Article Information

Nishimura, H., Lim, K.Y.T., & Koyamada,K. (2012). The Abyss Observatory designing for remote collaboration, self-directed discovery, and intuition development in multi-user interactive 3D environments. Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, 5(2), 1-11.

Selecting This Article

I chose this article because the abstract mentioned that they were using Second Life. Since, our class has read about Second Life this week I thought it would pertain to our class and further my knowledge on this virtual world. I was also interested in seeing what The Abyss was and how they were able to create it in a virtual world, and what makes it different from a museum in the real world.

Summary

In this article, the authors talked about how they were able to create a learning environment in the virtual world, and what challenges may come up from this. The article was divided into three sections and talked about how each were vital in helping create The Abyss and other virtual world creations. These sections were; Collaboration, Visualization of Relation,  and Fusion of 3D Model and Data from the Real World. For collaboration, the authors discussed how the creators of the Abyss were able to come together, no matter where they were, and create this museum in Second Life. They also mentioned it was easier, and less costly, to build plus it was accessible to users all over the world. Visualization allowed creators to create a more life-like museum to allow users to get a better understanding and full experience of different environments. For example, it is harder to create and exact underwater experience and environment. In Second Life, they were able to create underwater exhibits for users to tour. The creators also made the Abyss so that users can choose to tour what exhibit/world they want and use arrows to help guide them on their tour, eventually looping back to the starting point/hub. Since it is difficult to get an exact picture of what all environments are like, especially underwater, they authors talk about how the users combined the real world data that they were presented with, and created a 3D model to help bring the museum exhibits to life. With the combination of these three sections, creators were able to create the Abyss so users can tour and learn about the different environments and get the sense that they are actually in that environment. This also helps future creators design virtual museums or environments to be realistic.

Presentation in a Business Education Setting

Since this article was talking about creating a realistic environment in a virtual world, I was not sure how I would be able to apply this in a business education setting. However, I could have students explore different places on Second Life, or a similar virtual world, and then give them the task to create/design their own business or setting. This would require more than just a basic knowledge of Second Life so it would be a longer process than just exploring the site.

Presentation in  a Business/Industry/Healthcare Environment

This article gives businesses, industries, and healthcare a new way to reach potential customers. Business people can create businesses and allow potential customers to explore their products and services through the virtual world. It would also give them a way to test their products at a lower cost .

Opinion on the Research

I found the research confusing at first, because of all the terminology that I was not familiar with. However, after carefully rereading the article, I developed an understanding of it. I think that this research is very useful to those who want to develop a realistic environment or building on Second Life, or another virtual world. This research also made me curious and want to check out how realistic the Abyss and similar environments and museums are.

An article I chose to read from the Journal of Interactive Online Learning was titled, “Internet Relationships: Building Learning Communities through Friendship” by Dawn Bikowski. I selected this article because the title seemed very interesting to me and the abstract made me want to continue reading the article. Even though there was a lot of information presented, it was not difficult to comprehend.

In this article, a study was done in a course with undergraduates. They were put into teams and worked with students from Thailand on a project for a Thai client. Throughout the course, and afterwards, five students were interviewed and asked a series of questions about the project, their international teammates, and their feelings of community and friendship. Although the majority of the students did not feel like they had a sense of community throughout the online portion of the project, the researchers looked into other factors that might have caused a barrier in building relationships and that sense of community.

The researchers findings were that three factors could have effected reaching a sense of community in the online portion of the project. These were; individual factors, sharing, and support. If the students were not open to making friends or building a relationship through this project, willing, or comfortable, to share information that was non-project related to help further build the relationship, and have support from other teammates and advisors, the researcher found that this could possibly effect their sense of community. Although this study was a small sample, they hypothesized that further tests might have a similar result.

Creative Commons are license that allow individuals to use, view, or rework certain creative work, while still giving the credit to the original creator. This is important because this opens up opportunities to use creative work in the classroom to help students learn or understand concepts. In the future, this can help my students find more creative ways to present information for projects that they are given and also allow me to make learning more interesting to the students. They also do not have to solely rely on the textbook and lecturing for learning, instead, there are frequent breaks to find and look for media to help supplement the learning.

One of the podcasts from Bud the Teacher that I listened to was “Thinking. Making. Learning.” This episode was based at a summer camp held at IBM for young students. This camp hosted a model for helping students think, learn and be creative called the ACTIONS cycle.

A-    Ask Questions

C- Collaborate and Connect

T- Tools and Technology

I- Inquire and Innovate

O- Organizing thoughts

N- Now what? Next Steps.

S- So, what are you willing to do?

Throughout the day, students go through each step when they are learning and trying to be creative. This model from the podcast would be applicable to teaching business education because students need to learn and be creative. This podcast would show students a way that others are learning and see if it can help them or be useful for starting out.

The podcast that I listened to was an episode from The Cubicle Escape Pod. The hosts of this podcast are entrepreneurs who came up with an idea that would help journalists in this digital age. Throughout the podcast, the hosts were going through the steps that they went through when creating and carrying out the idea that they had.  Since many students want to own their own business or invent a new product or service, this will help them get an idea of the work that goes into developing a new idea and making sure that it will be successful.

In Chapter 1 and 2 we learned about blogging and microblogging. Based on your personal opinion, which would you prefer to use in a classroom setting?

I used my Tumblr to do this. Let me know what you think!