“Virtual Worlds: Where Business, Society, Technology & Policy Converge” - the metaverse conference at MIT. Is this what IT was like in the early nineties with the birth of the World Wide Web? Bob Sutor: posts the agenda with links to videos. My impression - given Mr. Sutor’s description before the event - was that the conference discussion would center on standards for implementing the many platforms that are likely to emerge. (How will Azwaldo Villota - my Second Life avatar - travel to an IBM grid, or the Pepsi-verse?).
Opening remarks by Frank Moss, the Director of the MIT Media Laboratory (who hosted the event), highlighted the potential for new technologies to allow us to connect “in many different dimensions” while also pointing out many of the challenges faced in bringing virtual worlds (VW) to the mainstream user. Joey Seiler of Virtual Worlds Newsposted notes during the conference. Good read, well done.
Most significant to me - perhaps - was that Mr. Moss went over the time alloted his opening slot. Where ideas seem to move at the speed of light, is time of little consequence?
What models of education will replace our current traditional system? Business needs educated candidates; lacking that they will need to do the training themselves…
I continue to suspect that a SL service based on new user orientation has a market.This need was even noted in an article recently by a software industry pundit [anecdote from an IBM event at which SL was heavily promoted]:
“…attendee Melanie McKean, a development lead the Westfield Group insurance agency, had never heard of Second Life before the Rational conference, but IBM’s promotion of the realm piqued her curiosity.
“Having missed the conference’s keynotes, she created a Second Life account and hopped over to IBM’s Codestation to see if she could catch the presentations there — but after a fair bit of fiddling around, she still couldn’t figure out how to view the video. Her attempts to find a more experienced guide also ended in frustration.”
Even after Help Island, new users - those who are in the grid to do business - are going to need help; reliable, commited (contracted?) help. An effective user orientation program would offer:
engaging, web-based multimedia instruction in the “knobs and dials” of SL
hosting of individually guided tours for first sessions
group events serviced by “uniformed” staff (hired “mentors”)
in world information/tutorial stations
a group IM that is manned by someone, 24/7
How many people would it take to make an effective team of mentors. Would some need to be “on call?” How many would be needed to create an effective 24/7 monitor of a group IM channel? What resources would each mentor need at their fingertips? (Are additional resources made available to SL Mentors by LL?)
If that group IM was restricted to client avatars, a private help line could be established.
It would surprise me if there was not something like this already, in SL.
IBM is set to debate these issues on Friday at a virtual worlds event it is co-hosting with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge.
Among others, academics and companies including Toyota and PepsiCo are meeting, perhaps to explore a path toward interoperability standards according to Bob Sutor. In his series of posts describing his virtual world requirements, Sutor explains some of what is necessary for interconnected VR grids to allow for a user to travel between.
In Second Life there is EduIsland, what would EduPlanet be like?
Feedback suggests that educational content in VR (specifically SL), can benefit from approaching design with the intent to increase interactivity. Many in SL have commented about how education in SL needs to be something new, how we cannot just rely on traditional methods for this new technology to evolve. Not so many are developing these new tools.
At least one veteran SL user has remarked on this in a weblog:
“…a lot of the ‘uses’ for SL have revolved around replicating existing teaching methods. So people build lecture theatres so students can experience the pleasure of reading someone type with super-lag. People drop notecard-givers on every corner, pumping out raw text ¹ with very little creative possibilities.” Kisa Naumova
What will be the nature of an effective, asynchronous instructional object?
