Games & Learning

Ohio University and Second Life

Here's a story about educational use of Second Life at Ohio University. It's published in Athens News on 1/29/2007.

http://athensnews.com/index.php?action=viewarticle&section=news&story_id=27194

Here's a 2/2/2007 article on Ohio University Outlook.

http://www.ohio.edu/outlook/06-07/February/299n-067.cfm

NMC Virtual Worlds: Education Services

The New Media Consortium announces the launch of NMC Virtual Worlds (http://virtualworlds.nmc.org), a services unit under the NMC umbrella that will provide a full palette of support to educational institutions wishing to explore, build, or establish a presence in a range of virtual worlds. Download PR-NMC-Virtual-Worlds.pdf

The Ultimate Distance Learning (SL in New York Times)

SL Article in the New York Times "Education Life" section.

Second Life to go Open Source

Second Life to go open source

The creator of the burgeoning 3D virtual world expects it to grow even faster with outside programming help, David Kirkpatrick reports in a Fortune exclusive.

Ohio University Second Life Campus

The Ohio University Second Life Campus is now open to the public. The Ohio University Second Life campus consists of two islands: "Ohio University Without Boundaries Second Life Campus" and "Ohio Outreach Island."  The islands were developed in a partnership between Ohio University Without Boundaries, The Ohio University College of Engineering and Ohio University Outreach.

Campus infrastructure features architecture reflective of Ohio University's beautiful real-word campus along with original modern styles unique to Second Life and includes a Student Center, Conference Center, Arts and Music Center and scale recreation of Stocker Center.  Here are some screenshots of the campus visual infrastructure:

Ohio University Without Boundaries SL Campus also features a learning center that houses research and development into technology mediated learning within the Second Life environment.

The "Learning Center" provides the space to house multiple "learning kiosks."  The "learning kiosk" provides a scalable method for building modularized learning with a variety of support resources and media.  Each kiosk will hold unique learning content for blended or stand-alone learning experiences.  A prototype learning experience is currently available in the learning center as part of the blend for students in John Stinson's "Managing in the Innovation Age" course.  The kiosk is also open to non-students who are interested. 

This prototype kiosk features a real-world challenge, a common feature in OUWB's action learning approach. There is also a video podcast player that subscribes to a podcast that is also available through the iTunes store and the course blog. The kiosk also offers links to best practice and links to the course blog.  The podcast and links will all aid students in working through and responding to the challenge.  Here is a screenshot of the "Managing in the Innovation Age" learning kiosk:

OUWB is currently seeking subject matter experts interested in contributing learning content for development into learning kiosks within the OUWB SL Learning Center.  If interested please respond to ouwb@ohio.edu. 

Ohio University also has a variety of other development projects underway for delivery within Second Life which we will document in this blog in subsequent posts.  Stay tuned!

To visit the OUWB SL campus you must have Second Life installed.  The campus can be accessed by going to Region: Ohio University, at the following coordinates: 20, 36, 24. Similarly you may use this SLurl: http://slurl.com/secondlife/ohio%20university/20/36/24/ or simply type "Ohio" into your Map under region name and both the OUWB SL and Ohio Outreach will come up in results.