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As you’ll see in the video below, you need pretty steady hands so this will work best for the surgeons among us.

The interface is simple enough to use so creating a story is as straight-forward as 1) having a story to tell; 2) finding the correct clip art, 3) moving, sizing, rotating the clip art on a page; 4) adding the text to he clip art callouts and to the page.  After that you have a 3-D pop up book, viewable via the web, embedded in a web page (see below) or as mentioned earlier in the palm of your hands.

So, here is my story below, please let me know what you think of this tool as a way of engaging students with accounting content, what suggestions you have for improvement and if you try, please share the stories you’ve come up with.

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As some might know I’ve been using Second Life in my financial accounting class at the University of Central Florida since the fall 2007 semester.  Since that time my class size has gone from an average of 200+ to 800+.  I have tweaked the learning objects each semester to try to improve the students learning experience, from the way the students interact with the 3-D accounting equation and interactive T-account to how they submit their homework, now employing automated homework boxes that examine the formatting of the data and the naming convention of the notecards that the students use.  The homework on the notecards is now automatically read and sent to a MySql database and a confirmation e-mail is sent (well usually this works) to students so that they know they’ve submitted things properly.

As the occasional reader of this blog will know, well firstly I only occasionally post, but secondly I’m interested in using Second Life to engage my students in what surprisingly I’ve been told is a rather un-engaging topic.  So I’m always listening to feedback from my students about my use of Second Life and the problems some of them have.  In fact when asked how my students feel I usually reply that anecdotally the students fall into thirds: 1/3 really like it, 1/3 really hate it, and 1/3 just use it because it’s something that is required.

But as I prepare for the start of the Spring 2010 semester I thought I should look at some actual data to see how students feel.  I am always cognizant of the cost/benefit of using Second Life for my students and for ME (as it takes up most of  my time, answering orientation questions, grading non-automated HW assignments, dealing with students whose laptops aren’t powerful enough, etc.).  And I wanted to see if the “noise” from the 1/3 “I hate it group” is causing me to actually inflate the size of that group – the old squeaky wheel thing going on.

So I looked at data I collect at the end of each semester.  I ask my students to take a survey in which I ask for feedback on all the technology I use in the course: Second Life, Twitter, Concept Mapping software, My Accounting Lab, and Meebo (yes I know its a lot of technology for an accounting course).  I’m not going to go over all the results to that survey in this post but want to examine one of the questions that I ask:

For each of the Second Life objects listed below, use the scale below to indicate your agreement with the following: I felt that the Second Life objects helped my understanding of the underlying accounting concepts in acg2021

These are the results:

For Fall 2009 40.7% of the students agreed or strongly agreed that Second Life helped them understand the underlying concepts of financial accounting! And it’s actually better then that.  Included in the average % is data related to students who used Second Life to watch my lectures (as opposed to using a website – though 15% of students did report they watched lectures at least some of the time via Second Life), removing that and just examining how the students felt the learning objects helped them to understand the underlying concepts of financial accounting we see that 47% of the students agreed or strongly agreed that Second Life helped them to learn accounting!  Wow!  So how do previous semesters stack up, here they are:

Spring 2009

Fall 2008

Spring 2008

You will notice that when class sizes are relatively smaller more students felt that the use of Second Life helped them to understand the accounting concepts, those students who agreed or strongly agreed overall represented 55.5% and 58.6% when using just the learning objects.

Fall 2007

The number’s here are comparatively low, but during this semester Second Life was voluntary and not a required component of the course.

So (and BTW if you’re still reading this far down, thanks!) I would say that any tool in which 40% or more students agree helps them to understand accounting is well worth the effort.



Second Life Prefrences for Text Chat

Once you’ve done this, you can now chat with a group of avatars and they will see your chat translated into the language you’ve selected in your prefences (see Chat Language above) and their chat will also be translated.

I teach accounting so you might wonder how this could affect me.  Well not only does the chat translator work with avatar chat but it also works with object chat.  That is, with the text an educational object is scripted to “say”.  This could be objects used in an orientation for your students, or in learning objects.  Now if a student is more comfortable in a language other then English, they can use the same objects you create and read the chat in their own language.  For example see this image of my accounting equation providing feedback and notice that the text is shown in both English and Spanish.

Second Life Translations

Now I don’t know Spanish so I can’t vouch for how good (or not good) they are, but I imagine they will only improve over time.  Certainly if I was teaching a foreign language this would be a huge boon, but I can also see other possibilities, what if there were an accounting translation version?  Accounting after all is the language of business, and many first time students struggle more with all the new terminology then with the actual number crunching.

To try it out yourself you need to download the beta Snow Globe Viewer, the links are provided below (Note: I was using the Mac version and it worked just fine).

For Windows, Mac, or Linux

I struggled to figure out how to do a workshop about Second Life in a limited amount of time, with attendees who have limited experience in Second Life if any, and who will have limited if any internet connections.  I wanted to keep away from PowerPoint and find something that would be compelling enough to keep the groups attention, my argument is that Second Life is engaging so my workshop should be too.  Thankfully I stumbled upon a wonderful new presentation tool called Prezi.

I see Prezi as a tool that helps you to tell a story and while PowerPoint lends oneself to use a lot of text, Prezi lends oneself to use more media – flash movies and pictures along with text to help tell the story.  You don’t have to worry about transitions, Prezi zooms into each object in your presentation which turns out to be a really nice way to show emphasis.  Prezi is fairly new and there are certainly some things I’d like to see.  For example, a way to include sound so that I could create a narrated presentation or at least some background music.  It can be more flexible in terms of themes and color choices as well, but all in all I think it did a nice job of forcing me to think a bit outside of the box.  Will see what the workshop thinks about it.

Below is an embedded version of the prezi (you can also see a larger version that is hosted on their site).   One thing that might not be inuitive at first is the need to click through the presentation and that is accomplished by using the controls on the bottom right corner of the prezi. You can view it full screen, click on any object to zoom in for a closer look, and click the links to open up a web page.  One of the nice features is that when an object is a flash movie, it automatically starts playing nice and seamless.  Let me know what you think in the comments.

I’ll also be giving a talk about Twitter and how it can be leveraged for classroom use in which I’ll be doing a basic run down of what twitter is – for anyone in attendance living under their green eye shades.  I’ll also cover some of the relatively newer ways of interfacing with Twitter including TweetDeck, Seesmic, Spreadtweet, Mishnet, and Tunein.  For managing multiple accounts something most anyone using twitter will end up doing, one for personal use and one for the classroom, I’ll be talking about two products, HootSuite and CoTweet.  And finally I’ll be discussion a neat tool from Poll Everywhere that allows you to take polls with responses coming from various sources – the web, text messages, mobile web and of course twitter.

The first presentation was for the 17th annual Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technologies and I presented some initial results of student perceptions of engagement related to their Second LIfe™ use and it’s impact on their performance. I have a lot more analysis to do and will be presenting a more detailed analysis at the upcoming Second Life™ Education Community Convention taking place September 5 – 7 in Tampa, Florida this year in conjunction with the Second Life Community Convention. I will post details of that after the session, but for those interested will post my slides from the AAA below.

My second presentation was given as part of the Conference on Teaching and Learning and was geared to how I used Second LIfe™, Twitter, Camtasia Studios, Meebo, Jing, and Concept Maps in my course. Whew that was a lot to over in 40 minutes! The slides for that are provided below.

Lastly, I was interviewed yesterday by CDB Barkley from the New Media Consortium as part of their Studio One series (follow the link for other interesting interviews). I mainly focused on the use of NMC’s orientation island which I’ve discussed previously in this blog and my plan on bringing in over 700 students this fall into Second Life™ (in just a few weeks, which says quite a bit about my lack of blog posting this summer).

Well it’s been a busy few weeks, but the real fun begins in 2 weeks as 700+ students enter begin using Second Life™, I promise to keep everyone posted with greater frequency.

Through the interview, Lou has provided surprisingly thorough insight into his business, and the business of virtual worlds in general. Beyond this, he gave detailed information on the accounting procedures he employs. The questions I asked are as follows:

1. What first led you to pursue a business related to Second Life?

TheSLAgency understands the potential for Virtual Worlds and how they bridge geography, enable unique experiences, and expand the imagination of its participants. That being said, we knew we needed to be in this space as the future of ‘digital dwelling’ looks more and more promising. TheSLAgency looked at several virtual worlds and found Second Life to contain a nice balance of ease-of-use verses functionality / audience. Understanding that Second Life, from a marketer’s perspective, should be used as a tool…and not a pool:

2. What are some of the companies you’ve worked with? What type of services did you provide?

TheSLAgency has successfully executed various types of marketing services for The Ontario Public Service, Nestle Nesquik, The World Bank/IFC, and MIRA Publishing to name a few. Services range from 3 to 6 month branding/messaging programs to live conferences events, recruitment drives, brand interaction, author readings/discussion, display media and virtual brand ambassador programs.

3. Why should companies consider expanding into virtual worlds?

The common denominator for all virtual worlds is the memorable & emotional experience they provide. When you can engage a consumer for upwards of 30 minutes, provide an interesting (read non-boring) training vehicle, or cost-effectively bridge geographic bounds via Virtual Meetings; it is difficult to overlook the value that VW could provide.

4. What advantages are there in marketing within virtual worlds, compared to more traditional means? What are the disadvantages?

Having a footprint in a virtual world allows for a unique brand experience and provides that emotional connection – this is an already establish goal of traditional advertising. A brand can engage their message target much more effectively and creatively via 3D content that is dynamic and innovative. Doing so builds brand affinity. From the business / corporate perspective; Virtual Worlds can enable branch offices from around the globe to meet, chat, and visualize ideas without paying hundreds of thousands in hotel & travel arrangements.

One may look at the non-standard metrics as a disadvantage to Virtual Worlds. Second Life for instance is not unlike the world-wide-web in 1995. It’s still new, adopted “only” by a few million users (compared to overall internet users) and still has many milestones to reach before it’s completely like the internet we know today. Content development in almost any virtual world is typically propriety, although in Second Life, content can be developed by anyone who learns the basics of the built-in toolset. This slight learning curve, coupled with any lack of “community management” can leave your consumer-targeted Second Life space devoid of visitors. This is what many 2006/2007 brand entrants into SL fell victim to: a poor understanding of the community, it’s wants/needs, and dreams.

5. What are the chief problems, if any, that you encounter when pitching the idea of marketing in Second Life (specifically to big name businesses)?

Some businesses fail to make the connection and see how Second Life can forward their message / brand experience. We haven’t found this to be unique to large or small businesses. A similar song has been played when CMO’s and VP’s were being pitched to budget a public website. TheSLAgency believes we are at that point again where innovation tentatively hangs up in a “why do we need this” meeting. Surprisingly enough, most businesses are intrigued, and excited about the value Virtual Worlds can bring to their brand; however, some are overly cautious, while others are willing but fail to do the proper planning.

6. Do you find that it’s becoming easier to make the case for business in virtual worlds?

There has been a surge of interest in finding & implementing business solutions within a virtual world such as Second Life. We say ‘finding’ as each approach to leveraging virtual worlds for a goal should be done analytically and carefully planned out. No solution is cookie cutter and truly visionary corporate representatives understand this.

7. What is the future of marketing in Second Life?

We see an heavy push by the business world to be involved in Second Life . Recruitment and Training are the top reasons why business-centric (non-consumer) companies inquire and work with TheSLAgency.

8. What do you see in the future of virtual worlds in general?

While it is difficult to see the future; we do see a inevitable expansion of Virtual Worlds into everyday life. This “mainstreaming” will come about when the general populace overcomes the stigma that was first associated with the internet. E.g. being “plugged in” to a virtual world.

9. Are there any other virtual worlds you’re looking at for your business? Any that interest you otherwise?

While our developers have been prototyping in several other virtual worlds; we enjoy working with Second Life due to its flexible functionality.

10. Finally, what method of accounting do you use? (Accrual, cash-basis, or “I don’t know – ask my accountant”). How do you account/keep records for transactions?

A single point of “cash” is utilized and budgeted out to the required departments. Since this leg of our business is done primarily in a virtual world, we primarily use the linden dollar to pay all but high-level employees and fund development projects when not done in-house.

Relatively speaking, accounting of SL Transactions is rather easy. Each month SL enables you to download a record of all transactions. Mind you, some transaction sheets can be thousands of entries long and require a fair amount of man-hours to process. A service-based QuickBooks template, as well as a basic understanding of spreadsheet software is really all you need.

Louis Volare (Real Life – Louis Landon) - you have to experience his music in order to believe it! Please be sure to check out Louis Volare in SL at Landon Arts, Landon (133, 243, 23) or through his RL (real life) website http://www.louislandon.com/…. You won’t be disappointed! 

Louis Landon is a wonderful musician, smart business man, and a promoter of peace that has been using SL to his advantage. Louis has stated his personal mission is “to create a more peaceful world by writing and performing music from the heart.”  That statement tells of Louis Landon’s passion for his music and mankind.  The amount of work that Louis puts into promoting his CDs and his mission of peace both through SL and RL is extensive and the success of his newest CD is proof that he is doing a great job.

 1.  What made you decide to open a business and play your beautiful music using SL?  I thought that it would be a great way to increase my fan base and reach people with my music and mission.  

2.    Do you see the use of SL as a plus to the advancing of your music/business?  Definitely.  

3.    How do you track sales and/or tips through SL?  It’s not possible to see where all CD sales or downloads come from,  but the downloads that come through secondtunes.com are all from SL. iTunes is impossible to tell, but people often tell me why they bought my CD on cdbaby.com.  And I would say that maybe 60% of my sales there are now because of SL.  

4.    What is the most challenging part of keeping accounting records through SL? It is not really a challenge at all.  SL does all the work for me and all the information is available for download. 

5.    Are you able to extract the necessary information from SL to prepare financial statements and/or tax returns?  Yes.  Everything I make in SL goes into PayPal and then is transferred directly into my corporate bank account.  Every penny is accounted for.  

6.    What advice would you give to other musicians who are contemplating using SL? I’d say, jump in. I still see SL being at the formative stages.  I believe there is a strong upside potential in SL.  It has not grown as fast as I had thought, but it is growing.  And I think the best years of SL are ahead.  My business model there continues to evolve and I find that more things are leading to RL work.  

7.    (This question is one that many fans wonder about… the Volare brothers… so I had to ask) Are you and Luigi really brothers or are you the same person?  I can’t answer that question because both Louis and Luigi would come after me. I’m not so worried about Louis. hehe

submitted by: Terri Berry (SL Avatar: TerriBerry Wrigglesworth)

Seeing so many students over the course of the day and evening left me reflecting on the impact of watching your students do their homework! It’s something we don’t do, normally. It was amazing to be able to see what the students were doing, look at their transactions (On the notecard and visually via the model) and be able to provide feedback on the spot. This ability really highlights the possibilities of teaching in a synchronous environment. And amazingly (and this is important I’m sure, but don’t know quite why yet), the students stayed around even after they submitted their own assignment. They didn’t just log off (as they do when they submit things via WebCT). Certainly some were helping others, but many were well just watching, for what ever reason and I think that’s great!

Well here’s the boring technical stuff for what I did / what the students did. The 1st assignment (and the next two for that matter) were to create accounting transactions form problems in the students textbook. They had to write the transactions on a notecard and drop it on the model. Here’s an example of a completed notecard (from assignment #3) on the right. The model would then process the transactions and let them know if the results of all their transactions was a balanced model (i.e. debits=credits). I found, and encouraged students to make changes to their notecard until the model was balanced – in that way they would know they had the right answer – so in the end there were over 1000 notecards with accounting transactions on them. To make my life easier I crated a script that would send me an e-mail of the content of each notecard in csv format that included the notecards owners name as the subject line, thus helping to authenticate who dropped the notecard. Here’s what the emailed assignment would look like:

Anyway, it worked great (a few hiccups with directions like renaming the notecard transaction, and such) but overall Second Life held up without a glitch and the model processing 1000+ notecards and sending out emails worked like a charm also.

I know what your thinking, accountants in second life, how much fun can they have? I give you this short video and some pics to allay your fears, we are a partying bunch….

]]> http://www.mydebitcredit.com/2008/01/22/accounting-students-in-second-life/feed/ 0 http://www.mydebitcredit.com/2008/01/22/nmc-orientation-island-a-success-story/ http://www.mydebitcredit.com/2008/01/22/nmc-orientation-island-a-success-story/#comments Tue, 22 Jan 2008 16:21:46 +0000 admin http://www.mydebitcredit.com/2008/01/22/nmc-orientation-island-a-success-story/ If you’ve read this blog from my initial postings, you will know that I was less then enthusiastic about the student orientation experience, and believe that at least in part the poor SL orientation island (what with students not being able to get off, the harassment, etc.) was reflected in the resistance my Fall 2007 students had to Second Life. Also as mentioned in those posts, a new type of orientation would be available for my Spring 2008 class – The NMC Orientation Island and what a difference a well thought out, education based orientation makes.

A quick mention of the highlights from an educators standpoint:

1. Not one student has gotten “stuck” on NMC’s orientation island.
2. Students that are unsure where to go, can IM me and receive a TP directly to our classroom in Second Life.
3. Students having problems – with clothes or any other issue can be met at the orientation island (something impossible with SL OI) by myself, a TA, etc.
4. Within minutes, if so desired, students can be on Teaching 4, for my own orientation of classroom objects.

I could not be more pleased with the results of having the students register via NMC and learn the basics via NMC, but there are a few downsides that should be mentioned in all fairness.

1. A few accounts were broken (clothes didn’t rez, didn’t receive e-mail authorization), and the registration does not allow someone to get a new avatar with the same e-mail address. These students (and honestly only a handful out of close to 200) had to register and go through Second Life’s own orientation.
2. Avatars can move off of the orientation island (see above), very quickly, thus more avatars were ending up in the classroom orientation lacking some very basic skills (a trade off I’m very happy to make). After all, I’d rather have students learn the basics in my classroom, exploring the learning objects if possible.

And the quantitative numbers prove (at least to me) the success of using this type of open orientation, for the first two weeks of the semester I have had the following:

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