The collection of educational tools for Second Life

March 2nd, 2010 • MUVEs

I’ve been interested, for several years already, in creating a documented collection of educational tools for Second Life.  The effort however to produce a snapshot in time of the variety of tools available for educators required a dedication beyond individual commitment. If the purpose was to create a valuable contribution for the community of educators at large, it was clearly a work for many, many helping hands and contributors.

The MUVEnation open online programme gave me the opportunity to organise such a work. First, back in September 2008, I coordinated the efforts of 33 partcipants in the introductory course for the identification of more than 100 tools used for teaching and learning in Second Life. Later, in March 2009, 55 education professionals (lecturers, researchers, learning technologists and teachers) have collected, tested and fully described more than 150 tools for teaching and learning in Second Life. The result of this collective work has been transformed into a book, published as an Open Educational Resource under CC licence by attribution unported, so anyone is free to distribute without restrictions: adapt, translate, re-mix and improve it.

The book is presently under a last quality control review for public release and it should be available by the end of March 2010. The book was edited by me in collaboration with Jaime Alamo, professor at the University of Valencia. The list of authors who contributed to the collection is here:

Editors

• Margarita Pérez García
• Jaime Álamo Serrano

Reviewers

• Jaime Álamo Serrano
• Sam Boswell
• Louise Drakley
• Laura Fedeli
• Benoît Lacherez
• Erena Leon
• Karsten Oster Lundqvist
• Margarita Pérez Garcia
• Shirley Williams
• Darren Wright
• Production editor & design
• Margarita Pérez García

Authors

• Jaime Álamo Serrano
• Teresa Almeida d’Eça
• Cristina Arnau
• Serkan Baykusoglu
• Antonella Berriolo
• Sam Boswell
• Pilar Cantero
• Dolors Capdet
• William Colmenares
• Caterina Coluzzi
• Emilia Corsi
• Cristina De Angelis
• Cedric De Meyere
• Carmela Dell’Aria
• Eugenio Di Rauso
• Louise Drakley
• Antonella Elia
• Laura Fedeli
• Luca Ferrari
• Bex Ferriday
• Gloria Gómez-Diago
• Dafne Gonzalez
• Melanie Hughes
• Moira Hunter
• Evelyn Izquierdo
• Nergiz Kern
• Samuel Landete
• Erena Leon
• Angelina Macedo
• Elisabetta Marzetti
• Hamid Mernaoui
• Michele Moretti
• Elisabetta Nanni
• Giuliana Perco
• Margarita Pérez García
• Ljuba Pezzimenti
• Raul Reinoso
• Sabine Reljic
• Melanie Rubenbauer
• Ramiro Serrano
• Adelina Sporea
• Annamalia Tancredi
• Patrizia Tancredi
• Max Ugaz
• Anna Vartepetiance Salmasi
• Azucena Vazquez
• Steven Warburton
• Darren Wright

The 150 tools described in the book were organised in the following sections: communication, delivery of learning material, content creation, organisation of meetings and events, collaboration, assessment, feedback and tracking, gaming, and multi-purpose tools. The book also has a special section for Sloodle with descriptions of : Sloodle Chat Logger or WebIntercom, toolBox HUD (gestures, microblogging), Freemail for Sloodle (to be integrated inside the HUD), Distributor or Vending Machine, Presenter, Browser, Metagloss, PictureGloss and PrimGloss, Reg&Enroll booth (Enroll to a group/course), Choice, StipendGiver, Quiz-collaborative-game, Quiz Chair (for multichoice, true-false, short answer and numerical), Quiz-on-pile and the Awards System.

An excerpt of the chapter 01 – Communication can be downloaded here: Chapter 01 – Communication

Tags: Book, MUVEnation, mvn08, OER, Second Life, Tools

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