IL2007: Tour of Second Life

I did a 15 minute cyber tour of Second Life to a standing room only (SRO) crowd in the exhibit hall on Wednesday. I showed people part of Info International Island and even interacted with a couple of people there. Yes, the tour was live! For some, this was their first look of SL running in real time. (BTW there is no other way of running it, although can see videos -- e.g., videos on YouTube by Ohio University and NOAA -- and pictures of SL.)

During the cyber tour, I told them five things I thought they should know:

1. A basic Second Life account is FREE. It is amazing how much you can do if you have a basic account. However, you cannot own land and cannot buy/sell things. Is that a stopper? No, not for many of us. I'm on a free account and have done presentations in SL and taught classes in SL.
2. The residents are making SL what they want it to be. Linden Labs, who created SL, aren't building it. It is people who have SL avatars that are building the places, products and services.
3. There are no formal governments in SL, but there are simple rules to keep things civil. Really "the rules" try to get us to play nice consistently and to "do unto others as we want others to do unto us." Other than that, Linden Labs is following the rules of the U.S., which is where the company is located. For example, gambling is no longer allowed in SL, since gambling for money on the Internet is not legal in the U.S.
4. In order to run SL, you need a computer with lots of memory, a good video card, and a high-speed Internet access. Some people find that they cannot run other programs when they run SL, and that is something they had to figure out for their setup.
5. People from all walks of life, socio-economic status, physical abilities, interests and time-constraints are active in SL.
   

Afterwards, several people stayed and asked questions. SL seems to always generate questions! I suspect a few people will contact me later with even more questions, especially as they begin to think about using SL in their organizations.

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IL2007: Second Life, part three

The final session on Tuesday at Internet Librarian concerning Second Life had Kelly Czarnecki and David Lee King talking about working with teens on Teen Second Life. Some thoughts included:

• Teens and adults need to know the basics before taking on a project
• Projects may take longer than expected
• Teens can get very engaged when working in a virtual world
• Projects can be focused on a specific school or activity (e.g., teen digital bookcamp)
• how do you assess your work?
• Who handles the money in SL?
• Hands-on learning creates engaged students

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IL2007: Second Life, part two

More notes from the Second Life track on Tuesday:

• Micki McIntyre talked about health/medical resources/sites in Second Life, e.g., Center for Disease Control, National Library of Medicine, and the American Cancer Society. There are also support groups in SL. In addition, there is the Support for Healing Island and Healing Island.
  
• Some people with disabilities are using SL and finding it beneficial. [related blog post] People with disabilities find camaraderie and a place where they can do things there that they cannot do in real life (RL).
  
• There are spirituality sites in SL. There are recreations like the Mosque at Chebi and Sistine Chapel. there are places that have real congregations like Wings of Hope and bFirst Unitarian Universalist Church.
• Micki's handouts are at www.healthynj.org/sl.html. Additional resources at http://slhealthy.wetpaint.com.
  
• Derry McMahonElisabeth Marripodi talked about virtual training hospitals.
• Why?
• Immersive environment
• Interactive
• Controlled environment
• Can be scripted
  
• What do they do? e.g.,
  
• Case presentations
• Discussions
• Patient scenarios
• Drawbacks
• Unreliable Internet connection
• Unpredictable problems in-world
• Other
• Combine virtual and real resources
• Can do disaster preparation training (without a real disaster)
• Can create custom designed learning environments

Updated 11/03/2007

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IL2007: Second Life, part one

This morning, there were two sessions on Second Life and virtual worlds.

• Lori Bell spoke about what virtual worlds are, why we (librarians) are in Second Life. She also talked briefly about librarians getting involved in another virtual world geared for children called Whyville.
• Shawn McCann spoke about being an Immersive (Gaming) Librarian.
• Jeremy Kemp gave a presentation about the work San Jose State University is doing in SL.
  
• I (Jill Hurst-Wahl) spoke about the tools needed to build virtual communities [presentation]
  
• JJ Jacobson talked about supporting communities in a virtual world and specifically groups were role-playing is important (e.g., an idealized Victorian community). [presentation]
• Kate Fitz, a law librarian, gave an interesting presentation on the work she is doing in SL as well as some of the legal issues that have been raised about SL. [presentation will be here]
  
• Rosemary Arneson is an academic librarian who talked about the work her library is doing in SL and what she'd like to do in the future. One thing she wants to build is a virtual wetlands/swamp to highlight that type of environment and teach why they need to be saved.
  
• Michael Sauers talked about some of the issues/problems/concerns with SL. We tend to say that it is all "rosey", but it isn't.
  

The audience asked good questions, both publicly and privately. I think people got a lot out of the presentations and hearing from people who are using SL (and who are willing to point out concerns).

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IL2007: What's Happening in IL Space?

The Sunday night event was at the Monterey Public Library and was an intro to several themes that are going to occur at the conference.

Jeremy Kemp, Lori Bell and Kitty Pope talked about Second Life.

• Jeremy talked about how San Jose State University is using Second Life. They got into SL early and have been innovative. What was a bit disappointing is that their space in SL seems to really mirror their RL space.
  
• Lori and Kitty talked about the work the Alliance Library System has been doing in SL. There are 37 library and partner islands. There are 50+ libraries in SL. There are 600+ library people in the Alliance SL Google Group and 700+ working in SL, most on a volunteer basis. And these are people from around the world.

Aaron Schmidt talked about gaming. It's a $11 billion industry. Games are about content and learning. He believes that libraries should support gaming and talked about events that libraries could hold for all age groups.

Amanda Etches-Johnson talked about a couple tools that libraries are using to provide more services to their patrons. For example, becoming an Amazon affiliate or doing readers advisory through Facebook ("I Read" Facebook Application).

These were all quick 10-minute presentations. Teasers. Then there was a wine and cheese reception that allowed us all to talk and mingle before heading to dinner.

How many people were there? I didn't count, but definitely more than 100 I think.

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Second Life workshop at Internet Librarian conference

Yesterday, I was part of a team that did a three-hour workshop at the Internet Librarian conference entitled Libraries on the MUVE in Second Life (SL). The other members of the team were:

• Kitty Pope (Kitty Phillip in SL), Executive Director, Alliance Library System
• Barbara Galick (Puglet Dancer in SL), Executive Director, Cullom-Davis Library, Bradley University
• Tom Peters (Maxito Ricardo in SL), Founder, TAP Information Services
• (My avatar name in SL is Jillianna Suisei.)
  

The handouts for the workshop will be online later this week at http://www.alliancelibrarysystem.com/presentations.cfm

From the workshops I've done on SL, there are several things people often want to know. A few of these questions (below) were raised yesterday:

• What equipment is needed to do SL? The info is on the SL web site...but good to have better than what they state.
  
• Do you need to pay to do SL? No
• How do I know who these other avatars are in real life? Look at their profiles and/or ask.
• How much does it cost to own land in SL? The land prices are on the SL web site. Not-for-profits can receive a 50% discount. There are also monthly maintenance fees. All of these fees go to purchase and maintain server space.
• How much does it cost to construct buildings in SL? Well, often people will volunteer to do construction, which means the labor is free. However, if you need to pay someone, then the costs can vary, likely based on the person's skills and the time required to do the building. Buildings can be inexpensive ($50 - $500) or very expensive (multiple thousands of dollars). It was noted yesterday that one person charges $2,000 to do terra forming (forming islands to specifications).
• How much time do people spend "in" SL? That really varies. The consensus is that spending a lot of time upfront learning the commands, etc., is very important. After that, it depends on a person's preferences.

How many people are active in SL? I like to raise that question. Generally, at any given time, there are 30,000 - 50,000 avatars in SL. In the last 60 days, 1.4 million avatars have logged into SL. However, you'll notice that there are more than 10 million registered avatars. This morning, Stephen Abram mentioned over breakfast that many avatars go into SL around 5 times and then quit. Why? I believe it is because SL is not intuitive and not easy to learn. People may also not understand what the benefit is for them.

How many virtual worlds are there? Tom Peters has been keeping track and has a list now of 50+ virtual worlds. Some are geared for young children, which means that kids are growing up understanding this technology. How will that influence there interface preferences, etc., when they are adults? Interesting question, eh!

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