Many educators, over the past couple of years, have had the chance to participate in a number of online synchronous professional development sessions, commonly called Webinars. Vendors often give product walk-through presentations using the WebEx online conferencing program. The International Society for Technology in Education presents professional development sessions using Adobe Connect, another Web-based presentation software. Other districts and educational agencies choose Elluminate as their presentation platform. Each of these products has similar components—they allow the participants to view a presentation, chat in a chat window to ask questions or make a comment, create polls to collect data from the participants in real-time, and sometimes even allow the use of a microphone in addition to a chat window. Usually, the sessions are recorded and archived so participants can go back and review the presentation or share it with others in their professional learning community.

MUVEs

Second Life, a Multi-user Virtual Environment, takes this type of interactive online professional development one step further. In this environment participants log in to a virtual world and are represented by their virtual persona, or “avatar,” which they created earlier. I have observed in lab settings many teachers using this type of environment to enhance their professional practice, and see how truly engaging and educationally sound it is.

According to research compiled and edited by Dr. Barry Ellis in his discussion of learning and technology specialist Betty Collis’ work, online professional development environments should allow for the following patterns of communication in the online environment: Telling, asking, responding, and discussion. Second Life easily provides for these four patterns of communication.

Telling

In Second Life, the presenter has many types of educational tools available with which to present information in a meaningful way. There are “multimedia boards,” which allow slides and hypermedia presentations to be shared within Second Life, and videos to be streamed from Web sites. There are note cards available for sharing text with participants within a session and which can be referenced back to after the session. In addition, to support the content being presented, anything in Second Life can be created so a participant’s Web browsers will be launched to lead them directly to additional Web-based information.

Asking and Responding

Asking a question in Second Life, or responding to a question, may take one of three forms. A participant or presenter can use a chat window, which all others see, to ask a question or offer an answer. Anyone in Second Life can send an instant message to any one particular user without others seeing (a great way to clear up confusions and clarify thoughts). In addition, Second Life has voice chat built-in, and all users can use a microphone to ask a question, participate in a discussion, or give a response aloud.

Discussion

The arena in which Second Life shines, in my opinion, is in the discussion area. Collaboration is rich when everyone has the same ability to comment, talk, share, and discuss. In many of the other online synchronous environments, the participants often have lesser sharing capabilities than the presenter. In Second Life, all users have the same power to lead a group discussion, voice their opinion, and share their own thoughts with others via note cards and multimedia boards. In addition, many of the activity structures we are familiar with in real-life professional development (i.e., Experts Share, Paired Verbal Fluency, Medium Size Circle) are able to be used, without any re-working, within Second Life. Small groups can move out of earshot of each other to summarize a component of something they have learned, brainstorm ideas for implementation, or come up with an action plan using a combination of voice, chat, and note cards within the Second Life environment.

Various other tools within Second Life and additional third-party programs allow the creation and collection of data from polls within Second Life, and the recording of entire sessions as a video, including the text chat and voice chat, and the ability for others to view these sessions later.

I encourage you to give Second Life a try. There is no cost to download the client, create your avatar, attend sessions in Second Life, or even conduct your own meeting. In part two, I will provide insights into our district’s involvement in Second Life as a real-life professional development venue to enhance teaching and learning.

 References:

• Ellis. Barry. The case for on-line synchronous delivery. Distance Education Solutions
• Saphier, John and Mary Ann Haley. Summarizers. Carlisle, MA: Research for Better Teaching, 1993.
• Elluminate
• Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro
• WebEx
• Second Life

Kathy Schrock is the Administrator for Technology for the Nauset Public Schools on Cape Cod, MA. A large part of her job is involved with infusing technology throughout the curriculum in all areas and at all grade levels.

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