ACRL-VWIG Program April 27, 2014

"Embedded Librarianship for 21st Century Learning"

April 27, 2014

Speakers: Valerie Hill (Valibrarian Gregg) and David Shumaker (Dmitri Starsmith)

 At this program, Valerie Hill (Valibrarian Greg in SL) and David Shumaker (Dmitri Starsmith in SL) explored what it means to be an "embedded librarian" in a virtual world.  Val presented first, reviewing how it came out of the goal to serve library patrons wherever they are and to incorporate services that help librarians meet information literacy goals.

She pointed out that real challenge facing embedded librarians is how to integrate information literacy goals within whatever context they find themselves working, be it a virtual world or in a classroom. This challenge is made difficult by the rapidly changing information landscape librarians find themselves working in.  Print resources are no longer the top of the information hierarchy.  Meeting information literacy goals means we must consider literacy for all information formats including print, digital, audio, video, social media and virtual worlds.

 The concept of information literacy has changed.  It now encompasses all types of "literacy"  including Digital, Media, and Print literacy.  Librarians and educators are engaged in fostering all types of literacy.  Info literacy no longer means just print or teaching people to read.

Librarians and educators today are all impacted by  "virtual worlds" whether or not they actively participate in Second Life because they are involved in social media, online meetings, online exhibits/displays and other immersive learning environments.  Embedded librarians share resources and information in numerous formats both synchronous and asynchronous, and,  in both physical and digital realms.

The next presenter, David Shumaker, author of the book, "The Embedded Librarian: Taking Knowledge Where It’s Needed" (Information Today, 2012).  David examined what being an "embedded librarian" means. He pointed out that being embedded isn't dependent on place, driven by technology and isn't only about teaching.

 

Embedded librarians develop strong working relationships of mutual understanding with teaching faculty.  They work together to develop shared goals and objectives.  Librarians should be seen as partners who share responsibility for educational outcomes and where they have full membership in the team. Embedded is about collaboration, not about technology.

Embedded librarians have a role in curriculum development and course design.  They can use their strong skills as collaborators to work with subject instructors and with students. David pointed out that the librarians role in Distance Ed and learning is not extraneous to the process but, should be considered integral to it.  This view dovetails with the ACRL Info Literacy Competency Standards.

Philip Rosedale & Ebbe Linden Address the Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Conference

Philip Rosedale Delivers Opening Address
"Closing the Gap: Virtual Reality & Education"

April 9, 2014

Over 160 people from around the world attended the opening address of the Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Conference given by Philip Rosedale.  Rosedale, one of the founders of Second Life and it's former CEO is now CEO High Fidelity Inc. He focused on the next steps to be taken in making virtual environments a success.
 

He said that the biggest obstacles to the adoption of Virtual Worlds by a wider audience are solvable technical issues.  The biggest technology issue, one which creates a huge limitation on the way people can interact in virtual worlds,  is the reliance on the mouse and keyboard to communicate.  "It is hard to communicate with each other here. The problem is the mouse.  You have to use a mouse which only gives you 2 degrees of freedom; up/down or side to side."  

 
While text is powerful, it limits people's ability to communicate.  He suggested that Oculus Rift and  advances such as motion controllers and 3D cameras, advances which allow "visual immersion" or presence, will powerfully impact the user's ability to communicate and participate in virtual worlds.

 

On the future of virtual reality platforms 

 

"I believe that for virtual worlds to become a tool we all use, they have to be a lot more like the internet than it is today.  We all need to run our own servers.  Linking has to be akin to linking to the web.....the Virtual world of the future, as it takes its next leap, is going to be an inter-network of virtual worlds."

Philip also spoke about scalability.  To increase the number of simultaneous users who can log-in, virtual worlds like Second Life currently rely on putting more and bigger servers to work.  He pointed out that this wasn't a workable solution as "there aren't enough servers on the planet" to get everyone into virtual worlds.  One possible solution, is to implement a peer-to-peer system, something like that used by Skpe or BitTorrent.  "The Next generation of virtual worlds can be build as a cloud of machines that are shared and borrowed from all of us....The new hardware, led by Oculus Rift, will open the doors to easier ways to interface with virtual environments."

For educators and education in general, he had this to say:

"The future for education [in virtual worlds] will be incredible.  You will be able to bring in more people at once, and relate directly to them."

The complete presentation can be accessed at Youtube courtesy of Mal Burns

****************************************************************************

CEO of Linden Labs, Ebbe Altberg presents keynote address at VWBPE Conference

 April 11, 2014

Over 200 people attended the keynote address, "Reconnecting with the Education Market" by Ebbe Altberg, the new CEO of Linden Lab/Second Life at the 7th Annual Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Conference.

The focus was on the future of Second Life, but he spent a lot of time addressing questions. Here are some highlights from his presentation.

About Linden Lab's controversial Terms of Service issue:
"I am working with my Legal Counsel to try to try to figure out how we can make it more obvious – or very obvious – that the creators of the content own the content, and we obviously have no intent of ever stealing your content or profiting off of your content independently of the creators in some fashion.  The current terms might indicate that we might somehow have some plan to steal people’s content and somehow profit from it for ourselves, without benefiting the creator, and that’s obviously not our intent at all. We're working on some simple tweaks to the language to make that more explicit."

Ebbe stressed that the company is interested in rebuilding and strengthening the connection between Linden Lab and the community of educators.

About the Education Sector:
I feel very strongly that the education sector, the education market, is a very important partner of Second Life, and that it’s important to us to make it a great product for all of you.  I think the education sector helps us a lot of ways, in that if we can provide a great service to you, you can become great evangelists for the platform, and also in many times I think you are pushing in research and thinking about how to use environments and technologies like this.  I know that originally education was an important aspect to Second Life and Linden Lab and then a few years back we make a mistake of disconnecting with this community and increasing pricing and all kinds of things; and we’re actively now trying to reverse that."

He emphasized that he is encouraging openness and communication between users and Linden Lab.  Lindens are being told to be inworld, a policy that reverses the practice of the company in the past.  He spoke of encouraging dialogue between users and Linden Lab, particularly with educators.

“Of course. They make this all possible. We don’t do content. We empower content creators to draw in other users to share those that is incredibly important.”

The biggest obstacle to virtual world adoption by a wider audience:
“Ultimately, in order for Second Life to grow, it has to become easier to use. It takes too much time to engage and immerse people and make them functional.....Unless we do something technical, nothing will change...There was an under-investment in user experience....My dream is to make this something a huge number of people can enjoy and contribute to."

For those using Macs in Second Life, he promised to look into the current problem which prevents shared media from working. This is a long overdue and very welcomed promise.

The one message that educators can take back from the conference from him/Linden Lab:
 “We are here. We are willing to listen and dialogue. We want to talk about the future. The doors are open again. We want to know how to make you successful. That’s it. I’m here. I’m happy to talk with all of you. I want to learn and listen. I want to make you successful.”
  
View the full presentation via youtube courtesy of Mal Burns