Virtual worlds

The Association of Virtual Worlds has just released its new title The Blue Book: A Consumer Guide to Virtual Worlds listing over 250 virtual worlds and is pleased to offer it free to anyone who is interested in the rapidly growing field of virtual worlds.

Download it as a zip file and open it in .pdf. You will be rewarded with 43 pages of definition, explanation and links to all the virtual worlds currently available.

Getting ready for the New World

I am forever shouting the praises of Second Life in which I can learn, create, socialise and play. I joined a year ago today and my avatar took her first steps inworld when we studied a course in Virtual World Librarianship. This was so rewarding that I then went on to do the Intermediate course and have registered for Working with a Class in Second Life next month.

If you don't know what all the hype is about read Second Life - what is the hype? a new post in the makeuseof.com blog. The writer claims that Education is one of the most progressive fields in SL and while I am still hoping that one day my college will see the light, I am preparing to offer training to our lecturers to get them ready for the new wave.

Training Resources

I'm always on the lookout for resources to improve information literacy training and distance education. Here are some I found in Roddy MacLeod's latest Information Resources Newsletter:

1. Alternate Reality Games for Orientation, Socialisation and Induction: ARGOSI http://www.playthinklearn.net/argosi.htm
2. Create online training http://www.create-online-training.com/
3. ELI Discovery Tool: Net Generation Workshop Guide http://www.educause.edu/NetGenTool
4. Handbook for Information Literacy Teaching http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/insrv/educationandtraining/infolit/hilt/index.html
   

Second Life demo

I did a demo of Second Life for Adult Education Week recently. There was a disappointing turnout - I don't think it was promoted very well - but the 1 lecturer, 2 psychologists and a smattering of Library staff who attended were entertained and, I think, persuaded to try it for themselves. I was lucky to come across a couple of avatars in a library in SL and one of them entertained us by turning himself into a multi-coloured dragon and several other incarnations. I get a lot of pleasure out of this programme and am doing another virtual librarianship course starting in next week. There is so much to learn about the world and how to do things in it. My new home PC is in for repairs (it went into a regular reboot cycle and couldn't get started) so I am currently unable to visit SL from home. It's very frustrating. Can't play Oblivion either and am having to spend more time on housework!!

Who am I?

As part of the 23 Things programme that I am coordinating for my college I started playing around with avatars from Yahoo earlier this week. Here is my avatar:


She's quite unlike the character I play in Oblivion (blonde, fair-skinned, delicate-looking but a champion fighter with "hands like a smith" or my Second Life avatar (she changes virtually every time I go in-world as I have an amazing array of free hairstyles, skins and clothes in my inventory as well as the ability to change my appearance at will). It's sometimes hard to come back to reality and look at myself in a real-world mirror.

The digital native thingy

I knew that my obsession with video style games such as Morrowind and Oblivion was not just a case of my being a "gaming granny" but something a bit more deep and meaningful. Now, as reported in insidehighered.com, College and university librarians have some unconventional advice: Play more video games. When ‘Digital Natives’ Go to the Library.
This irks me somewhat in that it categorises librarians once again using the Digital Native/Digital Immigrant tags. I recently attended "Nerd School", hoping to become more familiar with new terminology and usage of new technologies, but was instead subjected to a test to see whether I was an immigrant or a native. I defy many so-called "natives" to achieve as high a score as I got! I suffer from insatiable curiosity and am always trying out new things and learning all the time.