Journal+Part+2


 * Thursday, November 29:** I have been reflecting on our experience together this semester. I have learned quite a bit about a number of tools and also about myself. I have also grown in my appreciation for my students. I continue to explore Second Life. I attended an Anglican worship service, let by a priest from England. There were four of us in attendance. the service was very similar to a Catholic service I attended in RL several months ago. It was a liturgical service. I visited my friend Iz, and I sat around a [|hookah] with several hippies. Iz introduced me to several of her friends. I entered a "heated discussion" with one fellow who called my belief in God nonsense and silly. Iz felt bad that I was put in that situation. I did not feel offended. I was able to share my love for Jesus and his love for me in the face of ridicule. I was not angry or defensive. I was trying to learn about this fellow and why it was he had so much disdain for my beliefs. A fascinating chain of events. Our work on the peace front continues. EdTek has agreed to help me get a website started for this group. I met with one of the leaders of the group, Cotton Thorne. Cotton is an edtech guy.

I am beginning to form the ideas for the course I hope to offer next summer on religious experience in Second Life. I have no idea if anyone will take the course, but I am fascinated with the idea of introducing my students to the many folks who are sharing their faith and practice online in this manner. In SL, I can routinely interact with atheists, pagans, all persuasions of Christians, and learn from them. The $64K question is, how does this translate to my relationships with those in my own community here? What am I learning about myself and others that can help me serve, minister to and teach in a more effective way? The jury is still out, but the hints of possibilities emerge.


 * Friday, November 23:** I received notice that the panel presentation that I had proposed to [|SITE] was rejected. This was the presentation that examined usability/acceptance models for technology on Web 2.0 applications. Doug's diigo project, my wiki project, Sean's freshman seminar project with Second Life and Joop's research on educators' use of Second Life were the four featured projects. I am disappointed. I believe that we had a good proposal. I was not given any feedback as to why the proposal was rejected. I was informed that the call for proposals was left open and that I could resubmit with a different format (roundtable or short paper). I also learned this week that my application for a [|Fulbright award] that would have taken me to Southern Africa next year was rejected. The project I intended to work on involved investigated capacity building for online instruction in tertiary institutions in Namibia.

On the Second Life front, I joined a peace group and offered to help with website development. I made application to join a group of educators, artists and activists. I went through a formal interview process for the group and have not yet heard if I had been granted membership in the group.


 * Tuesday, November 13:** On the Diigo project front, Doug and I did a little debriefing yesterday. Only about 1/3 of the folks that agreed to participate have stuck with it. We are in a week of free exploration now and so we will see who continues and what functions they try out. Interaction is not strong. Diigo is quite complex, in my view, and difficult to learn without strong and ongoing support. There a number of important features that make it a useful tool, but I am thinking now that the "E" in the [|Dodge equation] would be quite low. Speaking of the Dodge equation, Joop has posted [|preliminary findings] of his study of SL using the Dodge formula.

I have a group together for the TCC proposal, one that features religious expression online. Several of the group in 675b have volunteered to be a part of that. I am also looking for opportunities to write a proposal with Wes regarding media use by faculty in online courses. Finally, I am considering a proposal which would feature the use of wikis as a supplement to online instruction. I had a three-way video conference yesterday with two colleagues using the utility ooVoo. [|Oovoo] is skype-like, but taken to another level. Audio and video were both clear and text and file transfer work well. I recommend that you try ooVoo. My username is sheadely, if you try it out, send me a message and we can try it out together.


 * Tuesday, November 6:** the NCATE visit continues. I met Tom in SL today and introduced him to Joop and suggested that Joop should interview him. Tom learned how to use the talk function. He and I discussed the challenges inherent in SL for our use. The wide-open nature of the medium with racy content is one challenge that he pointed out, another challenge is the amount of time and effort that students and educators need to invest to become adept. I investigated today another virtual world, which is the [|Agape World Fellowship]. I visited there for about 30 minutes and requested citizenship. The intent of this site is to provide biblical instruction and interaction between Christians and non-Christians. The graphics are not at all of the quality of SL, but the people were friendly and the text chat was meaningful.


 * Monday, November 5:** We are in the midst of an NCATE accreditation visit this week. I participated in two interviews this morning. Our interviewer colleagues were interested in faculty load, collaboration, diversity, scholarship and the representation of our mission as a Christian IHE in the work that we do in the school of education. No mention was made of technology in either of the sessions, except in several comments made by faculty. Perhaps information technology is not a great concern in K-12 schools and colleges? I really believe that technology is a big concern, for both teaching and learning and administrative purposes. Doug and I are in week four of the Diigo project. Professors in the study group have not used diigo as prolifically as my student colleagues in edfl675. However, we are having continued activity in bookmarking and highlighting. This week, we will be exploring the search capabilities of Diigo. I participated in worship at the Friends meeting on Saturday on Sea Turtle Island in Second Life. I saw several "old timers" from the original meeting, including Harmony and Turtle. I met Micah, who is related to a family I know here in Newberg. I shared a message regarding hope and it brought a blessing to someone in the meeting.


 * Tuesday, October 30:** I met Tom (Thomas Brandenburg) in SL today. There was a crash in the system that made if difficult for us. I hope to meet him and others of my colleagues in this group in SL soon. I have created a 675folk group in SL which allows me to send notices out to any and all who have established a presence in SL. I also installed a mashup utility between SL and Facebook this afternoon and will be testing that out.


 * Monday, October 29:** I spent some time with Cheryl and Sue and Amy on Saturday in the Online Conference room reviewing RSS feed readers, diigo and course projects. I also reviewed my notes on the Educause conference and visited the virtual campus of the Masters of Digital Media program at The Great Northern Way Campus (Vancouver BC). This program was featured in a presentation by Joanna Robinson at Educause. Information on the program can be found [|here]. Doug and I sent out the phase two information and instructions for the Diigo project today. Of the 36 potential participants two weeks ago, seven have bailed out, 13 have completed phase one, and we are waiting to here from the other 16.


 * Thursday, October 25**: thanks to Tom's example, I will begin organizing this page in blog-like fashion, with the most recent entries at the top of the page. Today was a very good day at the Educause conference. My evaluation of the sessions I attended yesterday was that they were fair, but today's were excellent. I rode the monorail from downtown Seattle over to the Seattle Center with Debbie and the girls. This is all of a two minute ride. At the Seattle Center, we intended to go to the Pacific Science Center, a great hands on museum of science. We have been there on several other occasions and the girls were excited to go again. However, upon arriving at the Seattle Center, we were overwhelmed by the Space Needle and so I agreed to go to the top. It was quite an experience. The day was clear and cool, but not cold, and the views were incredible! Debbie took the girls to the science center and I rode back downtown to do the conference. I sat in a great session on Second Life. The unique format had about 100 people packed into the room with another 50 people in Second Life at the Annenberg Center. It was a very interesting experience, holding a seminar with people in both locations. and indeed some of the participants occupying the physical space and in the virtual space at the same time. My colleague, Sean McKay, was also online as EdTek Zeno. Sean has established great relationships with a number of the pioneers in educational work in SL. After that session we attended a large keynote address about [|Marist University's] efforts at supporting faculty use of Web 2.0 tools. It was excellent. The speaker, Josh Baron, the Director of Academic Technology & eLearning for Marist, shared a framework for supporting faculty innovations in teaching using Web 2.0 tools. I intend to request documentation from Josh on this process.

Sean and I presented our poster session on Second Life. When the doors opened, we had a flood of about 20 people that immediately descended on us, and we had steady traffic the entire 90 minutes. There is great interest in SL and folks are curious as to what it can actually be used for. Sean did an excellent job on the construction of the posterboards, photos and slides. He also had his Mac running with a slide show of pictures taken in world. we got about 20 people to sign up for an ongoing conversation and at least 15 that said they would participate in a research study. We will pass names on to Joop. Here we are at the poster session. What am I learning regarding Second Life?
 * 1) There is high interest in it. Evidence [|CSI: NY] last night, which featured about 20 minutes of in world video as part of an episode that showed detectives solving a crime by interacting with avatars in SL. Or consider Dwight Schrute in [|The Office], he as seen in SL tonight. Popular media are latching on to SL in a bi way. Indeed, CSI has now developed their own virtual experience in SL. I visited there this morning and it was packed with CSI fans who had never been to SL before. One nice development for educators. The big money folks at CBS have invested a bit in tutorials for SL that are easy to use and well done animated videos. They can be found [|http://alpha.cbs.com/primetime/csi_ny/second_life/tutorials/#|here].
 * 2) Very few educators are actually using SL yet, although the number is growing.
 * 3) Sean's virtual field trip idea is a winner and we will develop the idea out over time. Low cost to the faculty in time and financial resources.
 * 4) While design and programming are the power tools in SL today, soon, building relationships and community there will be the power skills.
 * 5) Networking with educators (and others) worldwide is an immediate payoff for an educator to be in world. Where else would I be in a worship service with a dragon, a transgendered person, a physicist and a showgirl? Where else can I walk into a Jazz club and have the owner put on [|Miles Davis] performing So What? Time and effort will be invested in determining if the pay off for learning gains and of what type are there for students.
 * 6) Not all learners will get it, want it or gravitate to it. Yet, the same can be said of 50 minute three times a week lecture courses. What do we tell students in those? "Get over it, this is college" "Tough it out, I had to" "I am a professor, I am paid to profess" "This is the way we do it here". So, while I am quite sensitive to student needs and preferences, I recognize that no one medium is ideal for every single student.
 * 7) A topic related to SL that I have not heard much on yet is integrity and ethics. I believe it is an important area to consider. There was an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education recently (see the resource page for a link to the article) that discusses legal and ethical issues for a university in requiring or encouraging students to be in SL. I have yet to hear the issue come up as a presentation at conferences, although I will be spending time investigating this. In particular, I will be looking for scholarship around the themes of personal integrity and identity. What does it say about me that I have chosen to represent myself in SL as a 22 year old Scot Jung who is thinner and darker skinned than the aging college professor in RL? Do I treat people differently in SL than I do in RL? Do I engage in activities in SL or converse with people there I would not normally do so, and is that ok?