Kamimo Island is still going strong …

We aren't keeping this blog updated quite so often now, since the actual Kamimo Islands project ended at the end of 2009. However, there's plenty of activity on Kamimo these days. The Sandbox looks different every day, and the Business Talking course from Linnaeus University (as we're now called) in Kalmar is just finishing its sixth cycle.

We've got 35 students on the course this autumn (2010) and there are 192 applicants for 50 places in the spring … and this is without advertising. It's more that we're trying to keep the existence of the course a secret so that we don't get too many people on it!

We keep on finding new geographical areas to get students from too. This term's course has people in (and sometimes from) 11 different countries, with the prize for enduring dodgy internet connections going to Fidelis in Abuja, Nigeria!

Molde are also very active on Kamimo and there all sorts of extra activities going on there too.

Lunch with Davric Rinkitink

On Thursday, 19th November SULF (the Swedish university teachers' union) had a one-day workshop in Stockholm at Aula Magna, which is a complex of lecture halls in Stockholm University. The theme of the workshop was "Should the teacher appear in the lecture hall or or the screen?", i.e. it was all about the impact of net-based learning on the university world. One of the lunchtime attractions in the Gallery where everyone ate their lunches was 'Lunch with Davric Rinkitink'. We'd set up a computer and a projector so that people could look at Kamimo Island, and an echo-cancelling microphone so that people could participate in a conversation about the way SL can be used in higher education. It was quite a busy day for me because a colleague and I were also booked to make a presentation of both Adobe Connect and Kamimo Island at a meeting at Växjö University the same afternoon. After I'd eaten lunch (virtually and IRL) in my office in Kalmar, I got in a car and drove 100 kms over to Växjö. The photo shows me participating in another conversation over afternoon coffee in Stockholm, but this time from Växjö.

We had some very productive conversations that day. Participants were impressed both with the look and feel of Kamimo Island and with the quality of the Voice Chat audio. As a result of the conversations, I'm now discussing the further use of Kamimo and Avalon with teachers from two other Swedish universities.

A report on Language Learning in Second Life

Stefanie Hundsberger, a researcher with the Arcadia Fellowship Programme at Cambridge University Library, has just published her report on language learning within Second Life. One of the environments she investigated was Kamimo Island.

The report can be read on line via the following address:

http://arcadiaproject.lib.cam.ac.uk/docs/second_life.pdf

Busines Talking goes from strength to strength …

We've just received the absolutely latest figures for applications to the Spring 2010 round of the Business Talking course. We're now up to 78 applicants … which isn't bad for a course which has never been advertised! However, perhaps word-of-mouth is the best way forward when you're dealing with courses in an environment which is as weird as Second Life (at least for the university world!).

The fall-off in numbers of actual students (compared with applicants) seems to be slightly higher for Business Talking than it is for other on-line courses. My explanation for this is that a course in Second Life makes greater demands on the students' own computers, but it would be interesting to follow this up some time (perhaps in my third life …).

Swedish National Agency for Higher Education mention Kamimo

The Swedish National Agency for Higher Education, or 'Högskoleverket' in Swedish, have published an article in their latest issue about Kamimo Island and the Business Talking course. The article's only in Swedish, unfortunately, but you can read it/download it as a .pdf document from this link:

Nyheter & Debatt

Business Talking instructional video on YouTube

If you click on the title of this post, you'll be re-directed to a short film I posted on YouTube yesterday to show newbies to my course how to adjust the Voice Chat settings in Second Life. I've also posted a link to this on the course web site. If you want to paste the link in on its own, it's:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILfx9XYpPC4

My next productions will be a short 'Kamimo SLURL to walking around on Kamimo' film and a 'Searching, Finding and Teleporting' film. They're intended for new students who've never been into SL before.

The film was made using the purchased version of ScreenFlow by a teacher who'd come down with a shocking cold (I hope I'm a bit less like Marlon Brando in Godfather next time!). I then exported it to Quicktime, imported it to iMovie and uploaded it to YouTube. That might not be the most efficient way of doing things, but it works for me! YouTube as a distribution channel is a bit more accessible than MobileMe, but if anyone wants a copy of the original, just let me know and I'll make it available as a downloadable file in my MobileMe gallery.

Lots of applicants for the Business Talking Course

The figures for the number of students who've been accepted on to the autumn 2009 Business Talking course (which takes place on Kamimo Island) are just in. I've got 52 names on my list … which will probably result in about 30 students. The course itself doesn't start until September, so there may be some changes between now and then, but it looks as though there'll be two groups of students on the course this term.

We're still keeping fairly quiet about the existence of this course (most of these students just happened across it on the national web site for university courses in Sweden), but it looks as if the demand for it is fairly steady.

As usual, we'll be kicking off together with students from UCM, with students from this side of the Atlantic having a Second Life buddy on the other side (although 'sides' is something of a relative concept, since some of the students are joining us from places like China!).