Collaborating in Second Life

This activity was tricky for me; I was busy shopping for Christmas, visiting relatives and doing all those things you do at Christmastime but still the MUVEnation activities kept going. Imagine my relief when we were given some extra time!

I chose 'assessment' as the topic for this exercise and there was just one other person who chose this topic in SL, Tempest Nitely. It was a great relief to find that Tempest and I shared a timezone (just about). I emailed Tempest and she emailed back straightaway saying she was willing to collaborate.

We arranged to meet on my island and we used voice to discuss which tools we would use. We had lots to choose from. We divided up the work (an easy process with just two of us to organise) and then TPed to MUVEnation island to decide what our display was to include and to check out what the others had already done. We decided to start on our display right then and there. But it was not to be! We could hardly set anything up before it would be returned to us. So, we kept our build low prim and low tech and hoped that it would work. Alas no, all of the items were returned to my inventory shortly afterwards, ruining several hours work.

I decided to concentrate on the things that we were placing on my island for now. I put out the tool (or the ones Tempest had left), set them up, made a sign into a notecard giver that talked about the tool and where we got it from. Also, how to use it.

The tools we chose were:

1. The Quiz Master
2. The Jeopardy Panel
3. The Pollster Set
4. The Teacher Gamers, and
5. The Grammar Quiz.

'Assessment, Feedback, and Training' was the full title of the topic and I guess most of the tools we chose really fell into the 'Feedback' section. Most of the tools required an instructor to be present and consisted either of questions being asked and marked correct or incorrect. So, it gave the participants feedback on whether or not they had mastered a particular topic or gave the instructor feedback on how well the students had mastered the topic that may mean the instructor alter subsequent activities. Only the Grammar Quiz didn't require an instructor to be present.

Tempest rebuilt our display on MUVEnation Island after talking to Steve about the problems we'd been having. Unfortunately, all of our work had been lost and Tempest had to start from scratch.

Because I was so busy over this period (and still am) I don't feel I put in as much work as I would have liked to. Tempest was similarly busy (with a young family). Even though we decided in broad terms what we were going to do, we still were fairly autonomous and only met inworld once (though that was for an extended period). There have been no real problems or misunderstandings - just lack of time.

I would like to thank Tempest for her help on this activity. It's also great to meet someone else going through the same things as you are and being able to talk about those things! Very helpful!