Kamimo Islands

Kamimo Island is still going strong …

2010-11-19T02:12:00.000-06:00

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

2009-11-20T07:55:00.004-06:00

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

2009-11-06T13:52:00.002-06:00

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 …

2009-10-20T02:38:00.002-06:00

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

2009-09-23T02:51:00.001-06:00

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

2009-08-29T00:12:00.002-06:00

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

2009-08-11T06:19:00.002-06:00

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!).

A new book review

2009-05-26T05:54:00.003-06:00

Hi Judith and all others ,

According to the agreement previously made with Judith about linking to the pdf of the article, we had to wait till the next issue of the journal would be out. And that came out today! http://digbib.nl
So, I hereby send you the 2 pdf's (article & book review) as attachment. You can now put that out on the blog.
http://www.himolde.no/~molka/SL/BookreviewKamimo.pdf
http://www.himolde.no/~molka/SL/EducationSLNamro.pdf
I also put the article through Google translate and created a Scribd doc with a english translation: http://www.scribd.com/doc/15729296/Education-and-Teaching-in-Second-Life I do not have time to do this translation properly.
Hope to bump into you sometime, in real or virtual life,
best regards,
Guus

Review of our book: Learning and Teaching in the Virtual World of Second Life

2009-04-29T05:59:00.003-06:00

The podcast link is located on the blog ventriloguy: blog-podcast. It states, "The one hundred and sixty-seventh episode of ventriloquy introduces what is likely to be the first education-focussed book on Second Life."

The blog introduces the podcast review, "Edited by Judith Molka-Danielsen (SL: Aklom Haifisch) and Mats Deutschmann, Learning and Teaching in the Virtual World of Second Life is a collection of academic papers primarily describing the work done in the first Scandinavian project in Second Life to focus on designing platforms for lifelong learning, at Kamimo Island."

Update on the AVALON project

2009-04-29T05:46:00.002-06:00

Check out the video 'The AVALON Project (Ignite Presentation)'
This 5-min video is a brief presentation about the AVALON project.

The AVALON Project (Ignite Presentation)
EU funded AVALON is a 2-year project to explore the potential of langugage learning in Second Life. This 5min presentation outlines what...
Video link:

The AVALON Project (Ignite Presentation)

About AVALON-project
EU funded AVALON is a 2-year project (Jan 09-Dec 10) to explore 3D worlds for language learning funded within the Transversal KA 3 Program.

Spring 2009 Business Talking course completed

2009-04-24T01:48:00.004-06:00

The Business Talking course at Högskolan i Kalmar finished on Kamimo Island yesterday evening. This photo is one of the visual aids one of the students used in a presentation about her group's experiences of Thailand.

There were 20 active students on the course this time around, of whom 19 have finished with at least a pass grade. The course planning and organisation worked well, although having a 'normal-sized' group required me to organise 5 extra sessions (for people who were working or away when regular meetings were scheduled), which added about 2.5 hours to the course time budget. On the other hand, since everything is working much more smoothly now, I've actually 'saved' those hours elsewhere on the course.

Once again students mentioned (spontaneously) the phenomenon of losing their inhibitions about speaking English in front of other people when it was their avatars doing the talking. The students themselves are of a variety of nationalities - from Mexican to Phillippina, but including plenty of Swedes - and spread out geographically IRL from Umeå to Ho Chi Minh City to upstate New York.

We've already had more than 30 applications for the 24 places on the course in the autumn - without actually advertising it at all. It looks like Business Talking is now a self-supporting course here in Kalmar.

Learning Net in Sweden has written about the book

2009-03-16T04:12:00.002-06:00

Learning Net is an on-line resource for teachers at university level in Sweden who use (or are interested in the development of) ICT in higher education. They've just published an article (in Swedish) about the book … which we hope will provide teachers in Sweden with more or an opportunity to follow what's gone in the Kamimo Islands Project.

Here's a link to the article itself:

Learning Net on the new book

New Book

2009-02-19T06:47:00.005-06:00

The new book:

"Learning and Teaching in the Virtual World of Second Life" (2009).
eds. Molka-Danielsen, J. and Deutschmann, M., Tapir Academic Press, Trondheim

was relased by Tapir and is available for purchase at:

http://butikk.tapirforlag.no/en/node/1195

Another course, another term!

2009-02-06T03:09:00.004-06:00

The Spring Term 2009 Business Talking course started on Kamimo Island yesterday afternoon, when 22 students from "Sweden" met up with their American buddies from the University of Central Missouri to be whisked off on a tour of Second Life by the Americans. I write "Sweden" because that's where the course is based administratively (at Högskolan i Kalmar in Sweden). The students themselves this term come from all over Sweden, Russia, the Netherlands and Italy. They include a Swedish student at Högskolan i Kalmar who's currently on an exchange to Astoria, New York and a teacher at the Swedish School in London.

The Business Talking course went under the name of Oral Production until this term, and has been offered twice already. This term, though, the student group is up to size (I think that around 20 is probably all you'd want to handle on an interactive - and active - course like this at one time), and it looks as if the course has become a regular part of Kalmar's range of courses.

The Course Launch went very well yesterday. Swedish students came on to Kamimo Island in groups of four at roughly 15-minute intervals, so that they could have an orientation with their teacher in peace and quiet, and then meet up with their American buddies. We start the course in earnest next week, when one of the activities will be for the Business Talking students to share what they've discovered in Second Life so far.

The run-up to the course is also now establishing a routine of its own. Here are some Dutch students using the wireless network outside my office to open Second Life accounts for themselves (and for me to check that their laptops could cope with SL).

Teaching in English in Second Life

2009-01-09T07:05:00.002-06:00

The English group at Kalmar had some money available at the end of last term, so we're going to invest it in creating a training course for teachers wanting to create courses in Second Life, with an emphasis on people who don't have English as their native language.

The people working on this project at the moment are Peter Carlsson, the IT technician/trainer at the department where the English group is situated (called HV in Swedish) and myself, David Richardson, although we've already had offers of help from a couple of other people connected with the AVALON EU project which is just kicking off.

What's happening at the moment is that we're drafting the syllabus for the course. When we've got that passed, the course will be made available for applications via the Swedish national on-line university application system, http://www.studera.nu. After that we just need to produce the course! It starts in September, 2009, by the way.

We've started a separate course blog to document the process of creating the course. Click here to access it - everyone's welcome to join in!

Online Information 2008

2008-12-19T05:33:00.003-06:00

Alastair, David and Alexandra gave a presentation entitled "Teaching and learning in Second Life - experience from the Kamimo project". The presentation described David's courses in English presentation skills and Alexandra's research on the interaction between students and teacher during the course. There was an audience of around 100-150 in the auditorium and the sound quality in Second Life was excellent despite a shaky rehearsal earlier in the day. After Alastair took the audience on a short tour of Kamimo Island he joined Alexandra and David at the camp fire for discussion about the course. The paper is available now in the conference proceedings or in full text from the University of Kalmar.

Online Information 2008 in London

2008-11-21T08:06:00.002-06:00

The Kamimo project will be presented at one of the major conferences in the world in the field of information, Online Information 2008, 2-4 December at Olympia in London. We have a slot on Wednesday 3 December at 15.00, see conference schedule. Alastair will be there IRL with David and Alexandra Petrakou presenting in-world from Kalmar. The title of the session will be Teaching and Learning in Second Life - Experience from the Kamimo project and an abstract on this is available via the conference site. We will be concentrating on David's English courses and Alexandra's current research around them.

3D Design in Virtual Worlds at Molde University College

2008-10-23T04:58:00.004-06:00

Sept 17, 24 and October 1, 8, 15, 22 and 29, 2008.

These are the 6 meeting dates for the course 3D Design in Virtual Worlds a 3-credit giving elective course at Molde University College. The course is lead and taught by Assoc. Professor Judith Molka-Danielsen with several guest appearances from Dr. Bryan Carter (UCM).

This course is an introduction to 3D graphic design of objects in virtual worlds. We use the virtual world of Second Life as a working environment. The course had an introductory meeting in a physical lecture room, and also in the 3D virtual world of Second Life. After the introduction meeting, meetings are only in Second Life. The learning objectives focus on a theoretical introduction to 3D Design and discussion of the technologies and applications used in industry (such as may be used in the building of ships, transport vechicles, or furniture). For practical exercises, we use Second Life and have ask students to apply design techniques (learned from industry examples) and address requirements (of customers) to designing a course project in SL. The course project requirements were presented as "customer specifications". Students design and build objects, and report on the project in oral and written presentation. Programing languages and applications that may be used in the course include: Linden Scripting Language (LSL) and graphic editors (such as Gimp - open source, but others may be suggested later).

Some of the projects submitted by students include: spiral staircase, smoke emitters, information kiosk according to specifications and in the style of Steam-Punk and a final project to design a "ship". The evaluation criteria for the ship have been given in the form of a rubric. At this date the course is still in progress and designs on the ship are not yet submitted.

The images above show several of the class meetings that include lessons about "avoiding client side lag" in designing, and an example of kiosk design by one of the students.

3D Virtual Worlds in Learning - Day Conference at NTNU, Uninett-ABC

2008-10-23T04:34:00.003-06:00

October 9th, 2008

Judith participated in a day conference that was held at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology(NTNU) on October 9th. The day conference was co-sponsored by NTNU and Uninett-ABC (a backbone network provider for universities in Norway). The conference was organised by Assocate Professor Ekaterina Prasolov-Førland (with the Program for learning with ICT). It was the first initiative to my knowledge to bring together the academic community in Norway that have an interest in learning in virtual worlds. The keynote speaker of the conference was John Lester, (aka Pathfinder Linden), from Linden Lab in Boston, USA. John presented learning opportunities in SL, and explained some of the issues of managing a virtual world, and integrating extensions to that world (both client side and server side). While there was a strong focus on Second Life, there were other virtual world and platforms for virtual design that were mentioned on the day's program. The speakers mentioned a variety of application for 3D worlds in learning, such as in science education (teaching children about genetics through simulation) and presenting heritage virtually and using machinima (there was a presentation of Trondheim in the Medieval Ages when it was called Nidaros). The program can be found at: http://www.uninettabc.no/seminar3d/

Building Issues and Geodata

2008-10-23T03:54:00.002-06:00

October 2nd, Judith presented Second Life to the Department of Building Issues and Geodata in Molde Municipality in Norway. This public administration department was interested in how Second Life could be used to help address building issues in real life. Judith gave an introduction to the design and editing capabilities of SL, and showed some of the work-in-progress of our students (bachelor and masters).

Fall Seminars and Activities

2008-10-23T03:33:00.004-06:00

Dear friends of Kamimo,

So much has been happening this fall, but we have not taken time to write about it. I will try to sum up some of the activities that have been taking place with the Kamimo project.

First, a presentation of learning activities on Kamimo was presented at the EUROCALL Confernce, 3-6 September, 2008 Székesfehérvár, Hungary.

Session From in-world collabortaion to real world competencies: the Kamimo experience; Symposium Chair: Dott.ssa Luisa Panichi, with participants J Molka-Danielsen, M Deutschmann, B Carter, D Richardson . The image shows the preparation of our presentation. This is a normal activity of setting up to show SL at conferences. It did work in the end, and everyone continued to smile.

The symposium traced the sim's development from the initial design stage and presents case studies from various language courses held on Kamimo. We argue that the international collaborative setting and the authentic socialization occasions of Second Life offer new exciting possibilities in language learning. The symposium concludes that an efficient use of the environment is one where teachers act as facilitators of learning processes in a complex system in which the students are the primary agents. Ecology of learning, collaborative language learning, learner agency, pedagogic design, virtual learning environments.

Graham Davies presented a pre-conference workshop on getting started in SL.

http://virtualeurocall.googlepages.com/Euro08PCWSL.doc

New SL research in Jönköping

2008-08-20T09:12:00.005-06:00

In mid-August the University of Jönköping's School of Education and Communication held a conference aimed at presenting current research to school teachers in the region. Over 1,000 teachers attended and around 50 researchers from the university presented their work. The theme of the conference was "didactic excellence requires academic competence".
Ylva Lindberg, senior lecturer in comparative literature, presented her experiences with students in Second Life which will be the basis of a book chapter focusing on SL; The imaginary, Social codes and Literacy. Her work also involves Bryan Carter from the Kamimo project. Bryan participates in the writing of the book chapter that will be published in French. Bryan also assists Ylva in her literature course in SL and exchanges between Bryan’s and Ylva’s classes has been tried out in SL. Alastair Creelman assisted in the presentation from Kamimo Island and answered audience questions. The response from the participating teachers was very encouraging and many had ideas of how to use SL in their own teaching.

Kamimo presentation at Norwegian SL seminar, 18 August

2008-08-18T06:41:00.008-06:00

Judith presented the Kamimo project at an in-world seminar organised by our partners Design Container (see below for details). The aim of the seminar was to show how Norwegian companies and the academic world are using SL as well as giving representatives a chance to meet and discuss with two representatives from Linden Labs.

Two banks presented their SL projects; Norwegian DnBNOR and the Dutch bank ABN AMRO. Both have a presence in SL and see this as a potential new forum for meeting customers, stressing the importance of being where their customers are.
An interesting new project of Norwegian libraries in Second Life was also presented and if you understand Norwegian their blog is worth a look.
Two representatives of Linden Labs in Europe, marketing director Clare Rees and market coordinator Katrine Janssen, presented LL's strategies for attracting corporate business in SL and answered audience questions. There were several questions about the appearance of new virtual worlds and about the portability of avatars between these different worlds. The competition should spur further development in virtual worlds and LL is hoping to be able to cooperate with other solutions. Inter-world avatar portability however is still some way off even if IBM have had limited success recently.

The session was rounded off with a fascinating dance sequence performed by an SL music group called the Avatar Orchestra Metaverse (photo by Design Container).

SL Seminar hosted by Design Container

2008-08-14T05:15:00.004-06:00

Below is an invitation to participate in a Seminar in SL that will be hosted by Design Container on August 18th, at kl.13.00 on their SL location (SLurl is below). The working language will be primarily Norwegian with some presentations in English.

SL Seminar

Det har de siste årene vært mye fokus på 3D online verdener, og spesielt Second Life. Design Container ønsker med dette å invitere til ett ettermiddagsseminar online, hvor norske bedrifter som allerede er etablert i SL kan uveksle erfaringer, og bedrifter som er nysgjerrige kan få mer informasjon om hvordan SL kan brukes og hva det er.

Agenda:

· Velkommen ved Design Container

· DnB NOR forteller om sine erfaringer

· Høgskolen i Molde forteller om bruk av SL til undervisning

· Vestfold Fylkesbibliotek forteller om sitt prosjekt

· Representant fra Linden Lab svarer på spørsmål

· Musikalsk innslag av en norsk SL musiker

Du trenger

Second Life installert på din computer og ha opprettet en bruker

. Last ned fra: www.secondlife.com. Design Container kan kontakts inworld ved å søke opp navnet Ela Oliva og sende en IM (Instant Message) til henne. Er det problemer med det tekniske, kan dere også ringe Linn-Cecilie hos Design Container på 450 17 701 i forkant av møtet.

Sted:

Design Container sitt konferansesenter i Second Life http://slurl.com/secondlife/Guru%20Meditation/228/123/23

Påmelding

Send mail til ela@designcontainer.no med ditt virkelige navn, firma og ditt Second Life navn.

Seminar Presentation in Skövde

2008-06-04T12:11:00.003-06:00

The University College in Skövde runs a seminar each year about pedagogical uses of computers. This year they invited David Richardson to present the thinking behind the Oral Production course on Kamimo Island.

There were 40 participants who listened to a blow-by-blow account of the pedagogical thinking behind the course and the various issues involved in running it in Second Life. The presentation was run as a dialogue between participants and David, and there was a lot of interest in how a course in Second Life can be run.

Helena Taubner and Anita Mattsson from Skövde deserve a vote of thanks for asking us - and it's to be hoped that they can use Kamimo Island for their own courses in the autumn.

The Furture's so Bright

2008-05-30T05:12:00.002-06:00

On May 26th, in the company of Mats Deutchmann and Lusia Panichi, I (Judith - not in foto) attended a presentation of HUMlab on their projects in virtual online worlds. HUMlab office is located on the physical premises of Umeå University in Sweden.

HUMlab(http://www.humlab.umu.se/), has a virtual sim in Second Life also, called HUMlab. (The SLurl will be added to the right.) We discussed sources for possible collaboration between HUMlab and the Kamimo Island project, and also for future EU projects.

HUMlab projects encompass a great range of interest areas: history, language, art, religion, etc. Jim Barrett (PhD candidate in Modern Languages) is managing their SL sim/SL related projects. Jim says HUMlab is looking for interesting projects on their sim. One of the present residents on the HUMlab Second Life sim is: Sachiko Hayashi, she partook in a 2006 HUMlab seminar, "Technology as a Medium: Artist as a Consumer". She has an installed an interactive art piece in collaboration with artists from Denmark.

West meets east in Second Life

2008-05-26T01:18:00.007-06:00

Kamimo Island is the setting for an interesting project involving our partners at Lund University and a university in China. This project aims at supporting teaching, learning and recruitment/information in a multidisciplinary collaboration between the Centre for Languages and Literature, the Faculty of Engineering, Nordic Centre and the Centre for Educational Development (CED) at Lund University.

The project will provide a web portal for students at the China-focused Engineer programme and for students of the partner universities/centres in China. Additional purposes are recruitment and exchange.

The project also aims to build a virtual meeting place in SL, in which students from China and Lund will meet, interact and collaborate in different learning activities. These activities will strengthen the linguistic, cultural and social competence of the students and give the teachers a unique opportunity to study immersive teaching and learning in virtual worlds.

The first SL activity took place recently on Kamimo Island where the Swedish students had set up an exhibition presenting Swedish festivals and traditions. They then carried out a virtual seminar with their Chinese counterparts explaining Swedish traditions with the help of the exhibition. Further SL-based activities will follow after the summer.

For more information please contact:
Maria Hedberg (Lund University, CED)

CenIT Workshop in Jönköping

2008-05-20T06:12:00.004-06:00

David Richardson presented the Oral Production course at the CenIT workshop at the University of Jönköping on May 15th. CenIT is a unit within the university which is intended to further pedagogical development for all the departments of the university, as well as conducting research into how networked organisations and courses function.

David took participants through the process of planning and carrying out a course entirely within Second Life. Many of the participants were experienced in world, but there was a lot of interest in how a course like this actually works.

Jönköping was connected up to the island of Gotland for the talk, using Adobe Connect, so a recording of the presentation was made. You can view the presentation by clicking on this link:

David's Presentation

After the presentation there was a Panel Debate with several of the presenters answering questions from the audience. To view the panel debate, click on this link:

Panel Debate in Jönköping

Student projects in Kalmar

2008-05-14T03:25:00.005-06:00

Around 50 students (both campus-based and distance) gathered 18 April at the University of Kalmar's School of Design in Nybro to present their design projects based on Second Life and Kamimo Island. The students come from two separate programs (Design and Interaction Design) and the Second Life projects were an opportunity for the two groups to interact. The design students work more on an artistic level with design concepts and form whereas the interaction design group work with 3D design and have more of an IT focus. These groups had not previously had contact with each other though several had carried out more limited projects in SL last year (see previous blog entries). The teachers, Ivar Jung and Ole Victor, had given the groups a week to work on their projects after introducing them to SL and showing them Kamimo Island.

The students presented ideas for buildings in SL and discussed SL as a learning environment. Most designs were futuristic in style, often buildings which were easy to fly in and out and easy to see from the outside. One of the problems encountered when working together in SL was when several people were building at the same time in the sandbox. This often caused considerable lag and made in-world cooperation tricky. Several students felt that it would be better to build at a private location in SL without risk of having to share capacity. The interaction design students look forward to being able to import from more advanced 3D modelling tools since the tool available in SL was felt to be too limited. The general verdict from the interaction design group was that SL was still not really advanced enough for their purposes. The design students saw potential in SL for designing "impossible" structures and experimenting with space and form and found several good examples of this.

One of the designs presented

Presentation in Västervik

2008-04-17T12:17:00.002-06:00

Kamimo was presented at the Struktura Futura conference held at Gränsö Castle in the archipelago of Västervik on the Swedish east coast. The conference, held on 16-17 April, had three themes; entrepreneurship, economic growth and learning environments. Kamimo was presented as an example of a new learning environment to an audience consisting mostly of local and regional authority staff as well as several companies and universities. Alastair was there IRL and Björn and Judith presented via SL. Sadly we suffered from low bandwidth on the available wireless network and the sound quality was not really satisfactory. However the participants got an overall view of the project and seemed interested in the business role play presented by Björn. Several people expressed an interest in testing SL and showing Kamimo to colleagues.

Kamimo on Gotland

2008-04-07T02:15:00.002-06:00

Affective language teaching on Kamimo Island was presented at the annual conference of the Swedish Modern Language Teachers' Association in Visby on the Swedish island of Gotland on 5th April.

David Richardson showed around 30 participants at the conference the facilities available on Kamimo Island, Virtual Montmartre and Virtual Harlem, and discussed some of the issues involved in teaching in a virtual world.

Kamimo presented in London …

2008-03-18T14:43:00.002-06:00

ICC-Languages is an NGO which promotes language learning and teaching within the EU. They held a conference at the University of Westminster in London last week, and David Richardson presented the pedagogical and organisational aspects of the Oral Production course on Kamimo Island there on Saturday, 15th March. Since David made this presentation from his office in Kalmar, using the Adobe Connect programme, it was possible to record it. You can take a look at the recording by clicking on this link:

David Richardson: Intercultural Teaching in Second Life

The presentation itself describes the administrative, technical and pedagogical decisions that have been taken as the Oral Production course in Second Life had been developed. The first three minutes of the recording are fairly silent, as David waited for the participants in the ICC conference to arrive.

Kamimo presentations in Uppsala and Trondheim

2008-03-18T09:22:00.002-06:00

On 5 March we presented the project at a pedagogical seminar at Uppsala University Learning Lab. Alastair was there IRL and in-world presentations were made by David and Bryan focusing on teaching in SL. Interest was high especially among library staff and we hope to establish some cooperation with Uppsala in the near future.
Uppsala University Learning Lab (Swedish)

Björn and Alastair also attended the NVU (Nettverksuniversitet) conference in Trondheim 11-12 March and presented the Kamimo project along with in-world contributions from Judith, David and Bryan. The conference focused on the influence of Web 2.0 on higher education and the use of virtual worlds was a recurring theme in several presentations.
NVU web site (English)
NVU web site (Norwegian)

Active students in SL and building presence

2008-03-05T07:06:00.007-06:00

Twenty students at Molde University College, consisting of 6 working groups in the bachelors course in E-Business, have been stepping into Second Life. They were given an assignment to look for two real world companies and brands. They were asked to report how they are represented in Second Life. One student group selected to report on the Norwegian bank DnB and BMW. Here he reports:

http://blog.bildeservice.com/wordpress/?p=76

In my opinion (Judith) the spin on the digi.no article that is referenced by the student has an unfounded negative message. The visitor counts may be low at present. But, DnB has had a virtual island for less than a year and longer study is needed to draw conclusions. Second, visitor counts do not measure that many more persons know about the DnB sim presense. Third, with many projects in second life, much activity is spread out over several sl locations or even in real world, between group or classroom "meetings". For example, my students were asked to complete an assignment, without actually being on Kamimo Island, however, their introduction and access through the college's network made access to Second Life possible because of the Kamimo Island Project. The greater question is how does one measure the marketing effectiveness of brand presense in Second Life?

We think that spinoff activities must be taken into consideration in answering this question. As an example, the DnB sim has also hosted a meeting place between our students from Molde, Kristiansund and Ålesund. The course on Buying and Selling, had a meeting that took place at a meeting room on the DnB sim. The course meeting allowed students to play the role of persons in firms buying ERP systems. Although 7 students made avatars to participate in world, there were 70 students that followed their actions in the classroom. Meshing conferencing systems presents its share of problems, but as an introduction, it presented the virtual world and activated many students.

Feedback from users of Kamimo Island

2008-02-29T07:14:00.001-06:00

Thought you'd like to know that Kamimo has been getting lots of praise
from students using it and from casual visitors:
Best site I've visited
Absolutely beautiful
Wow!

are three of the comments people have made!
I'm running the Oral Production course in world right now and
everything I've tried has worked really well. The only technical
problems have been at the student's end of the line - and there
haven't been many of them.

David Richardson
Kalmar, Sweden

Oral Production: first teaching session

2008-02-15T01:00:00.002-06:00

We had our first teaching session on the Oral Production course yesterday evening. There were about 9 students there (some came late …), and we managed to cover quite a lot of ground. The students presented their findings from a week of SL exploration, and they practised being polite and courteous in English. There were one or two who needed help getting their voice chat working, but we managed to get that sorted on the hoof without disrupting the rest of the activities.

Immediately after the session, I posted feedback on the course web site and published a podcast about it too, both of which are accessible from the course web site.

The facilities worked very well - almost too well, in fact. I'm going to work on small group work between now and next time, so that groups don't disturb each other's work.

Oral Production on Kamimo launched yesterday afternoon

2008-02-08T03:20:00.001-06:00

What an interesting day it was yesterday! We had about 10 students from our side of the Atlantic who met about 15 from Missouri on Kamimo Island to start Kalmar's Oral Production course.

This wasn't a formal teaching session: I needed to establish people's identities, and make sure that they had fully-working avatars. Then they were linked up with a US partner (all of whom are a little more experienced in the environment than my lot), and made arrangements to meet up with them elsewhere in the environment later. My students will be making a presentation about their experiences at the first Course Meeting on 14th February.

It was like being at a noisy cocktail party! And for me, as a teacher, it was like trying to play a complicated piece on a church organ … whilst baking a cake and working out a chess problem in my head (and I don't even play chess!). What was fascinating, though, was seeing the 'magic' of SL take over. We had participants from Missouri, Partille, Ålem, Smedby, Nybro, Tallinn, PIsa, Kalmar, Oskarshamn and Molde, and they all just started chatting with each other, exchanging e-mails and life histories, just as if we were all in the same room (which, in a way, we were).

Alexandra Petrakou, a doctoral student from Kalmar who is conducting field research on and around the Oral Production Course, was also with us, and I was taking care of both screen recordings and video recordings in RL in my office …

It feels good to have got started. Here's the link to the course web site:

Oral Production, 3 hp

New Semester on Kamimo Education Island

2008-01-29T11:36:00.000-06:00

Greetings Friends of Kamimo,

We are beginning a new semester on Kamimo Education Island. The teaching activities continue to be registered on the public google calendar, that is also accessible in-world. Here is the page for the calendar: Kamimo Education Classroom and Spaces
In February David Richardson (Kalmar University College) will be starting the course "Oral Production" that will have meetings to April.

Also with 3 meetings in February, Mats Deutschmann (Mid Sweden University) will lead a course in Oral Competence.

The Kamimo Island Project has received funding again for 2008 from Norgesuniversitetet (NUV) and another course, "3D Design in Virtual Worlds" will be scheduled for the fall 2008 (registration at Molde University College). The course will be lead by myself, Judith Molka-Danielsen.

December Workshop in Pisa, Italy

2008-01-07T03:18:00.000-06:00

December 14th, Mats Deutschmann and Judith Molka-Danielsen attended a workshop in Pisa that was organized by Luisa Panichi (Centro Linguistico Interdipartimentale
Università di Pisa) to share teaching and learning experiences of our projects in Second Life. Also contributing virtually in SL was Bryan Carter and David Richardson. The outline is posted here:

"Learning and teaching in Second Life: building on the Kamimo experience/Percorsi di apprendimento all’interno di Second Life: oltre l’esperiena Kamimo."

Centro Linguistico Interdipartimentale,
Università di Pisa
Pisa, Italy

Venerdì 14 dicembre, 2007
9.15-16.30
Aula 1, Polo Didattico Carmignani
Piazza dei Cavalieri, 6

The Kamimo Islands project is a collaborative effort by three universities to create a unique space for research, communication and socialization within Second Life. The partner organizations are at Kalmar University College in Sweden (Ka), University of Central Missouri in the USA (mi) and Molde University College in Norway (mo). The primary goal of this partnership is to create a Virtual Learning Environment in Second Life that is supportive of life-long learning.

The first part of the workshop will present the experience of educators from the Kamimo Islands project. The workshop will take a look at the collaborative learning environments of Kamimo Island, Virtual Monmartre, Virtual Harlem and the Social English Course for Doctoral Students.

The second part of the workshop will look at the learning environment of the Isola di Digital Humanities which has been developed within Second Life by the Corso di Laurea in Informatica Umanistica (Degree Course in Informatics for the Humanities) of the University of Pisa in collaboration with the Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King’s College, London and the Fondazione Galileo Galilei in Pisa. The workshop will take a look at the reconstruction of Galileo’s Laboratory (Laboratorio di Galileo) and of the Tower of Pisa (Torre di Pisa).

***

Il progetto Kamimo Islands è una collaborazione fra tre università atta a creare uno spazio unico per la ricerca, la comunicazione e la socializzazione all’interno di Second Life. Le università consociate sono l’Università di Kalmar, Svezia, l’Università del Central Missouri, USA, e l’Università di Molde, Norvegia. L’obbiettivo principale di questo consorzio è di creare un ambiente virtuale per l’apprendimento continuo all’interno di Second Life.

La prima parte del seminario illustrerà l’esperienza dei docenti del progetto Kamimo Islands all’interno di ambienti di apprendimento di tipo collaborativo quali Kamimo Island, Virtual Montmartre, Virtual Harlem e il corso di Social English per dottorandi.

La seconda parte del seminario illustrerà l’ambiente di apprendimento dell’Isola di Digital Humanities che è stata creata all’interno di Second Life dal Corso di Laurea in Informatica Umanistica dell’Università di Pisa in collaborazione con il Centre for Computing in the Humanities di King’s College, Londra e la Fondazione Galileo Galilei di Pisa. Il seminario presenterà la ricostruzione del Laboratorio di Galileo e della Torre di Pisa.

9.15 Saluti e presentazione del seminario.
Prof. Giuseppe Di Stefano, Direttore CLI e Dott.ssa Luisa Panichi, CLI.

9.30 Presentazione delle isole pedagogiche Kamimo e del progetto di ricerca
finanziato dal Norwegian University Programme (Norgesuniversitetet).
Prof. Judith Molka-Danielsen, School of Informatics, Molde College, Norvegia.

10.30 Presentazione in-life del progetto di ricostruzione storica di Monmartre e
Virtual Harlem.
Prof. Bryan Carter, Missouri Central University, USA.

11.00 Pausa Caffè

11.30 Presentazione ed valutazione del corso Social English for Doctoral Students.
Dr. Mats Deutschmann, Coordinator Forum for Flexible Learning, Mid Sweden University, Svezia.

12.15 L'isola di Digital Humanities: una collaborazione internazionale per la
ricostruzione del 'laboratorio di Galileo' e della torre di Pisa
Prof.ssa Enrica Salvatori, Dipartimento di Storia e Prof.ssa Maria Simi, Dipartimento di
Informatica, Università di Pisa.

13.00 Chiusura degli interventi

Kamimo at OnLine Educa in Berlin

2007-12-03T02:13:00.000-06:00

The Kamimo Islands Project was represented at the OnLine Educa conference in Berlin by myself, David Richardson, and I hosted a 'knowledge-exchange session' on Thursday, 29th November and made a 20-minute presentation on Friday, 30th November. This year the conference, the 13th in succession, was better-attended than ever, and the range and sophistication of activities, presentations and projects was also greater than ever. There were several presentations which were connected with Second Life, but several participants told me that Kamimo was the only SL activity they'd seen presented which had progressed beyond the stage of investigating the entire SL environment. There was, consequently, a great deal of interest in Kamimo, and both contact sessions had a large number of participants.

The knowledge exchange sessions on Thursday, 29th November were intended to be small-scale affairs. My session had eight participants, including the MD of a Silicon-valley offshoot of Stanford University's activities in virtual education, the ex-head of the British Council's attempts to introduce ICT into its teaching, who now runs his own company in London, the head of the Serious Gaming Institute at Coventry University in the UK, and a representative of the Luxembourg Ministry of Health, who was very interested in ways of using SL in health informatics. We met in a ballroom, which was dotted with round tables at which intense discussions were taking place on a number of topics. Our discussion was wide-ranging and I've now got several interesting leads to follow up (I'll be writing a lot of follow-up mails in the next few days).

The presentation on Friday, 30th November was part of session DES51 about ICT and language teaching. The session was very well-attended - with not a spare seat in the hall! There were about 60 people present, with a few more on Kamimo Island. The other presenters were from Digital Publishing, a German company selling on-line language courses, Rosetta Stone, an American company primarily involved in CD-based language-learning courses, and an EU project which has produced a course in German as a Foreign Language to be used in Greek secondary schools.

My presentation dealt first with Kamimo as a whole, and then concentrated on the Social English course in the autumn and the planned Oral Production course in the spring. I ran the presentation from the Peer Gynt Rotunda on Kamimo, using an echo-cancelling microphone to talk to people attending as avatars. Alastair Creelman, Mats Deutschmann and Marika Olander (from Estonia) were there as avatars, which made a strong impression on the listeners. I think that many of them had never seen SL in action in this way before. The Q&A session after the presentation also made a great impact, since questions were being fielded both from the room and from Kamimo. There were several discussion afterwards about 'where' we were meeting exactly, and I think that the message got through that SL is a very interesting 'space' in which to study, as well as being an object of study in itself. The brochures I took with me went like hot cakes (I should have taken 20 more!), and both Veodia and the work of Design Container raised a lot interest amongst the listeners.

Now, of course, it's a grey Monday morning, and the memory of Berlin will be fading again. However, I'm sure there'll be some spin-off from the presentation of Kamimo there. One concrete result already is an invitation to present at another conference in London in March, for example.

Student projects on Kamimo

2007-11-29T06:31:00.000-06:00

Students on the University of Kalmar's Interaction Design program are busy with 3D design projects on Kamimo Island. They are in their 2nd year of the program and their 6 week projects involve designing and building the island's exhibition centre as well as a new classroom environment. They are working in 6 groups (four groups on campus and two groups of distance students) and must cooperate in world to be able to build their structures. The ability to collaborate in world on a 3D modelling project is one of the unique aspects of using Second Life according to teacher Peter Adiels.

During the project work the students document their ideas and reflections on the assignment in personal workbooks that are confidential between the student and the teacher. Very few of the students had ever heard of Second Life when the projects started but Peter is impressed by how quickly they have adapted and are now building with confidence. Some students are somewhat sceptical to Second Life as a serious environment for 3D design but hope that more advanced 3D tools will soon be compatible with SL.

The projects will conclude on 14 December when the groups will present their work some of which may very well be implemented on Kamimo in the near future.

Kamimo presentation at Jönköping University

2007-11-28T07:03:00.000-06:00

Second Life was the theme of a seminar held 14 November for teaching staff at Jönköping University in central Sweden with particular focus on the Kamimo project. Alastair Creelman presented on site and the participants were also able to meet and discuss with Bryan Carter and David Richardson via SL. Bryan and David talked and answered questions about their teaching experiences in SL whilst Alastair described SL in general and the background to the project. The participants were very enthusiastic and the seminar lead to a great deal of discussion.

Teaching Languages in a Virtual World

2007-11-23T07:00:00.000-06:00

This article was presented by Judith at the NOKOBIT Conference in Oslo, Novemeber 20th, 2007. (Link to the article is in this entrys title.) The presentation contained more results, that we acquired after the submission deadline. The audience of academic colleagues at universities and colleges in Norway, seemed enthusiastic about the potential of SL in education. Most of the attendants had been aware of SL, and many have heard about it within the last year.

Article:
http://home.himolde.no/~molka/Teaching-Languages-post-Nokobit2007.pdf

Regards, Judith

Online Educa Berlin

2007-11-23T06:40:00.000-06:00

David will present our research in teaching languages in Second Life. Here is a preview article about the coming event.

OnLine Educa have just sent out a blurb for the fair next week:
http://www.icwe.net/oeb_special/news68.php

(The link is in the title as well.)

Public lecture on Kamimo Island

2007-11-06T08:21:00.000-06:00

The University of Kalmar offers regular public lectures by our staff on current research and these are also broadcast by video conference to learning centres all over southern Sweden. On 15 November we're planning to offer one such lecture also in Second Life on Kamimo Island. The lecture is about the record industry, its growth, relevance and future. The lecture will be held in Swedish since the prime audience is here in Sweden. The aim this time is primarily to test and see how this works and hopefully we can offer more lectures next year.
A Swedish description of the lecture can be found here.
A report on the event from the Kalmar newspaper "Barometern" can be seen here (in Swedish).
Swedish TV4 also reported on the event.

15 NOVEMBER 16.00 - 17.00 (Swedish time)
Kamimo Island, classroom Peer Gynt
"Var kom skivbolagen ifrån och vad har de tillfört?"
Kjell Arvidsson, University of Kalmar

Planning the Oral Production Course

2007-10-30T06:26:00.000-06:00

(BTW, clicking on the link in the title will take you to the Information page for Kalmar's on-line, part-time courses in English)

The preparation for the spring round of the Oral Production, 3 hp course is now well underway. We're hoping that Norges universitet will make another grant to the project for 2008, and if they do, then researching into the whole process of putting a course like Oral Production together will be one of the 2008 activities. However, until then (and perhaps after), I'll try to keep this blog updated with news of how we go.

The next activity in the preparation process is going to be the 'welcome letter' students get in late December. We managed to get 18 applicants for the course before the application deadline on 15th October (which is pretty amazing, since the course wasn't officially made available until about 5th October). Between now (late October) and mid-December, these applicants will have their prior qualifications assessed, and then they'll be offered a definite place on the course (at which time we send out the 'welcome letter').

I see this letter as a very important part of the process of forming a bunch of unconnected applicants into a group (and if they feel that they're a group, they'll tend to do better on an on-line course …). This process is probably the most important one in the first part of the course, so I want to make sure that it works.

When the course gets underway (at the beginning of February), I'm planning to use a sort of 'rolling enrollment' to get the students started. I'll be inviting 'buddy groups' of three students to meet me on Kamimo at roughly 15 minute intervals (i.e. 9 each hour, since there'll need to be a short break between groups). Doing it this way also allows me to cover for people who don't turn up on time. I'll ask each group to arrive 15 minutes *before* the time of their enrollment with me, so that I can fill the group before up, just in case someone doesn't turn up …

These buddy groups will have three members, and the organisation of course activities will centre around constellations and combinations of buddy groups. E.g. each buddy group will have tasks which need to be reported back to the whole class by the buddy group (rather than by a particular individual). This enables, amongst other things, peer review (buddy group-to-buddy group), which in turns frees up my time as teacher, so that I can give 24 individuals the kind of individual feedback they're going to need. If I had to work with 24 individuals all the time, rather than 8 buddy groups, I'd soon lose track of them all.

On enrollment day, I'm hoping to have some American students from Bryan's Composition II course available, and our plan is to attach a couple of American students to each buddy group. The Americans will have been working in SL for about 4 weeks at that stage, and they'll get extra credit on *their* course for including feedback from European students in their written work. Practically and specifically, the Americans will take over each buddy group as I finish my slot with them and lead them off somewhere else in SL to start introducing them to the Americans' favourite places … which the European students will later present at our first Oral Production meeting.

This sounds really complicated when you try to describe it in words … but it's a lot easier doing it for real (even in SL!), believe me. It's rather like organising the line of kids when you're taking a class of 8 year-olds to the swimming baths!

The general aim is to make sure that the students on Oral Production find a small group to coalesce to, and also find people who can help them … and to ensure that I'm *not* one of those people!

Thus the welcome letter needs to include a 'mechanism' for ensuring that students have actually created an avatar for themselves before they turn up on Kamimo for their enrollment session. If I'm lucky, they'll also have gained some experience in actually using their avatar in SL too. Another essential element is an elementary survey of attitudes and interests, so that I might be able to find some basis for organising people into buddy groups. And a third element is a list of possible times and dates for people to tick, so that I can make it all work practically.

I'll be getting this information back from the students on a 'Course Information Sheet' in mid-January, which will give me a couple of weeks to get things organised both here and in Missouri before we kick off.

Lund University project links up with Kamimo

2007-10-19T06:40:00.000-06:00

The Centre for Educational Development (CED) at Lund University, Sweden have started a project to investigate the opportunities and limitations of Second Life as a learning environment. They are using Kamimo Island as their base and will contribute material to our project.
The project's web page is at present only in Swedish.

League of Worlds 4 Conference in Karlskrona

2007-10-17T04:47:00.000-06:00

Since February 2007 we have been meeting through various conferencing software (Marratech, Skype, Second Life) and finally our research group met in person at the League of Worlds Conference in Karlskrona, Sweden. In the photo are David Richardson (Kalmar), Judith Molka-Danielsen (Molde), Bryan Carter (Missouri) and Alastair Creelman (Kalmar). We had great discussions throughout the conference, with other attendants as well, about course and programs within virtual worlds. Among others we spoke with Mats Deutschmann (Mid Sweden University), Luisa Panichi (University of Pisa), Roberto Muffoletto (Applachian State University), and many others.

Our slide presentation that was part of our panel discussion:
Multiple Agencies of Educators in Virtual Worlds is included here.

A report from the conference is available on the University of Kalmar's web site,
in English or in Swedish.

Addtional photos from the conference can be found here on Flickr:

Conference Photos
Comments welcome...Judith

Kamimo opening - links to press articles

2007-10-08T05:35:00.000-06:00

After our press conference on Kamimo Island we of course featured in a number of articles. Here is a selection.

In English
SLNN.com article
Reuters Second Life

In Norwegian
Yggdrasil (student site)
Norgesuniversitet
Digi.no (national web magazine)
Na24.no (national web magazine)
Høgskolen i Molde

In Swedish
idg.se (national web magazine)
Slainthe (Swedish SL magazine)
Sveriges Radio (Swedish radio)
Barometern (Kalmar regional newspaper)

Press Conference Review (images on this link)

2007-10-05T03:02:00.000-06:00

Recapitulation
In the reception area 3PM was a meeting of about 25 persons where about 14 were from the media. The area was open for all.

Bjørn Jæger from Molde Univeristy College gave a verbal welcome in Norwegian, while David Richarson from Kalmar University College translated the welcome to English and gave this via text messages.

The virtual campus "Kamimo" (Kalmar, Missouri, Molde) is a result of a project supported by Norgesuniversitetet (NUV) and the Norwegian Research Coucil. The projects three partners are Kalmar University College, The University of Central Missouri, and Molde University College.

Bjørn summarized the following:

Network society has a unique qualities that can be tied to education and learning.
-Network society gives a unique feeling of presence that you cannot find in other technologies
-It can be tied to learning through practice and experience
-Information is alredy easy to access via the web. Network society eases learning by offering different methods to integrate knowledge into learning (practice, experience, simulation, cooperation, repetition, and other traditional methods).
-Supports fundamental concepts in education: open information exchange, and open dialouge between people. And the exchange is free.

We open Kamimo to gather experience and build up compentancy in education and learning in a network society.

Afterwards Linn-Cecile Hansen from Design Container and Judith Molka-Danielsen from Molde took us around the campus island.

We visited Loke's Sandbox, Kvasir's Cabin, Fannagan's Fall and two different classrooms, plus the welcome area.

The Sandbox is where students can experiment and build. Kvasir's Cabin is a paradox in that it is much larger on the inside than it appears on the outside, and the waterfall has a secret cave.

In the Auditorium, Alastair Creelman from Kalmar University College presented how their school plans to use the campus area, and also the group room that is outdoors as was told by Bryan Carter, the Missouri representative of the project.

Kalmar will use Kamimo in a course on 3D industrial design and with another course on 3D design for network society. Missouri will create an virtual representation of the special cultural melting pot of Montmartre in Paris in the 1920s. In histoyr education they can listen to music, participate in events (representing the era) and study architecture from that period.

The press conference was ended i the reception area with distribution of a free t-shirt and a round of questions.

With regards,
Bjørn Jæger
Project leader
Associate Professor
Molde University College

Opening of the Virtual Campus Kamimo

2007-10-05T02:16:00.000-06:00

This was the original call to the press conference:

Molde University College, and partners University of Kalmar and Central University of Missouri will launch its new joint virtual campus in Second Life Tuesday, Oct. 2 at 3 PM, holding an 'in-world' press conference at the new Kamimo Campus area. The event will be hosted by the three partners and their campus contractor Design Container.

The environment of higher education is changing rapidly. Society requires academia and businesses to work closer together, to innovate and to move economies forward. Higher education needs to change to address these changing needs. The emerging new Social Software supports the basic nature of academia; open access for sharing of knowledge in an open dialogue between people. The 3D-environment with live avatar-figures creates a feeling of presence not provided by any other technology, while at the same time incorporating traditional learning and collaboration tools like e-mail, the web, and Learning Management Systems (LMS).

The Virtual Campus Kamimo officially opens in Second Life on Tuesday 2.Oct at 3 PM.

The following universities that already have signed up to use Kamimo Virtual Campus this fall: University of Lund, Sweden, University of Kalmar, Sweden, University of Central Missouri, USA, University of Oslo, Norway, University of Bergen, Norway and Molde University College, Norway.

Practical issues and registration
Each journalist must be represented by an avatar, for media that does not have an avatar we can give assistance in getting one. Our presentation will last for approximate 20 minutes, followed by questions.

NOTE:
We require pre-registration, upon which further practical details will be provided.

For further information and registration please send an e-mail to: In Norway: Bjørn Jæger, in Sweeden: Alastair Creelman or in USA: Bryan Carter.

Representatives attending will be:
Real Name
Avatar Name
Representing

Bjørn Jæger
Bjorn Flow
Molde University College, Norway

Judith Molka-Danielsen
Aklom Haifisch
Molde University College, Norway

Alastair Creelman
Alastair Creber
Kalmar University College, Sweden

David Richardson
Daveric Rinkitink
Kalmar University College, Sweden

Bryan Carter
Bryan Mnemonic
University of Central Missouri, USA

Linn-Cecile Hansen
Ela Oliva
Design Container,
Norway

About the University of Kalmar
The University of Kalmar has a range of almost 50 degree programmes and over 300 courses to offer within natural sciences, technology, computing, economics, tourism, social science, the humanities, behavioural science, health care, maritime subjects, design and media and teacher training. The University has been in an expansive phase for a long time now and has 9 500 students. Our aim is to make the University of Kalmar an attractive centre of learning for students and teachers. The goal is an institution of high standing based to academic quality and social relevance.

About the University of Central Missouri
With 150 career-building programs of study, a beautiful residential campus, and a welcoming hometown, UCM is the school of choice for some 11,046 graduate and undergraduate students. Founded as a teacher's college in 1871, we have maintained our commitment to excellent teaching.

About Molde University College (Norwegian School of Logistics)
Founded in 1994, Molde University College is among the leading institutions in Scandinavia within the field of logistics, offering education from bachelor to PhD-level, as well as bachelor and master programmes in economics, business administration, management, informatics, social sciences and health sciences. Molde University College is one of 25 state owned university colleges in Norway. We have approximately 1500 students, divided between 32 programmes of study. About 10% are international students representing 40 nations.

Kamimo Education Island receives first visitors

2007-09-26T10:30:00.000-06:00

On Monday, September 24th, we began to test the funtionality of Kamimo. The sim became tentatively open to visitors. Of the first was Maria Hedberg from Lund University in Sweden, Center for Educational Development. She introduced the teaching facilities, such as the media players, to a group of 6-8 teachers.

We have now arranged a calendar so that visitors can see planned use of the classroom facilities at

Kamimo Classroom Calendar.

We have also arranged an in-world survey for users of Kamimo Education Island. Anyone that visits the island can take the survey, and we would even appreciate it. The survey looks like a "plate of fruit" and if you touch the plate you will receive the url link to the survey. Just "follow the link."

The Oslo based firm Design Container is largely responsible for the look, feel, and functionality of Kamimo. They now feature us in their Portfolio of creations.

While we are still in testing phase this week, a grand public opening featuring an in-world press conference is scheduled for Tuesday October 2nd, 3PM (GMT+1, Molde time).

Oral Production on Kamimo, Spring 2008

2007-09-19T05:50:00.000-06:00

Högskolan i Kalmar is offering a 3 hp course in Oral Production (muntlig framställning) in the virtual world, Second Life in Spring Term 2008. The course itself is an attempt to offer a ‘mainstream’ course on Kamimo Island, an educational environment Kalmar has been helping to build as a junior partner in a Norwegian project since January 2007.

The course focusses on helping participants to improve their oral skills in English, concentrating on the ability to deliver good technical and academic presentations in English. Students and teachers will meet on Kamimo Island and students will practise their oral skills in English in different combinations and contexts, as well as gaining practice in listening to formal and technical English. At each stage in the course there will be opportunities to receive detailed feedback from teachers.

We’re making 24 places available this spring, and you ought to be able to apply for the course in the usual way. If you’d like further information about the course, please contact David Richardson (david.richardson@hik.se).

Under construction

2007-08-10T03:09:00.000-06:00

Our two islands, Kamimo (Kalmar and Molde) and Virtual Montmartre (Central Missouri) are now under construction and we hope to have the basic landscaping and building ready by the end of August. At present they are not open to visitors but in September we can open for business and we aim to arrange several courses/student projects there during the term. The main aim for the rest of the year is to carry out and evaluate educational activities in Second Life and work on how to develop the environment in 2008.

Meeting with NUV and Bayern Virtual University

2007-07-12T11:56:00.000-06:00

I recently on July 10th joined in on a network meeting that was initiated by
representatives from Norgesuniversitetet (NUV) our funding organization.
Here is an outline of the meeting:
Kl. 9.45 Presentation of Norgesuniversitetets by director Jan Atle Toska
Kl. 10.15 Presentation of Bayerns Virtuelle University by direktor Paul Ruehl
Kl. 10.45 Discusion of the likeness and differences between the two organizations and possibilities of further cooperative work (such as i EuNeON)
Kl. 12.15 Presentation of the National Senter for Telemedisin by Kirsten Eriksen, Leader of the Network Based Competence Development Center at NST.
Also, information on a Masters in Telemedisin at the University of Tromsø:
http://uit.no/medfak-studietilbud/telemedisin/
Kl. 14.30 Presentation of the Second Life project Molde University College by Associate Professor Judith-Molka Danielsen.

In the presentation of our project I discussed the evaluation process for our project, introduced the outline for the course in Social English, introduced the new virtual islands of Kamimo Island and pointed out as well Virtual Montmartre. Bryan Carter and Alastair Creelman presented their avatars and met with my own avatar inworld. We demonstrated some of the classroom capabilities used in prior inworld courses by Bryan.

We expect the Kamimo Island will be open to visitors in late August. More news about the course in Social English will be posted then. We already have about 8 doctoral students interested in following the course meetings. David Richardson will continue to be the primary communicator for this course.

good summer, Judith

Kamimo Islands discussed in Morgenbladet

2007-06-01T08:29:00.000-06:00

Morgenbladet is the leading newspaper for intellectual readers in Norway. In this week's issue there is an article about education in SecondLife and there is a focus on the Kamimo Islands project. The article is written in Norwegian. An online version is located at the link: Virtual studies .

just for grins

2007-05-04T06:02:00.000-06:00

Something fun by
Kevin and Kell, the virtual world of: 9th Life

News from the Pilot Course Planning

2007-05-02T03:20:00.000-06:00

I'm in the middle of planning a pilot course to run on Kamimo Islands in the autumn. It'll be a course for doctoral students in Social English, to help Scandinavians make a mark when they present at conferences, and try to get invites to research teams. The three main elements of the course will be: presenting your research so that an academic 'lay' listener can grasp what you're doing; handling more formal interactive situations, such as round-table discussions and Q&A sessions after a conference presentation; and, finally, schmoozing at conferences (i.e. participating in informal discussions over coffee or dinner).

Teachers, such as myself and Bryan, will be in SL to provide the students with some difficult characters to deal with! We'll also give detailed feedback to participants about their performance on the day, and about what they need to work on.

The plan is to start in week 38 (Wednesday, 19th September) and have one session each week until week 43 (24th October). With a bit of luck, we'll be including one of the SL sessions in a League of Worlds Conference presentation (http://www.leagueofworlds.com/upcoming) in early October.

I'm hoping that Judith and Bjørn can take charge of the evaluation of the course from the point of view of the project. We're hoping to have three doctoral students from each of Kalmar, Molde and Mittuniversitet (in Härnösand), and it'll be interesting to learn the differences between three places in terms of getting going, preparing participants, etc.

I've done a preliminary budget for the course, and it comes out as incredibly cheap! 24,000 SEK at the last count, for both preparation and delivery. I've asked my boss to help me find the funds, and at least some of them will probably come from the training budget for doctoral students in the sciences here in Kalmar.

I've also just sent out a Call for Volunteers to 90 doctoral students here in Kalmar ('just' being about two hours ago), and talked to Mats Deutschman up in Härnösand, who reckons there should be no problem getting some arts and humanities doctoral students from there. If Molde can produce a few computer scientists, it ought to be an interesting student group.

Kalmar students design learning environments in SL

2007-04-25T05:48:00.000-06:00

Students here in Kalmar have been involved in project work linked to the Kamimo project. A class from the Interaction Design program and a class from our Design program were given a general introduction to SL and then asked to work in small groups and design stimulating learning environments that could be used on our islands in SL after the summer.

The two classes had different backgrounds; one based in design, art and architecture and the other class based in IT and inparticular 3D design and programming.

In a very short space of time they came up with a number of creative and interesting ideas that can definitely contribute to our project and what our islands will look like. The majority of students felt that it would be best to create completely new learning spaces in SL rather than build copies of existing campus buildings or local landmarks. Many of the designs were futuristic in form and in many cases the meeting areas and group rooms were situated in the air, sometimes floating sometimes linked together by transport tubes. One group took a well-known Kalmar landmark (the old water tower) as a shell but once inside they had designed learning spaces with a medieval feel.

Some groups felt that we should have open learning spaces without walls with easy access since it is often frustrating to navigate up stairs and round corridors with an avatar in SL. Another idea was to assign colour coding to students according to subject area/institution and that avatars would leave coloured footprints behind them. In this way you could easily find colleagues.

Our island should be inspiring and surprising; a place that people talk about and recommend. One idea was to build a typically Swedish country cottage (almost a cliché in fact) but when you went through the door you arrive in an open, futuristic environment completely out of scale with the cottage you saw from the outside. Another was to incorporate a face in the landscape that can only be seen from above, symbolising knowledge. The fact that the face would not be obvious would also create a reputation for the island and possibly attract visitors.

Students were enthusiastic about the possibilities of using SL in education but also somewhat concerned about the importance of revealing your true identity in educational contexts.

We hope to use some of these ideas and designs on our SL island later on this year.

Experiences at the Project Leader Seminar (NUV)

2007-04-22T12:29:00.000-06:00

We (Bjørn Jæger, Alastair Creelman and I) attended a workshop held by Norgesuniversistet for project leaders in Tromsø (17.-18. april, 2007). I (Judith) was not part of the original application for the present project, so that Bjørn and Alastair were listed to introduce our project. Bjørn introduced the basic concept of Second Life, because it is a relatively new virtual world platform. Alastair led the audience around SL using his avatar, including a trip to the SL Bryggen (representing the RL one in Bergen), where he walked into the water to look at the fish and then demonstrated how to fly out. In addition the public was shown how to use maps, find people and events, and how transport to another in-world location. He brought the audience to meet Bryan Carter’s avatar in Bryan’s in-world classroom located at The Black Sun II in SL. Bryan and Alastair spoke over skype. The 40 minutes allotted to the session quickly evaporated. We received many questions. It is obvious to all that the platform of SL offers enormous possibilities including integrating multimedia using in-world streaming video, or power points slides, or providing links to web resources.

Some familiar with the platform pointed out the negative aspects of the virtual world of SL. It was pointed out that there was much focus on buying and selling virtual items (including land, buildings, clothing, and all imaginable). While this is a focus, there are also very many things that can be experienced without entering financial information. Others noted the focus on the “people go there to party” aspect. However, Alastair pointed out, that similar to the www, both porn sites and educational sites exist, and it is a matter of what the purpose of your activity there is. The potential for the support of learning is great. This was introduced in the effects of Bryan’s classroom, but also from the discussion with Bryan, as he described his support of his students of literature.

Our current activities, under the current project, are to establish a working environment and to target at least 2 students each, with support of teaching (holding course meetings) and advising from our 3 institutions. We also intend to explore how some ICT tools may be integrated into SL. We hope to explore tools such as SLoodle (an in-world version of Moodle).

One of the primary lessons learned by our project team at the workshop is the importance of doing evaluation underway. Kalmar has recently interviewed design students, and we hope to integrate these interviews into our evaluation. Because this project involves both design and use of the environments, we need to benchmark the initial knowledge and expectations of the designers, as well as the users. Our requests to the builders (outsourced) will include the feedback that we receive from these design groups.

Those present of the Kamimo Project Team have also decided that we will prepare an application to NUV for a second year of support. We hope that the entire team will agree. While the initial grant has allowed us to establish the environment, we believe a second year is needed to develop and explore different means of supporting student learning. The focus of the second grant will be on the Wider Learning Experience. While methodologies such as lectures and group projects contribute to learning, we feel that SL broadens the learning experience. In our second proposal, we will explore the motivations and facilities of SL that contribute to a richer method of learning.

Finally, we have decided that our internal discussions will take place on the Kalmar Moodle server (login required). However, our: activities, accomplishments, general plans, anecdotes, general wishes and interests, anything that will allow people to find us and to contact us if desired…(please drop us an email). The point was is to reduce the use of private email by our team members for developing ideas, and to share what we learn.

Judith ….from rainy Molde.

Presenting Kamimo at Lund University

2007-04-17T10:49:00.000-06:00

On May 7 Judith and I will be presenting Second Life and the Kamimo project at a pedagogical seminar at Lund University. I will be there in real life and Judith as her avatar in SL with a voice link-up via Skype. We hope to get some new and valuable contacts there that can contribute to the project in some way later on.
Read more on Lund's website at http://www.ced.lu.se/o.o.i.s/3751

Another Swedish university that has shown a clear interest in the project is Mid-Sweden University (Mittuniversitetet). Mats Deutschmann visited us in Kalmar recently and had discussions with David and myself about cooperation in SL.

Our application for project funding from the Swedish agency NSHU was not immediately successful and we have been invited to a seminar after the summer to develop the idea further.

Presenting Kamimo in Tallinn on 20/3

2007-03-14T04:55:00.000-06:00

David Richardson is off to Tallinn on Monday morning to lead two workshops in the use of ICT in distance education. You can read more about these by clicking on the link above (in the title to this post).

He'll be talking about Second Life in detail on the Tuesday, 20th March session, and mentioning the work we're doing with Kamimo Islands.

The Monday session will be broadcast via Marratech (as you can see), and readers of this blog are welcome to join in. If you need any help getting started with Marratech, mail David at david.richardson@hik.se

New project application

2007-03-02T06:05:00.000-06:00

The University of Kalmar is involved in another project application for work in Second Life, this time together with Umeå University and the Blekinge Institute of Technology. We have sent a preliminary application to the Swedish Agency for Networks and Cooperation in Higher Education with the preliminary title "Second Life - the learning environment of the future?". This project does not aim to buy land or build in SL but will be more investigative looking at the suitablity of SL for education, interaction between SL and web-based applications and how 3D representation affects the learning process and social interaction.

If accepted, a full application must be submitted to the authority by 15 May. Other participants may be added during the process and the project will, of course, refer to and develop contacts with Kamimo.

Presenting the project for Noregsuniversitet

2007-03-01T04:55:00.000-06:00

Bjørn Jæger and Alastair Creelman are scheduled to briefly introduce our project at the Noregsuniversitet project seminar (that is primarily for the NUV project leaders) on April 18th in Tromsø. The presenation title is, "Læringsmiljø i Second Life: Læring med pedagogisk merverdi eller flopp med stor wow-faktor?" in English that is "Learning Environment in Second Life: Learning with added pedagogic value or flop with a big wow-factor?" Also, Judith will be in attendance to lend support.

Another Swedish university is interested

2007-02-28T13:30:00.000-06:00

I've just been talking with a teacher of English from Mittuniversitet (Mid-Sweden University) in Härnösand in the north of Sweden I know in other contexts. His name is Mats Deutschmann (and his field is politeness in social language in English!).

Mats has been seconded to his university's unit which helps develop flexible learning, and he was very envious of the progress we've made so far. He wanted to be the first university teacher in Sweden to 'open up' in Second Life … and we've beaten him to it!

He's going to be talking to his bosses about what we've done so far (even though we've hardly started), and he feels that there's a good chance Mittuniversitet will want to buy land on Second Life too. I suggested that they open up nearby when we've got our site set up. Who knows? We might end up creating a Scandinavian-US campus area!

Totally New in Education

2007-02-23T03:40:00.000-06:00

The Kamimo Islands project was written about today (23.feb.07) in the local newspaper in Molde called, Romsdals Budstikke. The article is written in Norwegian. It was not in the online edition. But the printed edition can be purchasable in pdf. There was a large article about Second Life in general and a smaller article about our project. The smaller article is based on the direct interview with me. They could only cover a subset of the points we discussed, from page 23 in Romsdals Budstikke: Helt nytt i undervisningen.

Kamimo Islands Project Area now Active

2007-02-19T11:46:00.000-06:00

Peter Carlsson, our tireless IT technician, has now created the Project Area for Kamimo Islands. I've just sent all Project members a mail with your User Names and Passwords in it, together with a bit of information about what's already there.

The Project Area is open for all members of the Project, but closed to outside visitors. Members should feel free, however, to adapt the Project Area any way they like.

The Project Area is actually a 'course' on our Moodle server. If Sloodle gets properly off the ground, it could be good to get our hands in on Moodle (which you'll need to create the courses on which appear in SL).

Kalmar ideas

2007-02-19T08:51:00.000-06:00

We have a number of interesting developments to report here in Kalmar.

Design and IT

A number of student groups in the field of interaction design have started designing learning spaces that could be included in our part of Kamimo. A guy called Peter Adiels is leading this work and he will be appearing more as our project develops. We had a meeting last week with a representative from our design department and they are interested in working in SL. We see a perfect opportunity to link design and IT here where the designers create interesting objects (sculpture, form, architecture etc) and the IT students write the scripts and programs to create them in SL.

Virtual Kalmar

We're meeting the town council this week to discuss the creation of a virtual Kalmar in SL. Peter Adiels and colleagues have already created a 3D model of the town centre and the castle and SL would be the perfect place to showcase it all. We'd have to fill it with interesting things to do of course. However this entails the council buying some land, preferably beside Kamimo.
In a similar vein we also have a 3D model of the warship Kronan that sank in battle off the coast here in 1676. The county museum has a superb collection of artifacts from the wreck but an SL model could be a future project idea.

New project

We're discussing with 2 other Swedish universities about a new SL project. This could link with Kamimo in some way but we've just started discussions.

Guided tour in SL

I've arranged a lecture on 1 March where Bryan will guide us round in SL and talk about his experience of SL education. Interest is quite high and we have staff from all parts of the university attending (including 2 heads of department!). I think this will generate even more interest.

Project Area on Kalmar's Moodle server

2007-02-16T09:43:00.000-06:00

I've asked Peter Carlsson, our IT technician to create a Project Area for us on our Moodle server. I missed him this Friday afternoon, but I'm sure he'll have something ready by Tuesday next week.

There's a link to our Moodle server at the head of this post. The direct address is http://moodle.hv.hik.se. If you go there, you can take a look at my courses by clicking on the English link, and then on one of the courses. You'll then come to a log in page where you can log in as a Guest (you can change the language to English, by the way, with the drop-down menu up in the top right-hand corner of the screen). If you want to take a look at Business Writing, the enrolment key you'll need is ENG036, Course a1 and a2 both have ENG107 and Course a4 has ENG112.

When the Project Area is up and running, you'll need to click on Projektplatser, and you'll have been sent a User Name and ID, either by me, or direct from the Moodle server (depending on how Peter sets it up). You use that information to log on to the Project Area as a full user.

Porta Italia at UiB

2007-02-15T11:44:00.000-06:00

On February 12th, I had the opportunity to meet Dr. Margareth Hagen from the Dept. of Romance Languages and Literature with the University of Bergen. Their department offers a network learning program for languages students studying Italian. The network portal is called Porta Italia. This portal is supported on the Lingo platform. I was given a guest account and have begun to explore the support capabilities of the portal. It will be an interesting case for comparison of learning environments. I look forward to learning more about their site and have already experienced a short tour of the visual Vatican Museum. I can confirm that it took much less time to enter the museum virtually than it does in real life.

yet another design

2007-02-14T14:47:00.000-06:00

After talking with Judith, I redesigned the blog interface to make it more 3.0 with regards to functionality, links, communication etc...Please let me know if you would like your skype availability known from the blog. Once we get our islands placed, I can create a slurl there...looking forward to comments.

bryan

Good to have a name!

2007-02-12T00:33:00.000-06:00

What a good name Judith came up with! It sounds suitably exotic and it takes in the names of the three places involved in the project. I've always felt that it'll be easier to visualise what we're doing once there's a name to it, and this one is catchy too (it could have been 'Momika', couldn't it!).

The idea of an underwater island is also really interesting. One of Kalmar's research areas is marine biology - it'd be good to get some activity from that department too.

Welcome to Kamimo Islands

2007-02-08T12:32:00.000-06:00

Kamimo Islands is a real collaboration between partner organizations at Kalmar University College in Sweden (Ka), University of Central Missouri in USA (mi) and Molde University College in Norway (mo) to create a Virtual Learning Environment in Second Life.