King's Corner

This is primarily for those Pellissippi State folks with an interest in our presence in Second Life.

Things languished the last year or so, as we anticipated. We were all overwhelmed with moving to a new Course Management System, a new Content Management System, a new Student Information System, budget cuts. overwork, etc. Along with others, I found myself having to track my time and energy into other things. That situation has improved somewhat, and so we are looking at that potential again.

As we’ve mentioned in other articles, Second Life has fallen off the radar of the mainstream media, but since I’ve gotten back into it I’ve been impressed with the continued growth of educational endeavors there, and the ways in which people are figuring out how to use it to foster learning, along with the serious research that is being conducted on SL as a medium for education in distance and hybrid situations. The University of Texas system, for instance, has announced a system of around 50 islands to provide significant space to each of their 16 real-life campuses. Plus, we have people working on an open-source version that can reside on our own servers and potentially hook into the larger metaverse, part of a larger world-wide effort that is likely the next stage in developing a virtual universe that might be considered Web 3.0 or 4.0.

Several faculty were interested in the possibility of SL at one point. We would like to completely rebuild the island known as WindingRiver Campus2 to make it more useful for learning, given SL’s unique capabilities. We’ll have a meeting to discuss this when we get back from fall break, probably at 3 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 23, but subject to rescheduling depending on feedback. If you are interested, please drop an email to dking at pstcc dot edu to make planning easier. Thanks!

Barry Dahl sums it up and comments on it; D2L announces it succinctly. Bottom line: D2L’s pre-existing art shows Blackboard just didn’t invent what it says it invented, so there is no patent infringement.

Pardon me while I offer an editorial opinion, that is mine alone (i.e., it does not necessarily represent the opinion of anyone except me): duh! Now, Bb, can you leave them alone so they can focus on educating students instead of enriching lawyers?

Full US Patent Office report is available in PDF format.

We have been “down,” at least as far as posting, for months. Honestly, the most recent post below was written back in January, and I thought it was posted (I edited it to include the paragraph about the Instructional Technology Conference, which is current). While I was at the conference and looking at the blog, I realized that the “I’m back” post didn’t post. Tried it again, and failed.

I’m pretty handy with PHP, but I just don’t have the time to troubleshoot right now. Fortunately, WordPress, the software that powers this blog, came out with a new version just a few days ago. Upgrading seems to have fixed the issue.

This blog will house several categories of posts. Watch how it develops. To be a “good” blogger, you have to blog frequently. I don’t know that I will be a good blogger, in that sense. The upside is that I will only post when I actually have something to say. There will be others in here as well, people who are conducting Conversation Cafés or who otherwise collaborate with me on projects, so that will make it worthwhile to check back here. Use the Categories listing on the side to find the specialty you’re actually interested in.

This is a place for publishing ongoing discussions about some of the academic issues in which I’m involved, including Conversations Cafés and Second Life use in education. Anyone can make comments, but you must register in order to be able to do so (this is just to cut down on comment spam). Let’s collaborate!