Last week I had the opportunity to use a virtual tool that I have been using for some time in a number of different ways. It is a tool that many, many people use, that quite a few use for education but that many, many more are sceptical about with regard to it’s relevance to teaching and learning. Have you guessed which tool I am talking about yet? Second Life of course!

I have blogged about Second Life before (Virtually convinced about 3D virtual teaching and learning) and the JISC RSC Wales team have had a virtual office (on the University of Wales, School of Health and Social Sciences Second Life island) for some months now. We have used our virtual office as a place for our geographically distributed team to meet and collaborate as well as a place to introduce those new to Second Life to some of its potential.

But last week I had the chance to spread my wings and explore this virtual tool in other ways:

As a virtual conference delegate at the University of Wales Newport  NEXUS Conference. This was an interesting experience in that half of my expectations were met but the other half weren’t! I expected to access and view the conference (live webstream, Twitter feed) easily … and I did … but I also expected to interact with the other virtual delegates (much as you would at a real conference) but found that this didn’t happen. It could have been to do with there only being a handful of virtual attendees because of the last minute announcement of the opportunity to attend virtually; it could have been to do with everyone (like me) being new to virtual attendance and not being sure of how to interact virtually; it could have been because there was no-one encouraging interaction either during or after the live broadcast; or it could have been another reason that I have yet to figure out. I wonder what the conference organisers thought and whether they would do it differently (if at all) next time.

On a virtual field trip to a world where everything was so much bigger than the virtual me. I visited Greenies Island (which from this blog looks set to be no more on Second Life after this week – what a shame) with several of my other JISC RSC UK colleagues. It was a chance for us to explore a new virtual place together; to see how Second Life can make the impossible virtually possible; to practise our navigation and flying skills (around the oversized house and the indoor race track); as well as to meet a giant cat, climb inside a large handbag, safe and fridge (there was more but that was all I managed this trip) and to ride a rocket. Having stayed on fairly safe (similar to real life) virtual ground until this point in my virtual worlds journey I found this a great experience for gently showing me the possibilties of the impossible and I look forward to exploring more ‘impossible’ places like this on later virtual field trips.

As a learner on my Open University course, H800 ‘Technology Enhanced Learning: practices and debates‘. As the course title suggests, we explore, discuss and use many technologies but Second Life isn’t introduced for another few weeks. I knew about the Open University’s island and have been keen to have a proper excuse to go there for some time, so when a few of my fellow H800ers decided to meet up there to chat about the course, as an alternative to Elluminate, the suggested web conferencing tool, I was more than happy to join in. Maybe it is because I am already familiar with Second Life and find it quite comfortable to be in and interact within this kind of virtual environment that I found this to be the best meeting as a H800 learner I have had. The visual, 3D nature of Second Life and the fact that I can ‘see’ who I am talking too helps me to engage. I haven’t had a chance to ask the others what they thought and this week we are meeting via Elluminate again but I really hope we continue to meet using Second Life because it definitley enhanced my learning experience this time

In amongst all of this virtual conferencing, meeting and learning I also read John Kirriemuir’s (Virtual World Watch) ‘Zen and the Art of Avatar Maintenance‘, which is a great read for Second Life fans and sceptics alike.

If you would like to know more about our SLOffice and our activity in Second Life or if you would even like to take your first steps (as Barry College are doing at the moment) then please get in touch …

(If you would like this blog post as an audio file please click this link or right click the link and choose to save the mp3 file. Please note: the audio file was created quite simply by pasting the text into Balabolka (one of the tools available as part of My Study Bar/EduApps) and saving as an mp3 audio file).

… an eLearning Advisor (Learning Technologies). Taking my lead from my colleague Karl’s recent post  ‘A month in the life of … an eLearning Advisor (Learning Resources), I thought it might be an interesting experience to do the same thing, for myself but also for anyone who reads this and is interested to know what a month in the life of a JISC RSC Wales eLearning Advisor (Learning Technologies) can look like. The first thing to say is that every day/week/month is different but that ultimately I am here to provide a service to our supported post 16 learning providers in Wales. Karl’s blog post focussed on the wide range of queries he and Sam deal with, so to make this different from his great blog I’m going to give an example of a selection of the activities I have been involved in over the last month, starting with the queries.

Queries
These are just a few of the queries (received in person, via email or Skype or over the phone) I have delt with this month:

Text Wall - we use a text wall to collect comments and questions from delegates who attend our events. During our recent ‘Learner Voice, Learner Choice’ roadshow we also suggested it might be one of the many tools that could be used to record the learner voice. A number of the organisations who attended the event had borrowed the text wall for a short period (in return for some feedback on how it goes) to try it out with their learners (Learning Centre suggestion box, opinions of Moodle, during Adult Learners Week, for feedback on lessons …) and one contacted me to ask for more details of the service (options for different walls, cost) because it was proving to be successful and she was interested in having their own wall. One follow up job for this week is to contact all of those who have borrowed a wall to find out how they got on. I’ll share the results via this blog.

Legal advice – at the last of our roadshows ‘Small Steps … Great Strides‘ I had a query from a college about whether there were any legal requirements or implications regarding allowing parent’s access to learners eILPs. JISC Legal, one of the JISC Advance services are almost always my first port of call for education related legal advice, so I contacted them and received a response within days which I passed on. Rather than attempt to summarise the response here the legal information regarding eILPs and parental access received can be found on a GoogleDoc.

Moodle – there have been a few Moodle queries this month but 3 of the most common ones are asking for a recommendation, asking for a way of doing something and asking for a solution.

• The recommendation was for someone who had experience of networking a number of Moodle’s together … I recommended the North Wales 14-19 Network;
• The way of doing something was for how to embed a web page in a Moodle page … I suggested using a handy piece of code (with the relevant web address inserted) given to me a few years ago that has been very useful: <iframe width=”100%” height=”500″ align=”middle” frameborder=”0″ src=”http://www.rsc-wales.ac.uk” border=”0″></iframe>
• The solution was for a problem a Learning Centre were having regarding how to push news out to their students, rather than expect them to go looking for it … and I recommended the RSS feed for Moodle forums that anyone could then subscribe to.

Facilitating the Moodle-Wales group
As the vice chair of the Moodle-Wales Steering Group, I have the honour of facilitating meetings. Usually the Steering Group meet face to face after one of the Moodle-Wales User Group meetings or via video conference but this time we decided to try something a bit different and we chose to use Skype (the latest beta version that allows up to 5 videos). This meant that we could all meet from our desks rather than having to book and travel to VC studios. It worked surprisingly well for a tool that is in beta.  After the meetings I compile and publish the minutes online and then get on with my actions!

Visits to providers
We try to visit all of our supported learning providers at least once a year to find out what they are up to and how we can help but we also do follow up visits too. The following are some of the real (and virtual) follow up visits I’ve done in the last month:

• Coleg Elidyr to show staff the potential of some of the free, open source applications available via Edu-Apps.
• Coleg Glan Hafren to collect the Turning Point interactive response system set we loaned them, along with feedback about its use.
• Barry College to take them on a virtual tour of our Second Life Office, followed on another day by a face to face session to show them the basics of building in Second Life so that they could borrow some space on the University of Wales Newport, School of Health and Social Sciences island (where our SLOffice is based) to try and engage with learners who won’t engage face to face.
• Coleg Gwent to take a virtual tour of our Second Life Office and the island and later to test (virtually) the Skype (Beta) multi video setup for a session they want to run.

Events
Organising and facilitating events is also another part of my role as an eLearning Advisor (Learning Technologies). This month I supported colleagues at the Cardiff  ‘Small Steps … Great Strides‘ roadshow, which was the last of the series of three roadshows, the other two of which I was much more involved in (‘Barrier Busters, Accessibility and Inclusion‘ and ‘Learner Voice Learner Choice‘). For the last few months I have also been working on organising the one big, cross sector event that we are running in Cardiff on 30th June this year – ‘Learning in a Digital Wales – Dysgu mewn Cymru Digidol‘. There are still some places available on this FREE event so if you are interested then you’ll have to be quick and book now!

Virtual communication
We communicate with our learning providers in many different ways but 2 areas I have responsibility for contributing to (as do most of the team) are:

• Twitter – I tweet as@HelenHRSC on a very regular basis but also as @rscwales when it is my turn. As a learning technologist I am constantly on the lookout for news ideas and examples of effective practise and I find that Twitter is an excellent way of sharing what I find quickly … as well as also finding out what others are doing and sharing that too.

• Our teaching and learning (and technology) blog – I managed to blog 3 times last month (twice about Moodle and once about digital communication) but this varies depending on how much I am at my desk and whether I have been inspired to blog and feel I have something worth saying!

Twitter is my first virtual port of call for sharing stuff, followed by our blog and also the news pages on our website.

Keeping up to date and sharing with the team
I use a whole variety of ways to keep up to date with what is happening in the world of education and technology (RSS feeds, Twitter, mailing lists, newsletters, attending events, taking courses,  talking to people … ) and as well as sharing all of this with our supported learning providers I also make sure I share with the team too. A couple of tools that I have come across and shared recently are Twiddla (a bit like Etherpad(as was) but allows images and password protection) and Wallwisher (a web page for sharing ideas and comments that can been used in many ways).

As I said at the beginining, each day is different and this is just a flavour of the things that I am involved with as an eLearning Advisor (Learning Technologies). I guess the job is like both education and technology … always something to learn and share … but also ever changing!

(If you would like this blog post as an audio file please click this link or right click the link and choose to save the mp3 file. Please note: the audio file was created quite simply by pasting the text into Balabolka (one of the tools available as part of My Study Bar/EduApps) and saving as an mp3 audio file).

With the publication today of JISC’s new ‘Getting started with Second Life‘ guide and the recent blog post from my colleague Paul (The Meaning of Second Life) I felt that this was finally the time for me to hold my hand up and declare that I am one of the people who has become virtually convinced that there is a place for virtual teaching and learning in virtual 3D environments, like Second Life. I think the thing that has finally convinced me to make my declaration are the points listed below from the new ‘Getting started with Second Life’ guide, that made me chuckle, as I recognised myself when I first entered the virtual world:

… and yet despite feeling like this initially I refused to give up and after reading a range of publications and reports about teaching and learning in a virtual way and being able to have first hand experience of participating in and leading sessions in Second Life (thanks to the help and support of the University of Wales Newport’s School of Health and Social Sciences and my fellow RSC Wales team) I now wish that these tools had been around when I was both a learner and a teacher!

I could continue to share my thoughts about the potential of this tool for isolated or distance learners or for those who find it hard to engage with the ‘real’ world but flourish in this kind of virtual environment … and say this is all despite the potential barriers and issues that there undoubtedly are with an unfamiliar/relatively new tool like this … but I won’t. I will however (in the words of my colleague Paul) encourage those who haven’t tried to ‘give it a go’ and those who have but gave up (maybe because of some of the things listed above) to ‘give it another go’ … and remember that for those organisations who we support you can always call on us for some virtual help!