that our sandbox was not large enough to accommodate large groups of people with big building projects; voice communication is not always dependable; and there is a need to differentiate the sessions based on learner abilities.

Recently, and quite unexpectedly, I became homeless in Second Life.  The island, White Pearl, where my avatar, Mandie Mimulus, had been inhabiting for nearly a year went offline on Friday, July 24. I say it was unexpected only because Linden Labs did not give me notice of the island’s disappearance—one day it was just gone with all my objects that I had placed on the island.

For some time now, all who had lived on the beautiful islands of Voyager Archipelago, an estate of thirteen sims including my White Pearl, knew it would eventually happen.  The estate owner, Skipper Burns, had disappeared.  Skipper was a responsible Second Life land owner; he was always visible on the islands and it was unlike him not to respond to IMs and emails. His name disappeared from our group list and his profile was not found in a search. Rumors circulated that he was ill and some believed Skipper must have passed away or became incapacitated in some way. Even without his presence, the islands of Voyager continued to exist for awhile. It was a mystery.

So what does one do in Second Life when someone disappears—file a missing avatar report? Inquiries to Linden Labs support produced no valuable information except to assure me that I would be given a 24-hour notice before my island would be taken offline—which, of course, proved to be misinformation. Fortunately, a request through Linden Lab Live Chat brought my island back for a 24-hour period and I was able to retrieve all my objects and say a proper goodbye.

Voyager Archipelago was a well-planned region with plenty of open sim water for residents to sail, jet ski and kayak. Skipper Burns, whose avatar resembled a rugged sea captain, maintained a nautical theme throughout the region. One could find sunken pirate ships and lighthouses as you explored the many waterways.

My White Pearl island was located at the furthermost southwest corner of Voyager which offered me fantastic sunset views from the top of my own lighthouse. My favorite pastime was to kayak from my island to the Trader’s Point, Voyager’s business district, to explore the period ships Skipper had on display. There was also the neatest little chandlery shop and a pub that served Guinness. Skipper was a huge fan of the late comedian, George Carlin. He had even erected a small memorial in the pub where one could sit and enjoy YouTube videos of Carlin’s funny monologues.

I have several fond memories of Skipper. The most vivid occurred on Halloween night 2008 when my island was invaded by a Pumpkin Head griefer. I was totally rattled by the experience, didn’t know how to handle the intruder and didn’t want to abandon my island. Skipper was online and within seconds of my distress call, he was on my island, had caged the griefer and banished him to regions unknown. Next, Skipper sweetly chastised me for not knowing what to do and he spent the next several hours teaching me how to deal with griefers.

Not all Voyager residents were respectful of one’s privacy. I had a neighbor who found much enjoyment in buzzing my island with his helicopter. Sometimes he would hover outside my lighthouse and once he dived at my avatar with his helicopter. I believe he was upset with me for not accepting him as more than just a friend. I eventually banned him access to my island. To maintain the openness of the Voyager waterways, security ban lines were not allowed to be used but if you ban someone from your land, that avatar sees red ban lines. This neighbor filed a complaint with Skipper stating I was not complying with covenant rules and used ban lines. Once I explained the circumstances to Skipper, he just chuckled, “Well, that will teach him!”

Voyager residents did not have terraforming (editing land) rights on their islands. Whenever I wanted to change the look of my land, I would notify Skipper and he would terraform for me. Of course, I wanted to learn how to terraform and Skipper taught me. The last few times I had asked for something to be terraformed, Skipper would just assign me the rights to do it on my own.

Skipper also taught me how to manage an island in Second Life. When VSTE Island came online, Skipper was always available to answer my questions and he expertly explained the ins and outs of sim management. I felt so proud when I discovered he would visit VSTE Island about once a month to see our progress. This week I experienced a great sense of loss when a potentially catastrophic event occurred on VSTE Island and I did not have Skipper Burns to turn to. I realized I didn’t just lose a home but I lost a great mentor and dear friend.

If you had read my previous entry on this blog you would have thought I was to use this blog as a chronicle of my experiences at NECC this past week. Think again. I blogged plenty… but just not here. I used the micro-blog called Twitter exclusively! Twitter is referred to as a “micro” blog because one is only allowed to post 140 characters and every single character counts.

Twitter provided me with interesting conversations, connectedness and discovery by following interesting, insightful and enjoyable people whose random NECC musings made my conference experience most pleasurable. I felt as if I was part on the whole conference, not just the sessions I attended, because of Twitter. In fact, I figured I could have survived the entire NECC Conference with my iTouch and one of several Twitter apps.

In addition to being a collaborative tool, Twitter became my mini diary of my conference experiences. Twitter allowed me to share with my followers what I was up to at any given moment and comment on relevant information being discussed at sessions I attended. In addition, I was able to share links to resources and communicate with friends throughout the large convention center.

I have been a Twitter user for almost two years and find it to be a beneficial tool in my everyday life in many ways. First, there is a strong Twitter community in my school division. We use Twitter to share resources, network and support each other. Many times I have found a quick solution to a technical issue faster through Twitter than by using conventional methods to report a problem. As a computer resource specialist I must complete monthly reports of technology integrated activities happening at my school. By using Twitter as a daily diary of these activities, I am able to complete my reports more efficiently while sharing with my professional learning network.

Twitter allows me to extend my professional learning network outside my school division. There is a strong community of educators who I follow on Twitter and I have come to greatly appreciate the value in networking and the real-time interaction Twitter provides.

One of the strongest benefits I have recognized about Twitter is being able to customize and use it on an ongoing basis to meet my specific needs and interests. As a participant in the multiuser virtual environment called Second Life, I follow many of my Second Life friends and several Second Life information resources on Twitter. As a manager for Virginia Society for Technology in Education’s (VSTE) island in Second Life, I use Twitter to advertise our weekly meetings and to share photographs of our activities and events bringing more interest to VSTE Island. Now, there is an object which enables one to post to and receive updates from Twitter when in Second Life.

Another great way to customize your Twitter needs is to use hashags. Hashtags are phrases or keywords that can be used to monitor who is saying what about a particular topic on Twitter. Standards for hashtags are one word or multiple words strewn together without any spaces such as #NECC09 to help those who seek similar content about this year’s NECC Conference.

I am @mkbooz on Twitter and would love to tweet with more educators.

In a few hours I leave for National Educational Computing Conference (NECC) in Washington, DC. It will be my first time attending this conference and I am excited.

Since this year’s conference is just a few hours’ drive away from my home in Virginia, I will be attending with a large group of Computer Resource Specialists, Instructional Technology Coordinators and principals from my school division. It is great to be able to attend a conference like this with so many colleagues because we will be able to share our experiences and learn from each other even after the conference ends. I also realize this will be an opportunity to extend my personal learning network by meeting people from all over with the same interests.

With web tools readily available I will be able to share my NECC experiences as they happen with others who are not attending. It is my plan to include a daily blog post and Twitter about all the sessions I am attending. My Tweets will update on my Facebook page and I will share photographs through Flickr and TwitPic. In addition, I will post to my VSTE and NECC ning pages.

It is going to be a great four days!

I completed my ISTE NETS*T Capstone one year ago this month.  In fact, the day I clicked my final Capstone submission button, I created my Second Life avatar, Mandie Mimulus.  I knew of Second Life and had colleagues encouraging me to join but felt I wouldn’t have had the time to devote to Second Life while taking the year-long Capstone course.

My Capstone experience has served me well in my current position as an instructional technologist and much more.  During the Capstone exhibit writing process, I often compared it to writing a grant.  

For several years I tried to receive one of ISTE/HP Technology for Teaching grants for my school; my grant proposals were all unsuccessful.  My instructional technology coordinator suggested it may be easier to become a reviewer for ISTE and HP instead.  I applied and was accepted in 2007 as an ISTE grant reviewer consultant.

For the past three years I have had the opportunity to review grant proposals for the ISTE/HP Technology for Teaching grants.  The most rewarding part of reviewing these grant proposals is seeing different insights on innovation ~ there are some great things going on out there!  Plus, I do get paid per completed grant review.  

It is assumed that grant reviewers typically spend about a half hour on each grant review.  Well, my first year I spent much more time reviewing a grant proposal—more than an hour per grant.  Last year was better but I still spent more than a half hour per grant.  I just struggled with some of the nuances in the grant review rubric.

I now recognize that I lacked a firm understanding of the NETS my first year and after a year of applying the NETS in my everyday teaching, I found this year’s grant review process less of a struggle.  Though, I am sworn to secrecy about the process and criteria, I can tell you I am amazed at how much I have grown, professionally, this past year.  It was if someone had lifted a veil and I could clearly identify a distinctive grant proposal and the impact that technology can have in teaching and learning.

It has been a long while since my last post.  Much has transpired!   I received another grant for an exciting project which has preoccupied me since September 2008.  It involved four Virginia Beach computer resource specialists ~ me, Lisa Alconcel, Al Doss, and Kim Harrison.  We created a virtual simulation of the Jamestown Settlement and Powhatan Village of 1607 for Virginia educators to use as a resource in preparing rich and engaging lessons for their students.

This recreation is housed in the multi-user virtual environment (MUVE) called Second Life on VSTE Island, maintained by the Virginia Society for Technology in Education (VSTE).

The virtual Jamestown simulation contains historically accurate buildings, artifacts and information directly related to the Virginia Standards of Learning that can be toured by educators who visit Second Life using three-dimensional model representations called avatars.

Virtual environments such as Second Life are a novel learning platform for educators that can combine interactive graphics, gaming skills, simulation technology, virtual reality, voice chat and rich digital media with historical environments to be utilized as a resource in planning classroom learning experiences for students. Through virtual simulation teachers have a sense of “being there” even when attending a class or training session in person is not possible or practical.

Interactive tours of the James Fort, English ships and Powhatan village have been designed to follow virtual signposts detailing essential content knowledge with links to educational websites. These historical tours have also been recorded using video making software to be shown in the classroom learning environment with students.

VSTE supports the use of professional learning communities to create a culture of success in improving academic achievement of all students and encourages professional development programs emphasizing strategies for integrating 21st century themes and skills.

VSTE Island in Second Life holds weekly meetings for educators to come together in a collaborative virtual environment led by the four computer resource specialists.  These meetings support teacher-to-teacher collaboration; particularly exchanges focused on deepening teachers’ content knowledge of the Jamestown Settlement and fostering classroom project based learning activities for students.

For more information on the Virginia Society for Technology in Education, visit www.vste.org.For more information on the Virginia Society for Technology in Education, visit www.vste.org.

FETC’s opening keynote speaker was Jeff Corwin, Animal Planet’s wildlife biologist.  With humor and a dynamic personality, Jeff spoke about his passion for environmental education in the age of technology.  He related his work in the environment and ecology to strategies that can be applied in the classroom to engage students and inspire an interest in learning.  Now considered an expert in rain forest animals, Jeff was first introduced to tropical rain forests in 1984, while on an expedition to Belize.  This fueled his interest in the study and conservation of these ecological marvels.  I was impressed that he had served as Expedition Naturalist for The Jason Project, the acclaimed documentary series produced by National Geographic under the direction of Robert Ballard.  I remembered sharing this documentary with my third grade students as we studied the Titanic. Jeff is now partnering with Discovery Education to produce a handful of projects.