Another Look at SLoodle

[Donavan Vicha]

A few months ago, I wrote about the grand opening of the San Jose State Unviersity's .... One of the biggest impressions left on me that day was how they connected the inworld presentation with a Moodle chat room, allowing people without SL connections to chat with those who were in world. By happy chance, I was inworld and alerted to a meeting going on. Here are excerpts from a transcript of my chat with Pedro McMillan, the new full-time developer for SLoodle, an application that links SL with Moodle.

First up, a Glossary tool:

[7:46] Pedro McMillan: here's a nice simple one to start with

[7:46] Pedro McMillan: are you familiar with the glossary tool in Moodle?

[7:46] Oberon: No.

[7:47] Pedro McMillan: it's a module you can create for any course, and it is exactly what it sounds like.... a glossary of terms which you can look up. [On SLoodle.org,] we have a glossary with various Second Life terms in it

[7:50] Pedro McMillan: this little cylinder on the floor [in Second Life where our avatars were standing] lets us connect to that from here, so that e.g. a classroom full of students can all see the definitions together

[7:50] Pedro McMillan: it works by chatting "/def WORD", where "WORD" is whatever you want to look up

[7:50] Pedro McMillan: /def avatar

In the chat text area, the following information was generated by the object:

[7:50] Sloodle MetaGloss .3: Avatar: 1) The digital representation of your virtual self in Second Life. Or, in plain English, the character in Second Life that's you; 2) Other people's characters. Generally, any other thing with a name above it (though there are very convincing cardboard cutouts in Second Life); 3) A "costume" or outfit; a full set of avatar body parts, clothing, and/or attachments that provides a specific look.

[7:50] Oberon Octagon grins and chuckles, Cool!

[7:51] Oberon: /def slurl

[7:51] Pedro McMillan: there's not much in it at the moment (everybody always thinks of terms that we haven't added yet!)

[7:51] Sloodle MetaGloss .3: SLURL: A door to go into Second Life from www.

[7:51] Oberon Octagon pumps fist

[7:51] Pedro McMillan: /def prim

[7:51] Sloodle MetaGloss .3: Prim: Primitive - the smallest unit of building objects. Box, sphere, etc.

[7:51] Pedro McMillan: so that's the basic idea... nice and simple, but can be quite effective, especially if you are teaching languages

[7:52] Oberon: Oh, yeah.

[7:52] Pedro McMillan: (or just *better* language to people who are not very literate)

[7:52] Pedro McMillan: (which counts for a lot of the population of

Scotland (where I am!))

[7:52] Oberon: In a reference desk situation, this would be very nice.

The next HUD we looked at allowed me to post to a Moodle blog:

[7:56] Sloodle Toolbar Box owned by Pedro McMillan gave you 'Sloodle Toolbar v1.1.1' ( http://slurl.com/secondlife/virtuALBA/246/232/31 ).

[7:56] Oberon: But I don't see a Toolbar in my inventory. [I'd gotten a bunch of things from a SLoodle exhibit during the grand opening.]

[7:57] Oberon: So here goes.

[7:57] Pedro McMillan: this has just been updated (well actually reprogrammed completely), so this is the most up-to-date one anyway

[7:57] Oberon: One is customizable, but I figure the other is what I should test?

[7:57] Pedro McMillan: yes... the sloodle.org one

[7:58] Sloodle Toolbar v1.1.1 (sloodle.org): Please chat the subject line of your blog entry.

The HUD was telling me to use the chat line in SL browser to create the title.

[7:58] Pedro McMillan: if it doesn't say "Initialising..." when you first wear it, then try detaching it and wearing it again

[7:58] Oberon: Testing the Sloodle Toolbox

The HUD showed that the title of my Blog post would be Testing the Sloodle Toolbox

[7:58] Sloodle Toolbar v1.1.1 (sloodle.org): Please chat the body of your blog entry.

[7:58] Oberon: It asked me to chat the title and that worked. Now we're onto the blog entry. Very spiffy.

[7:58] Sloodle Toolbar v1.1.1 (sloodle.org): Please review your entry, and click "Save Changes" to send your entry to the website, or "Cancel" if not.

[7:59] Oberon: Review entry and Save changes. [I chose Cancel.]

[7:59] Sloodle Toolbar v1.1.1 (sloodle.org): Blog entry cancelled.

[7:59] Oberon: I cancelled. Wasn't sure how I was going to edit or revise the entry. But that's nice.

[8:00] Oberon: I assume you can initialize it to a personal blog?

[8:00] Pedro McMillan: only to a Moodle blog

[8:00] Oberon: Doh!

[8:00] Oberon: But each student in a class would get one. That's very nice.

We are in the process of converting the WebCT courses to Moodle. It won't be a difficult stretch to adopt SLoodle somewhere down the road, and I will keep in touch with the SLoodle developers as they refine their work on this exciting application.