Lighthouse Learning Island

Lighthouse Learning Island to "close"

2010-03-26T15:35:00.000-04:00

As of August 1, 2010, Lighthouse Learning Island will be closing. Due to budget constraints, the cost of maintaining the space is not feasible.

Thank you to all of you that participated in our professional development activities and offered tips and advice to make things meaningful for the support of teaching and learning using this venue.

I would imagine some of the groups on the island will be "taking up residence" on other PD areas in Second Life. As any other organizations from the island make their new plans, the SLURLS will be posted on this blog.

Kathy Schrock (Kathy Dryburgh SL) has rented a small plot of land on Eduisland 6 (SLURL) and will be announcing any upcoming professional development opportunities through the "K-12 Educators" group in SL. Her new spot is called "Kathy Schrock's Kaffeeklatsch".

This blog will remain up as an archive of the process of creating a viable professional development space in a virtual world.

Welcome Watertown Public Schools to LLI!

2009-07-12T17:52:00.005-04:00

Alan Epstein RL/Ahlan Oh SL has spearheaded Watertown (MA) new Second Life initiative and we welcome them to Lighthouse Learning Island! We have renewed our lease with Linden for another year, and now have six public school districts, three state collaborative agencies, and one university outreach program on the island!

Please stop by and check us out when you get a chance! There will be lots of exciting things going on when school starts in the fall!

A "lighter-weight" Second Life viewer

2009-01-16T07:28:00.011-05:00

I have just tried Kristen's Viewer for Second Life (Windows only). It is supposedly a bit more lightweight, so I decided to give it a try on my netbook, an Acer Aspire One.

I tested both it and the SL viewer and set the preferences the same in each. I bumped the graphics up one notch above the bottom, to see if the avatar could still walk with any success and ran a slide show off of a presentation board in Second Life while using each viewer.

Kristen's Viewer did perform much better on the netbook. I have included two screenshots below so you can see the rendering in the Second Life viewer and her viewer.

Second Life Viewer

Kristen's Viewer

In a pinch, which is the only time I would even try to use the netbook for presenting about Second Life, it could be done via Kristen's viewer. It is nice to know I have this option!

**Update 1/18/09: Port of Kristen's viewer available for the Mac here.

Virtual Pioneers Article

2008-12-12T20:00:00.002-05:00

Here is a link to a great article appearing in the Open Press about Andrew Wheelock and his Virtual Pioneers project on Lighthouse Learning Island!

Vanderbilt Center for Science Outreach joins Lighthouse Learning Island!

2008-11-15T10:48:00.003-05:00

Scott Merrick (Scottmerrick Oh/SL), in his role as the Teacher in Residence at the Vanderbilt Center for Science Outreach, now has a educational building on Lighthouse Learning Island. Scott will be utilizing the space for his in-life work with teachers and for extensions of projects the "outreachers" are working on in conjunction with the CSO.

The Vanderbilt CSO "is dedicated to enhancing scientific and technological literacy through the establishment of unique partnerships between University scientists, K-12 educators and students, and the local and global science community."

We welcome the new group to the island and look forward to lots of professional sharing and collaborating!

Virtual Pioneers

2008-10-10T09:53:00.002-04:00

Spiff Whitfiled (SL), from the WNYRIC organization located on Lighthouse Learning Island, did a presentation for the DEN group last evening. The reviews are raving!

Metanomics Show

2008-09-05T19:10:00.008-04:00

A few weeks ago, Metanomics did a show on the K-12 presence in Second Life. You can read about it, listen to it, or watch it here.

The speakers and guests were Jennifer Ragen-Fore from ISTE, Peg Sheehy from Ramapo Central (Maggie Marat SL), yours truly (Kathy Dryburgh SL), and John Lester (Pathfinder Linden SL) from Linden Labs.

Enjoy!

Welcome to WNYRIC CSLO Model Schools!

2008-08-21T13:40:00.004-04:00

The newest addition to Lighthouse Learning Island is the Western New York Regional Information Center CSLO Model Schools building. A group of educators, headed by Andrew Wheelock (RL)/Spiff Whitfield (SL), is working on a project called Virtual Pioneers.

Virtual Pioneers is "a site is dedicated to teachers exploring the potential of using MUVEs for teaching and learning about social studies." They use Ning for their collaboration, so, if this interests you, take a look at their page, and come visit them on Lighthouse Learning Island!

Kathy

New tenants and DEN Gala

2008-08-20T20:45:00.002-04:00

Things have been busy for my avatar in the past week. I presented and took teachers from the Westport (CT) Public Schools on a tour of my favorite spots in Second Life while they were attending a summer institute. Soon thereafter, they joined Lighthouse Learning Island, and their new building is all set and ready to go!

There may be another group joining this week, too, but more to follow if when that becomes a reality.

Tonight I attended the Discovery Educator Network (DEN) Gala in Second Life. Everyone was dressed to the nines, and there was dancing, arcade games, and much more. A purely social event, which was perfect right before many of us go back to school! Here is a shot of Pia Klaar (a teacher from my district) and myself as we enjoyed the party!

Two published articles about Second Life

2008-07-10T22:40:00.004-04:00

I recently had two articles published, on Hotchalk.com, about Second Life and professional development and one dealing with our Lighthouse Learning Island initiative. Take a look if you get a chance!

Skoolaborate...here we come!

2008-03-05T18:51:00.006-05:00

We have decided to become partner members of the Skoolaborate Project on the Teen Grid! There are some details to work out, but, after listening to the PacRimX Team last evening at ISTE, I realize that a private island, with the chance to work with international schools (when the time zones allow!), takes away some of the concerns of hosting our own place on the Teen Grid.

The Skoolaborate Project is well-established and, since we will be bringing in mostly middle school students, the added bonus of having them limited to the island and the non-ability of "strangers" to just drop in, will be a comfortable way to start this process.

We are going to have to think of some creative ways to get items over to the Teen Grid since we will not be moving avatars over, but we can deal with that. I can forsee our group coming up very interesting ways to get our tools onto the Teen Grid (as well as quickly learning how to design good hair!)

Thanks to Westley and the other partners for letting us take part in the project!

Second Life and Intel 965 Chipset

2008-02-13T22:14:00.004-05:00

I am not sure where to post this information, but I found a fix if you have a laptop that has the Intel 965 Chipset and cannot get on Second Life with Vista or XP. I located this fix while working with a student's laptop and it works for him. The Macbook Air has this chipset, too, and, while I can get into Second Life, it did crash sometimes. I have edited the file stated below and it seems to help. It definitely helped the student-- he can get right in now and never crashes!

Find the "user_settings" folder under your Second Life folder that is under AppData or Applications Data. (This may also be under .../Roaming/Second Life/user_settings/) You will also see a folder with your avatar's name. Don't change the settings.xml file in that folder, just the one in the user_settings folder.

Open the settings.xml file in the user_settings folder with Notepad. You will have to manually add the two lines below to this file to disable object occlusion. The lines to add (someplace after the first couple of lines and before the last couple of lines in the XML file) are:


<UseOcclusion value="FALSE"/>

Chose to SAVE AS and overwrite the old setting.xml file, restart the computer, and, hopefully, you will then be able to connect to Second Life! I hope this works to solve the problem for some of you!

Kathy

Lighthouse Learning Island PLC Presentations

2008-01-11T15:13:00.000-05:00

Following is a video that contains three presentations by the members of the Nauset Public Schools Lighthouse Learning Island Professional Learning Community. These educators took the risk to learn this new environment from scratch and went from logging in for the first time to loading up a presentation board and presenting in Second Life in just 10 short hours!

If you are in-life, you can look up Babette Botha, Kimjoy Fizzle, and Dahling Carling (the three presenters) and the other members who completed the PLC, Raia Schmooz and Hilda Helgerud, and ask then about the experience.

We will be following up with getting the group ready to go to the Teen Grid with sessions on advanced building and scripting.

Nice post about Lighthouse Learning Island

2008-01-08T15:09:00.000-05:00

Tom Werner, of the Brandon Hall Research blog, posted some thoughts about Lighthouse Learning Island that made me feel very proud to be part of the project!

Kudos to all of the educators involved and to our school districts who were willing to take a chance!

I am about to embark on phase 2, which involves continuing the Nauset professional learning community and teaching my teachers how to build and create. We hope to have word soon on the availability of funds for a Teen Grid island (Windmill Learning Island??).

The MUVE Game Project

2007-12-30T22:54:00.001-05:00

Take a look at this assignment from a Fall 2007 class from SDSU, co-taught by Bernie Dodge, Exploratory Learning Through Simulation and Games. Looks like a great assignment!

Be sure to take a look at the class projects to see some well-thought out ideas for the use of Second Life to support teaching and learning!

Kathy

Session 8: The In-life Presentations

2007-12-05T21:38:00.000-05:00

This evening, four of the teachers in the PLC gave their presentations in-life. I applaud them for taking the risk to try something really new, and they came through with flying colors. In addition, the content of their presentations, mostly about SL sites, was pedagogically sound and they came up with some great ideas that they can carry to the Teen Grid once we make that leap! After a bit of follow-up next week, they will be adding their presentations to the whiteboard in the theater in the back of the Nauset Building on Lighthouse Learning Island.

Here are some photos from the presentations, and our holiday photo! The avatars presenting are Kimjoy Fizzle, Babette Botha, Dahling Cahling, and Hilda Helgerud. The other members of the PLC included Pia Klaar, Wang Wingtips and Raia Schmooz.

Holiday Photo

Presentations & Adobe Education Leaders

2007-12-03T19:09:00.000-05:00

Five or six of the teachers that have been in the Nauset Lighthouse Learning PLC this semeseter will be presenting their 5 minute presentations in-life, with voice, this Wednesday (12/5/07) at 5:30pm SLT in the presentation area behind the Nauset building on Lighthouse Learning Island. We are hoping to get all the presentations done in the hour we have. Come cheer on some educators who took the risk to enter this brave new world of Second Life!

On another note, thanks go out to Dennis-Yarmouth Public Schools and Plymouth Public Schools (both on Lighthouse Learning Island) for agreeing to give up a bit of land and some prims to allow the Adobe Education Leaders to have a place in Second Life! I have placed another building on the island, and several of the Adobe Education Leaders have already been by to check it out! Look for exciting things to be happening there in the near future...

For those of you who are interested in finding out about the AEL program and reading the profiles of the very talented educators who are members, visit this page for more information.

Kathy

Second Life in the media

2007-11-17T07:24:00.000-05:00

Our Boston CBS affiliate, WBZ, aired a report on a local company who is hiring new employees in Second Life. It was nice to see a positive report about Second Life!

"Virtual World Takes Job Search to New Level"

CNN enters Second Life!

2007-11-12T15:50:00.000-05:00

Hey, let's be sure CNN gets lots of submissions from all the educators using Second Life to enhance teaching and learning on the Main and Teen Grids! Watch the video here to learn how to submit a CNN i-Report.

You can even pick up a CNN kiosk to place on your own land!

Kathy

Day 7 of the PLC

2007-11-08T19:00:00.000-05:00

Today was a real work day of the PLC group. We only had four attendees today, but I had them make a purchase of a whiteboard, set it up, load it up, put it away, and demo'ed how to save a PowerPoint presentation as jpegs and upload a jpeg to Second Life. Lots of info for an hour, but the group is very professional now, and are true Second Life users!

They will each be presenting a 4-slide show on the night of December 5th, and, if we do not get done, on December 6th. I will be helping them individually in the meantime if they run into snags.

Join us in SL on Lighthouse Learning Island at 5:30 SL time on 12/5 (GMT -5) and watch the PLC group present their thoughts about the use of Second Life to support teaching and learning.

Scott Merrick came by during the class today, and it was a little tough to keep him in the loop of the activities since I was not using voice in-life, and the others were all in the real same room with me. I do appreciate you stopping by, though, Scott!

Kathy

Day 6 of the PLC: Presentation by Kathy Dryburgh

2007-11-01T21:47:00.000-04:00

This week, the PLC group came together, with many other guests, to the large presentation area on the Nauset plot on Lighthouse Learning Island. I had an ambitious 92 slides to get through, and I had re-uploaded them at the tiniest size possible so they would rez.

Well, things were moving along nicely, when, at slide 60, a notice from Second Life popped up that they were going to restart the region and we were all going to be logged off. Well, it happened, and, when logging back on, the island was still not available.

I found an nearby island (Eduisland II), where I happened to have rights to place an object, and sent a teleport message to all the participants who had re-logged in. I put out a whiteboard, had KJ and Clare round up the group, loaded up the rest of the slides to the whiteboard, and finished up the presentation. (I was told that things had not been rezzing well, although they were fine for me!)

Things learned:
1. Always have a back-up place to go in case this happens to you. Find a friend who will give you permission to place your educational tools in case the place you are presenting is re-started and disappears while you are presenting.

2. Remember to take your whiteboard with you if there is a note that the island is re-starting, so you can just place it in the new place and continue as if nothing had happened! :-)

3. Learn how to teleport groups of friends...it is easy to do, and I have used it a few times to teleport my PLC group, and it came in handy tonight! (I apologize to those who logged on late, made their way back to the island when it re-appeared, and could not find us at the alternate site.)

4. Remember to set yourself to "busy" when presenting, and, for those of you who are participants, try to find another friend attending the presentation to ask to teleport you or give you information. It is hard for the presenter to do that and present at the same time.

Thanks to all who stuck with the "mobile presentation" tonight! The URL to all the links and the show in PDF format, in case you missed it, is http://kathyschrock.net/web20/

Kathy

New Life for K-12 Use of Second Life

2007-10-26T07:55:00.000-04:00

I think of Second Life as an online collaborative environment that I am using to support teaching and learning in real life. The wonder of the interface is the low-cost and engaging one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many aspects.

There are a core group of pioneering K-12 educators who have been in Second Life for a while now. I am starting to notice a couple of things and would like to pose a challenge.

1. There is a core group of K-12 educators, but I am not seeing many new faces.

2. There does not seem to be a lot of real life K-12 professional development going in in SL (or I am not aware of it.) I think, in order to entice others to the venue, more emphasis needs to be placed on the professional development aspects instead of the social aspects.

3. There needs to be a central database (not dependent upon the group messages) of any open-to-the-public K-12 real life professional development taking place in Second Life.

4. Everyone needs to have voice chat enabled...they do not have to talk, but must be able to listen.

5. Group leaders should use the group IM process sparingly, and only minutes before an event is to occur. It is often problematic and annoying when users are involved in something else. I have taken myself out of many groups because of these interruptions. (I liken it to someone coming into a real life faculty meeting and yelling "There is a make-your-own sundae bar in the staff room!" The meeting kinda goes flat at that point.) We are professional enough to have the events on our own calendars, IMHO.

The challenge I propose to current Second Life educators.

1. Bring one new educator colleague into Second Life per month. Mentor them through the beginning tough times. Make sure they have voice chat enabled.

2. Create and present one real-life professional development session, using voice chat, every two months in Second Life. Those of you in Second Life are capable of using the tools and I know that you have a a huge amount of educational pedagogy to share. Enter the information about your event here. I will be the editor of the database.

With two recent prime-time televisions shows and many talk shows showcasing the non-educational side of Second Life, I think it would benefit those of us who feel this venue is valuable for teaching and learning to provide more professional content in-life.

Kathy

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Day 5 of the PLC: Presentation In-Life

2007-10-25T21:56:00.001-04:00

Well, this was an experience! Tonight I presented, with voice, and streamed mov files on the topic of public service announcements for use in the classroom. (http://kathyschrock.net/psa/).

The presentation was to showcase the use of both a presentation board and a media center. Members of the PLC were in attendance, as were many other visitors including Hodgjazz, Dewey and some of his grad students, Westley, Ahlan, Kety, and Vinnie, to name a few. Although each announcement of the presentation went out explaining voice chat was to be used, some attendees showed up without the voice chat enabled. I did my best to present via voice, cut-and-paste the text for them into chat, and change the slides and start the movies, but I am not sure the whole thing came off smoothly. Most of the technology worked, even with the 20 or so attendees on site, so that is encouraging!

Next week I will be doing another presentation. I think it will be in the large presentation area in the back of the Nauset building. And I think the topic will be Web 2.0 applications for teaching and learning. Thursday night, November 1 (US day) at 5:30pm SL time.

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Wiki postings from day 4 of the PLC

2007-10-25T15:00:00.000-04:00

SECOND LIFE PROFESSIONAL LEARNING COMMUNITY
HOMEWORK FOR WEEK 4

Today in the session, we took a tour of educational sites on the Main Grid. I asked the participants to envision that the interactive sites (not the professional development sites) were available on the Teen Grid and their avatar was also on the Teen Grid. Participants were asked to come up with three ways to use these interactive sites with students. They will be providing their SL avatar names in their post so you may follow-up with them in SL, we are using Google Docs to revise and edit this document, and I will be posting it to the blog when it is complete.

Kathy Schrock

After spending a few hours on several of the sites we quickly visited in class, I could see lots of potential for student use. For example, I visited the Morocco site and was able to put on an Moroccian clothing, look at different items for sale, and visit the Mosque. I think students would find it not only engaging but also enjoyable and enlightening to be able to be emersed into any culture that could be created in this manner. They could participate in viewing a celebration specific to a culture, witness a religious or governmental event, or just view and participate in a family's daily life routine to learn about the various aspects of differnent cultures. I can see huge potential in the future in this area.

I also toured the Computer Museum and the NASA space center. I would love to see the Computer Museum have a walk through exhibit that students could actually see the inner workings of a computer. Sections could be added to allow students to learn about the various parts and how they all work together. The history piece at this point seems to be just a series of slides. I envision a timeline that students could touch and be transported to that point in history to see how the computer functioned at that time. The NASA site was the most developed in my opinion. With voice-media streaming, it allows the student to take a flight into space while learning about the suits astronauts have to wear and why. I enjoyed the teleport to Mercury, however, once there I could not move (perhaps that is due to lack of gravity? ) At any rate, I see great potential in this area also. Students could be asked to investigate the inner workings of the sun or a smaller star, visit a planet, discover gravity, etc. using their avatar. Students could also set up experiments for other students to try. The biggest advantage to Second Life is the abililty for students to be actively engaged, in a real sense, in their learning experiences.

Kimjoy Fizzle

I have had to try to think like a teacher of high school or middle school due to the fact that the minimum age is 13 and I teach K-5 students.

A study of glaciers and climate change would be timely, especially with the melting of the ice in Antarctica and the Arctic Ocean and of the glaciers at places like Glacier Park in Montana. At the NOAH area in Second Life, the different phases of the glacier enables students to see what actually happens. Seeing what happens when sea level rises and relating it to what would happen to Cape Cod if the ice in the north were to melt would help children find relevance in the information they are looking for.

Students who are learning how to assemble computers and troubleshoot hardware at Cape Cod Tech could actually purchase the components necessary to build a computer at a teacher made electronics store. They could then "build" the computer in a sandbox reserved for the class.

Using the IBM sports place, have students create a virtual baseball game. Area could be set up that allows students to choose the speed and type of pitch and figure out how a variable such as trajectory and speed affects a batter's performance. This may be impossible to set up on Second Life but it would be a good physics project.

Babette Botha

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Day 4 of the PLC: A Whirlwind Tour

2007-10-20T15:05:00.000-04:00

During our session this week, I teleported the entire group to places all over the Main Grid. These sites illustrated the different TYPES of sites that can be created in Second Life-- simulations, interactive sites, front-end to the Net sites, etc.

The teachers were asked, ahead of time, to pretend they were on the Teen Grid and had access to their students and to think about these sites with relation to teaching and learning. Their homework is to provide 3 ways in which they feel some of these sites may be used. They are posting that information to a wiki and I will add it to the blog once it is complete.

Next week, on October 25th at 5:30pm (SL)/8:30pm (EST), I will be presenting a real-life presentation for the group in the Nauset Public Schools building on Lighthouse Learning Island. The point of the presentation is to showcase HOW to present in Second Life. All are welcome, but make sure you have voice enabled so you can hear the presentation!

Kathy Schrock

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