Eloise Pasteur (eloisep)'s Public Profile in the Diigo Community

Member since Jul 04, 2008, follows 31 people, 13 public groups, 153 public bookmarks (159 total).

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Recent Bookmarks and Annotations

JISC Second Life guide helps lecturers teach in the virtual world : JISC on 2009-08-07
MindNode and MindNodePro - mindmapping software - Eloise's thoughts and fancies on 2009-07-10
Coda - is it really the last word in coding? - Eloise's thoughts and fancies on 2009-07-08
Research Article: A Second Life PCR lab evaluation on 2009-07-06
- This study examines students’ reactions
  to the virtual biosciences laboratory developed in Second Life® (SL)
  at the University of East London. Final year undergraduates and
  masters students studying biotechnology took part in a trial of
  a virtual Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) experiment in Second
  Life and evaluated their experience by anonymous questionnaire.
  Learning gains were measured at various points during the study
  using pre- and post-tests, and interaction with demonstrators was
  monitored and compared during the real life (RL) practical. Both
  groups showed a significant increase in learning gain over the
  pre- and post-tests, although no difference in gains between the
  two groups was detected. However, students who conducted the PCR
  experiment in SL required significantly less demonstrator assistance
  during the subsequent RL practical. The SL practical was well received
  by students, with 92% of participants reporting that they would
  like to use the system again and many requesting other experiments
  to be made available in this manner in the future.
- The aim of this study was to determine
  whether conducting the PCR experiment in the virtual world of Second
  Life produced similar learning gains to those observed in the physical
  world laboratory and to see if working in the Virtual Lab enhanced
  students understanding of the experiment. The student perceptions
  of the Virtual Lab as a teaching mechanism and the perceived impact
  on their learning was examined through questionnaires.
- 7 more annotations...
- - The SL
    group completed a pre(virtual) Lab quiz and then individually registered
    for Second Life to create an avatar under instructor supervision.
    Each student completed some orientation exercises on UEL Island
    to become adequately skilled in using the Second Life environment
    (e.g. flying, putting on clothing etc.). The student avatars then
    met in the Virtual Lab to perform the PCR experiment. This was
    initially demonstrated by a member of staff before each student
    completed the virtual experiment themselves. Throughout this teaching
    session the students received face to face and virtual communication
    from their instructor.
  - Participants in both groups then completed
    the physical world PCR practical individually in the laboratory.
    During the physical world practical the number of questions asked
    of staff and demonstrators by students in each group was recorded.
    After the real-world practical all participants completed the in-class
    quiz once again as a measure of overall learning gain.
  - Pre-, mid- and post-tests were used to
    examine the learning gains seen in the students at each stage of
    the teaching process. The learning gains of each group at the three
    stages of testing are illustrated in Figure 2. Using a mixed (or
    split-plot) ANOVA there were found to be no significant difference
    between the learning gains achieved by the SL and non-SL groups,
    with both groups achieving the same mean increase in test score
    between the pre and post tests. Interestingly however, there was
    a significant difference between the scores achieved by students
    in the SL and non-SL groups overall (p<0.001), with the initial
    average pre-test score of the SL group being significantly higher
    than the initial average pre-test score for the non-SL group. Quiz
    scores increased significantly across the study for students in
    both groups (p<0.001).
  - The number of questions asked by students
    during the physical world laboratory practical was recorded for
    the non-SL and SL groups. As can be seen in Figure 3, the non-SL
    group (Demonstration) asked significantly more questions (p<0.001)
    during the practical than the SL group. Furthermore, the staff
    supporting the practical sessions reported the SL group students
    to be more organised in their conduct during the class and appeared
    to take less time to complete the task.
  - Overall, satisfaction with the Virtual
    Lab was high. Ninety-two percent of respondents said they would
    use Second Life again and many had commented during the teaching
    session that they would like to see other experiments in the Virtual
    Lab. There were no significant differences in opinion between the
    sexes and between those who are re-sitting the module (11 students)
    and those that were not. Students who had already completed one
    Semester of the course joining the programme in October 2008 (21
    students) found the in world instructions on how to complete the
    Virtual Lab experiment more useful than those (29 students) who
    started in Semester B, February 2009 (p<0.05).
  - A moderate negative correlation was found between
    age and overall satisfaction (r= -0.54, p<0.001). Younger students
    were generally more satisfied with Second Life than older students.
  - Those who had used Second Life before
    the study (16 out of 50 students) differed significantly in their
    expectation of in-world feedback whilst undertaking the Virtual
    PCR experiment from those who had no prior Second Life experience
    (p<0.05). Of the 16 students that had used SL before 6 students
    answered Q11 of the questionnaire (Table 1) with 3 or lower while
    only 4 students out of the 34 who had not used SL before answered
    Q11 in this way. Those who had used Second Life before thought
    that they had not received sufficient feedback during the experiment.
Photoshop CS4 fun - Eloise's thoughts and fancies on 2009-06-08
- However, I also bought Photoshop CS4 Down and Dirty Tricks by Scott Kelby. Kelby runs Kelby Training and is a Photoshop pro, so there's a nice balance there
- There's a fair bit in terms of work-flow that I learnt and that I think I will remember. There's more in terms of tricks that I might use occasionally that I know I won't remember, but I will remember where to look them up when I need them. The image over to the right is one I made, using the instructions, in about an hour. It would have been faster, but in a couple of places I struggled until I went back and read the instructions very, very carefully, but for 3D modelling that's hardly a crime - could you make something like this in Second Life in an hour of first building?
- 1 more annotations...
- - The other thing to mention is a tool called Filter Forge which is now available for the Mac. Filter Forge comes with a load of presets that let you create rocks, metals etc. simply, and also adapt and create your own filters that you can share. You can also easily create seamless textures, and apply the filters to your own textures. It's also got a 30% discount for the next couple of days!
Solving problems the Web 2.0 way - Eloise's thoughts and fancies on 2009-05-23
"Second Life is dead" unless you can actually read - Eloise's thoughts and fancies on 2009-05-08
- The Nielsen people record actual minutes using various "sites" across 180,000+ US-homes. Second Life comes out at 760 minutes per week (that's over 12 hours), or over 1h 45 minutes per day... (wimps - I'd be an outlier around the 2500 minutes per week mark!). Amongst its users (comparing to other user-minutes per week) this makes it more popular than even the 800lb gorilla of World of Warcraft (653 minutes per week).
- Comparing it to social media sites the difference is even more extreme - Facebook does the best at 84 minutes per week: that's 11% of the time that Second Life users spend. Twitter weighs in at about an hour a week on average. Stephen Fry is much bigger in his usage I'm sure, but the averages are up there for easy comparison.
- 2 more annotations...
- - What does it all mean? Well, it might mean Second Life is a niche market, but it's a fiercely loyal niche market that really, really gets it - and this gives Linden Lab a reasonably solid (hard numbers are impossible to come by) income stream and around that a reasonable likelihood of continuing to provide its service.
  - Signing up to Second Life is more like taking someone who has basically no computer experience and saying "learn the internet" - there are lots of steps along the way, moments that are critical to whether they will continue or not, but there are lots of skills to go from seeing your first web-page to signing up to a forum, RSSing a blog or two, generating a web-page with HTML, CSS and jquery... and that's the challenge of learning Second Life.
Advantages of Second Life over web-conferencing - Eloise's thoughts and fancies on 2009-04-27
- Advantages of Second Life over web-conferencing
- Experience - whereas video is a one-way, passive experience, SL is a group one. This is a completely different dynamic, if the presentation makes use of it. If they just passively show a video, they might as well be on the web. Think of it, when done well, as comparing sitting in a movie vs at a comedy show where the audience can yell out comments that are instantly worked into the skit.
  Collaboration - participants get a completely different experience when they 'see' each other. It is more involving and interactive. This gives the speaker a chance to gather instant feedback, adjusting the presentation on the fly. There is even software for SL that allows participants to give feedback at specified times via their keyboard. Also, we find that "leaders" emerge in virtual focus groups, who often bring out information from others but don't dominate as they might in a "real" focus group.
  Screening - starting with a larger group, sub-groups can be created based on criteria such as beginners, those giving great feedback, gender, etc. These avatars can be instantly transported into other prepared rooms or SL environments for follow up, further Q&A, take a tour, etc.
  Also, participants can click on each other's profiles and learn about each other, something many like to do.
- 2 more annotations...
- - Spatiality - in a three-dimensional space people can move, and use proximity and distance to each other or to objects (for example for group building, voting by feet, to 'physically' separate collaboration tasks from one another, or just to non-verbally communicate preferences). In video conferencing, all you see is somebody else's mimics. There is no concept of space at all - which is crucial, however: remember Nonaka's Ba.
    Embodiment - being virtually embodied as an avatar can augment the feeling of co-presence, the feeling of being there together with your colleagues, peers, or collaboration team, etc. Directing your virtual representation, you visualize where your attention is at every point in time. In a video conference, nobody knows if you are paying attention or just looking at a totally different application on your screen.
    Configurability and scriptability - a virtual world can be more than a container for space, physics and avatars. Realized as a reactive, interactive and maybe even intelligently behaving environment it can harbor, support, and augment rich user experiences.
  - 'Applying it right' would mean here:
    
    not to use the virtual world as just a fancy chat system with some visuals in the background
    
    provide real interactive experiences instead
    
    not to make as many people as possible sit down and watch yet another 2D powerpoint presentation in a 3D world
    
    encourage them to use / make them use the new possibilities offered by the system (move, discover, create, modify, interact, ...)
    
    not to try to teach them how to use all the menus in the SL software
    
    rather let the interactive objects speak for themselves on a simple click (->establish new forms of 'dialogs')
    
    leave 2D 'flatland' (info walls, in-world powerpoint presentations)
    
    embrace 3Dimensionality
Why Second Life works like it does - Eloise's thoughts and fancies on 2009-04-22
Good media week for Second Life - Eloise's thoughts and fancies on 2009-04-07

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