NMC Campus Observer

Symposium on Creativity: Friday Highlights

CDB Barkley (aka Alan Levine) : Aug 21, 2007 04:20pm

While we covered the first session (Ted Kahn on Synectics) from Friday as a separate post, this day of the Symposium on Creativity might have been the most full, and this, most challenging to summarize, even now, a few days after the fact.

So there is going to be a long stream of photos here- but also, stay tuned to the longer stream accumulating on our slcreativity flickr tag of shared photos, well over 1000 images as of this post.

At 10:00 AM on Friday, Bluewave Ogee (aka Leslie Jarmon, University of Texas at Austin revealed the secrets of Creatively Teaching Project Management in SL

Many classes in Second Life focus on improving SL-related skills. But Second Life offers a convergence of multimedia instructional tools that can be creatively used to help make even a “Real Life Skills” class like Project Management engaging and interactive. This session demonstrates the use of Second Life tools being used in an actual Project Management class taught in Second Life via the Academy of Second Learning.

Bluewave had some audio challenges, but recovered quite nicely for an engaging session via chat alone. Through her shared list of suggestions, she had the participants talk about their own project and project management needs. You can find everything that was said via the pretty chat transcript.

The afternoon was scheduled for the showcase of what the participants created in the Studio Sessions. At noon, we got a chance to walk through the projects created by people who took Desideria Stockton and Eloise Pasteur’s session on Teaching Environments.

Eloise Pasteur and Desideria Stockton

You can find all of the resources for this studio session on the Creating Pandora’s Box: Immersive Learning Environments 101 wiki as well as postings by both the teachers and participants in the Creating Pandora’s Box blog.

As a tool, Eloise and Desi shared a great tool called the Spidergram, which helps create a 3D node and connector object that helps visualize and plan the development of a teaching environment.

An hour was not really long enough to take in all of these projects, yet we were asked to vote for a favorite.. Wow was that difficult! The projects are available for viewing all this week, and maybe longer, on NMC Labs (152, 162, 22) — just follow the paths and look for the big orange arrows that point to the projects.

The rest of the studio sessions strutted their stuff at 1:00 PM in the Cooper Coliseum, with first some examples of sculptures freated in the Sculpture/Modeling Studio session.

Meleni Fairymeadow, mentor for the Sculpture and Modeling session, introduced a few of the projects done this week.

Prim Statues crafted by Lyr Lobo

Stella Costello describes Machimina Studio sessions

Although the machinima students accomplished alot during the week, none were ready by the showcase time– and too bad as we got a link a few hours later to a fabulous one by Calisto Encinal- see Calisto Meets his Maker. We will publish others as we hear about them.

CJ Carnot gave a run down of the Fashion studio sessions, and hinted at the irony that designing fashion in Second Life seems to require much more time in PhotoShop than Second Life. We heard a lot of kudos from participants in this session.

Last but not least was Virtual Photography…

Studio mentors Ravenelle Zugzwang and Torley Linden

Torley Linden and Ravenelle Zugzwang shared examples and provided an overview of what was covered in this Studio session, and we heard from a few participants as well, such as Mia Infinity:

Towards the end of the day, we had a fascinating session on Social Creativity and the Second Life Elf Culture by Gjo Bing (aka John Shibley) and special guest, the Elf Queen, Forsythia Wishbringer. Now, I had not really heard much about the Elf Circle, but Gjo and Forcy provided an outstanding look at a “real” culture created in this virtual world, on principles one can hardly argue with:

This presentation introduces the idea of social creativity: the forming of affiliations between people (in the form of their Second Life avatars) and the continued creative shaping of these connections until they begin to approach a culture strong enough to bring to all its creative expressions a coherence that is self-evident.

Gjo Bing

Forsythia Wishbringer

With just the last 15 minutes, we were given the option to take a brief tour, about 6 destinations available, where a guide was waiting to show us around I went with a group to Elgs Harbour, and saw quickly some of the sporting grounds used for combat competition (using “low technology” weapons), but more impressive the harbor itself, a very tranquil and inviting location.

But there was little time to linger with the elves, as 6:00 PM brought a great hands on session with Corwin Carillon (aka Nick Noakes, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology) who gave a rather large group, a concise and effective lesson on Shifting the Power from Teachers to Learners by showing us and giving us the Builders Buddy tools for rezzing objects as needed. more than the tool, we all got to practice some script handling.

And last, certanly, certainly not least, was a session from ur colleagues in Australia (where it was morning for them)– Anya Ixchel (aka Angela Thomas, , University of Sydney) and Kim Flintoff, Edith Cowan University gave us an experience of Teaching On the Second Life Stage: Playful Educational Strategies for Serious Purposes:

Theatrical spaces have historically been places used to teach, purge and shape culture. For over a decade, virtual reality has offered a new kind of theatrical space; now, with the rise of social networking spaces, many more people are using the potential of the web to perform, critique and comment on cultural issues. Second Life provides a new and exciting space where students can explore issues that are both personal and global in significance. Teaching strategies which incorporate dramatic and theatrical components are perfectly suited in the Second Life environment for engaging students in playful but meaningful reflection on such issues. This session will involve participants in role-playing, reflection and discussion. Participants will also be encouraged to brainstorm the possibilities of incorporating such strategies into their own educational programs.

Using a metaphor of the fictitious news show “EOX” news, we were put into role groups such as “students”, “parents”, “administrators” to a future scenario of some user crackdowns in Second Life. As described in a (again, this is not real!) open letter to Linden Labs:

Open Letter to Linden Lab Staff

February 20, 2009

We, the undersigned, are concerned about way Second Life has moved away from its grassroots principles of freedom of expression and participatory culture into a sanitized Disneyland state. We recall in 2004 when Phillip Linden proudly, enthusiastically and energetically espoused his philosophical stance about Second Life:

“So SL poses a new question… what if the online environment offered you MORE freedoms than the real world, in just about every way. I assert … that we might therefore actually behave better in such a place. We might learn faster, interact more deeply, and therefore become better people, at least on some levels. Little has been written about this. I am asserting that this will only occur in an environment in which the freedoms are not a laundry list of experiences, a-la-Disneyland, but instead a fundamental ability to express yourself; these are the real freedoms. I am saying that if you have more freedoms, in an expressive sense, you might have better or at least more complex behavior.” (Philip Linden, Second Life Herald Interview, June 21, 2004)

Indeed, during the first three to four years of Second Life, citizenship grew to several million users precisely because of the liberties and creativities found in such an “infinite possibilities” standpoint. People entered Second Life for a multiplicity of purposes, and its success today is directly related to the opportunities provided by user created content. Collaborative creativity on a global scale was never so exciting and exhilarating, and you might even recall that in 2007, the ground-breaking educational innovators at the New Media Consortium held a symposium on creativity in Second Life.

Yet since early 2007, there has been a steady decline in the freedoms enjoyed by and afforded to our citizens. First of all, advertising and signage related to certain sexual practices was outlawed. Soon thereafter, all casinos and houses of gambling were removed. In early 2008, there was crackdown on all explicit sexual practices – the furry avatar was removed as an option at log-in, and all Gorean sims were shut down. By the end of 2008, all known sims and clubs that offered simulated sexual practices were removed without warning.

But by far we, the undersigned, believe that the most debilitating move on Linden Lab’s part is the new TOS policy issued in January of this year, 2009, to remove all M rated sims and M rated content, even in citizen’s private homes. With 30 million users, all over 18 and adult, we cannot understand this move to reduce Second Life to Disneyland, which serves only to stifle the creativity and personal freedom of expression out of each and very one of us. Second Life is no longer a deeply compelling place for us to live, to work, and to do our business. We therefore call for an immediate return to the terms of service as set out at the beginning of 2007.

(NOTE: THIS LETTER IS FICTIONAL AND DESIGNED FOR ROLE-PLAYING PURPOSES)

Each group has to decided on a message to relate by one spokesperson on the TV set and one for the “person” on the street interview. As a group of students, we had a mixture of wanting to be practical and present a compelling case NOT to crack down and discriminate groups in SL, while at the same time, some of us like Corwin, took up the more radical position (he looks nasty with the giant cigarette):

We really did not have enough time to play these out in enough detail, but Anya and Kim presented an excellent framework and structure for setting up role plays- and showed that it can be done without fancy islands or even owning land. For more see Anya/Angela’s blog post summary…

And finally, for the closing of this incredible day of activity, we had 3 performances offered by DonCoyote Antonelli’s ZeroG Skydancers, an art form of creativity that can only take place in Second Life.

DonCoyote Antonelli

We have a video prepared from our hundreds of photos taken and the music performed and will post it as soon a we get an okay from DanCoyote. Until then, the photos are posted to flickr at http://flickr.com/photos/nmc-campus/tags/zerog/

Story filed under: People, Places, Things, What's Happening
Tags: slcreativity, zerog
See all stories by CDB Barkley (aka Alan Levine)