We visited the BIOME (141, 171, 34) to meet Clowey Greenwood, a science educator from Northern Michigan University who has been enriching his face to face classes in Second Life since fall 2007. They received funding to make this sim and it is currently still under construction. The CONFERENCE ROOM, BIOME (43, 55, 69) we were in was round with a presentation screen at the front.
Clowey teaches elementary school teachers, and at the time was teaching a graduate course called “Current Issues in Science Education.” He says he gets great student evaluations of the course and teaches with text only – no voice. His rules include a 30-second wait before replying which he feels gives slower students time to respond, deeper or slower thinkers extra time, and leads to greater participation overall. From his experience students can come to a class in SL if they can walk to their chair and use their camera. What he has learned is that students needs clear directions, and splitting the class into smaller groups is effective. [11:59] Clowey Greenwood: I was going to tell you about the undergrad's favorite activity
[11:59] Esme Qunhua: please
[11:59] Clowey Greenwood: They toured the cell on the neighboring island of Genome in pairs or 3
[11:59] Clowey Greenwood: and took snapshots of themselves next to parts of the cell.
[12:00] Clowey Greenwood: Then they used those snapshots to make powerpoint presentations of their "tour of the cell"
[12:00] Clowey Greenwood: the instructions were to pretend they were tour guides and, besides making it scientifically correct, make it fun and creative
[12:00] Clowey Greenwood: everyone loved that activity
[12:01] Clowey Greenwood: And they got a much better idea of what a 3D cell is like than you can get from even a (supposedly) 3D model in the classroom
[12:01] Esme Qunhua: Clowey can you tell us about the butterfly event and then we will get out of your way.
[12:02] Clowey Greenwood: Ode Butterfly collectors and Science Friday (the US National Public radio weekly show) are sponsoring a butterfly hunt across several sims
[12:02] Clowey Greenwood: This is starting right now. Below you will find a lot of posters with electron micrographs of butterflies and scientific information
[12:03] Clowey Greenwood: If you find a butterfly and click on it with your mouse, you might win a piece of jewelry
After the interview we took a break and many of us went looking for butterflies in the hunt taking place that day. It’s hard to catch a butterfly in virtual reality. After I managed to finally get one I “won” a bracelet made by an SL artist. It sparkled and I learned that this was a particle sim. The Particle Lab is a space in SL where you can learn how to do particle animation which is used to create things such as smoke, fairy dust and sea spray. Particle is a two-dimensional image which is always seen straight-on by any given avatar.
Class ended with a three-dimensional Likert scale. This is a method of using closed-ended assessment questions meant to gauge feelings or attitudes on a rated scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree. This method is used for collecting rank-ordered data (all possible responses are given to respondents). I felt this was a very successful and fun way to gather this information.
