updates n events

»Next Week, Available via Second Life: Join the ‘Libraries of the Future’ debate at the Bodleian Library
The event take place at the Bodleian Library at Oxford University, UK on April 2nd. If you can’t make it there, you can follow along using Second Life.

From the Web Site:

A debate to raise the current issues facing librarians and data management professionals is being organised by JISC, bringing together an international expert panel to speak at the University of Oxford’s iconic Bodleian Library on 2 April 2009.

In his blog, Professor Peter Murray-Rust, a speaker at this upcoming ‘Libraries of the Future’ debate, expresses serious concern at the apathy he senses amongst university librarians in their failure to engage with the issues that will seriously affect them as we advance into the digital age.

The international panel of speakers comprises:
+ Dr Sarah Thomas, Bodley’s Librarian and Director, Oxford University Library Services
+ Chris Batt OBE, Former Head of Chris Batt Consulting
+ Peter Murray-Rust, Unilever Centre for Molecular Informatics
+ Santiago de la Mora, European Partnerships Lead, Books - Google UK Ltd
+ Robert Darnton, Harvard University Librarian
+ Vincent Gillespie, J.R.R. Tolkien Professor of English Literature and Language

Much More Information Here

Registration for either the live event or via Second Life here. Source: JISC


Writing center adds Second Life for online tutoring for students


Director Frances Crawford said Second Life, the online tutoring social network, is another advantage offered to students and faculty and the latest addition to the writing center.

Second Life targets online students and those with a tight schedule; it is identical to face-to-face tutoring because of its abilities.

Adding to the assistance of the new writing center, such as help with essays, grammar, sentence structure and MLA, Second Life is a social network controlled by tutors from writing centers worldwide and available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Crawford said all students need to download the program at esmgsl.com, which stands for education server management group in Second Life.

Teachers will have access to student assistance items.

For example, a student can create a virtual note card to post a paper and receive help from a tutor; this way, a student can be at home and still receive help through chat.

Tutors also can pull items from a "virtual inventory" list, such as a PowerPoint Presentation, to better explain questions.

Virtual dry erase boards, where students and tutors can converse online and explain questions, are also available.

Tutors can pull up as many boards as needed to describe one's errors or answer questions visually.

Crawford said tutors can have more than one session at a time to better serve those online; they also can have private conversations, where those online surrounding the group will not be able to hear, if they chose.

Much like being in an actual tutoring session, classrooms are also available where the tutor can sit next to a student.

This college, however, is not the only one to use this server, Crawford said. Many universities use the server; there can be from 70,000 to 100,000 surfers worldwide at any given moment.

On the site, there is also a virtual library for those being tutored to do research.

Crawford said even though it is a controlled environment, people do need to be at least 18 to sign up.
Continued...


Living NOAA's Second Life
Mar 23, 2009
As told to Alice Lipowicz

As leader of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Virtual World program, Hackathorn found new ways for the government to participate in the Second Life virtual environment. He also is co-chairman of the Metrics and Research Working Group at the Federal Consortium for Virtual Worlds and co-created SciLands, an international user community that meets on its own mini-continent in Second Life to promote science and technology.


NOAA is testing virtual worlds for use in educational outreach, data visualization and other applications. We are using Second Life as a platform because it caters to a worldwide audience and provides access to people who could never visit our real-life offices. Ideally, we can show students parts of our world they otherwise would not see, like the bottom of the ocean or the northern lights. Much of the data that NOAA produces is inherently 3-D, and Second Life provides unique opportunities for visualization.

NOAA Virtual World started as a personal hobby in 2006 outside normal working hours with a generous donation of a virtual acre of land on Second Life. I was able to demonstrate some basic functionality and convince local management there was value to this new technology. In July 2006, Sandy MacDonald, director of NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory, provided some seed money. NOAA's first virtual island opened in January 2007.

Our program has grown in small steps since then. This process is by no means over. At this point, we have two or three on-site staff and half a dozen subcontractors. Our operational budget is in the low to mid six figures.

Second Life provides the interface, the building tools and the world. It is like an [Internet service provider] hosting a Web site and providing basic tools to design Web pages. The number of regions NOAA utilizes is a function of how much money we invest. Most of the design work is done in Second Life, but more and more, we take advantage of 3-D animation programs like Maya, Blender or SketchUp.

We are beginning to test data visualization in virtual worlds, or what I like to call collaborative [geographic information systems]. One recent prototype we call Second Earth attempted to blend the capabilities of tools like Google Earth or Microsoft Virtual Earth with the collaborative capabilities of Second Life. You can fly through and remotely collaborate about a real-time dataset