Learning in 3D Class: Week 4

Erika, our guide for ProtoSphere, talks to the group.

This week's class proved to be exciting as we got a guided tour of ProtoSphere from Erika of ProtonMedia, used the VOIP in Second Life and had a group challenge where teams of students (dressed as fire fighters) cleaned up make believe chemical spills in teams of 4 or 5. The idea behind that exercises was to help them learn how teamwork principles can be applied in a 3D world to help with team building, cooperation and coordination.

The ProtoSphere demonstration was great, we got to learn how to use gestures in-world and we got to go play a wheel of fortune game, see a large classroom and experience the social networking aspects of ProtoSphere and how you can click on an avatar and see a person's real-life profile.Our host also explained the different types of companies using the product and gave information on how they partner with organizations to set up and deploy the ProtoSphere application. You can check out ProtoSphere for yourself by viewing a demo at ProtonMedia's web site.

Later in the evening, we discussed designing instruction in a 3D world...Analysis of the learning objectives, Design of the learning events, Development of the in-world scene, Implementation of the technology and finally Evaluation of the educational experience from the in-world learning. Basically, we applied the ADDIE model of instructional design to building a 3D synchronous learning experience. The model is applicable just the specific details are applied differently and the design of the environment in which the learning occurs is critical to success.
The whole class standing around the main campus in Protoshere.

You can see the presentation discussing the ADDIE model for 3D worlds at Designing 3D Learning Events and peek into the class and some of the struggles we still have with the technology. I keep thinking of how similar the initial use of 3D worlds are to the early days of e-learning...first great hype and then great disappointment when the e-learning didn't live up to the hype and then a more realistic and positive use of the technology.

I think we are starting to see the wave of hype for 3D worlds starting to crash (see article How Madison Avenue Is Wasting Millions on a Deserted Second Life) and then, in the next couple of years, we will see more realistic use...but first some technical issues need to be worked out.
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Walk a Mile in My Shoes: Games Let You Do That

Part of learning is expanding your mind and understanding different perspectives or points of view. One extremely effective way of doing that is to "walk a mile in the other person's shoes" in other words...experience life as the other person does. This is sometimes much easier said than done since adopting another's view point can be difficulty and incomplete if done superficially.

One answer to this little dilemma is to play a video game as the other person...yes video games can allow one to assume the role of a foe or adversary and discover what he or she is thinking...one such game is called Peace Maker.

Thanks to Brandon Beaver (Bloomsburg IIT alumni) who sent me a fascinating piece about the game. Here is what Brandon had to say:

Interesting concept as it seems like some other games I've seen, but this one is very timely and relevant. The game allows you to play both sides of the conflict. In fact, one of the people interviewed in the piece on the radio said they could not really understand the other side's point of view until they played this game and then they began to understand.

What a great idea. Encourage your foes to play the game from your perspective and visa versa. We could do something like this in the states...let a doctor experience life as a patient...let a sales person experience life as a customer...let someone in the majority experience life as a minority. Let a parent experience life as a teacher or a teacher the life of a principal.

Another spin on this is the French finance game Cyber budget which I have blogged about before in Out and About: Learning Organisation. Read an article describing how it works called Tax too high? Then set your own budget, says French finance boss. In this game, you become the finance minister and must balance the budget while keeping all of your constituents happy (good luck).

The game allows anyone who is not in the finance office to struggle with the same issues as the politicians and to see just how difficult it is to try to create a fair and balanced budget with all the different interests at hand.

The budget Minister of France Jean-Francois Cope says the game, called "cyber-budget", will allow citizens to pretend they are in charge of the national finances.

If you speak French, check out the Cyber-Budget web site and play the game yourself.

Can you think of any applications where you want learners to experience life from a different perspective? What a powerful tool...and unique to the video game genre, put the learner in the role of that other person through a game and allow them to struggle with the same issues and ideology. What a learning experience.

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As the Internet expands getting an online Associates degree has been possible for years, and now a degree like an MBA is a possibility. Not everyone is looking to get a college degree online though, so there are many other things you might be able to find online of interest to you, right down to dancing lesson videos.
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Second Life Assignment Has Life of Its Own

If you have been following the Second Life class I have been conducting this summer you know that one of the assignments is to create a Machinimia Project explaining some part of Second Life. The complete assignment can be found on the Assignment Page of the MSIT Second Life wiki.

One student has already completed the assignment and created a Machinimia and posted it on YouTube (having some issues with TeacherTube, however, trouble loading) and then, in the true spirit of Web 2.0, he got an interesting message about his video.

I'm from the SL Newspaper and I just want to let you know that I came across your movie on YouTube.com (about LSL) and that we put it in our paper... Great tutorial by the way. Are you planning on making more of these tutorials? Thanks ...

What a great example of the power of Web 2.0 for sharing information...information that, without the web, would have been stuck in the walls of academia never to be seen by anyone else but with YouTube, blogs and wikis, the knowledge can be shared. Here is a view of the video.


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Design Day and the ASTD Big Question for July

I left a comment on Tony Karrer's blog about creating a "Design Day" so that everyone in the blogosphere adds a comment about the importance of instructional design as opposed to focusing on technology.

And then Dennis Coxe over at Sailing by Sound picked up on my comment and posted an entry called "I Declare 'Design Day'". It is a great entry outlining 3 elements of good design.

Around the same time, the ASTD Learning Circuits Blog had the July "Big Question" which was "Choosing Tools" which is actually a series of questions:

• How does the eLearning design process need to change to accommodate such a wide variety of tools?
  
• How does the tool selection process need to change?
  
• What should learning professionals do to stay up-to-speed? Do they need to learn new tools constantly? Can they stick with a few tools?
  
• Will this trend continue? If so, then what does that imply for us?

So, once again, I noted that good design is independent of the technology. Meaning that regardless of the technology what really matters is design. So now that I established that point, the next question is "Can certain attributes of different media be leverage for learning?"

For example, you can leverage audio (MP3) for modeling the pronunciation of certain words as opposed to writing the correct pronunciation on a blog or a wiki without the corresponding audio track.

Or, you can use the motion aspects of technology like Adobe's Flash to show assembly of an item as opposed to static images accompanied by text or even audio.

So, to get to the "Big Question"

• How does the eLearning design process need to change to accommodate such a wide variety of tools?

The elearning design process (which is not dis-similar to the instructional design process) has always included an element of media selection. During the analysis phase of instructional design, one of the decision points is what media to use. The selection of the media is dependent upon the objectives you are attempting to teach. If you teach the concept of "change over time" a video can be effective...text might be a little less effective. If you want to reach the affective domain, use video or immersive 3D environments.

If you want to teach jargon or acronyms, choose a design that emphasizes repetition and rehearsal, maybe a simple game to encourage repetition.

• How does the tool selection process need to change?

I am not sure the overall tool selection process needs to change, tool selection shouldn't matter as much as attribute selection...use the attributes of video where it makes sense...because video can be used in a variety of technologies....blogs, wikis, elearning development tools and even PowerPoint. It is not a matter of choosing the right "tool" but choosing the right vehicle within the tool to provide the desired learning effect. Games to motivate, video for the affective domain, blogs for story telling by experts, wikis for teamwork, 3D worlds for immersive learning experiences.

The tools are less relevant, for example, I can show a slide in a 3D world to teach someone how to assemble a chair, but is that the best media for learning to assemble a chair...no. But a 3D world might be great for teaching a team of people how to cooperate together to respond to a chemical spill. As another example, if the only thing moving in a video is the person's lips...do you really need video or would audio work just as well.

Let's move the argument from "Choosing Tools" to choosing attributes.

• What should learning professionals do to stay up-to-speed? Do they need to learn new tools constantly? Can they stick with a few tools?

Learning professionals need an awareness of tools but it is the attributes that matter more. Go to conferences, attend webinars, read blogs and talk to fellow professionals to stay aware of what is going on but...don't get sucked up into the hype of a new tool, stick with what you know (or should know) about the attributes of media which best convey a message to the learners.

Finally:

• Will this trend continue? If so, then what does that imply for us?

Yes, of course it will continue. It implies that we must constantly be learning in the learning field...makes sense and is what makes this profession so interesting and exciting.

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Four Generations in the Workforce

Here is a great article titled Mixing and Managing Four Generations of Employees by Greg Hammill. It does a great job of explaining the tendencies of four different groups all currently working within organizations and all required to work together even though they have different outlooks, experiences and expectations. The groups are:

• Veterans, Silent, Traditionalists (born between 1922 and 1945)
  
• Baby Boomers (born between 1946-1964)
  
• Generation X, Xers (born between 1965 and 1980)
  
• Generation Y, Millennial, Echo Boomers, Gamers (born between 1981 and 2000)

There are a number of really great charts in the article and some interesting comments. Here is Hammill's take on the core values of each group.

• Veterans, Silent, Traditionalists---Respect for authority, Conformers, Discipline
  
• Baby Boomers---Optimism, Involvement
  
• Generation X, Xers---Skepticism, Fun, Informality
  
• Generation Y, Millennial, Echo Boomers, Gamers--Realism, Confidence, Extreme Fun, Social

And here is how he sees each group dealing with money:

• Veterans, Silent, Traditionalists---Put it away, Pay cash
  
• Baby Boomers---Buy now, pay later.
  
• Generation X, Xers---Cautious, Conservative, Save, save, save
  
• Generation Y, Millennial, Echo Boomers, Gamers---Earn to spend.

So do you fit any of the categories? Is he "right on" or off-base?
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Third Class in Second Life

This week, we had Suzi Mazzenga as a guest speaker talking about her adventure as a male in Second Life. You can read about it in her article My Days as a Dude. She gave her presentation using text chat within the Second Life classroom we have set up on MSIT Island.

The class then had a discussion about the places they visited last week and how those places could be used for education. Thanks to Marnie Welliver for taking over the faciliation of the class as I was otherwise engaged.

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Comparing 2D and 3D Synchronous Learning

Here is a video I created for my "Learning in 3D Class" which contrasts the world of 2D Synchronous tools with 3D Synchronous learning tools. I hope it illustrates some of the advantages of 3D environments and some of the things that can be done to faciliate learning within a 3D environment.



The video is based on the work Tony O'Driscoll and I did for the e-learning guild's Synchronous Learning 360 Report. For a full discussion of 3D synchronous learning, you want to get your hands on that report, it contains a complete essay describing our view and explains how to create your own interactive synchronous learning as well as providing a maturity matrix of the use of 3D synchronous learning environments within organizations.

Also, you can check out a webinar where I co-presented with Steve Wexler and Karen Hyder on the Synchronous report. It is worth taking a look. The webinar is titled Synchronous Learning Report.

The webinar provides a great sneak peak into the data contained within the report and shows you the powerful data analysis tool available free to guild members.
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The End of Email?

I often talk about how the "gamer" generation views email as snail mail. Here is yet more proof. Tom King of Mobilemind sent me this great link to an article Kids say e-mail is, like, soooo dead which explains why kids don't use email.

My favorite part to the article: "Sometimes I say I e-mailed you, but I mean I Myspace'd or Facebook'ed you,"

Yes, they are creating verbs out of nouns...my former English teacher is cringing as you read this.

Over at the Pew Internet and American life project, their report Teens and Technology: Youth are Leading the Transition to a Fully Wired and Mobile Nation published in 2005. Indicates that teens are not really that into email even way back in 2005.

Email, once the cutting edge “killer app,” is losing its privileged place among many teens as they express preferences for instant messaging (IM) and text messaging as ways to connect with their friends. In focus groups, teens described their new environment. To them, email is increasingly seen as a tool for communicating with “adults” such as teachers, institutions like schools, and as a way to convey lengthy and detailed information to large groups. Meanwhile, IM is used for everyday conversations with multiple friends that range from casual to more serious and private exchanges.

This just shows the power of social networks and how important it is for this generation to be wired to one another. The social network trumps almost all other forms of communication. If you are not thinking about creating a social network around topics, areas of concern or competitive advantage...you should be or your training program or academic courses are going to be...obsolete.
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Guild Happenings

Avatar from ProtonMedia's ProtoSphere which will be discussed today.

Today at 12:45 EST, I will presenting, along with Ron Burns of ProtonMedia a session titled Fostering Informal Learning in a 3D Learning Environment. It should be very interesting and a lot of fun. We will focus on how informal learning can be fostered in a 3D environment.

Also, next Tuesday Steve Wexler, the Director of Research and Emerging Technologies, of the e-Learning Guild will be conducting conducting two webinars along with Kevin Brown from Tableau Software. The first half of the webinar will show what people can do with the Guild's Direct Data Access system (pretty cool stuff, especially if you love data.) The second half will show how people can use Tableau to analyze their own data.

This is a great chance for anyone not familiar with how the guild's system works to see it in action.

People can sign up for the webinar here.
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Learning in 3D Second Class...Tech problems

The second "Learning in 3D" class had a few technical difficulties. Second Life was slow and not everyone could log in. And our other 3D space was not accessible either. Our goal of this class was to view a number of educational locations to see what types of educational environments are being created within Second Life.

We had a great guest speaker, one of our graduates, Bart Pursel.

Bart did a great job with his presentation in spite of the technical difficulties. First he created a very helpful link on this blog providing a number of SLURLs which are worth visiting. Check them out at Learning in 3D Talk

He also summarized his experiences with the class in a great posting titled Learning in 3D Wrap Up. He also lists a number of hints for conducting a class like this in Second Life.

I then distributed some note cards to the MSIT group (after some difficulty) and the students then have a chance to go back into Second Life and see some of the places on their own. They are then asked to write their experiences on a note card and then we will discuss those experiences in our next class.

I also created a Machinimia assignment which the students are creating interesting 5 to 7 minute videos to show how Second Life works and how the technology could be used for creating educational sessions. The videos will be placed on YouTube for future viewing.

You can check out all of the class activities at MSIT Second Life Wiki. There is a great discussion going on under the Discussions tab.

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Value of Research

As an academic and a person who values research, I think it is critically important to our industry to back research and to use it to make sound judgments regarding the design, development and delivery of e-learning. One site I especially like is No Significant Difference.

Will Thalheimer has done a fantastic job in promoting that agenda and so have the likes of Ruth Colvin Clark and Richard Mayer as well as others.

Another group that is assisting in that area is the eLearning Guild who is doing some fantastic research in our industry.

However, research does not come without cost as anyone will tell you and Cammy over at Learning Visions has some concerns about the high cost of guild research in her post titled e-Learning Guild Synchronous Learning Systems.

She makes some good points but also brings up a questions I have been asked many times, why is research so expensive. It seems so easy, just ask some questions, record the answers and you are done.

As a seasoned researcher I have to say...not so fast. Research is about asking the right questions, finding the right correlations and investing in the proper tools so that the research is an accurate reflection of reality. Much time is spent trying to obtain responses and then trying to make sense of the responses, of course, this is after you have carefully crafted and tested the questionnaire (a time consuming process itself.)

The eLearning Guild actually gives away much of its research. First, the basic membership is free and then an overview of research reports are free, the webinar that Cammy attended is free...and she took great notes with great information that was all free--check it out...(even if she was multi-tasking while Steve showed the research tool.)

And while $995 for full access to the report (once you are a member) might seem expensive to an individual, to a corporation it is a small price.

We need the guild to conduct research and we, members of the field, need to support it. Why, because empirically-based decision making is critical for our industry and the research the eLearning Guild does is invaluable in helping organizations avoid mistakes that can potentially cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars. A small investment in research is good for companies and good for the industry. Research that would cost an individual company thousands of dollars can be aggregated by the guild and end up costing less than $1,000.

So we can lament the cost of obtaining the entire report or...we can be appreciative of the fact that the eLearning Guild is doing our industry a great service and giving away an awful lot of free information as well as providing additional information at a relatively small price.

So, if you are not a member consider joining, for free...and then see for yourself.

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Workshop Success-Teacher/Technologists Doing Great Work

Yesterday, my 13 yr old son and I presented a workshop sponsored by the Carbon Lehigh Intermediate Unit to help teachers integrate technology into the schools. It was a great group of teachers who have been designated, through a grant, as master technology educators. Their role is to go back to their school district, building or academic unit and help other teachers integrate technology.

This group is spending a week at Bucknell University learning all about integrating technology into the class room and how the technology functions. They are being worked really hard...up early, sessions running all day and then even after dinner, more sessions.

We had the privilege of providing some information and education about Second Life. My son did an awesome job explaining how to navigate and build in Second Life but did an even better job answering questions and providing a student's perspective on how he interacts and reacts to SL.

He also had to deal with a resident in SL saying inappropriate things to his avatar in front of the teachers, he handled it brilliantly (no bias here).

We conducted two workshops, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, here are the groups in RL and in SL.
Group One


Now for SL:


Group Two

Now in SL.

I have to say that with the dedicated work of these teacher/technologists from around Pennsylvania and the team at the intermediate unit...technology is reaching the schools and being done professionally and with an eye toward the future...what a great project and group of people. I was glad my son and I had a chance to participate in some small way.

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Training Blog Portal with PageFlakes

Steve Woodruff and I have put together a portal aggregating blogs around the topic of training/elearning/innovation and other learning, development and education topics.

Check it out at TrainingBlogs (we didn't spend a lot of time on the name.)

Here is what Brent Schlenker had to say about the portal.

So, if you don't want to mess around with aggregators and making your own little world of opt-in opt-out content, and you'd rather kick it old school...then just bookmark this little gem and you'll have a very good connection to the training world.

And here is what Wendy Wickham said

Superduper cool!!! Love it!!! Bookmarked it!!!!

And...if something is missing, you don't like a category...we omitted important blogs (your blog), please let me or Steve know. (especially in the Edubloggers tab).

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Father and Son Second Life Presentation

My work with games, gadgets and gizmos provides me with the perfect opportunity for connecting with my oldest son (now a teenager...it is everything they say it is)

In fact, tomorrow he and I are co-presenting a workshop about Second Life at Bucknell University to a group of high school, middle school and elementary school teachers.

My son is going to show them how to edit the appearance of their avatars, how to build items and add textures, how to navigate the world and how to chat and communicate. I am just going to sit back and watch the 13 year old do his stuff (and talk a little about the educational aspects of the tool.) We have co-presented twice before and he does a great job. This is going to be the highlight of my month! (and to top it off, he get 60% of the stipend directly...the rest goes to his college fund!)

Here is a picture of his avatar from the teen grid...Dmc Dench.

You can read more of his Second Life exploits in my TrainingDay post Like a Fish to Water.

If we are going to talk about reaching kids through technology...we need to involve the kids and gain insights from their perspective. I look forward to learning a lot tomorrow in the two 3-hour workshops.
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NCTT Summer Workshop

Every summer the NCTT organization does a great summer workshop for educators in 2-year, high school, vocational schools and other schools about technology in the area of Information and Communication Technologies.

This year the workshop was kicked off by Gordon Snyder Jr. the Executive Director / Principal Investigator of the NCTT center. Check out his blog for great information about Information and Communication Technologies...if you want to be up-to-date on the technology...his blog is the place to visit.

He gave some great statistics about the use of the internet around the world. The stat that I found most interesting was that land line use is actually declining by 9.7% per year. Soon young people will be asking "Mom, Dad, is it true you had something called a 'Land Line' that is so old fashion."

I was fortunate enough to keynote the event and lead with a presentation on the topic of..."The Gamer Generation." The audience was receptive and it generated a lot of great discussions. These are people that are on the front lines of dealing with the techno-natives and are constantly looking for new ways to provide learning opportunities for these kids who have grown up playing video games, surfing the web and creating content on sites like MySpace and YouTube. Thurday we are raffling off 40 copies (signed) of the book.


Gordon, Mike Qaissaunee and Mohammad Shanehsaz then gave a great presentation on Web 2.0 Tools. Here is a picture of Mike. They really had some interesting insights into how the tools can be used in an educational setting to help the upcoming generation understand technical concepts and ideas.

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Total Chaos: First Second Life ID Class...Total Fun

Tonight was the first "Learning in 3D Class" it was totally fun and totally chaotic. It reminded me a lot of the first e-learning classes that I taught, no one was really sure what to do, the software would crash from time-to-time and students and instructors where figuring out what needed to be done.

So here are a few lessons learned:

• Avatar must be off of orientation island before they can teleport (we had some stuck students) A good prerequisite would be for the learner to be off of orientation island before attending class.
  
• Be aware of graphic card issues. You need to have the right graphic card to participate or it will crash on you. Had three students with this issue (out of 30)
  
• Show learners how to create landmarks early so they can find their way back to you. We wanted everyone to come back to the classroom on our island but they couldn't find it.
  
• The scavenger hunt was a lot of fun. I hid blue cones with definitions of key terms the learners had to find. They had a great time looking for the cones and finding the definitions.
  
  
• Things take longer than you think. Allow extra time for helping to return lost avatars and working with permissions. We had some people "locked out of areas" because of permission issues. So they had to be "opened" during the class.
  
• Expect weird and strange noises periodically through class as some more experienced students would virtually "yawn" or laugh or worse.
  
• Develop protocol for asking and responding to questions, everyone talking at once is too much

The lack of audio was really an issue so...we mashed together a solution. We had everyone log into Adobe Breeze and use that audio while we were in Second Life. We also had Heather demo some Second Life stuff through application sharing within Breeze. It worked surprisingly well.

So, I would say the first class was everything you expect from the first time using any new technology and I am sure the other classes will be more tame...maybe.
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Survey Says

Of course you all know about SurveyMonkey...a great piece of web-based software that allows you to create excellent surveys with relative ease. The price is reasonable as well!

I haven't used it for a while and found out they revamped the interface and did some changes to the management of the surveys. Very nice. I use it for the evaluation work I do on some NSF ATE grants.

If you haven't checked out SurveyMonkey before or if it has been a while, take a visit. You'll be impressed.
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Long Weekend: At the Virtual Beach

So for this July 4th weekend, I have been able to visit the beach a little. Check it out. I can even hear the waves.

Also just learned that on Teusday, I'll be giving a keynote address at the Summer Curriculum Workshop for the National Center for Telecommunications Technologies a center sponsored by the National Science Foundation, I'm looking forward to it.
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Heads Down Second Life Work

A good number of hours today are going toward my preparation for my upcoming class called "Learning in 3D."

Today I focus on preparing the MSIT Second Life wiki for the class. It guides learners through the first few lessons for the first class and provides them with some resources. I also spent a lot of time this morning trying to set up a travel itinerary for new avatars to get a feel of the Second Life universe and what can be accomplished from an educational perspective.

Feel free to check out the wiki and add any resources or other items that would be helpful.

I currently am focusing on:

• Signing Up
  
• Communicating
  
• Moving Around
  
• Building

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T&D Reviews Gadgets, Games and Gizmos for Learning

This morning I opened up the July 2007 issue of ASTD's Magazine, T&D and found that Paula Ketter has just reviewed Gadgets, Games and Gizmos for Learning.

Here is some of what she had to say:

[This book, like others, talks about] the impending retirement of baby boomers and how companies are dealing with the critical knowledge transfer that needs to take place.

But what makes this book different is its unique approach to the knowledge-transfer issue...This book is a valuable resource for any business looking to find practical solutions to the boomer-gamer knowledge-transfer gap. It reveals new methods and tools that are being used successfully in a variety of settings, including Flash mobs and cheat codes, video iPods, instant messaging and blogging.

Knowledge transfer is one of the most critical issues facing organizations today.

In fact, I was reading the Philadelphia Inquirer a few weekends ago and they had an article on retiring air traffic controllers. The head of the union said "The margin of safety is decreasing becasue you're seeing an experience drain going on." The article goes on to say that retirements and staffing levels have reduced the amount of time veterans have for fully training recent hires...new methods are needed for training, hopefully my book helps organizations understand some of those new methods and training possiblities.

Also, this month, Wiley's publication Global Business and Organization Excellence published an article I wrote titled Tools and Techniques for Transferring Know-How from Boomers to Gamers. You can read the abstract here.

If you are looking for some summer reading, you might want to pick up the book or the article and provide your own review. You can write the review on this blog or hop on over to Amazon and leave a review.
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Metaverse Links

Lately, I've been tuned into the metaverse since I am teaching a class called "Learning in 3D" starting on July 9 using Second Life and ProtoSphere (how cool is my job?)

The class is focused on designing effective instruction in a 3D world.


So, here are some links on the topic.

• Definition of Metaverse
• The Metaverse Roadmap Project
• Metaverse Roadmap Overview
• Article titled: Another Life: Virtual Worlds as Tools for Learning
• Article titled Defining and Understanding Virtual Worlds
• Games and Learning? Getting Serious
• Blog by ProtoSphere founder. Ron Burns
• Like Fish to Water, my weekly entry on TrainingDay blog
• Intellagirl's web site

And, in the spirit of "fair and balanced reporting" here is a great posting by Clark Aldrich of why Second Life (metaverses in general) are not good learning platforms...read the comments as the discussion progresses in an interesting fashion.

Top Ten Missing Features of Second Life as an Educational Simulation Platform

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