Web 3D

Just a quick post about a new book edited by Richard Katz (educause).  This is a relatively small download (2.1mb) and is also available in print from the educause site.  If you have any problems downloading, email me and I will send you the file.

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In case you have not been able to keep up with the New Zealand developments around copyright of your intellectual property, there is a new site available:

http://www.creativecommons.org.nz/

If you are not familiar with creative commons licensing, this is a very good site to visit.  Essentially, this provides a clear and sensible means to protect your intellectual property without having to resort to the “extremes of copyright control” with which we are all familiar.  I find the flexibility of the licensing to be particularly compelling, as it allows an author to tailor usage in ways that match the specific character of the material.  The site provides the actual licenses to attach to your intellectual property, along with cut-n-paste code for websites.  Click on the example below to see the actual license I have applied to my work here.

 
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 New Zealand License.

This latest issue of Educause Review is devoted to Virtual Worlds in Higher Education.  I think the brief opinion piece by Richard Katz is particularly helpful to decision makers.  Click on the picture, or here.

Howz that title for a mashup of acronyms!  I have been in the Otago/Canterbury OpenSim (just updated) and done some practice building.  I have constructed a bit of a lecture area (I know….why????), and have experimented with manipulating objects.  The full Linden Scripting Language is not implemented thus far, so some of my scripts don’t run.  Also, some of the object characteristics don’t operate properly.  If any of you encounter problems and want some assistance, please feel free to call me.  BTW, here is the site information again:   Link

This is a very interesting and useful study around the information behavior of our future students.  I find it disturbing (although not surprising) that the study found such clear evidence that student information literacy has not improved to any significant extent.   It also seems clear that students are in mere production mode when it comes to writing papers, and that their “information seeking tends to stop at the point at which articles are found and printed”.

I have been working on the UoA sim for the past few months, and this week I was able to link up with David Bodily from Wyoming Community College.  He teaches in a nursing program there, and has developed an intriguing medical simulation that is now also housed in our University sim.  This teaching tool allows the instructor to manipulate patient physical responses – including voice, lung sounds, heart sounds, blood pressure, pulse, respiration and ECG – thereby requiring the attending (student) team to respond.   I won’t try to explain it all here, so please go to the site and have a bit of a play with it.

If you are an Office 2007 user, you must look at this new plugin for Powerpoint.  I can’t even begin to describe everything it does, but there are several excellent little videos and examples.  It is called pptPlex and in my opinion turns Powerpoint into a real teaching tool at last.  Check it out.

Leicester University in the UK has run the Media Zoo in Second Life since April 2007 with funding from various sources, including JISC. Efforts are focused on students’ in-world socialization and engagement with the aim to make information and knowledge exchange more productive. The July 2008 edition of the ALT newsletter features an article with initial research findings and recommendations for productive in-world group work. This work may be presented at the ALT-C conference in Leeds from 9-11 September, which Ashwini and I will attend.

Welcome to Web3D, the new collaboration site for staff at the University of Auckland.  Cathy Gunn and I have been talking recently about the difficulty we each have in ‘keeping up’ with what everyone at the University is doing around elearning, and so the idea was born to launch a community blog.  There are any number of very interesting developments happening at the University, and all too often few people know of them.  With increased visibility, we hope we can all better provide support to each other.  So, this site will allow you to share your projects and ideas with colleagues all across the University, and to potentially gather support with minimal investment of time.