BG News: Facebook in the classroom

I was quoted in an article in the BG News on Sept, 3.

http://bgnews.com/campus/facebook-in-the-classroom/

#SLCC 2010

Last weekend I attended the Second Life Community Conference 2010 with my colleague and BGSU Virtual Campus Co-Administrator Bonnie Mitchell. Below you can find all 4 of the presentations we gave hosted on Slideshare.net and links to the Google Docs.

Art101: Final Exhibition in Second Life: Updated

As the second summer semester came to an end, my Art 101 class in Second Life held a gallery opening on the final day of class. This opening and exhibition was open to the public and several SL residents and BGSU community members were in attendance! Visit the gallery by clicking on this SLURL:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/BGSU%20Collaboration/56/36/35

This exhibition includes two floors of artwork. The first floor hosts work created by Art 101 students influenced by works from history. The full assignment sheet can be seen here. Each work is presented next to the work that inspired it. You can read more about what inspired the students by clicking on each of the works in Second Life.

The exhibition also includes a show of artwork by practicing artists curated by Art 101 students. The assignment sheet for this show can be seen here. Each student interviewed the artist about their work. The interview can be read by clicking on each work in Second Life.

Images from throughout the semester, including the exhibition opening can be seen here:

Below are a few of the “Extra Credit” postcards and posters made for the exhibition.

SIGGRAPH SpaceTime Exhibition on BGSU Virtual Campus

I’ve been working hard all weekend to get the Animations loaded into our new dynamic media players on the BGSU Virtual Campus for the SIGGRAPH SpaceTime Exhibition. You can watch over 32 animation and videos of interactive works at the gallery.  I just put up a post about it on the BGSU Virtual Campus blog. Read on here…

Here’s the SLURL to get right to the gallery: http://slurl.com/secondlife/BGSU%20Creation/164/180/28

Art 101: Critique in Second Life

Over the last week my students have been working on an assignment in which they were to find an inspirational work of art and create a work in repsonse to it (read assignment here). The first meeting class of this week, we held in-progress critiques of the work. The set-up for this included teaching students to upload images into Second Life (my tutorial here), build a primitive or object to put them on (tutorial), and then how to put the image on the prim (tutorial).

Here are some image of both critiques. View more here.

The most exciting thing was the amount of feedback each students received from other students. In a studio classroom the comments usually come from only a handful of students. An Instructor often times has to play a significant moderator role to coax quiet students into speaking. I’m not sure if it was because this is NOT a studio art class with non-art majors OR if the text chat mode of communications allowed students to speak more freely, but the amount of feedback per image was really wonderful!

Art101: Artist Roleplay Assignment

This summer I am teaching Art 101: Intro to Art online in Second Life. It took about a week to get the students up to speed on how to use Second Life. I am using some of the info at the main SL wiki, but mostly my own tutorials at the BGSU SL Help Wiki. My students are keeping blogs to reflect on what they see/do in class, document what they discover on the web and in Second Life, and also as a place to display what they create. Our second week, most of them blogged about our trip to the Sistine Chapel re-creation on Vassar Island (SLURL).

Last week the students were given an assignment to research an artist from a list I had presented them with. Then, they were asked to modify their avatar to look like that artist or one of the artworks that person had created. Finally, the students roleplayed those artists in a conversation in front of the class to present their findings. Click here to read the assignment. Watch two example videos below or see more examples here.

Jackson Pollock & M.C. Escher

Sol LeWitt & Henry Moore

Overall, I would say that the assignment was a success! Some students were able to modify their avatars better than others but the creative choices was easy to spot. Some students were unable to use voice chat and therefore held conversation in voice chat. This made the exchange between the two avatars move much slower and the immersion felt by the audience less present. However, students were still able to present their information in a timely manner.

We’ve moved!

The official SLLC blog at BGSU has now moved to:

Blogs.bgsu.edu/SecondLife

Please redirect your subscription settings there. Thank you!

5 tips for Students on the SLED blog!

RSS Feeds and myBGSUonline

I spent a few hours messing around with RSS feeds on myBGSUonline.com today. While I’ve had (way too) many blogs in the past… I have to admit that I’m a WordPress n00b. So when I finally settled on this theme (“Light”) I was baffled by the fact that it didn’t already have an easy to find RSS logo and feed on it. It wasn’t until I watched this tutorial video (thanks Terence!) and took his suggestion to add the ‘meta’ widget that I now have a link on my page called “Entries RSS”.

So, if your students are going to use myBGSUonline be aware:

• Some themes come with RSS logos and feeds built in and others must add the ‘meta’ widget.

OR

• They can add the ‘RSS’ widget and use their URL feed (click on the menu part of the widget)
  
  • Example: For the RSS address use http://www.example.com/feed/
  • This will provide a little RSS logo that when clicked, adds the feed
    
    • There is a down side to this option: Next to the RSS logo is the title you choose. Clicking on that word and not the tiny tiny RSS Logo will only reload the page and not add the feed. This option may seem a bit overwhelming for first time bloggers.

    

* Take a look at the sidebar on this blog as I have enabled BOTH features.

Private Blogs – No RSS

There is no way to get an RSS feed on a private blog (or one that you can only view by invitation). However, this isn’t just true on this site, I’m pretty sure it is true on Blogger and elsewhere. The drawback? Your students cannot keep private blogs while you keep the nice RSS Reader (a savior when it comes to grading 40 blogs a week!)

The solution?

I will probably have my students choose the radio button option (Options > Privacy) “I would like my blog to be visible only to registered users from blog community.” This will keep the blog from being posted on the myBGSUonline frontpage and therefore secret, but not restricted. At the same time, I can still use my RSS Reader and view all my students’ blogs from one place.

The up side?

Students may create a blog on myBGSUonline that has anonymity. There are no ‘author profile’ pages that automatically link from a new blog. When assigning the creation of a blog I have always made it clear that they are writing in a public space and therefore are free to choose an anonymous blogger identity and blog name.
* Keep in mind that in the past, my blog assignments have been private, i.e. they do not have to share their address with anyone but me. This takes advantage of blogs as an accessible web-log, but not its web 2.0-comment capabilities.

Secure Pages and Private Blogs

I’ve just started a new page (called “Password = Password”) describing some of the privacy features here at myBGSUonline.com. This page requires a password to view… and as you can tell from the title, the password is “password”.

Some of this information may be found elsewhere on the myBGSUonline site or in the FAQ (I usually test, until I break the thing, then go to the FAQ). So if it needs changed, updated, or corrected please let me know.

MyBGSUonline allows user to:

• create password protected pages (not blogs) on a blog
• create more than one blog (is there a limit?)
• create private blogs visible to only:
  • the myBGSUonline community
  • or select registered myBGSUonline members
• create ePortfolio sites that may include a blog, but not as the front page

MyBGSUonline does not allow users to:

• invite non-myBGSUonline members to read their private blogs
  • and subsequently only individuals with an @bgsu.edu email can register as myBGSUonline members
• use categories (or tags) to separate posts into individual RSS feeds

Thus far we have more pro’s than cons!

Next I will test RSS feeds for private blogs in my RSS Reader (Google Reader).