Final Despatches from the Western Front (of SL)

Demelza Trefoil's experiences in SL have been overwhelmingly positive! While taking account of problems in this 'world' (technical problems, access, SL loneliness, etiquette, etc.) many of my blog entries reveal possiblities for staff, students and visiting speakers to make effective (and lively) use of a virtual environment for teaching and learning. Recording experiences using a blog lends an immediacy to an assignment like this, and it is surely in the spirit of Web 2.0 to blog while exploring and assessing a virtual world...

Second Life has become a great networking tool for me, to which I will return in the future. I still cannot get over the fact that I can 'speak' to librarians from all over the world (sometimes while dancing with them!).

The opportunities for librarians to exploit Second Life seem limited only by imagination, time resources (and time differences) and ubiquitous problems of access... Even if SL dwindles, I believe there will be other virtual worlds in the future. It's a great idea for all of us fledgling librarians to cut our teeth on this one, so we'll be ready for any more to come!
Demelza missed the parade in 'Dublin' on St. Patrick's Day. By the time I got to 'O'Connell Bridge' everyone was already gone! Libraries must try not to miss out on the Second Life parade...

When is a library event a non-library event...?

...when it involves this much tango and salsa!

I just popped into SL for a few minutes this afternoon, and there was an invitation waiting for me from Puglet Dancer of Librarians of Second Life to attend a concert celebrating Bradley University's new exhibits - Bradley University, Info Island II (98, 128, 24). Just as I was leaving UCD, Hal Parnall from our class arrived. He said he'd come too, so I went on ahead and teleported him.

The concert was on the roof of the student centre. I had a ball tangoing with Fredje Ruska. I was joking and said that all we needed was a long-stemmed red rose to clamp between our teeth. Next thing you know, offers of a rose appeared on screen from Fredje and another chap. Very smooth operators, these Librarians of Second Life!

The main performer was Professor Believeau (SL) or Dr Ed Lamoureux (RL). I googled Bradley University when I left the party, and it's amazing how involved in SL they are there. Dr Lamoureux teaches a Field Research Methods in Virtual Worlds course. Students have to carry notecards which are Human Subjects Protection Procedures (like our ethics forms) to give to any avatar who asks about their reseach work in SL. They are forbidden from copying or saving transcripts of talk from avatars who haven't given permission, and they have to block out avatar names and faces in photos - all exactly as you would expect in RL research...

The RL library at Bradley University received an Innovative Teaching grant recently to set up an island and explore education and outreach opportunities. All manner of academic departments got involved - History; Health Sciences; Engineering... It seems like a very vibrant project.

It really is worth joining Groups to keep up with events and initiatives. Every time I log on, there are invitations waiting for me. The only real problem is time difference. Some have sounded absolutely brilliant, but getting up at 3 a.m. is going above and beyond the call of duty!

How are we all going to squeeze into Mary Burke's office?

On Wednesday, 26th March a few of us attended Akiiki Vella's virtual office hour in SL. This was great! All of us had questions about assignments, and most were quite minor points but all of us received answers in under an hour.

Trying to see a lecturer can be difficult at times, while attempting to synchronise with office hours and lecture times, etc. I'm never usually in UCD on a Wednesday, but today in SL, around 12 of us got to 'squeeze' into Mary Burke's virtual office at the same time. Avatars could come and go, or stay for the hour. I would have lost a lot more time out of my day at a busy time of year, if I'd been trying to get into UCD to see Mary Burke in person. It must save the lecturer's time as well, rather than having to answer 12 emails, phone calls or visitors, many with multiple questions (and probably most students have similar concerns), and it saves a lecturer being stalked around the campus by over-anxious students...

There is a noticeable change in behaviour also. The frantic typing and chit chat of earlier events are now gone. I think we're all a lot more comfortable and confident in an SL environment. Everyone is more patient, and Akiiki is making sure that issues are handled one at a time.

Now the problem is that not all of the class are involved in Second Life, so they missed out on this session. But, just as with other RL sessions that class members miss out on, we can bring others up to speed in person, of if we hear people worrying aloud about questions which were answered in the virtual office hour, we can set their minds at rest.

Virtual office hours work! I hope there will be more, especially as the BIG PROJECT starts to really take shape, as I'm sure we'll all have another bundle of questions and minor quibbles...

Eat your heart out, Diarmuid Gavin!

This 'garden' of deciduous and tropical trees was created in under 2 minutes! Maybe SL has a role to play in the rash of garden and home makeover shows on TV. At least if you hate Lawrence Llewelyn-Bowen's ideas, then you can delete them all, rather than having to live with purple walls for years...

DUDE! Where are all the UCLA students?

Demelza, Bertie and Clarina waiting in vain for UCLA students on Wednesday 12th March. They must have gone surfing...

Still no sign of the UCLA students on Wednesday 19th March, but all was not in vain. A large group of SILS students got to use time in SL for an impromptu seminar about our Technology Audit assignment.

I think SL is one of the great untapped resources for any subject or discipline. Personally, I feel that when I'm away from UCD for any length of time, it can be quite isolating. You're beavering away on all manner of assignments, with nobody to talk to. Group emailing works to an extent, but actually I think the group dynamic works well in SL. OK, so you need to keep up with the 'chat' and messages can overlap, but overall, I found our discussion very helpful. It was interesting to see the flow of conversation, and I got a great buzz from throwing out a comment or question and seeing eight other avatars frantically typing away like crazy in a frenzy of response.

The added bonus of a 'tutorial' in SL is that if you lose track for a moment, you can save a 'transcript' of the 'conversation'. I did just that last night, and was able to review it this morning. I had missed out on one or two comments that were very useful...

It seems that some students are finding that SL can be quite a lonely place, so I think it would be good to keep meeting up like this at set times, so that we don't lose the momentum of this whole SL experiment. My group (Elmes) for the BIG project have had a couple of brief meetings in SL when we're off campus, rather than texting or group emailing, and it's working well for us.

Left-click once on this picture to see a 'Who's Who' of attendants...

I took some snapshots as usual last night, and also a screen shot, as this meant I had avatar names over each student. Screen shots are particularly useful for keeping track of attendance at an event, especially as most of us are changing appearance so often. (Also, if you want to make contact with someone after an event, you can search for them under People once you have their avatar name.)

Perhaps when we're all finished with this assignment, we could send the best of our pictures to Akiiki Vella, and she could keep an 'album' to show next year's students, or we could put them on Flickr ourselves...

Magical Mystery Tour and SL Ideas for 2008/2009

On Monday 3rd March, Gortadoo Ewing conducted two tours of Second Life as part of Library Ireland Week. I attended the 7pm tour. Gortadoo was typing away but I couldn't see any words on my screen. I IM-ed Bertie Latte, but he said there was no problem, that he could follow Gortadoo's 'words'. I was freaked out about not being able to 'hear' Gortadoo. (A tiny taste of what it must be like to be deaf in a crowd! Incidentally, wouldn't SL be useful for tutorials, library information sessions, etc. for deaf students/readers...) Then I had a Homer Simpson 'Doh' moment of revelation. At Mary Burke's 1pm lecture, every time I saw Gortadoo, he had muted over his head along with his avatar name. Subconsciously, I had taken this in and assumed that he was moving through us as a library facilitator and didn't want to communicate. I thought it was something he had done to himself. I quickly realised that at some stage, since the Ann Seidl talk, I must have inadvertently 'muted' him on the communicate panel. I foostered around, unmuted him, and thankfully I hadn't missed too much, as I'd already investigated the in-library facilities!

Moving on to the other locations was great craic. Every time I got sent ahead of my usual crew, I offered teleports to Bertie Latte, Roxey Loire, Clarina McMillan & Co. I'd like to think this was because of my helpful and generous nature, but I suspect it was more to do with a sort of SL Paranoia that I'd end up all alone somewhere strange. And ultimately, we did end up somewhere very strange. People swordfighting and wielding flaming torches is all in a day's work for SL, but zombies are quite another matter! I had never experienced such an 'attack'. It was really spooky with the loud noises and
Zombie bite Demelza Trefoil
Zombie bite Bertie Latte
Zombie bite Gortadoo Ewing
etc. scrolling at great speed down the screen. I immediately thought 'virus', as did Bertie. He IM-ed to say he was getting out of Dodge. But Gortadoo Ewing was tremendous. He barged into the zombies one by one, until they had all exploded into red spatter, SL blood, I presume. From that point on, I remained glued to Gortadoo's side - UCD's very own Ninja Librarian!

I've been thinking about tours and SL assignments for next year's SILS students. Maybe it'd be a good idea for each student to take one library or academic venue, and assess all that it has to offer in SL. On one or two tour days (with a schedule for the order avatars would go in) the class group could meet at UCD's SL branch. Every SILS student could be ready with landmarks and notecards to distribute. Each could guide a brief tour around their chosen library venue, plus one other fun venue (not to imply that libraries are not fun!). That way, students could pool their knowledge of what's on offer from a load of different libraries, and hone their in-SL presentation skills. It might be a little like herding cats, but I think it'd be great fun, and you'd learn a lot... (PC access permitting!)

A link to Second Life on the SILS School website might be useful. From my memories of the application process, it was all a little dry and there wasn't much information on the individual modules. A Digital Libraries Billboard in UCD Library's SL Branch could help recruit students to the course in general, and to the Digital Libraries Module in particular, by showing that the Module is right up to date (always assuming that SL doesn't become horribly passe in the meantime).

I've also been wondering about tempting the new intake of all UCD students in September 2008 into SL. I don't know what promotional ideas Gortadoo uses to attract new users, but I'm glad to see that UCD in SL is included as a branch library on the library website. I noticed the Book Bag Blog on the website, and was thinking it'd be very easy for Gortadoo to leave Book Bags, or a similar object, in the 'branch' and then new (or not so new) students could win a prize for a photo of the bag in the most weird and wonderful place in SL. Or perhaps it would be possible to organise an SL Treasure Hunt for Newbies. Prizes wouldn't have to be anything elaborate. Photocopying is very expensive for students, and a CopiPrint card with Euro30 credit gives 540 copies!

One small step for Akiiki Vella, One giant leap for UCD in SL!

Demelza working on her SL presentation delivery at the podium the night before the Library 2.0 lecture...

On Monday 3rd March, Professor Mary Burke (Akiiki Vella) gave UCD's first ever virtual lecture to SILS students. I rushed home after Ian Cornelius' lecture to use my laptop at home. (Having home SL access is great, and it meant that someone else could take my place in the Information Skills Room.) I felt a great buzz at being part of a ground breaking UCD event, with a journalist in attendance, no less!

At the start, there was a bit of a scrum, with students jostling for position, and one winged avatar ploughed straight into the presentation screen. Some students still haven't discovered the delights of IM-ing, and I could cheerfully have murdered the student who kept repeating "Get Lost" from their gestures inventory! Again, as with the Ann Seidl talk, I could feel some 'performance anxiety' about participation assessment, but this soon dissipated as the lecture got going. This time, I was better able to block out irrelevant 'noise' from other students, and concentrate on the lecture itself.


In a RL scenario, the lecturer talks, has a PowerPoint presentation, and asks and answers questions. This format works equally well in SL, but with added value, I think. It seemed so appropriate to be approaching the topic of Library 2.0 from within a virtual environment! I was able to 'take' the links to del.icio.us, the Library Success Wiki, Flickr and WordPress, etc. straight to my desktop.

I believe that the SL setting encourages quieter classmates to contribute a lot more. Maybe there is something liberating about adopting another persona or perhaps it's the 'otherness' of SL that allows students to take on an active, rather than somewhat passive, role in a class.

What did interest me was that during a lecture about Library 2.0 in Second life, argument still rumbles on about who will control information. One student spoke of gatekeepers. While I'm no anarchist, and like my books at home to be in alphabetical (fiction) and subject order (non-fiction) just as much as the next librarian, I've been hearing the term gatekeepers, and people worrying about a loss of control of information, since 10th September 2007, and I'm a little tired of it! I did manage to squeeze in a comment to the effect that the term 'gatekeepers' tends to negate the term 'access'.

SL seems to have a positive effect on me in a heated debate, as I tend to be more measured in what I type, than what I might blurt out in a RL discussion. Also Demelza's face remains serene no matter what happens, so nobody need ever know that I'm groaning aloud in the privacy of my own home...