BarCamp Session 2 - Second Life and education

The second session I'm along to is being hosted by DigitalKatie http://digitalkatie.typepad.com/ (@digitalkatie).

Been working with Global Kids charity which is based at the High School for Global Citizenship in Brooklyn. Focus on kids with limited access to education, computing equipment etc. No guarantee of computers at home. When extra activities like blogging or flickr it was kids first experience there. There were also low levels of literacy to tackle. Kate was working remotely via Skype and SecondLife. These kids had never used these tools before so we started by teaching them how to use the spaces in order to learn Global Science topics. Engagement was far higher than traditional teaching options. Got funding for 20 laptops, 20 Macbooks. This doubled the number of computers in the school. Teachers, Head and Admins had those machines. Massive change to level of IT access compared to before and compared to peers.

Second Life Curriculum: How to teach SL skills
We tested pdf files that were OK (tested in a school in Washington) but they were more useful for teachers than for students. The teachers in the classroom needed to gain these skills too so this was still useful.

We got them to texture objects, how to do 3D modelling. But we bombarded them with too much content. We hadn't worked out what they would need to know for the course so we taught too many skills in SL. And wordiness wasn't as good as demonstration for these kids. But there are over 100 free teaching materials for SL available at Gloal Kids

Learning Global Science: How to teach Science in SL
The team reproduced lots of materials and spaces to help the kids engage. Did debates with giant floor panels - SL avatars could move to a floor square and then ask then to justify their reasons.

The first area was Science at Home - giving each student a small house and a box of stuff: recyling bins, taps etc. They had to turn their SL house into a replication of their own homes. So they had to research what resources they used and what waste was produced etc. And they had to add a note to each item to explain usage in their own house. Planned to use these little houses as a base but didn't really return past this exercise.

The next area of study looked at Waste Management in Naples. Naples have a really bad waste management problem. There were cardboard cut out type city officials and if they asked the right questions they would find out about what was happening. These were programmed responses but with some variance so students had to ask a lot and talk to each other. This worked well as there were about 8 characters in wider areas but a later exercise had fewer characters and this worked less well. Not real people behind them in this scenario but SL hooked up to another service quite cleverly.

As part of waste management class students could trample through a virtual landfill to understand the issues better - something you could never do in reality.

The next are was Non Renewable Resources. Looking at coal, oil and the ozone layer. Built a coal mine (with water that was grottier by the mine than on the approach). Had a real problem with lag with the coal mine BUT the kids got the point of the coal mine - it was cramped and difficult. In NY it wasn't as if they could go visit a coal mine in reality (something you could do in Scotland). For the ozone exercise you could take measurements and research. Went well but not interactive enough

The next area was on Renewable Resources - we had a house they could explore (used a maingrid resource that we were able to put into the teengrid - not always possible). Needed to give more web resources, the kids got bogged down at the details. They type in a huge sentence and then take first answer. Need to change our approach to cope with that for next time. It worked but not as succesfully as it could be. From the images though you can at least see that it's a rich resource.

Next up was a Virtual Fieldtrip to a water treatment plant with guest via Skype. The issue was that the expert wasn't terribly audible so had to transcribe instead. Kids had great engaged questions though. The water treatment plant was also moved from main grid - scripting causes problems when you move from main to teen grid.

This was a real class in a real high school so to get credit a project was required so the class had a Final Project. Kids had a billboard to fill with Comic Life to present their project and they could accompany with objects etc. They did try out ideas well. Emphasis was on assessing the science learning not the SL learning. This was why an imported poster presentation worked. In future would focus the SL learning so that only useful skills passed on and more focus could be given to the science.

The kids had very little IT skills. So they learned other things - for instance we used Comic Life for exercises and teaching materials. Every day the kids were blogging about their experiences. They would blog about questions on the board and of their experiences etc. Used Google Earth - most hadn't seen before. This worked well although kids were putting up Flickr pictures with their addresses after looking at maps - swift teacherly removal there. But seeing actual science in action on Google Earth was great. And actually real life presentation skills were helped with the final projects and the confidence building.

Daily class first thing in the morning (for them), about lunchtime in the UK. Really great to be able to talk with different people in their classes, not just their teachers/local peers. Helps them see the wider world. Some of the Brooklyn kids had never even been into Manhattan. Brilliant that they could then speak to people in Scotland and get a slightly bigger mind view of the world.

We asked for feedback on the class. Really really positive. Came from a viewpoint of not engaging with science to being interested and open to learning about science.

The kids did a lot nore group work than they were expected. A lot of kids were enjoying the class and said they would miss it. A kid who was excluded for a few days actually logged in from home for class! That's a huge thing: the sign that something had been done right.

Kate managed to visit. Working on Kids Connect in Florida so went across to visit. On the team they had the teacher of the class, a science advisor, and a SL developer. The resources are good to go for others. We had a whole sim to work with but it only requires a little bit of SL land.

Resources
www.rezed.org/group/GKslcurriculum

Questions
Do you use SL in the UK? No. Real problems in Edinburgh and lots of local councils as they have security concerns, issues etc. Bute is the only Scottish area to do this, they set up a private island on a teen grid, no strangers etc. It was for after school usage but other teachers were interested only to be blocked by IT dept. Ed council computer specs are not up to the job, graphics cards can't do them, broadband connection can't handle that traffic. The set up is more for office workers than education. Glow is an initiative that should help though - will increase quality and speed of broadband. Kate's changing syllibus to Digital Media rather than Computing so blogs etc. will be included. At present school rules don't allow staff to change website let alone kids. But there'll be lots of safeguards: we should be teaching kids how to be safe online not blocking anything. The curriculum includes social software including tons of currently blocked sites.

There is an age issue for SL. Even SL Teengrid you have to be a minimum age of 13. Although the US law has been challenged. OpenSim is an alternative hosted option but most schools don't have that technology. One school in Edinburgh allows students to add stuff to their server. Comment from the floor: St Andrews University are working with OpenSim. At the moment not a lot of kids are doing computing and moving to computing at university so the universities are very supportive in terms of their own teengrids etc. Comment from floor: there are maths and sciences areas in SL? Yes but these are in maingrid. But some nasa, library etc. resources they can be moved to the teengrid as needed. The database code says whether resources are maingrid or teengrid. Resources developed in the maingrid not the teengrid work poorly, especially scripted objects.

Beacon of hope - we spoke to the head of the SL teengrid. They are planning for an open PG area in the middle. This would allow 18 year olds, parents and kids etc. to work together and would allow building and sharing space. Been talked about a long time but not happened yet. Comment from floor: great math models area, a shame kids can't see those.

Question re:resources. Most of what we used we built and developed but we had a good relationship with the maingrid so we were able to use existent objects. If you go to Global Kids you can access materials and reusing content. Pdfs are open for all but the resources cost money so the model wouldn't be reuse as is, would need to work out with Global Kids how those resources can be used/if there's cost. You need to bear in mind you need 2 to 3 people supporting the kids to do this type of learning. Comment: classroom management is very difficult when computer based learning - also do the kids become insular? Kate says that actually lots of interactivity. As adults in the teengrid (we're now classed as kids) we couldn't pass objects or see messages etc in SL. Kids were chatting away but we couldn't tell! LindenLab won't let just anyone do this. Even to be an adult in the teengrid you have to meet approval. To get your avatars in as teens you need very special permission. As adults you have island priveledges only. As teens you can see all so Linden want you to be seriously trusted. This is an issue of how it was developed: started as a game but having to catch up to uses now.

The online work was backed up with real life group tasks so working and talking together there - hard to tell as virtual tutor in Scotland!

Question: would you virtually recruit for an assistant? Might want to but funding would need to be in place. An audience member is at education dept in Edinburgh and reckons that trainee teachers etc. would love that experience. Expensive to clear people. You have to get police checks for all countries you've worked in and get documents translated. Maybe £300 per check for some. Real difficulty of safety causing siloing of data.

Assessment: class teacher generally did this. Some text exported from SL and that was passed on to teacher. Blogs also used. Kate also approved blogs as they went live. Vetted and published as a result of having assistance available.