SLOODLE Presenter
Posted by Peter | Filed under Education, Second Life, Sloodle, Software
I’ve just created and uploaded a new SLOODLE video, and this one is a kind of preview tutorial about the new SLOODLE Presenter tool which will be released in SLOODLE 0.4:
The purpose of the tool is to let you put together a presentation in Moodle, consisting of a series of images, webpages, and videos. Your students can then view the presentation in Moodle, or in Second Life. This is achieved by storing a list of URLs in the Moodle database, and then providing those to a script in Second Life. The object then fiddles with the parcel media settings to display the appropriate resource… so this requires that you either own the land, or that you can deed the object to the land-owning group.
This was originally suggested one afternoon at SLCC08… and being the crazy geek that I am, I skipped the parties that night (as I usually do anyway), and had the first prototype ready to demo over breakfast the next morning! 
Between research and other things, it has taken a while to get it to a releasable state… but it is nearly ready now!
There are a few caveats to mention:
- All resources must be hosted on the Internet (i.e. they have to be accessible by URL)
- Resources cannot be password protected (e.g. you can’t upload them into your Moodle course)
- Second Life only supports QuickTime and simple Flash videos
- Webpages in Second Life are non-interactive
We plan to release the first alpha version of SLOODLE 0.4 around the end of January 2009. Final release date is to be confirmed.
SLOODLE website gets a face-lift
Posted by Peter | Filed under Sloodle, Websites
After much discussion and chatting and ideas and then silence for a few months, we have finally given the SLOODLE website a face-lift. I am really very pleased with the result. Check it out:
The theme was based on a Moodle theme called EduMoodle, which was itself based on a Joomla theme by dudes at EduGeek. Our little variant was originally modified by our good friend and Sloodler, Chris Surridge, using screenshots (swiped) from the inimitable Sloodlebrity, Gia. I then tweaked it a touch to suit our needs, and also mercilessly hammered it into the approximate shape of a WordPress theme, to keep our SLOODLE blog looking nice and consistent. (I nearly hammered my computer mercilessly too… I hate CSS sometimes! Silly float attribute…)
The astute observer will also notice that we have some handy new pages in our lovely new navigation menu: About, Research, and Tutorials. They are still under-construction, but well worth checking-out.
Putting educational technology where it belongs
Posted by Peter | Filed under Education, Second Life, Sloodle, Software, University
The Deccan Herald carries a positive article about the use of technology in education. It is sometimes surprising to think, as can be read in the article, that the concept is comparatively young (at least in relation to widespread usage across the curriculum). Despite many well-intentioned failures of innovation, there is still a drive to further use the technological advancements of the modern day to improve education.
It is easy to make broad-based generalisations and expectant assumptions which turn out to be wrong. Certainly the ubiquity of computing these days demands that solid literacy skills are taught — I have often heard it noted by University lecturers that the seemingly most ‘literate’ computer users can turn out to be the least competent at common tasks, such as using styles and document outlines when preparing a report in MS Word. However, using technology in education ‘just because we can’ is likely to be a doomed course from the outset.
If I had lots of money, I wouldn’t go out and buy the fastest car just because I could afford it; I would obviously look for aesthetic quality, but (being a programmer) I value functionality higher. The same should be done with technology in education: just because we can financially afford the flashiest looking new bit of software that comes out doesn’t necessarily mean it will benefit the process.
A prime example is the educators I see from time to time who jump into Second Life, without really considering their goal in using it. As a wholehearted contributor to the Sloodle project, I definitely believe in the potential of the platform for education… but potential does not equal results. Educators and institutions can spend large amounts of time, effort and money, investing into it, and get pretty much nothing out but a deserted sim and a handful of lukewarm students who wouldn’t use SL outside class time even if you pay them (as many educators do… in L$!).
As Sarah Robbins discussed in her keynote session at SLCC08, you need to deliver what you promise, so you need to promise realistically! Doing ‘real life’ stuff in Second Life is effectively a waste of time, which is probably why early concepts for the Sloodle project were abandoned (such as re-creating a Moodle course page exactly 3d). We need innovative thinking and radical change… but we need to do it gently sometimes too.
Going back to the original Deccan Herald article above, I was very pleased to see the mentions of “networking” and “collaboration”. These are what it’s all about, just as with the schome project (”not school not home”) running on TeenSL, which brings teenage students together to function and operate effectively as peers with those who would (in any conventional setting) be the ‘teachers’.
Undoubtedly, formal education and qualification still needs a great degree of guidance and support, so I do not forsee the student-teacher relationship ever going away completely. However, among the greatest strengths I see in these collaborative, social, “constructivist” approaches are these: learning how to learn, and learning how to enjoy it!
Sloodle Alpha Testing
Posted by Peter | Filed under Second Life, Sloodle
Just realised I haven’t blogged in a while, so I thought I’d mention that the next major release of the Sloodle project (version 0.3) is pencilled in for the end of June/beginning of July this year, and we are getting started on the alpha testing phase.
A lot of hard work and new ideas have gone into this version, hopefully revolutionising the way Sloodle tools are created. That’s partly due to an all-new configuration system (whereby you configure the in-world objects on your website), and partly also due to the new localization, which transfers all the lingual output functionality to a separate LSL script via link message (which makes it easy to translate everything… hurrah!).
Things have also changed big-time on the Moodle side, so you now add ‘instances’ of Sloodle to your Moodle course if you want to access it from Second Life. These instances are currently called “Sloodle Controllers” (as they control access to your courses), but that is subject to change. This update increases security and flexibility, giving the educators control over how Sloodle behaves on their courses, instead of relying on an administrator setting a site-wide configuration.
Right… off to do Sloodle 101…
Oh, and btw, Second Life is (R) and (TM) Linden Lab etc. etc. and all that legal junk they want us to say every time we mention their product/service.
When tabs go bad
Posted by Peter | Filed under Programming, Sloodle, Websites
I am a Firefox fan-boy… and more than that, a tabbed-browsing junkie. It comes in very handy when working on the Sloodle project, and I’ve got our main site’s forums open in one tab, alongside documentation, a webmail folder (or 5), and a locally hosted Moodle site for testing on.
One thing I’ve learned the hard way recently though is to be really sure of what tab you’re using at what moment. Having tried a few things out in the Sloodle code on my local installation, I wanted to uninstall it from my local Moodle, and re-install it to see if my changes worked properly. Unfortunately, the Moodle tab I had open at the time wasn’t the one on my local machine… but rather, the one on my web-server. I didn’t realise until a fraction of a second too late!
I didn’t lose any seriously important data… this time… but it was quite a nuisance anyway.
I now simply don’t keep more than one Moodle open in the same instance of Firefox at the same time. It’s not worth the risk!
Back from holiday!
Posted by Peter | Filed under Sloodle
After a week off, I was back to work today. Had a big back-log of emails and instant messages to tend do, although surprisingly little forum activity over at Sloodle.org.
Still, plenty to be getting on with. Hoping to get Sloodle 0.3 out the door by the end of June… not pushing too hard to get it out, but enough so that my contact doesn’t end before or immediately after the release!
Currently, I’m still working object-orientating everything in the Sloodle PHP API. I’ve also got to think about making the in-world tools more easily translatable, although the basic code for that has been done… just need to edit the existing scripts to take advantage of it all!
And of course, there’s the usual providing support for people, remember that I’ve got an article about Sloodle to write for the (British) Mensa Computing SIG, and other general stuff.
Fun fun fun.
KitCom
Posted by Peter | Filed under Second Life, Sloodle
A new tool in Second Life is KitCom, which claims to be the “first and only tool to chat between Second Life and WWW”:
Technically it’s not the first and only, since Sloodle has had the “WebIntercom” tool for quite some time to link SL text-chat to a Moodle chatroom. However, I’m glad to see that somebody else has done it outside Moodle. Not sure how it works, but I’m glad to hear of it!
Second Life: DHTML on a Prim!
Posted by Peter | Filed under Second Life, Sloodle
Yep, you read that title right… DHTML on a prim…. yeeeeeaaaaaaah baby! :>>
Checkout this page here, which shows a pretty radio button bouncing about a box, powered by JavaScript (albeit rather poorly hackishly programmed JavaScript):
http://www.avid-insight.co.uk/sl/bouncing-ball3.html
Now, download and run SL client version 1.19.1 (it may need to be Release Candidate), and on your own parcel of land, set your media URL to the above address. Setup an appropriate media prim, and hit “play”.
(For those of you without your own land, we’ll be setting up demos of this stuff soon in the ‘Sloodleville’ area of the “virtuALBA” sim. Do come along!)
It’s fairly slow, and as yet SL doesn’t allow interaction… but it works! It manages to update itself about 4 times per second by the looks of it, which is more than enough for most (sensible) purposes.
Rock on Linden!
Meetings, meetings, meetings
Posted by Peter | Filed under Sloodle
My Tuesdays and Wednesdays are getting somewhat busy now:
Tuesday 10pm: Sloodle Development meeting
Wednesday 10am: Sloodle 101 class
Wednesday 10pm: Sloodle 101 class
With that and my church’s regular outreach starting on Wednesday evenings, I’m not getting much time for boredom! Good fun though. Lots of interesting folks coming to my 101 classes (some sessions more than others), and plenty more along the way in between times!
The project is definitely starting to feel more community-based, which is great. Lots more people getting involved gradually and having basic introductions to the tools through the 101 classes. The Sloodle Pilot will hopefully see more folks getting more seriously involved too as time goes on.
Onward, upward, outward! 
SloodleMoot08
Posted by Peter | Filed under Second Life, Sloodle
Well the first official SloodleMoot is nearly over. It was a 24 hour virtual conference in the virtual world, Second Life, centring primarily around the Sloodle project (as you might guess!). A few hours of dancing left, perhaps… but I think that’s the sessions all done. I was running 2 presentations, with 2 renditions of each. One of each via voice, and one of each via text.
My presentations were:
- Moodle-SL Interactions - looking at the ways in which Moodle and Second Life interact to form the Sloodle module
- Server-Side Programming - how does Sloodle affect the Moodle database, and how do you use the new Sloodle API?
All in all, I thought it was very successful. I got up to a dozen people at each of my sessions, and I thoroughly enjoyed doing them. To take full advantage of the 3d world, I prepared 3-dimensional diagrams to illustrate what I was doing. One diagram was a complex interconnection of blocks, showing which objects in Second Life communicate with which scripts in Moodle. Another showed the Moodle database tables which are added/affected by the Sloodle module, and the last one was a 3d UML class diagram of the Sloodle API.
I got some great feedback, and everybody seemed to appreciate the material and my diagrams. I hope it has also deciphered some of the Sloodle mysteries for many of the mystefied non-techies out there!
I might go back and join the dancing for a wee while now. Night night.
