The Study has started & presenting to ARVEL!

Hi, all - been really busy getting ready to conduct the study on chemistry student learning in my area in SL and it has begun!  I'm giving a presentation on it and on my area in SL on Wednesday in SL for ARVEL SIG inworld discussion (ARVEL is Applied Research in Virtual Environments for Learning - Special Interest Group).  Here's the SLURL to my area.  It will be 1pm SL time (3pm CST - 4pm EST) in my area.  Here's a link to the event:  http://arvelsig.ning.com/events/arvel-sig-inworld-discussion-8 .  Even bought an SL espresso/water machine!

Made our local newspaper!

Hi, all - The TAMU Health Science Center had their ribbon cutting yesterday on their new SL islands that are connected to our islands.  We had about 20 people in SL for the event.  Our local paper reported it and here is the link to the article:  http://www.theeagle.com/am/Profs-teach-online-with-virtual-A-amp-amp-M .  I made the front page!  This was a big deal - the Nancy Dickey, the president of HSC and past president of the AMA gave a speech in SL and even one of the Lindens, Teeple Linden, was there to talk of the importance of the educational mission of Linden Labs.  I asked him about the disappearance of the educational discount and the hardship it was placing on us university folks.  He said I should drop him a notecard with my concerns.  That is one of today's projects for me.

Chemist as Artist Project

I'm now creating another chemistry learning module in my area of Second Life - Chemist as Artist, where students are given a molecule (created by Hiro Sheridan's molecule rezzer), then they have to link the atoms & bonds together, make a copy, rotate each one to form two different orientations, and draw them in 2-D using solid lines, wedges and dashed lines.  My hope is that students will begin to be able to do the reverse:  look at a 2-D drawing and in their minds' eye be able to picture the 3-D molecule.  Here is the powerpoint presentation, which you can also view in SL. 

Dr. K's Molecule Game

Well, after hours and hours and hours of playing with objects, scripts, permissions (agh) and instructional design, Dr. K's Molecule Game is ready for folks to try out.  My student avatar could get through it so I'm hoping it is now working well.  If you want to try and you're not a chemist - here are the answers to the 5 stations:  6, 2, 63, nitrogen trifluoride, and 13, in that order.  Please give me feedback.  Its purpose is three fold: (1) to help my students learn to work within Second Life, (2) to have them apply a bit of chemistry knowledge and (3) to introduce them to the 3-D nature of molecules. 

All Ahead Full for SL Study

Hi, all - I've been meeting with my Ph.D. student, Ms. Zahira Merchant.  She and I are conducting a study of student learning in my chemistry site for her dissertation.  The study will be conducted during Spring 2011.  Since I have two classes, so one will be learning molecular shapes in SL, and the other class will be learning the shapes using traditional 2-D approach.  She and I made a video tour of my site for an initial presentation.  Here it is:  http://www.chem.tamu.edu/class/fyp/keeney/secondlife/drwendy-in-SL.mp4

You can also watch it on my movie screen in SL and link to it from a sign at the entrance.  

One of the issues is getting students familiar enough with SL so as to not inhibit their learning during the actual study.  So, I'm going to be arranging a tiny scavenger hunt (5 stops) and at each one, the student will have to rez a molecule and answer a question about it - not on its shape, but on its composition or name or simple calculation, like % by mass.  This exercise will get students used to working with the tasks they will be expected to do during the learning module.  I'm using the scavenger hunt by Alice Klinger and Alli&Ali Designs called "A&A Networked Scavenger Hunt Kit."  It is expensive - about $50 = $L12,000, but it is very sophisticated and folks must answer a question before they can proceed to the next item.  I'll let you know when it is set up.

Streaming My Personal Sympodium into SL

One of the most important parts of running office hours or a review session for a chemistry class is being able to work out problems.  So how would I do that in SL?  Our TAMU Instructional Technology Services folks and I searched for months before we found Wirecast from Telestream, which turns my own PC computer into a streaming server.   It did cost $450, but it was well worth it.  About a year ago, I bought myself my own Sympodium.  With Camtasia I was able to make videos that I posted on my website - they are definitely not professional, but my students find them useful.  Wirecast was fairly straightforward to install, but I admit I had my buddie, Ranil, from ITS, take care of it.  Initially, some students couldn't see the stream, but now that I tell them they must have Quicktime on their computer, and if they are off-campus, they must set up a VPN (Virtual Private Network) to get past TAMU's firewall, I think we're good to go.  I spent this afternoon at a local pub, Fitzwilly's (with free wireless) outside TAMU's firewall to make sure that off-campus students could see my desktop.  We'll have to see - the test will be my SL review session this Sunday......  As a note - the review session went great - all could see the board just fine, once VPN was in place!!  Whoop!!

Invited Speaker in SL - An Attempt

Last week, I was one of three invited speakers to a SL session at BCCE (Biennial Conference in Chemical Education) in Denton, TX run by  Chimera Cosmos (Liz Dorland).  Here is her blog - look at the August 9 entry.:

blog:  http://www.hastac.org/blogs/ldorland/teh-interwebs-and-second-life  (the mispelling is on purpose)
slideshow: http://www.slideshare.net/ldorland/bcce-2010-teh-interwebs-v2

Although there were some technical difficulties and she couldn't make it to my chemistry area, Chimera was able to visit the American Chemical Society and meet with Georgianna Blackburn (Sandy Adam - the brains behind the now defunct Sigma-Aldrich Islands - http://www.slentre.com/sigma-aldrich-in-second-life-the-right-chemistry/ ).  She did include some great pictures of my site and 50 chemistry faculty were there to see  her talk.