ANGEL Learning Island: Our Community R&D project in Second Life™

ANGEL Objectives in SL Community Practice R&D ANGEL Product R&D Collaborate with the SLED community Provide a place for all educators to experiment Provide a safe space for learners (Rated PG, no violence) Provide orientation guides for all roles Provide a community hub for SL learning objects Provide a community index to educational areas ANGEL Product R&D Learn to apply our Simple-Powerful-Open in SL Support our customers: link ANGEL to SL Explore new products & service opportunities SLED: Second Life Educators -- an organized community of practice within Second Life who are attempting to create educational tools and practices as a community. Our island has been built in cooperation with them, and relying on their commentary and support. In return, we’re providing them a home for their experimentation.

Key Facts Dates Access Support? January-May: beta testing May 16: public area opens to all educators TBD: private area for ANGEL customers Access www.angellearning.com/secondlife To participate in beta: secondlife@angellearning.com Support? The public offering is R&D only--not a supported product. Volunteers will offer informal support.

The Island Map Making sure that navigation is extremely simple was a core design principle for our Island. Maps like this dot the landscape, and allow simple one click “teleportation” to any area of the Island.

Orientation Garden A key objective for our Island was to create orientation experiences for each educational role. This image shows our “Orientation Garden for Learners” where basic navigational and vision skills are explained with tutorials. These were developed with experienced educators based on skills students need most for becoming productive in SL. A similar area for teaching advanced skills for instructors is also available.

Orientation: building objects One of the most intriguing aspects of Second Life is it’s support for building things. System developers create virtual campuses for student tours. Instructional designers create virtual versions of museums for a more real world walkthrough. Students can create 3 dimensional objects and even impart motion to them for homework. This image shows the “SLED Sandbox” that we’ve built in cooperation with members of the Second Life Educators Community. It teaches basic building techniques in an interactive tutorial fashion.

Orientation: physics of SL Second Life also is a place with motion. Here’s another image from the SLED Sandbox, showing Angelindy Anatine knocking over dominoes as he seeks to understand the physics of SL.

Tools for Educators The Educator’s Tool Gallery is a place designed to house educational objects that have been designed by members of the learning community. Most are offered free of charge and allow others to modify them for their own use. Each object has basic documentation on use in the form of an SL “notecard” that can be added to educator’s inventory along with the object.

Setting for groups Second Life offers impressive functionality for group collaboration. In the center of ANGEL Learning Island we’ve created a large group discussion area that educators can morph into a form most suitable for the type of experiments they’d like to conduct. In this case the “Drive In” style has been selected with recliners for learners and a large screen that educators can show slides on or even stream movies to.

Generate classrooms Educators can “generate” a virtual classroom for use with students. They click a kiosk, a classroom is created and fly’s up onto the hillside behind the boardwalk, and then students are given a teleportation link to the room.

Classroom Once inside a classroom an instructor has basic tools like this whiteboard behind Intellagirl, where she’s delivering a slideshow from images she’s uploaded into our slideshow tool.

Teleport Kiosk One of the problems identified by members of the SLED community was the simple location of educationally oriented destinations in Second Life. Our Teleportation Kiosk was built as a place to hold placards showing an image of educator built sites in-world. These allow an easy way for a visual review of potential destinations for faculty or students, and one-click teleportation to the location.

Connection to LMS An objective of our experiment with Second Life is to learn how we can best provide linkage between SL and the ANGEL LMS. A simple tutorial on the Island explains to ANGEL instructors how to create links to our Island from within ANGEL version 7.1 or 7.2, today. We plan to add more connective technology between the LMS and the Island as we learn more form community experimentation.

ANGEL VHQ Well, you knew it had to happen -- ANGEL has established it’s Second Life “Virtual World Headquarters.” Here you can spot Angelindy Anatine reclining after an in-world focus group. This corporate presence contains a space for us to conduct in-world meetings with our SLED project team and to conduct training sessions on the use of the Island.