The EduGeeks (all two of us for now) were discussing the Blog Tags sidebar last night. Katrina had noticed that the tags were all the same size. I looked in to it and found that each tag will grow in size depending on the number of times they are used. The more popular ones will be larger. So, my prediction is that the “Second Life” tag will be huge before too long. We all seem to be really excited about Second Life. All two of us, that is.
One fairly new project that I am really excited about takes the popular open-source learning management system Moodle and mixes it with the interactive social environment of Second Life. This program is called Sloodle (naturally). The goal of this project is to have a seamless integration between the two programs.
There are many ideas that they have for this. One is to connect the text chat function in Second Life to the database of Moodle so that the chats are archived for those that can’t make it. A side benefit of this is that people who can’t run Second Life on their machines can participate in the chat through the old fashioned method – in their browser. That’s so 2006….
There are several ideas being thrown around. One is a quiz block that you sit on in SL and answer questions for your Moodle exam. One that we may end up using here at the journal allows an avatar in Second Life to post an entry to their blog in Moodle (Moodle is the program that this site is running on). Jeremy Kemp recently posted a video on YouTube that demonstrates this function. Pretty interesting stuff:
Matt is currently an Instructional Designer II at Orbis Education and a Part-Time Instructor at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Previously he worked as a Learning Innovation Researcher with the UT Arlington LINK Research Lab. His work focuses on learning theory, Heutagogy, and learner agency. Matt holds a Ph.D. in Learning Technologies from the University of North Texas, a Master of Education in Educational Technology from UT Brownsville, and a Bachelors of Science in Education from Baylor University. His research interests include instructional design, learning pathways, sociocultural theory, heutagogy, virtual reality, and open networked learning. He has a background in instructional design and teaching at both the secondary and university levels and has been an active blogger and conference presenter. He also enjoys networking and collaborative efforts involving faculty, students, administration, and anyone involved in the education process.
Sweet!! Imagine combining this with the functionality of Snapzilla! Or with student-created videos uploaded to sites like YouTube! Exciting!!