Social media

Jan 26

Second Life PhD thesis of Dr Aleks Krotoski

News, People, Reports, Social media, Videos, Worlds 1 Comment »

Social Influence in Second Life: Social Network and Social Psychological Processes in the Diffusion of Belief and Behaviour on the Web

The PhD thesis, under a Creative Commons licence, of Dr Aleks Krotoski is available through her website; there’s some interesting wordles on there as well. Go here:

http://alekskrotoski.com/post/academic-dissertation—social-influence-in-second-life-social-n

(Shortened URL) http://is.gd/75yo9

(It was thanks to Aleks showing me around Second Life several years ago that I had the ‘Aha!’ moment, so without her there may not have been a Virtual World Watch and accompanying snapshots.)

Aleks is a media and Internet journalist for The Guardian, and a presenter on what many regard as the best TV programme on video games to date (BITS). She twitters, and is also the presenter of The Virtual Revolution, the forthcoming BBC series about the Web:

Nov 18

JISC Innovating e-Learning online conference

Events, Presentations, Social media, VWW No Comments »

The annual JISC online conference is open for registrations, and is worth considering.

This is now open for pre-event activities, such as reading and guided tours. The conference proper runs from November 24th to 27th. Being online you can, of course, access it from anywhere; no travel, train or plane costs, required.

The conference website is at:
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/events/2009/11/elpconference09.aspx

Note that you have to register, and there’s a small fee.

There’s two sessions on Second Life. One is by Kathryn Trinder from Glasgow Caledonian University:

The other is by Virtual World Watch:

In addition to this, there’s a number of scheduled events and guided tours in Second Life, facilitated by the JISC Regional Support Centres. So not bad – a conference that runs for several days, costs only £50 for attendance, travel and accommodation, and has hardly any climate impact. To quote James Clay …

Nov 06

Blue Mars and Virtual Whisky

Social media, Videos, Worlds No Comments »

There are more videos of virtual world activities, produced by UK universities and colleges, linked from the resources section.

Over at the Leeds College of Art and Design Annabeth Robinson has been experimenting with the Blue Mars virtual world:

Austin Tate from Edinburgh University describes the Virtual World of Whisky in Second Life, which is used to support tutorials about Scotch Whisky:

Tagged with: Blue Mars • Learning • Second Life

Oct 27

Snapshot survey #7 of virtual world use in UK Higher and Further Education

Social media, Surveys, VWW 2 Comments »

This is a “Request For Information” for the seventh Virtual World Watch snapshot survey.

This time, there’s just one main question, and a few side points. The main question can be interpreted as broadly, or as narrowly, as you wish. As before, the scope is limited to UK Higher and Further Education.

The question

How are you using virtual worlds (e.g. Second Life, OpenSim, Metaplace, OLIVE, Active Worlds, Playstation Home, Blue Mars, Twinity, Wonderland) in teaching, learning or research?

Things you may want to include:

Why you are using a virtual world.
If teaching using a virtual world, how it fits into your curriculum.
Any evaluation of the experience of using the virtual world.
Will you do it again next year? Why (or why not)?

A few side points

Do you know of any other individual, group or project at your institution using virtual worlds for teaching, learning or research? If so, a contact detail would be appreciated.
Do you have any interesting screenshots of what you’ve been doing in virtual worlds? If so, then please consider submitting them to the Virtual World use in UK Education Flickr group – thanks.

Deadline

Please send your contributions, in whatever format (e.g. email, Word, text) to john (@) virtualworldwatch.net by the end of Friday 20th November. Relevant content submitted by then is guaranteed to go into the report; content received afterwards is unlikely to make it in.

Thank you for your contribution,
Virtual World Watch

Tagged with: Blue Mars • HOME • Learning • Metaplace • OLIVE • OpenSim • Research • Second Life • snapshot • Teaching • Twinity • Wonderland

May 25

Dr Anne Cunningham

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In this weeks Start the Week with Virtual World Watch podcast, Dr. Anne Cunningham talks about how she ‘got’ Second Life, and some of the work she is doing with this particular virtual world.

Anne is based at the University of Sunderland, and can be found on Twitter.

Tagged with: Research • Second Life

May 18

Annabeth Robinson

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Annabeth is a multi-media artist and lecturer, based in Leeds and working at Leeds College of Art and Design. In this week’s Start the Week with Virtual World Watch podcast, Annabeth describes how she got into Second Life, her art developments within, and her experimentation and educational work with other virtual worlds.

Her personal website contains information about her art projects in Second Life. She’s on twitter as Angrybeth.

One terrific presentation to have a look through is Annabeth’s slides on creating content in Second Life:

Tagged with: art • college • design • Second Life

May 10

Andy Powell: why we funded virtual world stuff

People, Podcasts, Presentations, Social media, VWW No Comments »

This week’s Start The Week with Virtual World Watch podcast interviewee is Andy Powell.

For historical context, Virtual World Watch was a work colleague of Andy’s from the mid-1990’s at UKOLN (VWW: back row 3rd; Andy: back row 6th).

Andy is now the Head of Development of the Eduserv Research Programme, formerly the Eduserv Foundation. The Foundation funded a number of Second Life and Virtual World research and development projects, as well as Virtual World Watch, an island and several events.

Research Programme / Foundation activities with virtual worlds are described and archived on their website.

Two of Andy’s presentations of note are a recent one, presented at the JISC RSC Eastern event in April hosted by Shri:

… and his well-known “Second Life in 3600 seconds” presentation, the slideshare version of which has received over 17,000 views in the last three years:

In Second Life, and also blogging, Andy is Art Fossett where he has an occasional sideline in making footwear. On twitter, Andy is andypowe11.

Tagged with: Eduserv • Research • RSC

Apr 27

Jane Edwards, JISC RSC West Midlands

People, Podcasts, Social media No Comments »

Jane Edwards is the interviewee in this weeks Start the Week with Virtual World Watch podcast.

Jane works in the JISC-funded Regional Support Centre (RSC) for the West Midlands. As she describes in the podcast, some of her time is taken up with activities to support, and progress, the use and development of Second Life within post-16 education in this region.

Jane is also in the process of purchasing an island, then developing it, within Second Life to support these activities. Jane is also the co-maintainer of the JISCmail Virtual Worlds mailing list.

You can find Jane on LinkedIn, Twitter and Flickr. She is also, of course, in Second Life as Ladyjane Plympton.

Tagged with: college • JISC • RSC • university

Apr 20

Men and their sheds: Anna Peachey

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It’s the 20th of April, so in today’s Start the Week podcast Anna Peachey describes some of her Second Life activities.

Anna is a teaching fellow at the Open University and has been involved (through her company Eygus) in Second Life developments at that institution. She is in her third year of using Second Life for tutorials with students studying T175 Networked Living: Exploring Information and Communication Technologies, and has worked with Liz Thackray to provide sample tutorials for other T175 students, as well as a 2 day course event inworld.

Anna chaired the ReLIVE08 conference in Milton Keynes, wearing a pair of wings to the event:

Anna flits between Devon, where she is usually based, and Nepal. She can be followed on Twitter.

Tagged with: Learning • Second Life • Teaching • university

Apr 17

Twittering the Virtual Worlds Conference

Events, Social media No Comments »

The Virtual Worlds Conference takes place this tuesday coming (April 21st) in Sunderland. And it’s a pretty impressive line-up of UK academic virtual world developers, the best seen at an event so far this year.

Twittering will, inevitably take place. In fact it’s already started. There are three conference tags currently being used:

#rscn09 (official)
#rscnvw09 (RSC VW event format)
#ItsGrimUpNorth (most used)

There’s also an aggregator of social media content for this event, set up by Kathryn Trinder.

~~Several~~ Most of the speakers twitter. Here are ones known about; if you are speaking but not on the list get in touch and you’ll be added:

Shaun Allan
Simon Ball
Kate Boardman [Presentation]
David Burden
Anne Cunningham
Gareth Davies
Jane Edwards
Shri Footring
Ferdinand Francino
Harold Fricker
John Kirriemuir [Presentation]
Daniel Livingstone
Annabeth Robinson
Garfield Southall
Steve Thompson
Kathryn Trinder [Presentation]
Lisa Whistlecroft