My Final Project

For my final project, I created a private web site that links to a wiki, a spreadsheet in the clouds, and a group photo site for a group of women that take an annual ski trip together each year. The web site houses private information (like phone numbers and addresses) and historical information (that doesn't change), and it serves as a portal to the files and sites that group members will want to edit or add information to.

Historically, the group has used emails to plan the trip, but this means there are literally hundreds of emails – some with key information, some with comments about this information, but many others that are simply friends socializing. It’s overwhelming to simply keep them all, let alone find the one which has the information you are looking for when it comes to making decisions. I can’t tell you how often we re-send information because someone can’t find it. This year, one of our group changed jobs (changing her email address) and lost all the information we had shared. This class got me thinking that there had to be a better way to house the information so it is easier to store the information and more easily find exactly what you are looking for.

The web site is a private site, so you won't be able to open it up and use it, but I've included a picture of it (below). Anyone can see our wiki, so feel free to take a look if you are interested.

Another Blog's List of Collaboration Tools

A recent post on the eLearning Technology blog provided a huge list of collaboration tools that he experienced at a Learning Trends session. I haven't tried them, but just the size of it was amazing to me. I had no idea there was so much software out there aimed at helping people collaborate.

Aviva's Doing It

If you haven't already seen it, check out Shameer's blog post about how Aviva is setting up wikis for its employees to use and starting an Avivapedia as a knowledge management-type system. That's great. Nice to see a company that's not afraid of how people will use this type of technology.

Another Blog's Post about Second Life

I was going back through this year's big questions on The Learning Circuit Blog and came across one about Second Life. It was interesting to read the situations people feel it is most appropriate for and what kind of islands they would create. Check it out.

I liked Steve Churchill's comment on 6/30 about using it for simulations. I can really see that! Alex Heiphetz (who apparently works for a company that helps people get into Second Life) did a nice job of laying out his thoughts on 6/10. He also advocates using it for interaction as opposed to presentation.

My Podcast

Here's a podcast I recorded about customer loyalty ...

Google Site Discoveries

I'm creating a web site for my final project and have discovered a few things others might find helpful ...

• There doesn't seem to be a way to rearrange the pages on the site map. If you accidentally forget to create a new page and mark that it should go below your home page, it becomes your first page and the only way to correct that is to delete the page and start over.
• Regarding collaborators and viewers: Viewers are just what it implies - they can look at the site, but that is it. Collaborators can edit pages, but they can't invite new people to the site or change the appearance -- they can simply update page content, add links/images, etc. Only the owner can determine who has access to the site and how it looks in terms of themes, colors, side bars items/gadgets, etc.
• Is a private site really private? Yes. Only people who are currently on your sharing list can access the site. Others get a message telling them they are restricted from viewing the site. I also tested removing a member to see if her access changed and it did. One minute she could get in, but once I removed her from the sharing list, she got the "access denied" message.

Exploring Second Life - Using it to Train

Prior to last week, I had always thought of Second Life as purely social. I've never been "in world" but from what I had heard, it seemed like more of a game than anything else. Then I started hearing that people are making a living by charging for things in businesses that were set up in Second Life. Hmmmm. Then I heard people were wanting to set up training centers in Second Life. For the life of me, I couldn't see how that would work.

Last week I visited one of these training centers and it was ... interesting.

They had built a building, complete with spiral staircases, as student lounge, a library and classrooms. Through your avatar, you went to the center and participated in synchronous training. Students could use both verbal and typed "chat" to communicate, ask questions, etc. Quite impressive. They even showed us a team building activity where avatars solved problems together with the restriction that they could not speak, much like an activity we do in a classroom team building session.

There certainly appear to be many possibilities.

But there are also some limitations.

First, participants have to be able to work their avatar. One student who was part of the demonstration had been in Second Life for 6 months and she still had trouble raising her hand and walking from one place to another. When it came to "teleporting", another student had to take her along because she wasn't good at that either. It made we wonder to what degree the technology could be distracting to students -- will they be splitting their attention between what they are trying to learn and how to operate their avatar. We run into this challenge with any new technology, but in this case, it seems perhaps a little more complicated.

Second, there is the whole Second Life environment. Let's face it, there is some pretty adult-oriented content out there that is just not considered appropriate for a business/professional environment. Making sure your participants don't accidentally get somewhere they don't want to be would be important. And making sure others who want to be inappropriate don't get into your space in equally important. They recommended making sure you locate your center in a G or PG area of Second Life would help, but the risk is always there. A more certain way of controlling who comes to your center is to pay for an invisible island, but you still have the risk of your students getting into places they don't want to be and possibly unsure how to get back.

The person hosting us admitted that many things he was doing in Second Life could be done more efficiently in other delivery methods, but to him, the great advantage was have one place to access all training - the training center in Second Life. He didn't have some training offered in a classroom, some online via Web-Ex-type technology, some via self-study on a website, some as reading, etc. Everything people needed or wanted to do was at his Second Life training center. All they needed was an avatar to access it.

And while I have not yet been in Second Life other than as a tag-along to this host's avatar, people who are in that space say they really do feel like they are there "in world" -- that they are much more engaged in what they are doing than when they are in a synchronous online training session. But they admit that what they are participating in (social things) is more engaging that a lot of training anyway. They can't say for sure that attending a facilitated session that basically mimics Web-Ex training would really be different in Second Life.

It was very cool. It certainly has potential. But as I said in my earlier post, I'm wondering where it will be in 10 years. Will it really replace all training? Or will we figure out that it is great at some things and not so great at others? And in that case, will it just be one more place to go for training instead of my host's dream of one place for all training?