Comments on: New Distributed 3D Virtual Environment w/ Instructional Potential: Google Lively

By: Paul Left

Paul Left — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 03:50:43 +0000

I think there are currently some issues holding back adoption of virtual worlds in education. EG even large state-funded institutions here in NZ don't have the consistent bandwidth. This means I'm unable to make any serious use of such tools in my professional development activities.

I wrote about this problem in a recent post (http://www.verso.co.nz/professional-development...).

Lively presents an additional barrier for many of us - it's Windows-only. But it'll be interesting to see how it develops - I see its distributed approach a more fruitful avenue for educators to explore than the more 'closed' worlds we've seen to date. I just need to wait for a Mac version to become available...

Paul Lefts last blog post..Why I am not (yet) using virtual worlds in my work

By: Visualizing the Transition from Learning 1.0 to Learning 2.0 « Technogenii’s Blog

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 16:35:25 +0000

[...] interact with others using an visual 3D avatar [...]

By: Janet Clarey

Janet Clarey — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 14:05:35 +0000

Hi Paul.
Excellent points. Consistent bandwidth and platform incompatibility are significant barriers for distributed learning via virtual worlds. Your post is a reminder that we have a long way to go.

By: Janet Clarey

Janet Clarey — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 14:05:00 +0000

By: Paul Left

Paul Left — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 10:51:23 +0000

I think there are currently some issues holding back adoption of virtual worlds in education. EG even large state-funded institutions here in NZ don’t have the consistent bandwidth. This means I’m unable to make any serious use of such tools in my professional development activities.

I wrote about this problem in a recent post (http://www.verso.co.nz/professional-development/114/why-i-am-not-yet-using-virtual-worlds-in-my-work/).

Lively presents an additional barrier for many of us – it’s Windows-only. But it’ll be interesting to see how it develops – I see its distributed approach a more fruitful avenue for educators to explore than the more ‘closed’ worlds we’ve seen to date. I just need to wait for a Mac version to become available…

Paul Lefts last blog post..Why I am not (yet) using virtual worlds in my work

By: Tom Werner

Tom Werner — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 12:21:19 +0000

Hi Janet, my take on this is that it reminds me of when lots of fonts became available in word-processing apps in the late 1980′s. Some people got excited, but a natural counter-reaction was, “I just don’t really need 50 fonts.”

But now we know that the fonts were a step in the evolution toward anybody being able to desktop-publish any type of document they want.

Google Lively seems kind of similar. The counter-reaction: “I just don’t really need avatars in my chat messages.”

But maybe the evolution is that we’re quickly getting to bringing shared documents to 3D space (or, said the opposite way, bringing 3D space to shared documents).

If Google Lively evolves into us having a clubhouse where our Google Docs are easy to find and work on together, that might be interesting.