Another Look at SLoodle

A few months ago, I wrote about the grand opening of the San Jose State Unviersity's School of Library and Information Science in Second Life. One of the biggest impressions left on me that day was how they connected the inworld presentation with a Moodle chat room, allowing people without SL connections to chat with those who were in world. By happy chance, I was inworld and alerted to a meeting going on. Here are excerpts from a transcript of my chat with Pedro McMillan, the new full-time developer for SLoodle, an application that links SL with Moodle.

First up, a Glossary tool:

[7:46] Pedro McMillan: here's a nice simple one to start with

[7:46] Pedro McMillan: are you familiar with the glossary tool in Moodle?

[7:46] Oberon: No.

[7:47] Pedro McMillan: it's a module you can create for any course, and it is exactly what it sounds like.... a glossary of terms which you can look up. [On SLoodle.org,] we have a glossary with various Second Life terms in it

[7:50] Pedro McMillan: this little cylinder on the floor [in Second Life where our avatars were standing] lets us connect to that from here, so that e.g. a classroom full of students can all see the definitions together

[7:50] Pedro McMillan: it works by chatting "/def WORD", where "WORD" is whatever you want to look up

[7:50] Pedro McMillan: /def avatar

In the chat text area, the following information was generated by the object:

[7:50] Sloodle MetaGloss .3: Avatar: 1) The digital representation of your virtual self in Second Life. Or, in plain English, the character in Second Life that's you; 2) Other people's characters. Generally, any other thing with a name above it (though there are very convincing cardboard cutouts in Second Life); 3) A "costume" or outfit; a full set of avatar body parts, clothing, and/or attachments that provides a specific look.

[7:50] Oberon Octagon grins and chuckles, Cool!

[7:51] Oberon: /def slurl

[7:51] Pedro McMillan: there's not much in it at the moment (everybody always thinks of terms that we haven't added yet!)

[7:51] Sloodle MetaGloss .3: SLURL: A door to go into Second Life from www.

[7:51] Oberon Octagon pumps fist

[7:51] Pedro McMillan: /def prim

[7:51] Sloodle MetaGloss .3: Prim: Primitive - the smallest unit of building objects. Box, sphere, etc.

[7:51] Pedro McMillan: so that's the basic idea... nice and simple, but can be quite effective, especially if you are teaching languages

[7:52] Oberon: Oh, yeah.

[7:52] Pedro McMillan: (or just *better* language to people who are not very literate)

[7:52] Pedro McMillan: (which counts for a lot of the population of

Scotland

(where I am!))

[7:52] Oberon: In a reference desk situation, this would be very nice.

The next HUD we looked at allowed me to post to a Moodle blog:

[7:56] Sloodle Toolbar Box owned by Pedro McMillan gave you 'Sloodle Toolbar v1.1.1' ( http://slurl.com/secondlife/virtuALBA/246/232/31 ).

[7:56] Oberon: But I don't see a Toolbar in my inventory. [I'd gotten a bunch of things from a SLoodle exhibit during the grand opening.]

[7:57] Oberon: So here goes.

[7:57] Pedro McMillan: this has just been updated (well actually reprogrammed completely), so this is the most up-to-date one anyway

[7:57] Oberon: One is customizable, but I figure the other is what I should test?

[7:57] Pedro McMillan: yes... the sloodle.org one

[7:58] Sloodle Toolbar v1.1.1 (sloodle.org): Please chat the subject line of your blog entry.

The HUD was telling me to use the chat line in SL browser to create the title.

[7:58] Pedro McMillan: if it doesn't say "Initialising..." when you first wear it, then try detaching it and wearing it again

[7:58] Oberon: Testing the Sloodle Toolbox

The HUD showed that the title of my Blog post would be Testing the Sloodle Toolbox

[7:58] Sloodle Toolbar v1.1.1 (sloodle.org): Please chat the body of your blog entry.

[7:58] Oberon: It asked me to chat the title and that worked. Now we're onto the blog entry. Very spiffy.

[7:58] Sloodle Toolbar v1.1.1 (sloodle.org): Please review your entry, and click "Save Changes" to send your entry to the website, or "Cancel" if not.

[7:59] Oberon: Review entry and Save changes. [I chose Cancel.]

[7:59] Sloodle Toolbar v1.1.1 (sloodle.org): Blog entry cancelled.

[7:59] Oberon: I cancelled. Wasn't sure how I was going to edit or revise the entry. But that's nice.

[8:00] Oberon: I assume you can initialize it to a personal blog?

[8:00] Pedro McMillan: only to a Moodle blog

[8:00] Oberon: Doh!

[8:00] Oberon: But each student in a class would get one. That's very nice.

We are in the process of converting the WebCT courses to Moodle. It won't be a difficult stretch to adopt SLoodle somewhere down the road, and I will keep in touch with the SLoodle developers as they refine their work on this exciting application.

What We Need to Know About Wikis

I talked to Jenny Levine, our Wiki expert at ALA, about developments in providing and promoting wikis to the association. At RUSA, we have a number of wikis under development and as they "blossom" I add a link to each wiki to the ALA ReadWriteConnect lisiting of wikis. When enough wikis are ready for greater exposure, I'll put a page together on the RUSA site as well. But it makes little sense to make known the existence of a wiki where there is no work being done. I leave it to appropriate RUSA committees to establish guidelines and policies regarding wikis, but will use this article to make some suggestions and provide links for further understanding.

First of all, ALA has begun an excellent wiki on wikis explaining what they are and how to use them, as well as suggesting what ALA staff needs to know in order to get one started for you. It also includes best practice suggestions and tips for handling your wiki. ALA has really ramped up support for these wonderful collaborative tools! What's most important to understand, as Jenny wrote me, "Almost anything can be changed in a wiki's infrastructure at a moment's notice, as evidenced by the fact that you can suddenly turn on uploading, install a plugin to display RSS feeds, etc." But she went on to state that "the bigger issue is probably going to be structure. If you set up a wiki's structure to be chronological (which just means you manually organize entries on the home page and page titles by date) and then you decide to change to an alphabetical framework, you have to manually change the organization of the home page and possibly the page titles. Technically it's easy enough to do that (just "move" pages to new names and retype the entries on the home page), but it will be time-intensive. That's why it's a good idea to talk through the structure ahead of time and think about where you want be a year from now."

(Jenny gave me some great examples from her experience with ALA wikis, but I hesitate to steal what could be the basis of a good blog article from her on this topic!)

The biggest concern I have expressed is about the multitude of "plug-ins" and "extensions" that are appearing for use with wikis that practically turn them into sophisticated interactive Web sites. MediaWiki provides a great source of information on these extensions that should be consulted before considering what the structure and scope of your wiki will take. (A look at the Categories page provides an at-a-glance look at
what can be done, which includes chat, forums (bulletin boards), RSS, Google, Firefox, and other applications.)

And, of course, every wiki that I help set up for RUSA or ASCLA will reference the MediaWiki Handbook that provides comprehensive help in working with wikis.

As always, I welcome questions and comments!