Things I like about vSide

My wife and I have been spending a lot of time in vSide lately, and I have to say we're liking it! Here are some of the things I (we) like, in no particular order:

1. Music venues of all styles.
2. It's free! And by earning vPoints through rating music, adding friends, completing tasks, or simply being inworld, you can purchase clothing or furniture for your apartment to make your experience more customized.
3. Speaking of your apartment, it's easy to set up YouTube videos (or playlists, as I learned how to do recently) which would be great for a class get-together and chat.
4. There's a lot of space to explore and hidden secrets to find. For some photo guides to some of the secrets, check out kaprik0rn's Photobucket pages.
5. By setting up tags to describe your interests on your profile (here's mine), you can easily find other people who share the same tags. As you walk around, they have little smiley faces radiating out of their names. It's a great way to start a conversation!

OK, now a few grips/suggestions for improving the experience:
1. Avatars need to be a bit more customizable. You should at least be able to alter their weight; the world shouldn't be full of only skinny people!
2. Sometimes a particular song playing is annoying. It would be nice to have a "mute this song option" that would turn the sound back on at the beginning of the next song.
3. Why is so much of the experience on the web instead of better integrated into the user interface? Profiles, at least, should be editable and viewable from inworld.
4. I would like to use vPoints (but maybe not vBux which are tied to real-world currency) in more of a user economy. For example, by allowing users to submit designs for clothing or posters that could then be approved and sold through the usual means. This would also keep the product offerings fresh.
5. It seems the program isn't very friendly for non-English character sets in chat.
6. I get that this is mostly for teens and young twenty-somethings, but it would be nice to specify your status (a la Facebook) to clarify if you're there looking for friendships, romance, or whatever.

It seems like it won't be long before advocacy or education organizations find ways to create spaces within vSide...it has a lot of the advantages of other virtual worlds with fewer of the drawbacks.

Exploring other virtual worlds

OK, I admit it. The glimmer on Second Life has worn off somewhat. It's still the most customizable, the best-used, and the most cutting-edge virtual world out there. But as a teacher, I have to admit it's really not there yet for widespread use with K12. The biggest problems, in no particular order:
1. Unnecessarily steep learning curve. Not everyone wants/needs the same abilities to customize everything about everything. More basic modes would really help.
2. Huge resource consumption. I couldn't even use it during a brief period when it was unblocked at my school. It was craaaawling, and that was with one user - imagine a class of 20 kids trying to do something.
3. The partition between teen grid and adult grid makes it hard to collaborate with other educators in a space that's accessible to students, too. Plus, only about half the students in middle school are already 13 or older.

So I've been testing the waters, looking at other options for shared educational spaces. Here are three that I'm keeping an eye on:

1. Habbo. It's not nearly as immersive as other virtual worlds, but it does make it fairly easy to set up a persistent space (meaning people can access it even when you're not around) that is somewhat customizable. But I'll be honest: in some ways, it really acts and feels like an old-school chatroom and doesn't have much "dazzle" to it. And setting up a space can quickly get costly (comparatively). I do like that it needs little computing power or bandwidth to work. Generally, it seems geared towards preteens and young teens. Here's a screenshot:


2. Multiverse. Though still only for PCs, the Multiverse platform shows great potential for virtual worlds for specific purposes. If you're familiar with SL, imagine each sim being its own world, with its own unique commands and avatar looks. The folks at Multiverse say they want their platform to be used by lots of different types of people and have some attractive setups in place for both commercial and non-profit virtual worlds. The example worlds they have set up are pretty impressive but usually empty, so it's hard to get a sense of how interaction feels using the platform. Seems to be geared towards the geek set at this point, but I think it has a bright future as more compelling environments are rolled out.

3. vSide. This one has come a long way since I first looked at it in August of 2007. It looks and feels like SL, without the clunkiness. Now in the third iteration of its beta form, you can set up private spaces (unfortunately, they're only available when you're online) which are somewhat customizable. The neatest feature of the private spaces for me is the ability to choose YouTube videos that can be played and shared with a group in real time. There are also a number of music channels to choose from that again are enjoyed communally. Although I haven't figured it out yet, I understand there's even the ability for a room owner to use a microphone and pass it around for voice chatting. I would love to bring a group of students into this environment to check it out. It feels just about right for middle and high school kids. Outside of the private spaces there are lots of public spaces to explore, with lots of music playing everywhere. I like that you earn "vPoints" for interacting, completing quest-type activities, and just being inworld which can be used to purchase items for your space or clothing for your avatar. Unlike Habbo and to a certain degree SL, it's still an interesting space even when you're alone. Here's a screenshot of my apartment in vSide (which thanks to vPoints I was able to set up for free, though there's also a "pay for credits" option if you're so inclined):


If you want to, you can get in touch with me in any of these virtual worlds by searching for my avatar name, "Gxeremio".

Play The News now open!

A while back, I mentioned the great news prediction game Play The News, which I plan to use in a new current events course next year. Well, it's now out of closed beta and is available as open beta. Even better, you can now embed individual games in blogs, social networks, and other applications. Check out this game that explains the history of the Iraq War better than any news clip I've seen:

Student Internet rights

Do students have the right to rate their teachers online? How about giving their opinions about administrative decisions on their private blogs? Do students have the right to access information (article 13 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child) about whatever interests them on the Internet? Do they have a right to privacy (from school officials) concerning their online activities?

What do schools need to do to maintain a good learning environment and what shouldn't they do? What are the most important principles to keep in mind?

To catch a predator myth

I've written about the topic before, but a new article in American Psychologist confirms that a lot of the hype about internet predators is unfounded.

Yet, how many school divisions will make decisions about internet access based on myths? How many hours will be wasted teaching kids wrong information? Most importantly, how many children will become victims of sex crimes (both internet and non-internet related) because we refuse to tell kids the truth about how to stay safe?

Social Studies teachers, get ready!

Current events will not be the same again, once teachers and students experience the new Play the News game (now in closed beta testing).

I had heard about this game some time ago and got to experience it for the first time this morning. It combines an element of fantasy sports where you predict the future with great background information (maps, opinions of world leaders, and video clips) as well as the higher-order thinking required to say not just what you think WILL happen, but what SHOULD happen.

This will be a great tool for getting people engaged with current events. Current games, for example, include those about Kenya, the Oscars, Israel, Mike Huckabee, Microsoft/Yahoo, etc. Supposedly the games will be integrated with news websites and blogs directly which will provide easy access for a mass audience.

This may become the largest and most useful serious game yet.

Our own "War of the Worlds"

We had a faculty meeting yesterday that was supposed to be about crisis management plans, but ended up being about something else entirely.

Our local police department, wanting to impress upon us the importance of not being killed in a school shooting (as if we needed encouragement) presented a video with little introduction. A teacher asked one of the officers what it was and he said quietly, "It's Columbine." For the next ten minutes, we saw what looked like security camera footage from the cafeteria and library of a school being attacked by two young gunmen. We saw them shoot people on and off camera, and heard them taunting victims. Eventually they shot themselves. We were all stunned, many crying. I had a hard time getting to sleep last night as some of the more vivid scenes ran in my mind. And it was the main topic of discussion at work today - what the video meant, what we could do to be safe, and the emotional trauma we had experienced in watching kids killed before our very eyes. We had another faculty meeting after school today in which the principal apologized for what happened, saying the police didn't tell her what they were going to show.

But it turns out the video wasn't from Columbine. It was from a movie, called Zero Day, about a fictional school shooting. The particular scene we saw (I don't recommend watching it) has been confused on several sites as real Columbine footage, and although there were a few things that seemed off about the clip we saw (wrong date on the camera, clearer audio than you would expect, etc.) we trusted that the police weren't lying to us. Word is just now getting around the school that what we saw (which gave some of us nightmares) was not what we thought it was, and I expect some anger over the incident tomorrow.

And we all have a lot to learn from the whole affair.