technology is unpredicable!

this Monday's session was almost a success. Technology was sort of on our side except for poor old Jim whose sound didn't work. We all discovered that cellphone crackle being transmitted via headset into SL is not the most efficient means of conveying information! It was worth a try though I guess. On the whole, however, I was very impressed by the sense of presence. It was very much like being in a real conference situation.

Mats giving instructions

Toni telling us all about it

Monday's session

Well, if things should go wrong I guess they should do so with style: crashing computers, fire walls not letting sound through, avatars not making it into the room, chairs that we couldn't see each other from, echo effects, -well, what can I say. Still, the experience was good in a way: It gave me better insight into how I and others react in the environment when things do not work. But, I still feel despondent though, it's better when it works. Revenge on Thursday!

Check out Jim's video link on SL

Interesting documentary from the BBC- Check it out on Jim's video blog:
http://soulvlog.blogspot.com/2008/02/bbc-documentary-wonderland-virtual.html

And after today's session we're all exhausted!

Well, what can I say - technology! Irina, Martina and Maria were the victims, but the rest of us had a good meeting I think. Personally I feel it is interesting to reflect over how different the experience was from Monday's session- but I'm not going to go into details - not yet at least!

Talking communicative culture in Marratech

And I also must thank Toni again- I would have lost the recording if you hadn't been such a good circus manager! Thanks mate.

And that was soo good.

Technology didn't let us down! Yes! The first session was, at least from my perspective, a real succes. After some intial problems we all (well almost all, Martina couldn't make it) managed to get our sound working and altough Irelli/Irina was running around like a mad hatter, much to the amusement of everyone, we soon got organised to walk to the campfire.

Sound checking

Once there we had some really good conversation i think. You were all so active and I got a real feel that we there, for real. It's amazing how many cultural experiences were baked into our little crowd: experiences from Argentina, India, Spain, Italy, Seychelles, the US, the UK, Italy, Malta, Russia- just to mention a few. Can't wait to get to know you all better.

Safe around the camp fire on Kamimo

After the session I almost had a heart attack; Our recordings were almost lost! Anneli's poor computer just couldn't handle the 5 gigabyte file our session had generated. Thanks to Anneli and her husband Gregory, linguist/tech wiz, we managed to save the remains and safely tuck away the entire recording for analysis. Can't wait! (but I have to- plenty other things waiting to be done too). See you all on Thursday in Marratech!

And some interesting related blogs

Just thought I'd add a few links to related blogs:

The first one is the formal Kamimo blog. If you are ambitious, you read the entire history of the project here: http://kamimo-islands.blogspot.com/

The second blog spot relates to another course in Oral proficiency run by David Richardson, Kalmar University College. He's a real wiz when it comes to this type of course and actually the original instigator of our course. In other words- any complaints- blame David ;-) (it's an in-joke): http://opspring08.blogspot.com/

The third and last blog I want to draw your attention to is our very own Jim Barret. Did you guys know he is actually a Second Life ambassador? Check it out:
http://www.soulsphincter.blogspot.com/

Course 'Oral Competence' starts on Monday

Getting ready for the course start now. We now have 8 doctoral students with very different cultural backgrounds who are going to collaborate in Second Life, on Kamimo island. We have managed to get in touch with almost all of them and checked their equipment and it will be really exciting to see if all works out on Monday at 1. I sometimes tend overestimate the reliability of technology but I hope I am right this time in expecting everything to work out- I'm sure I'll be proven wrong though, yet again.

The last member to join our little gang is Irina. This is especially exciting since it is the first doctoral student that I actually supervise myself- I just got the news yesterday! So- now we have the following countries represented in the course: Australia, Sweden, Italy, Malta, Russia, Spain, the US and Norway. Not bad really considering there are only 11 of us partaking in this collabrative excercise, including students, teachers and researchers!