Sloodle: The Missing Link Between Education and Second Life

I don't think that I'll ever just "hang out" in second life like a lot of people do. I don't really want to build a house, start a career, or have a virtual pet or plant that I need to take care of. There is a lot of normal life reflected in Second Life, and to me, it seems like why would I go to the store and shop when that's something I don't even really like doing that much in real life.

I have understood that Second Life is a neat idea for meetings and interactions with people, but I still have been having trouble seeing how I could use Second Life as an actual tool with my students in my classroom. It's hard to tell students in an online class that they must attend a meeting at a certain time, and in fact, my school makes me put all required class meetings in the course list each semester if I want to do that, so telling students to meet me in SL would probably never happen. So, for me, the struggle has been understanding how I could personally use SL. This is where Sloodle has come into play for me.

I came across the various announcements for Sloodle in the SLED emailings and my interest was piqued in the first emailing I received February 23rd.

Professor Merryman will be demonstrating how to connect Second Life to
Moodle using the SLOODLE open source module.

Since I'm in charge of a large number of conversions of classes to Moodle at my school, I've been interested in all things Moodle. Moodle is a program that I originally hated and didn't see how it could ever replace all my organized folders on Blackboard, but now I keep finding myself yearning for my classes that I teach this semester to all be in Moodle. I went to the session on Wednesday the 24th, where it was just me and one other person. Professor Merryman basically gave a brief rundown about using Sloodle and then pointed us to a schoolhouse of sorts that he had all sorts of examples of Sloodle for us to view. We were told that it was available to look at at any time and that we would be enrolled in a orientation class that would allow us access to the Sloodle example classrooms. Because I'm a little awkward with SL, I decided to come back and explore this schoolhouse a bit more later.

Since this introduction time, I've popped over to the Sloodle island a few times and perused about. It's a really neat community and everything is labeled extremely well, which I appreciate. I finally sat down to run through the orientation introduction to Sloodle this past weekend. What I found was just amazing to me.

After I confirmed my registration (all I had to do was sit in a seat), I read through the information that was placed on giant panels on the back wall of the schoolhouse; the information was also on a notecard for me that I was given upon confirmation of my registration. The organization that put this on was called Cypris, and information on contacting them was found throughout the first few panels of notes I read.

When I had read about the practical uses for Sloodle, I was able to experience it firsthand. The room I was in in the picture above was the actual classroom. There were two classrooms, and apparently the way the sound is setup is such that voice chat is restricted only to the classroom you are in. The picture above is where a student can submit his or her assignments and check grades. Apparently, and this surprised me, a whole Moodle class can be taught without ever having to leave SL.

This picture above shows one of the actual classrooms. By clicking that white box, the classroom can be anything from a nice library room to a movie theater. It can be changed back just by typing "clear" in general chat. I thought this little box was neat since if you actually did have a meeting with students or even office hours (the library room has a nice desk), even though the location is stationary in SL, the background can be changed.

This picture shows how a student can check in for attendance. Simply by clicking on the little calculator looking thing, the student is then marked as having stopped by and is awarded points based on the teacher's point system. Very neat. This still allows the students to do this thing according to what works with their schedule (an important element of online classes). At this attendance machine was also how I was able to teleport to the room that held the two classrooms I mentioned above.

So I was able to see how attendance could be taken, how assignments could be received and submitted, and also how to have a specific meeting room for a class, but I was still wondering how things like quizzes would be handled. Apparently, Sloodle can setup quizzes either as a gameshow style where you compete against classmates or individually by sitting in a chair and clicking on the correct answer from the popup question that appears.

Even though I only focused in on this specific schoolhouse location that I had permission to play around with, I walked around the island area to get a feel for it. There are several classes in session there (I think) that have large rooms to check in and submit assignments, although I didn't see any rooms that had the ability to shift like the ones I encountered with the white box. There were also several halls that had explanations of the connection between Moodle and SL (apparently SL can be added into the Moodle drop down menu when setting up an assignment). There are also several lecture hall areas in the Sloodle region as well. My favorite is the UFO auditorium.

I really enjoyed my experience with Sloodle, and it made it very clear to me how Second Life doesn't have to just be a supplement to education; it can actually BE the educational experience. All of the things that I'm familiar with with teaching online classes and teaching Moodle are still present in Sloodle but with more visual effects and more of a sense of involvement. The Sloodle area can be found here.