Memorial Stone in SL | Victims in Kauhajoki, Finland

On Tuesday, September the 23rd, there came upon another horrible school shooting in Finland. This was not unluckily virtual but for real. If you want to put a candle in Second Life, there is a memorial stone in the Finnish Sauna Retreat area in the SL during this week.

Info about sad Kauhajoki School Shooting:
http://www.yle.fi/news/left/id102478.html

Sky News

I was preparing myself to the class for our volunteer students in the Adult Education Centre and wandered through Second Life seeking for some good sites for the quick tour demonstration. I teleported myself to the Sky News sim and met a very nice avatar called Silvae Reuven, who works for Sky News in the real world. She was very helpful and I definitely got a good case to my show.

Here is the slightly edited citations of the SL chat history I saved in Sky News island. Thanks to Silvae Reuven for her statements. These words shown below gives a good description about Sky News' ideas of using Second Life.

Second Life citations of the avatars chatting in the Sky News island, September, the 3rd.

[10:33] Silvae Reuven: hello aino!
[10:34] Aino Kanto: oh, hello! Am i interrupting something?
[10:35] Silvae Reuven: no, not at all. nothing going on here at the moment. :)
[10:35] Aino Kanto: ok, nice to hear
[10:35] Silvae Reuven: do you have any questions about this sim?
[10:35] Aino Kanto: i am preparing myself for tomorrows lecture
[10:36] Aino Kanto: just wonder if it would be a good idea to drop by with my
students
[10:36] Silvae Reuven: oh, cool, a lecture about?
[10:36] Aino Kanto: it is about social web tools, i will show some cases in SL
[10:37] Silvae Reuven: sounds interesting. we've held a lot of pretty cool
events here. want to know more?
[10:37] Aino Kanto: yes, please
[10:38] Silvae Reuven: ok, just need to move cat that is sleeping on my
keyboard...
[10:38] Aino Kanto: lol, they always love warm cool places... isn't it a paradox.. :=)
[10:39] Silvae Reuven: yeah, this one's Very insistent... anyway
[10:40] Silvae Reuven: we've had some of our presenters make live
appearances here with their look-alike avatars. Some took visitors on a
tour of the place to explain what happens where and talk about their
job.
[10:41] Aino Kanto: oh, that is very interesting
[10:41] Silvae Reuven: We've also had them interview politicians and tv
celebrities (UK ones) right here at the desk.
[10:42] Aino Kanto: oh, that is fascinating
[10:42] Silvae Reuven: To make all of that available to a larger audience, we
streamed a video feed of this onto a website where people could take
part in the discussion via a live forum.
[10:43] Aino Kanto: a new approaching between the virtual and real
[10:42] Silvae Reuven: ...what else...
[10:43] Silvae Reuven: Well, when we first launched, the interviews held
here were streamed live onto SKy News television, which meant
we had a virtual and real audience at the same time. A first!
[10:44] Silvae Reuven: That's about it. :-)
[10:44] Aino Kanto: amazing!
[10:44] Silvae Reuven: sure, we uploaded some videos to youtube, shall i
find the link for you?
[10:44] Aino Kanto: thank you for your briefing Silvae... i would appreciate the youtube link for sure
[10:44] You: would you know if here is something happening in the
morning tomorrow between 8:30 - 10:00 AM UK time
[10:45] Silvae Reuven: no, nothing happening in the forseeable future
[10:45] Aino Kanto: ok, i think we will definetely drop by tomorrow
[10:46] Silvae Reuven: few good ones here: http://www.youtube.com/user/SkyNewsSL
[10:46] Silvae Reuven: and I think I may have different ones on mypage (not sure now): http://www.youtube.com/user/SilvaeReuven
[10:47] Silvae Reuven: could be interesting to show your students
[10:47] Aino Kanto: thank you very much! this is very cool
[10:47] Silvae Reuven: good luck with that lecture
[10:47] Aino Kanto: i might do that, thanks for the hint
[10:48] Silvae Reuven: ok, if you have no more questions, i'm gonna
disappear
[10:48] Aino Kanto: ok, i will continue my journey too, thanks for everything
[10:48] Silvae Reuven: very welcome, have fun
[10:48] Aino Kanto: and good times in the sky
[10:48] Silvae Reuven: quite ;-)

Avatars have dreams in first life also

I teleported to ESL SL School (English as a Second Language in SL) and chatted with Johnius Petrov who is a member of a Help Team there. He is a russian who lives in Ukraine. He seemed to be a very nice person and had an interesting dream in the real life. He has a master degree of Computer technology from the University but wants to be a psychologist and to study abroad. He needs some money for that. The average salary in Ukraine is 300 USD so he has a dream to work in Canada and study later in England.

It was my first visit in the ESL SL school since about six months. The building itself had been changed: has now some more luxury comparing on the past seen :). I asked about Violet Meili, my first SL friend, who had also been working as a member of the Help Team in ESL SL school but Johnius had not seen her for a long time. I wonder what has happened to my dear friend Violet...maybe she has been concentrating in the first life like me recently.

Kirjoitettu Flock-selaimella

Beyond SL & Genoa & Live Concert

My dear friend Toni Cao logged in SL and I contated her at once by SL Instant Messenger. I invited her in Rome and we had an extremly nice conversation about recent issues in SL and real world. Toni is a RL journalist and has a carrier in new media genre for an service that spreads ICT articles all over the Italy for newspapers and online magazines. She uses a lot of her time to be aware about new trends in digital and collaborative medias such as SL. Actually she get paid for living in this virtual world: what a job she has!

Toni brang out a detail of highly respectful Gartner research. It has been estimated that 80 % of world wide internet connected population will have an avatarby by the end of 2011. So why wouldn't we spend some time to get known with these new possibilities of learning and collaboration and - for god sake - living!

Toni is interested in my "sort of research work" about my journey in virtual worldof Second Life. She suggested that she might write an article about my experiences regarding the notes I will make if I only could write a short description about my goals so that she could first show it to her boss. What a wonderful person she is! I promised to think about the nice idea.

She was terrified about the news from Finland. Some of the Italian news papers and web magazines has picked up the kills of eight people in the Jokela high school in Southern Finland. Usually all those news from Finland had concerned about positive issues such as Nokia mobiles and educational Pisa researches. What a sad day on Thursday indeed. Well, life continues but our minds carries now a painful part among the others, more pleasant. This deals somehow with virtual worlds and societies regarding the authorities' statesments because the killer had at least some contacts and had played shooting games in the internet.



Toni lives in Genoa, North Italy and wanted to show me virtual Genoa in SL. We teleported in there and she told me there was a very well detailed old harbour of Genoa in 3D. It really was amazing. Some italian men introduced themselves to us. They were avatars from a group that had a project going on of builing the historic centre of Genoa in SL. They presented us the area and we took a boat and saw nice buildings and sceneries all over.

Later on the guys started to flirt on us! Well, it just was so predictable: it is so italian. Toni is very social and good looking...and I am a blonde myself... no wonder (lol)! After all they got an idea: wanted Toni as a guide regarding to her knowledge of local places and journalistic skills.

After this session Toni wanted to go listen to one of her oldest SL friends, Luigi DiPrima, who was playing guitar and singing in a live concert on the stage. The end of the evening (and maybe half of the night) ran in really nice way listening nice tone of Luigi's voice and fluentguitar playing. I think the audience got what it had come to get: I assume Luigi got tippd quite well. Thatbrings to my mind that I did not have any Linden dollars cause I was still unimployed in SL and did not want to buy any currency. Then Toni just gave me 100 L$ so that I could give 20 L$ as a tip to themusician. The rest I will waste on "free" items. :)

Sound in virtual world. Yes, it really is possible. Not just audio feeds but also live concerts and conferences. Of course avatars can use voice chat also to speak out their thoughts. The quality of sound depends most of all on the capacity of client's computer. In some parts thevoice disconnected while Luigi was singing for an hour. Afterwards he jumped off from the stage, hugged Toni and chatted with us. Very pleasant evening indeed!

Quality of eLearning & Ancient Roma

I was introduced to Inge Qunhua, a danish teacher who lives in Jylland. I was told she owns an island that deals with eLearning genre. Her college uses SL in educational purposes. I need to get known with her better! Bracken (teacher as well) said earlier she could show me Inge's island some day if Inge happens to be offline. It would be really great!

We discussed about the heterogenic of the students. We agreed that in the future when there could me even more students and resources enough, it would be nice idea to sort the students into some groups established by their level of the skills. At least different level of classes could be arranged because the level of the students might be not so easy to test in advance - not at least by the students themselves. I referred to the language test tool (http://www.dialang.org/) which has been created by EU-funds.



Some leisure after serious talking. We decided to teleport ourselves in Rome with Violet1, Bracken and Inge. Teleporting just could not work at the time. Occasianally it is like that when the servers of the Linden Lab are operating with high speed when the SL is full crowded. This malfunction is called a lag > lagging. There can be over 50.000 avatars online at the same time when there were "only" 30.000 in the last May when I was more online last time. Reasearches tells that there will be over 25 % addition to the amount of new avatar in each month. No wonder some areas are really laggy. Of course it depends much on the capacity of the computers of the people all over the world. > See more about the figures

After some problems we succeeded to tp ourselves in Rome. It is sort of roleplaying area where are some rules (but no authorities) and the inhabitants have a dress code. They can wear togas and other ancient clothes and participate in the theatrical plays and circus. As an observer one can move around of course, but one might be ejected if interfears too much the plays going on.

The buildings and sceneries have been created in the good taste and the tools that can be used are also as they were in the ancient Rome. I was interested in the laundry building where were some animated interactive tools that created quite a deep immersive athmosphere around me. The owner of the laundry told that ancien romans used urea to clean clothes! One of the big collaborative projects is to build a roman ship with a group of vounteers. Nice area with lots of details and activities!

There was quite silent in Rome during our visit so I wandered all over. I noticed a banner for volunteer gladiators in circus. Maybe I should try that also! It cannot be wounded badly in virtual worlds and the effects to real life cannot be fatal..or can they (regarding the extremely terrible things happend just recently 7.11.2007 in the high school of Jokela, Finland.). > See more about the issue

Well, Violet1 was really keen on the horces controlled by avatars. She wanted to get one too, so they left while I preferred to stay in rome when they tped to the stalls. I walked into the building called "Latrinae" which seemed to be sort of water closet :).

There were posters where from I got to known that free citizens of Rome used to meet themselves at the latrinaes while making some other things. On top of every seats there were animation balls for different movements (lol), for example meditating. What a wonderful place SL is!

Second Life meets reality

Discussed with my SL friend, Violet1, about spending time in SL. She missed her class in ESL virtual school and was of course sad about it. She works for classrunner and Giovanni, the principal of the ESL school, had to be a substitude of Violet1.

Ethics and moral in virtual worlds reflect the same values of living and behaving as in real world. The situation could be relatively same if one missed his/her duties in RL. In anyway the students of ESL school do pay a small amount of linden dollars for the classes.

I wondered why Violet1 moved to Sweden instead of staying in Philippines, which is a paradise in my opinion as it's climate and nature. Violet1 told that it is nice for travelling for a week or two, but not safe at all to live in there. There is a lot of violence and white collar people are mostly highly corrupted. So one can do almost nothing because of the fear to get busted or kidnapped or even raped. So we got our conlusion taht despite all the darkness in the Autumn in the nordic countries Sweden is a really big contrast regarding it's social security system and peacefull attitude of the inhabitants and easy way of living in safe societies. Violet1 added that she thinks there is no such a place called a paradise.

Violet1 and Bracken (a teacher) were planning the Xmas parties in ESL school and discussed about the decorations when I teleported myself to the school. Violet1 has been creating 3D snowman with SL's efficient building tools. I noticed that mr Snowman missed a hat and a carrot nose, so Violet1 started to create those ideas immediately.

Before arrived in ESL school I had been shopping some new clothes and other items to change my outfit. I wanted to try rock-look so I had changed black clothes on and wore a guitar. I had gotten also some free animations called rockstar and so on. So they were surprised because of my recently changed habitus.

CASE Second Life: Description of the Project

In the beginning there was a God...and this is my story (LOL = laugh on loud). Well, I was very smoothly and nicely told that I should write down something about my recent interests with Second Life virtual world platform. But first may I introduce myself.

I work in adult education genre in an institution that is one of the biggest in its class in the Europe. I belong, among several others, in the team that deals with

• open and flexible learning
  including self and group studies in the open learning places and platforms with the aid of technological innovations of eLearning
• new possibilities of using eLearning tools
  collaborative, interactive, immersive, edutainable, ...

Once upon a time there was...
So, how it all begun. Well, I had red something about the Second Life virtual world in some articles beforehands, but when the particlar one was published in the leading newspaper of Finland I really got involved with SL. It happened in November 2006.

The article was nicely written and it surely influenced me a lot. I wanted to try the system personally so that I could see if it would be for any use in my work or leisure time. I must say I found it quite fascinating and, as its immersivity, a bit addictive also. It was easy to meet other users, get friends, and chat with them in visual and functional three dimensional virtual world.

Breaking out from the world...
After six months use lots of my best SL friends had to stop logging because of several reasons; mainly because of real life issues such as getting marriage, giving a birth, lack of time, sickness and so on. I tried to continue my journey in the world for a while. It just did not feel so interesting anymore without my network, avatars and real friends also. Of course I continued "meeting" some of them by online messaging tools and by e-mail but there was not that same cohesion between us anymore after we once left the world. Well, one of them, a wonderful portuguese lady, I met in Spain in the spring 2007...in real world! So it is not always only virtual. Sometimes SL meets reality.

The gap
I think I found the gap: virtual world is not just the world itself but the social interaction. In my case it was much about social collaboration with other users. So without that social network I used to deal with I found it meaningless. So I quitted.

...and rebooting in world again
After five months total break I got involved again. There were quite much articles in all over the newspapers and online magazines: other people had found SL too. And not just poeple, also some institutes ie. universities that had started to use SL as a tool to achieve better their goals that needed high level collaboration but the face-to-face meetings could not be possible.

Mr Gartner made us floating
Among other reasons our librarian brang out her growing interests after she had heard about the Gartner's research. I decided to open my mouth and told about my experiences in SL. We decided to get some more information about SL for future purposes. We have always been interested in new ways of learning in our institution...here was one that waited to feed our hunger.

About this blog
So here we are: in the blog typing something about SL and it's educational possibilities. I decided to start one so that other people could also get involved (if they ever wanted) easier without going through the same difficulties in the first few steps.

Goals
There are some goals in the research work (project). The main goal is to get known of Second Life (SL) virtual world platform for possible future purposes. Sub goals are:

• To make an easy-way description of SL and its nature
• To solve out how does SL work:
  - Is there any rules of conduction
  - What kind of interaction there is between users
• How SL could be used as educational purposes
• To search and get to known of the educationally qualified learning areas in SL
  - Is there any
  - Why learning areas are good or bad
  - What does it need to create one
• To be prepared if there might be really any value of using SL in our institution or in my own carrier
  - What are the ways to prepare to the future of using avatars in education
  - What does it need to get involved with a group
  - How much does it cost; Is there any possibilites to get fundation
• To write this blog as documentation and later on use it when writing a report about the research work for possible future purposes