My Virtual Cross-Canada Trek 2009 - Montreal and Beyond...

It's been a crazy weather year, like summer hasn't really started yet - lots of wet and rain and fog with the odd sunny day tossed in as a teaser of a summer that hasn't shown up yet.

My cross-Canada trek continues - I'm about 100 KM east of Ottawa - in fact at one point I thought my virtual and real selves might have met his week as I am actually in Ottawa right now, but heading home tomorrow. Just as well - wouldn't want to be messing about with that whole space-time continuum thing anyway :-).

Montreal is one of my favourite cities in the World. I lived in Montreal many years ago and love it every time I go back. It's city full of life, and culture, and always something to do, and the food is amazing. From Dunn's for cheesecake to Schwartz's for smoked meat, you never need go hungry in Montreal (and both are MUST stops during any trip to Montreal). Old Montreal is an amzing collection of restaurants, boutiques, and artisans - a very cool place. If you like vibrant, mult-cultural cities with lost to do and see - head for Montreal.

Hard to believe I'm almost 1400 KMs into my yomp across Canada - next stop is Ottawa, then up over Northern Ontario for Sudbury and Thunder Bay. Now if only the weather would cooperate and allow summer to start...

My Virtual Cross-Canada Trek 2009 - Bienvenue Au Ville de Quebec

Now 929 KMs from home, just passing by Quebec City. Quebec City is on eof the oldest in Canada - full of great sites, sounds, and tastes, including La Citadelle, regimental home of the legendary Vandoos - Le Royal 22e Regiment of the Canadian Army.

As the weather gets better I'm making greater daily progress as I keep walking across Canada. Next major destination is Montreal, a mere 272 KMs down Autoroute 20. I prefer the scenery along the South shore of the St.Lawrence River to that of Autoroute 40 and the North Shore.

The trek continues...

My Virtual Cross-Canada Trek 2009 - Bienvenue Au Riviere-Du-Loup!...

With the weather getting better, I've sailed right on through New Brunswick, passing through Edmunston and now find myself in Riviere-du-Loup PQ, 820 KMs from Halifax.

Several people have remarked that I am looking thinner although I've only noticed minor changes so far - I'm in one more hole on my belt, clothes are fitting a little better and I definitely have more energy. Still a long way to go...

I have no idea how much I weigh and probably won't weigh myself until the Fall - for me it's not about how much I weigh, but rather how well I feel and I am feeling good. Looking forward to a long summer of walking, with the next two big stops being Quebec City and Montreal. Bring on the hot weather and the miles!...

My Virtual Cross-Canada Trek 2009 - Welcome To Fredericton!...

Greetings from Fredericton NB, 419 Kms into my cross-Canada trek. Fredericton is the capital of New Brunswick and the home of the University of New Brunswick. UNB is hosting this year's STLHE (Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education) conference from 17-20 June, one of thebest conferences around if you are at all interested in teaching and learning at the college and university levels.

Fredericton is a great town, and over the years I've spent a fair amount of time here, spending a good chunk of my military career at CFB Gagetown in nearby Oromocto, Canada's Model Town...

The weather is getting better and now that it's officially Spring (YAY!), I'm hoping to make better progress. My next major objective will be Edmunston NB - I hope to be there before Easter. Wish me luck!...

My Virtual Cross-Canada Trek 2009 - I'm Past Moncton NB!

The trek continues, through slush and sleet, and snow, and occasionally sun - I'm just coming into Salisbury New Brunswick - home of an Irving Big Stop where I always stop when driving through NB. Sailed on through Moncton, weather was good, so kept right on going.

Different this time walking through the province, so it'll be a virtual stop at the Big Stop.

Next major destination - Fredericton. Here I come!!...

My Virtual Cross-Canada Trek 2009 - I'm in Sackville NB!

Man, the winds crossing the Tantramar Marshes were strong and cold! Lots of snow too - it's really slowing down my progress - I'm way behind schedule if I want to get to Vancouver by year's end.

I'm just on the outskirts of Sackville New Brunswick (NB), home of Mt. Allison University. We've had a messy winter so far in this part of the country - lots of snow, freezing rain, sleet, rain, and general mess. Next major destination is Moncton, NB - I hope to be there by the end of next week.

The journey continues...

A Real World Use of Virtual Worlds...

Loyalist College is one of the first colleges in Canada to have an active learning presence in Second Life. Several other Canadian colleges including my own, the Nova Scotia Community College now have presences in Second Life, but the forerunner was Loyalist.

Currently they are using Second Life to assist learners with Canadian border security and clearance processes. Here is a video of their simulation:



This is a great use of Second Life (or any other virtual world for that matter) to simulate learning environments and work places where the actual real-world environment is not available for learning. This is the power of virtual worlds - simulation, non-destructive testing (and destructive testing too), life-size modelling (very effective with molecules and single-cell organisms that can be "walked through", and other learning tools and resources that are not feasible in the real world. This kind of mix of real-world and virtual world learning will, I believe, become a large part of what we will need to do as adult educators in order to engage our learners - it's a great use of technologyto support learning and meets learners where they are - "Generation XBox".

Many thanks to Ken Hudson (Kenny Hubble in Second Life) for continuing to push the envelope of learning in Second Life. Check out Kenny Hubble's Media Ecology site as well- some great stuff on virtual worlds, media and culture.

If you are in world check out the Loyalist College island (and NSCC's too!) - they have a very interesting student lounge - the Shark Tank...

Looking Back, Looking Forward...

Happy New Year everyone! Hard to believe that another year is past and a new one about to begin. Thought I would take some time to look back at 2007 and look forward to 2008 (everyone is doing it - so figured I might as well too!).

I posted over 150 times in 2007 - my God I'm wordy! Hopefully I had some things to say that actually made sense. Many of my posts happened at conferences I attended (STLHE 2007 and CIT 2007) - I found that blogging the conference experience "live" was a great way to fully experience what was happening - great way to reflect on the day's events and get ready for the next day.

I also spent a lot of time focussing on education and in particular what I see as the future of education - the Personal Learning Environment (PLE). PLEs, and the increased use of mobile devices will have a major impact on how we design and deliver learning over the next few years. Learners will want more specific and customized learning that will fit into their increasingly busy lives - more flexibility, more options. Institutions will leverage distance and blended learning to increase enrollments with limited investments in capital building projects (and online courses cost a lot less than having to build additional brick learning spaces).

So here is what I think will be the "big things" of 2008:

1. Blended learning and blended learning opportunities will increase - in the end (maybe not the end of 2008 but soon after), more learners will be taking a blended approach to learning than a traditional classroom only model
2. Second Life will continue to grow and will be bought by one of the big players in the Internet (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft...)
3. Open Source will continue to take away from proprietary software - Google Docs and similar online collaborative "suites" will increase in use and popularity
4. Web 2.0 apps will become mainstream as businesses and educational institutions start to use them regularly
5. E-Mails use will decline in favour of IM, Twitter, Facebook and other more immediate forms of communication - EMail will be for "communicating with old folks"
6. Facebook will still be big, but may decline as people become tired of all of the "applications" cluttering up the interface. Look to Orkut and other social networking sites to grow among those wanting to be social without all of the "other stuff". Ning will grow in the creation and use of personal and customized social networking sites
7. I hope that someone creates the social networking equivalent of Meebo allowing me to use one interface for all of the social networking sites that I belong to - Facebook, LinkedIn, Bebo, Ning...
8. Microsoft Windows Vista will continue to struggle, good news for Apple and Linux distros like Ubuntu. More and more educational institutions will look at multi-boot Apple computers as the solution to their IT infrastructure needs.
9. The iPhone will come to Canada - PLEASE!!!! The iPhone is the future of learning...
   
10. I'll continue to blog in 2008, focussing on education and other things that make me go hmmm... including my new mantra of ECMO - Engagement, Collaboration, Mobility, and Openness - it's where education has to go...

To provide some balance, here are some other views of the year past and the year to come:

• The Most Important Hardware Stories of 2007
• Are Immersive Worlds the Future of Education or Just a Distraction?
• Science - Breakthrough of the Year 2007
• PC Magazine - Top Stories of 2007
• SciAm 50 - Scientific American Top 50 of 2007
  
• 2008 Trend Report (Just the Table of Contents - some neat things being tracked - report itself is expensive)
• Google and Second Life Will Prevail in 2008 (humour)
  
• 2008 Web Predictions - from the Read Write Web blog - a collection of predictions

So there you have it - a quick look back and a quick look forward. All I can say is that I'll continue to post here and hopefully some of it will even make sense.

Happy New Year everyone!


Gotta love iStockphoto - this same image is on the front page of today's Ottawa Citizen!

(Photo - Janus Coin by Marco Prins)

Are My Virtual Friends Real? ...

A recent article online at Information Week "MySpace Friends May Not Be Real", has got me thinking about the people that I have only met virtually and that I consider to be friends - are they real friends?

For me a friend is someone that I share common interests with, that I correspond with somehow on a fairly regular basis, and who knows more about me than name, rank, and serial number. I also know something about them and a friend is also someone who I want to talk to to ask questions of, to get their opinions on issues and to debate, discuss, and yes even argue with about the issues of the moment.

Using this criteria, I have several friends that I have never met anywhere other than online, mostly in Second Life where they are represented by their avatars. I consider many of these people to be good friends. In fact when I met one of my Second Life friends face to face in the real world this past summer for the very first time it was as if we had known each other for years (and in fact we have, just virtually).

I currently have almost 150 "friends" in Facebook. Are they all really friends - many are not, but many are and again, there are some who I have not net in the real world, although they are in the small minority. I find that for me Facebook has been a way to connect with colleagues and learners, and to stay in touch with old friends from the past. So on that point I do agree with the Information Week article - there is an element in social networking (for me at least) that requires some sort of face to face or real world connection in order to develop any sort of lasting bond.

This is not true though in my experience with virtual worlds such as Second Life. Whether it is because of the visual component, the chatting, and now voice, I feel no differently about my SL friends than I do about my real world friends. If they meet my criteria, they are a friend. I think that this is significant for me as an educator as more and more I will be dealing with learners and fellow facilitators that I will never meet face to face, yet I will need to develop relationships with. I think that it will mean that the definition of what a friend is and how we develop friendships will have to change. After all, these days just about everyone knows a couple that met on the Internet - are their relationships any less real or meaningful? We will need to redefine relationships and societal norms and here is an example of some of the issues and problems that could arise from the Wall Street Journal - "Is This Man Cheating On His Wife? It's a valid question - as the tools and means that we use to socialize evolve, so too must our conceptions and definitions of friends and relationships, and how we interact with each other, both in virtual and real settings

So, are my virtual friends real? They are to me...

I Speak Therefore I Am - Or Am I?

The latest version of the Second Life (SL) client has brought voice chat to the virtual world. There has been an amazing amount of debate (check out the SLED mailing list) about the use of voice in Second Life and what voice will do to the experience of using a virtual world where users are represented by an avatar that may have little or no connection to who they are in the "real world".

Will voice enhance or take away from the SL experience? It will certainly change it - I guess it will be the users who will determine the effects of voice chat. One thing that it has done already is caused interface changes in SL, which took some getting use to (my God I am a creature of habit!!). Many people are of the opinion that voice will add to the educational power of SL because users will be able to engage in conversations that are voice driven giving perhaps a better idea of who you are talking to and what they really mean. Just as many feel that it will take away from conversations and learning - I mean if you are talking to a beautiful female avatar who sounds like Jimmy Durante when they talk, that might have an effect on the conversation and the message.

All this debate about voice in a virtual world has me thinking about voice in the real world. The other day my best friend told me that I had a great "radio" voice - that surprised me because the voice I hear in my head when I speak doesn't sound like that to me. What are the implications of using voice to communicate? Much of my day to day communication these days is text-based - e-mails, chats, Facebook, instant messaging, text messages and so on. One of the complaints about text is that you can miss the nuances or intent of the message. Does voice get rid of this issue or add another layer? Is voice our preferred method of communication? Do you need to see the person(s) you are talking with so that you can see their body language to get the full meaning of what they are saying? Do any of our ways of communicating - text, voice, sight, sound individually give us the full meaning of a conversation, or do we need them all together to really understand a conversation?

These questions have great implications for us as educators, particularly as we move away from traditional classroom-based delivery where we have the full meal deal of voice, text, and sight, to alternate and distance delivery methods where we will probably have text, may have voice, but probably not sight. Can you really know someone who you have only texted with? I hope so, because I have people that I have met online and consider friends, but I have never actually spoken to them or seen them. This will become more and more common in the future.
So are these people whose voices we never hear less important or less relevant than those whose voice we do? I don't think so - ideas and points of view can be expressed without using voice, but we will all have to become better at expressing ourselves non-verbally, or we will lose the opportunity of meeting some pretty amazing people.

So if I never hear your voice, do you exist? Hmmm...


(Photo - "Elephant Talk" by gin_able)

Dancing With Angels

This is a video of the ZeroG SkyDancers from Second Life. This show was part of the SkyDancer's first anniversary and the fourth anniversary of Second Life. The SkyDancers are simply amazing and demonstrate some of the art of the possible in Second Life - it's amazing what you can do when you can fly!



I like to think of the SkyDancers as a virtual Cirque du Soleil..

My Avatar, Myself

I've been active in Second Life now for about 10 months or so (in world I'm hondomac Dalgleish). In that time I have found that the lines between SL (Second Life) and RL (Real Life) have effectively disappeared.

I use the same language in both places (I am me and my avatar is me), when I see the avatar of someone that I know in RL, I say "How are you?" and "Don't you look nice". I have friends in SL who I consider to be just as close and as important to me as my RL friends yet I have only ever engaged with their avatars and in some cases do not even know their "real" names or where they are from.

Those of us who know each other in both SL and RL quite often remark on the "blurring of the lines" between the two worlds. We refer to conversations and activities without saying that they occurred in RL or SL. In SL our social interactions are firmly rooted in acceptable RL norms and behaviours. Why is that? Do we need these norms and behaviours in order to function in the brave new world of SL? Is it a comfort thing? I don't know the answers to these questions (yet).

The blurring of the lines was completed for me yesterday. I was wandering in a local shopping mall when I walked past a women's clothing store. Looking in the window, I thought to myself that the clothes were nice, but that the clothes at Dazzle were better. Only thing is, Dazzle is a Second Life women's clothing store, selling only to avatars and without a RL presence. There you go, I now just live in a slightly larger world than most others.

Go anywhere in SL and you will see structures of all kinds - office buildings, homes, stores, shopping malls, and they for the most part look like their RL compatriots - they have floors, walls, and roofs. Why is that? It never rains in SL (unless you want it to and even then your avatar doesn't get wet). More line blurring or the continued transportation of RL norms and behaviours into SL?

One of my main interests in Second Life is its educational potential. There are literally hundreds of educational institutions with a SL presence, and many of them are now offering credit courses in SL. Again though, almost without exception, their SL selfs are represented by painstakingly accurate reproductions of their RL campuses. While this might be great for helping learners get around, how much sense does it make for an avatar to sit in a classroom all day? I have found that the most innovative educational facilities in SL look nothing like a "traditional" classroom. Rather, they are open, modifiable spaces that can be made into whatever it is that the learners need - that's the power of SL - learn underwater, in space, inside a living cell - down with the classroom!!

So, do I live in two worlds or one slightly larger one expanded by my Second Life experiences? I need to think some more on this, but I know one thing for sure - I wish I looked as good in a tux in RL as I do in SL - boy that hondomac is a snappy dresser! Hmmm...

Is Second Life a Game or...

I have been active in Second Life (SL) now for about 10 months. In that time I have come to see great potential in SL as a social networking tool, as an educational environment, and so much more. I have seen things and been to places in world (that's SL-speak BTW) that I could not have done in the "real world (RL)". I have met people from all over the world and have made many friends that I think of no differently than my RL friends even though all I have met is their avatars. There is a vibrant and growing educational community in SL that is doing some amazing things. There are artists, entertainers, entrepreneurs, and ne'er do wells in world. In many ways it emulates the RL, with the good, the bad, and the ugly that any society has.

But the nagging question is this - is Second Life just a game or something else? Is it a virtual reality with a real economy employing a lot of people and allowing many to get rich? Is it a place where people can be anyone or anything and do anyone or anything? Is it a great place to learn, to collaborate and communicate with educators and learners from around the world? It is all these things and more, but is it a game?

Clark Aldrich has an interesting post on his blog - "educational simulation". He defines an educational simulation as "A type of sim that brings together significant simulation elements and pedagogical elements with limited Game Elements." He then goes on to describe how educational sims differ from games in that they:

• Are built primarily to nurture specific learning goals in participants (called students or learners), often with real-life actions reflected in the interface.
• Often are supported by human coaches/facilitators.
• Tend to have lower production values than complex game.
• Focus on replay using different approaches.
• Are often chosen or paid for indirectly by program sponsors, not the participants themselves.
• Come in specific genres including branching stories, game based models, interactive spreadsheets, virtual labs, practiceware, just to name a few.

Yet like with all simulations, educational simulations:

• Require participants to necessarily develop skills, and do so through emergent learning.
• Can be single player, multi-player, or massively multi-player.
• Are built around levels.
• Will appeal to some people and not others.
• Focus on what actions are available, how the actions impact systems (including units, maps, and processes), and how those systems then produce results, often presented in a practice environment.
• Are surrounded by multiple communities.
• Are first described in design document, before programmed, debugged, and distributed.
• Can be complex or mini

(Many thanks to Clark Aldrich for this great definition - check out his blog - it's a great source of terminology and other educational resources for all things dealing with simulations and Web 2.0)

If you examine Second Life using these requirements and features, I think it is safe to say that SL is indeed an educational simulation. But is that all it is? No, it is so much more, and yes, at some level it is a game. But to simply dismiss Second Life as a game is to miss an incredible opportunity for learning, commerce, socialization, and so much more. Anyone who does this risks missing out on what could be a wonderful experience for them and their constituencies.

Maybe we need a new description for Second Life - it's not a game, it's not a simulation - it's a parallel synthetic reality - one more universe in the ever growing multiverse. Hmmm...

Virtual vs Reality

Increasingly I find myself using virtual environments and virtualization tools in my education practice. We are using tools like VMware and Microsoft's Virtual Server and Virtual PC to create customized software environments that allow for the learning of specific IT skills without worrying about impacting on the college network. We are using tools like Elluminate to meet and deliver learning across distance and I'm increasingly using Web 2.0 tools to expand my learning environments beyond the college walls.

I am also spending time in Second Life where I have met people from allover the world and developed friendships that I value no less than those I have in the real world. I may never meet my Second Life friends face to face, yet I value their friendship, knowledge, and advice no less than my "real" friends. I have met people, seen and done things, and learned so much in this virtual environment that I would have never done in the real world due to time, space, and logistical restrictions.

For me the boundaries between the virtual and the real have faded - together they make up my world, my reality. I firmly believe that this combination of virtual and real spaces is the learning environment of the future. So if I see you in the hallway and ask you if that's flexi-hair that you're wearing, please forgive me...