Graham Davies's Blog (54)

I have recently returned from Spain, where I contributed to a two-day conference on virtual worlds at the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV), 16-17 December 2011. The conference was organised under the auspices of the CAMILLE Project in the Department of Applied Linguistics at the Polytechnic University of Valencia within the framework of EUROCALL’s programme of regional events, in collaboration with the Inter-University Institute of Applied Modern Languages, supported by the Vice…

OK, so we now have SL Viewer 3 - which you will still find stored in the Second Life Viewer 2 folder on your computer. And people are still referring to the latest version as Viewer 2. Confusing, eh? There are quite few differences from the earlier versions, which I have now incorporated into my tutorial materials that you can download from Section 14.2.1 (i) of Module 1.5 at the ICT4LT site:…

Not long to go now until the SLanguages 2011 conference, 16-18 September 2011!

This is the link for SLanguages 2011 - which is the fifth in this annual series of conferences, dating back to 2007:
http://avalon-project.ning.com/page/slanguages-2011

I shall be presenting at 11am GMT (= 12 noon BST) on Sunday 18 September. I am conducting a tour of the EUROCALL/CALICO HQ.

All the best
Graham

I have recently begun using Scoop.It! It's a useful tool that enables you to set up Web pages that gather together links on a specific topic. ScoopIt provides a facility for you to "curate" information on your topics by trawling the Web and finding links that you may wish to add to your topic pages. The links are then laid out attractively like the page of a magazine:

http://www.scoop.it/

I have set up two Scoop.It…

SLanguages 2011 Online Conference

Time: September 16 2011 at 6pm to September 18 2011 at 12pm.

Location: EduNation and AVALON Learning Islands.

Website: http://www.slanguages.net

Organized By: Heike Philp aka Gwen Gwasi in SL.

Proposals are welcome. Deadline for submissions is the 15th of July 2011.

Further details at the AVALON Ning:…

Helen Myers of The Ashcombe School, Dorking (UK), has created a video on Skoolaborate and Learning Languages:

http://microsites2.segfl.org.uk/view_page.php?id=2772&gimage_num=2#gallery

It's about using SL with teenagers learning languages at secondary school level. The video describes the Lingualand project, which includes an area in SL where different languages are taught and where…

The transfer of ownership of EduNation III Island from Gavin Dudeney (Dudeney Ge in SL) to Randall Sadler (Randall Renoir in SL) has now been completed. Randall is busy right now, 27 October 2010, changing the terrain of the island. All the buildings and contents have been removed, so you won't find the EUROCALL and CALICO HQs in their usual place. But it won't be long before we are up and running again and in new accommodation. Keep an eye on this blog for updates. If you are…

Help for Newbies

I have not been very active in Second Life for the last few days, and I am not sure how active I will be during the SLanguages 2010 conference. I underwent surgery, an exploratory laparoscopy, on 8 October 2010,…

SLanguages 2010 is a 24-hour virtual conference on language teaching and learning in Second Life. It will run from 10:00 SL time (5pm GMT), 15 October, 10:00 SL time (5pm GMT), 16 October. Wherever possible, sessions will be repeated to enable people in different time zones to see them. There will also be group discussions and social events and the opportunity to visit an exhibition of SL tools for educators. Further information can be found in the AVALON Ning:…

I got back from EUROCALL 2010 in Bordeaux a couple of days ago. It was a remarkable and memorable conference in every respect. The quality of the presentations was very high, and the social events were excellent. The food and wine at the Gala Dinner were up to the standard that one would expect in Bordeaux, but we also had a lot of fun laughing at ourselves in the post-dinner karaoke session. Many of us did not get back to our hotels before 2.30 in the morning! It was so thoughtful of the…

I would like to thank everyone who attended the meeting on Viewer 2 yesterday evening in the AVALON sim. I know I talked far too much, so thank you for listening so patiently. I hope you found some of the tips useful. I certainly found your feedback useful: what you did not know about Viewer 2, what you like and what you find unfriendly or irritating. I have completely revised my tutorial materials on Viewer 2 to take account of the changes that have been introduced into Version 2.1.0, which…

This is to let you know that we have signed up for the Ning Mini pricing plan, so this Ning will continue to exist in its current form. We are therefore not migrating to a new network. The fee is modest at $19.95 per year, plus a discount for early payment. This fee is to be covered by EUROCALL. There is a drawback, however, as the Ning Mini plan restricts us to 150 members:

http://about.ning.com/plans/

At present we…

This is the website for The 1920s Berlin Project in Second Life:

http://www.1920sberlin.com…

There is a very lively discussion taking place right now in Gavin Dudeney’s That’SLife blog in a thread headed Second Life - the long goodbye. Gavin has decided to say goodbye to SL, at least in terms of continuing to play a role in using SL for teaching and training. He has decided that SL is not the most suitable environment for educators, citing technical problems, the unfriendliness of Viewer 2…

The Princess and the Pea: A fairy story retold in Second Life

Kip Boahn posted this link in Facebook. It is a video by Machinima, a wonderful illustration of the power of SL as a story-telling medium. I hadn't thought about using SL in this way - but it obviously works! More of the same, please!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqRUPjfr7aI

I have just created a short video of the EUROCALL HQ Building in Second Life and uploaded it to YouTube. Have a look:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GPTRLuT_qc

What do you think? I'm going to create a few more, focusing on holodecks, shared media and the joint EUROCALL/CALICO Resource Centre. I'm using Fraps, which is a modestly priced screen capture package designed for capturing clips of online games.

So Ning's free service is about to be phased out. At present we don't know how much Ning will charge us to maintain our little community. Further news will be announced on 4 May:

http://creators.ning.com/forum/topics/ning-update-rolling-out-full

Whether we will be able to afford the fees depends on what we will be charged. EUROCALL and CALICO don't have a lot of money to throw around. We…