Teachers Buzz Aug 20 2007 Transcript
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- Aug 20 6pm SLT/PDT "student built" project: Timeline of the History of Earth and Life on Earth Walking Exhibit, created at University of Arizona
Ourania Fizgig and Alan Myhre took us through The History of Earth & Life on Earth Exhibit, created as part of a non-major undergraduate intro-astrobiology course, Exploring Life in the Universe. Students in the ASTR202 (spring 2007) class helped to design and build a scale model installation work on the timeline of Earth, 4.6 billion years ago to the present. Embedded in this timeline are important landmark events in planet formation, geology, biology, and anthropology. Ourania told us about the awesome things that happened, the areas where they had challenges and where its going now! We then walked through the tour of the major timeline areas in a free roam of the exhibit. Questions came thick and fast and we look forward to seeing this student build develop further with subsequent cohorts and Ourania's plans. The exhibit is still open at LivingintheUniverse (30, 190, 251). SLURL: http://tinyurl.com/3awb3r
Rich text Formatted Transcript
Corwin Carillon: Welcome everyone to the Teachers Buzz meetup ....
Corwin Carillon: a quick reminder that we record these sessions and put the transcript on the NCM SL wiki...
Corwin Carillon: so hope you are all ok with that?
Aidenn Brooks: ok
otakup0pe Neumann nods
Lishwaren Jewell: sure
Ilene Pratt: OK!
Ourania Fizgig: great!
Fleep Tuque nods.
Tsunita Pinion: no problem
Corwin Carillon: thx
CDB Barkley wags a tail
Corwin Carillon: We'd like to thank Ourania for agreeing to take us around this great build ...
Corwin Carillon: Life, the Universe and Everything ;-) ..
CDB Barkley: Hi Danielle!
Corwin Carillon: hope you have brought your towels!
otakup0pe Neumann: 42 ?
Ourania Fizgig: laughs at reference...
Danielle Damone: Hi Alan!!
Corwin Carillon: So without further ado ... let me hand over to Ourania with our thanks :)
Stone Semyorka: Wow...this is a lot of work!
Ourania Fizgig: Hi everyone....
Fleep Tuque: Hi Ourania!
Togashi Jun: Hi
Stone Semyorka: Hi Ourania
Nomade Rosca: hi
Tsunita Pinion: Hi!
Ourania Fizgig: Welcome to the History of Earth and Life on Earth exhibit!
Ayla Curry: howdy
Siri Vezina: thanks
Chexie Hyde: hihi
Ourania Fizgig: Let's all go over by the Earth poster...then we'll walk the mile as I text chat a small presentation.
Ourania Fizgig: In real life I'm an Instructional Technologist/Designer (wearer of many hats) in the astronomy department at the University of Arizona. I work with a Distinguished Faculty Member (Dr Chris Impey) on a variety of formal/informal education projects dealing with astronomy and astrobiology.
Ourania Fizgig: Alan Myhre beside me here is one of the students who worked a lot on this project
Ourania Fizgig: I've set out posters that you can read/peruse at your leisure and I'll be summarizing in text chat. I'll be walking along as I go, stopping at the applicable section. After my intro, we'll tour the timeline and then have a discussion.
Ourania Fizgig: I'll try to keep up with questions...though I may not get to them til the end.
Ourania Fizgig: First I'll tell you what the timeline is about, then discuss the good things and challenging things from the experience and where the future is taking us.
Ourania Fizgig: (pull up your chat history if you miss any text :)
Ourania Fizgig: are we all good to start?
Ilene Pratt: Yes!
Lishwaren Jewell: sure
Birdy Aya: yes
Alian Akula: yes
Jeana Beresford: yes
Corwin Carillon: yeppers!
Siri Vezina: yep
Ourania Fizgig: great!
zazen Manbi: duditto
Ourania Fizgig: Fall 2007 we used Second Life in his 'intro to astrobiology for non-majors' course. Helping to get into SL was SL Mentor ScubaChris Wollongong, who is also affiliated with the UA.
Ourania Fizgig: The professor for the course is Chris Impey or Scuba Chris Woolongong
Alian Akula: sorry for the bump
Ourania Fizgig: I was wondering how this was going to work....
Ourania Fizgig: :)
Ourania Fizgig: Fall 2007 we used Second Life in his 'intro to astrobiology for non-majors' course. Helping to get into SL was SL Mentor ScubaChris Wollongong, who is also affiliated with the UA.
Ourania Fizgig: In the class, students have a semester "creative project" where they can meld their personal hobbies, academic majors, and personalities with the concepts they learn in the course.
Ourania Fizgig: There are poems, short stories, shadow boxes, artwork, digital movies, songs, performance art, sculptures...
Ourania Fizgig: We envisioned SL just to be another way for students to express their creative side for the astrobiology content.
Ourania Fizgig: .....walking.....
Ourania Fizgig: The History of Earth and Life on Earth Walking Exhibit is a scale model timeline of Earth - 4.6 billion years ago to the present. We chose a spiral visualization as it afforded the most length to the timeline in our space. It was all just a grand experiment, mostly to learn about building with students in SL and to gauge their interest.
Ourania Fizgig: These next few slides are just captures of the spiral structure and secondary vertical timeline on our older prim-limited "void sim" land.
Ourania Fizgig: (walking)
Ourania Fizgig: I'll wait longer for reading and poster looking time.
Ourania Fizgig: Students researched content (for Notecards) and found images for posters and guides for models. This summer we worked a touch of animation into the timeline (meteorite area and dino extinction). We didn't get much participation from the class of 100 students. There were 3 undergrad preceptors, like undergrad TAs, who were contracted to help with SL in the class. They are also students of the class. We had a group of 3 students do another project in SL (Alien Extremophiles), and a group of 2 students do a poster display in the timeline. Participation was not as heavy we wanted, but it was all a grand experiment so we were happy.
Corwin Carillon: can we ask questions as we go along?
Ourania Fizgig: oh sure, fire away :)
Alian Akula: title Somewhere over the rainbow
Ourania Fizgig: We were very much "winging it" after the first lab session. Since we had a small group though, it was easy to schedule lab sessions (if the lab space was available). It was easy to give one on one help and have supplementary building and Photoshop sessions.
Corwin Carillon: was wondering what you felt were the causes of the lower than expected participation?
Ourania Fizgig: Well --- Prof Impey quizzed the class during the first week to see who had heard of or been in SL. Only a few raised their hands.
Ourania Fizgig: We came to believe that the demographic in SL is still the 24-35 yr old...not the college undergraduate
Jeana Beresford: so your class met face to face
Corwin Carillon nods
Ourania Fizgig: Additionally --- we didn't have a clear vision of what SL had to offer. We expect that this spring, we can show them the timeline already completed, and they will have a good idea of how to "slide in" their piece
Ourania Fizgig: Yes - the class was face to face. Just over 100 undergrads in an intro astrobiology course at the UA
Ourania Fizgig: Non-astronomy majors
Fleep Tuque: So the ultimate project is cumulative?
Ourania Fizgig: Sorry - for those offering friendship, we can do that after.
otakup0pe Neumann: hehe.
Fleep Tuque: With each group adding to the existing time line?
Ourania Fizgig: In a way --- it's a large chunk of their final grade
otakup0pe Neumann: ourania much of this content is student created right ?
Ourania Fizgig: Yes ---each group of students would create a piece --- like a poster or model with content information attached.
otakup0pe Neumann: Awesome.
Ourania Fizgig: Yes, the content is student created :)
Ourania Fizgig: My next bit of text can help answer the question too...let's move on down and I'll paste it in.
otakup0pe Neumann: sorry :s
Ourania Fizgig: All said and done, this was a successful project and I hope it will continue in the future. There are all sorts of places models and informational posters can be sliced into the exhibit. It's truly an interdisciplinary project --- any biology, chemistry, geology, astronomy, math (history of), anthropology, history of 'anything' can fit into this timeline. If we go in this direction, then the architecture of the timeline and how avatars navigate it can modify and grow.
Ourania Fizgig: We had 1 group of students who built a "story box" of sorts, creating a work of fiction, based on fact.
Ourania Fizgig: It's what I refer to here as the Alien Extremophile exhibit, and it's on the ground level.
Corwin Carillon: cool
Ourania Fizgig: ...let's walk to the Challenges poster...this is where we will have the most discussion! lol
Ourania Fizgig: I'll wait a minute...
Ourania Fizgig: The most interesting challenges are listed on the boards here. For Spring 2008, I'll have a better idea on how to plan the semester and get more students interested and engaged in SL.
Lishwaren Jewell: What kind of support did students expect or receive?
Ourania Fizgig: In discussions with other colleagues...we realized the best end result of this project was introducing (or reintroducing) 21st century skills to the students
Ourania Fizgig: Most of them never used Photoshop before for instance.
Ourania Fizgig: We set up the expectation that they would get all the support they needed.
Ourania Fizgig: We had introductory labs for the undergrad preceptors
Ourania Fizgig: this is where ScubaChris really really helped
Ourania Fizgig: One of the preceptors...Alan Myhre beside me...really took to the building and scripting and became our expert
Lishwaren Jewell: Wow, great. Some of ours need help with the installation and orientation, even.
Kallisto Ihnen: So was this project technology driven or outcome driven?
Ourania Fizgig: We then had intro to SL labs for the students, on setting up an avi, moving, talking....then moved onto another lab session on building. From there we had "office hours" where we helped them. The primary builders of the exhibit though, were the 3 preceptors --- as they were contracted to give 100 hours each during the semester to our needs.
Ourania Fizgig: (scrolling through questions, just a minute)
Kallisto Ihnen: ok
Ourania Fizgig: Lishwaren --- yes..they needed a lot of help.
Ourania Fizgig: In the end we only had 9 student involved, and 3 were the preceptors. I can't even imagine what my life would have been like to have, say, 30 students doing this all at the same time. I was learning about the whole process just as much as them.
Ourania Fizgig: In the future, I'd be ready for 30-50 students at a time to be in here building like this.
Ourania Fizgig: As far as a technology driven outcome...no...it was not our initial idea.
Kallisto Ihnen: I am finding many SL projects focus on the technology; not on the student/business if you will requirements.
Ourania Fizgig: However...it became apparent after we ended the project. In the future, for grants for example, I am going to make it about the technology skills as the pitch for the project. Students didn't understand content any better by doing this...instead they gained better computer skills.
Fleep Tuque: Really? Did you use self-assessment to gauge that or some other measures?
Ourania Fizgig: Another sub goal of this project was to make an informal science exhibit. So, the students learned how to communicate their knowledge in an accesible way for the public, and present it cleanly and content correct.
Fleep Tuque: (the level to which they did or didn't learn more about the material)
Ourania Fizgig: The only assessment of that was qualitative --- working with the students, knowing they couldn't use photoshop before this...and then learning basic photoshop skills after.
Togashi Jun: writing across the curriculum (or tech literacy)
Fleep Tuque nods.
Ourania Fizgig: We didn't do any formal assessment on if they understood the content better after creating the exhibit. However...that is something for the future to consider. This was really just a big old experiment and prototype to see where the future could lead.
Elf Juran: it is a beautiful exhibit and very exciting, we came in early and looked at. i hope it stays up for awhile
Ourania Fizgig: It ended up in a great place, in my opinion, and can be built upon --- it's very interdisciplinary asmentioned before ---
Ourania Fizgig: My last little bit of text, talks about the future...
Stone Semyorka: Ourania, would you do it again knowing what you know now?
Alian Akula: will it be up for a while?
Ourania Fizgig: Lingering thoughts: It was a very interactive process for the students as they were building, but for other avatars who visit the timeline it is still very static (look, see, read, click). For me, I'd like to build more active learning into the exhibit for others in SL who come to enjoy it. Interactive is a strange word --- avatars are being physically interactive by moving their avatar, clicking areas to read, etc., but they aren't being asked to think. It's akin to the difference between a "natural history museum" and a "discovery children's science center" --- I'd rather build the latter.
CDB Barkley: Perhaps the learning value will come from activities built around the exhibit
Ourania Fizgig: Yes - it will be up for a long while. We plan to do this again in Spring 2008.
Ourania Fizgig: Yes CDB...
Kallisto Ihnen: Excellent points
Chexie Hyde: can we have a copy of your lecture on notecard?
Ourania Fizgig: I've already started a "scavenger hunt" as a curriculum item...pulling in other SL exhibits and spaces.
otakup0pe Neumann: Interesting.
Corwin Carillon: maybe hire a scripter to work with student groups to build the handson interaction you would like
Ourania Fizgig: Certainly --- I think there is a transcript already running. Some of it I ad-libbed :)
Togashi Jun: hmm
otakup0pe Neumann: So is this exhibition considered open to the public ?
Ourania Fizgig: Yes Corwin, that's in the plan for the future...though Alan here has gone up a huge learning curve. He used to be a business/accounting major...and now he's going into Visual communication ;)
Stone Semyorka: Copy your chat history and paste it to a text file.
Ourania Fizgig: Yes - the exhibit is open to the public :)
CDB Barkley: Perhaps where students can add, edit data that is asociated with the timeline- kind of like a timeline wiki?
otakup0pe Neumann: love the jellyfish :o
Ourania Fizgig: We are putting in a few grants to try to expand it to other classes at the UA to work on, and also for other SL classes to add to...as well as...any avatar in SL who has content to add.
Ourania Fizgig: (pardon, catching up on chat history...)
Ourania Fizgig: Stone --- yes I would do it all again, knowing what I know now :) It'll be a much better experience for everyone this Spring, and I hope to have at least 25 student interested
Ivy Innis: CDB I agree - i was thinking of collabrative annotations, not necessarily text - similar idea. I like the idea of image annotation.
Corwin Carillon: it will be great to see them building on this
Max Chatnoir: will you build on what you have here?
Stone Semyorka: Ourania, could you give the RL credits for my blog post?
Max Chatnoir: LOL
Ourania Fizgig: Yes - an SL wiki-type model might work well. For me, it's about managing the exhibit space, making sure things are content correct, making sure copyright is adhered to, etc. It could be a management nightmare ;)
otakup0pe Neumann: haha
Fleep Tuque: hehe
Ourania Fizgig: Stone, can you IM me? I'm not sure what you are referring to
otakup0pe Neumann: it is a management nightmare !
Fleep Tuque: Proper citations in SL have been a huge and recurring topic of conversation on SLED.
Ourania Fizgig: We;ll see - that's what NSF money is for...so I can devote more time to it and we can have a really permanent space.
CDB Barkley: It's a nightmare if one person takes it on themself ;-)
Fleep Tuque nods.
Fleep Tuque: Setting up rules or a system that all can adhere to defintely helps rather than trying to fix things after the fact.
Ourania Fizgig: Yes --- the instructions for the students were to find copyright free graphics...if not...then they had to cite it. We are just getting around to getting copyright permissions for some of the artwork and listing out a huge refernece list.
Ourania Fizgig: Are there any more questions or shall we tour?
CDB Barkley wants a tour
Togashi Jun: tour
Fleep Tuque: I keep waiting for the genius programmer crowd to develop a solution for us all to use. =)
Fleep Tuque: Tour!
Ourania Fizgig: hahaha fleep
otakup0pe Neumann: <_<
Fleep Tuque: :)
otakup0pe Neumann: Fleep we should talk.
Ourania Fizgig: OK - here's how it can work :)
otakup0pe Neumann: the tour ?
Ourania Fizgig: Follow the arrow on the box, by where we came in to enter. It's best if you walk or run to get the feel for the whole scale.
Ourania Fizgig: Click the posters for Notecard content.
otakup0pe Neumann: run through in mouselook mode ?
otakup0pe Neumann: i'll try that.
Ourania Fizgig: In the middle of the spiral...you are taken to a NEW timeline of the last 10 million years on Earth...
Fleep Tuque: So we want to go back to where we first came in? I have a SLurl I think
Ourania Fizgig: The big thing to note is how small the human portion is :)
Ilene Pratt: Keep in mind that Fair Use can come into play when using material for educational purposes... though citing sources is always a good idea.
Ourania Fizgig: You can walk to the spiral, it's behind all of you
Ourania Fizgig: Correct Ilene...but since this isn't a 'password protected course' it gets iffy
Ourania Fizgig: You cannot fly unless you have a gizmo...but you can hover.
Ourania Fizgig: You can go through walls, so you are not trapped.
Ourania Fizgig: This pink line right here is the last 10 million years.
Ourania Fizgig: The spiral is where we came in.
Corwin Carillon: hello everyone ... just seeing if this is working
Corwin Carillon: if you want to ask questions to Ourania maybe post them here
Bell Stringer: and so it is :)
Deed Davids: Works for me. ;)
Arteer Oliva: it is! Hello!
Max Chatnoir: Ourania this is just great.
Max Chatnoir: You have a very nice core to build on here.
Corwin Carillon: please post questions to Ourania here
Max Chatnoir: Ourania, I'm impressed by what's been put together here by relatively few students.
Corwin Carillon: me too
Ourania Fizgig: Does anyone have any questions?
Corwin Carillon: it is a great starting point
Corwin Carillon: what would you like to see happening here with the next cohort?
Ourania Fizgig: The next time around, I'd like to see more content added, and have the experience be a little more smooth for the students. After one more go, I'll have a good feel on it, to show others how it can work.
Ourania Fizgig: Most of the poster artwork is from images online we found.
Corwin Carillon: I have one suggestion too ..
Corwin Carillon: have a walk and talk anim at the start
CDB Barkley: perhaps some maps showing locations of rocks of each era age
Corwin Carillon: so people can talk and chat together ... I have one from Relay for Life
Ourania Fizgig: I'd love to get an intro geology class in here to build up that content.
CDB Barkley: yes
Ourania Fizgig: There is alot of content that can be added of course, but remember that basically 3 students and myself built this over 1 semester. That includes all the content you see here. The expectation in the future is to have multiple strands of content.
CDB Barkley: Maybe even make the walls a tad transulucent? so you can sense people on the other side?
Ourania Fizgig: A chemistry strand...a geology strand...zoology strand
Corwin Carillon: yeah
CDB Barkley: Maybe those could be layers
Ourania Fizgig: CDB - we did have transparent walls...and it was very distracting.
CDB Barkley: or paths
CDB Barkley: Ahh, good that you tried!
Ourania Fizgig: yes...those are ideas I'd like to pursue for a better architecture.
Corwin Carillon: you said you were gonna make the spiral 3D (go up) ?
Ourania Fizgig: It is difficult to get a sense of where you are in the spiral
Ourania Fizgig: We did have the last 10 million years as a DIFFERENT scale going vertical. But, moving it here we had to trash the idea since one can't fly without a hud.
Ourania Fizgig: For the future, we'd like to get that back.
Corwin Carillon: give a flight feather .. they are free, full perms
Ourania Fizgig: I'll have to look those up :)
Corwin Carillon: I'll drop one on you
Ourania Fizgig: Sounds like a great solution. I was also toying with the idea of a HUD the person wears for proximity...like audio clips of the notecard instead of clicking and reading
Corwin Carillon: you should talk to Ann Enigma .. see the infofez on Virutal Morocco and the InforMagharita on Boracay
Ourania Fizgig: The next phase will be about what the students want to do, though I will try and guide them. But, we want them to have ownership and pride and passion/interest in their work...so I like to follow their creative paths.
Corwin Carillon: :)
Ourania Fizgig: I'd love to see an anthropology class in here to build up the last 6 million years :)
Ourania Fizgig: We also have plans to build a scale of the rest of the universe to accompany this.
Ourania Fizgig: So much...so much!
Ourania Fizgig: But wanting to keep it student built
CDB Barkley: so much time, so little time ;-)
Corwin Carillon: yeah ... maybe overwhelm though if too many
Corwin Carillon: lol
Ourania Fizgig: Corwin, do you mean too many students at one time building?
CDB Barkley: Maybe the key is to focus each semester on just a portion
Ourania Fizgig: Like, if all 100 wanted to do the project?
Ourania Fizgig: Yes CDB, I'd like to approach it that way.
Corwin Carillon: maybe too much content if you overlay a lot of subjects
CDB Barkley: or a creationist timeline, much shorter and simpler ;-)
Corwin Carillon: lol
Ourania Fizgig: Oh right --- for that...I was envisioning "hospital tracks" Like if you want to follow the geology, follow the green line....follow biology use the yellow...etc
Corwin Carillon: cool
Ourania Fizgig: But I don't think it'll get built up that quickly.
Ourania Fizgig: Let's not get started on the creationist thing...I have enough trouble with that at telescope parties :)
Corwin Carillon: /claps Ourania and Alan ...
Corwin Carillon: ty both! :)
Ourania Fizgig: There are many many ways this can built up and expand...we'll see what happens in the coming semesters. It's all under my control (mwha ha ha), so it won't explode. I come from an instructional design background and science exhibits/public education...so I'll keep it in check.
CDB Barkley: Thanks to all, especially for being a student built ptoject
Ourania Fizgig: Yes, thank you everyone for coming, this was fun! A great end to the semester, and my main student builder Alan Myhre was here to see how excited everyone is.
Corwin Carillon: and our thanks to Ourania, Alan and the students!
Corwin Carillon: see you all in a couple of weeks for the next Buzz
LoriVonne Lustre: Thank you Ourania and Alan... this is very interesting
