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GUIDE FOR SECOND LIFE TEACHING

Introduction
This teacher guide was produced as part of our Virtual Hotel project in Second Life, supported by the e-Learning Development and Support
Section of the Education Development Centre of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. The project was jointly developed by the School of
Hotel & Tourism Management and the School of Design.

The project developed three islands in Second Life:

• HKPolyu Campus - http://slurl.com/secondlife/HKPolyU%20Campus/111/159/27

• HKPolyu Resort - http://slurl.com/secondlife/HKPolyU%20Resort/162/57/26

• HKPolyu Teaching Hotel - http://slurl.com/secondlife/HKPolyU%20Teaching%20Hotel/170/166/38

The purpose of the above developments were to provide a virtual environment for teaching hotel and tourism courses as well as to try to find
ways to use virtual worlds and simulated environments to enhance our teaching.

We have developed some teaching aids, lesson plans as well as some presentations, reports and papers to report our experiences. These can be
downloaded free.
• Planning a virtual field trip in Second Life http://www.scribd.com/doc/4614214/Planning-a-virtual-field-trip-in-Second-Life
• Virtual travel and tourism at: http://www.scribd.com/share/upload/3454832/sllxffatvmdh48c58mo
• Second Life: Teacher’s Perceptions: http://www.slideshare.net/paulpen/virtual-seminar-fet8604/
• Second Life Hotel & Tourism Student Feedback: http://www.scribd.com/doc/4612817/SL-Hotel-and-Tourism-Student-Feedback
• Handbook - Orientation Programme to SL for PolyU Students: http://www.scribd.com/doc/4612700/Handbook-Orientation-
Programme-to-SL-for-PolyU-Students
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Contents

GUIDE FOR SECOND LIFE TEACHING ............................................................................................................................. 1

Introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................. 1
1. Voice Chat in Second Life........................................................................................................................................................ 3
Setting up the Voice Chat function........................................................................................................................................ 4
Using the Voice Chat function............................................................................................................................................... 6
2. Making PowerPoint Presentations ........................................................................................................................................ 7
The Auto Slideshow Controls................................................................................................................................................ 9
3. Using Media Browser in Second Life ..................................................................................................................................... 10
4. Artificial intelligence avatar and Voting System...................................................................................................................... 11
5. Survey Form ......................................................................................................................................................................... 12
6. Calculator............................................................................................................................................................................... 13
7. Showing Video Clips/Movies.................................................................................................................................................. 14
8. Organizing a Virtual Lecture/Presentation.............................................................................................................................. 15
9. Organizing Group Virtual Tours/Field Trips............................................................................................................................ 16

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1. Voice Chat in Second Life

Voice Chat is one of the most useful functions used for teaching in Second Life. It allows the users to use voice to communicate in the virtual
world with a microphone instead of typing text for chat only.

With voice, it can be much easier to express our emotions and feelings. Voice chat can be used for:
- virtual lectures and demonstrations
- virtual meetings
- role-playing

However, due to the limitation of Second Life, we cannot block the voice within a set area, so if there are other classes taking place or users
talking with their microphone in Second Life, the voices will mix and it can be very noisy and difficult to conduct a conversation or make a
presentation.

Another weakness is that users need to have a microphone and speaker set up properly in their PC, which is not always under the control of
the teacher.

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Setting up the Voice Chat function

Before setting up the voice chat function in Second Life, you should:

- Have a headset or earphone and microphone installed to your computer.

- Ensure the Microphone is selected as the recording device. To check the setting, click “Start > All Programs >
Accessory > Entertainment > Volume Control”. Choose Options at the menu and then choose Properties. Check the
Recording ratio button and Click OK.

1) Select “Properties” 3) Tick “Select” option of microphone

from “Option” top in “Recording Control”
menu

2) Make sure “Microphone”

in both “Playback” and
“Recording” option is ticked

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Setup the Voice Chat function in Second Life (Contd)

1) In the top menu, choose <Edit>
and then choose <Preferences>

2) Choose the <Voice Chat> tab 3) Tick <Enable voice chat>

4) Click <OK> button

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Using the Voice Chat function

1) After the set up, you will have a

white spot above your avatar’s head

2) Press on the <Talk> button and

speak into the microphone. A green
wave appear where the white spot
was when you are speaking
3) Click on the button next to the
<Talk> button to turn on the Active
Speakers panel. In the panel, you can
adjust the volume level of different
people by the sliding bar.

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2. Making PowerPoint Presentations

The Communal Whiteboard is an interactive display tool for discussion or illustrated lectures within Second Life which can be purchased
from http://metalab.blogspot.com/. This is very helpful tool for presentation in Second Life.

Before you start the presentation, you have to convert each of your slides into individual images (suggested format: JPEG; suggested
dimension: 800x600 pixels) and upload them in Second Life as images as follow:

1) Select “Upload Image 4) “Uploading …” message

(L$10)…” from top File menu will be appeared in the middle
of Second Life window

2) Choose the image file for

uploading from your local PC
and “Open”
5) Uploaded image will be showed and
L$10 will be deducted from your Second
Life account. Click “OK” to continue

6) The texture image can

be found in the “Texture”
3) The slide order within the folder in Inventory now
board is based on alphabetical /
numeric filenames. Therefore it
is good practice to consider a
naming protocol before
dragging the images to the
board. ie. 01 - Introduction

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To put the slide image into the presentation white board, you need to follow the steps below.

1) Press the “Inventory” button and

open your inventory.

2) Hold the CTRL key down, drag the image you want from your Inventory onto
the whiteboard. The Whiteboard will have a red line around it as shown.

Note that anyone can place images on the board unless lock is enabled.

To delete the uploaded slide image, you can follow the steps below.

1) Press the Trashcan button

in the bottom panel.
2) A delete confirmation dialog box
will pop up on the top right corner.
Press “yes” to confirm delete.

3) As the board is communal, anyone can delete images

on the board, so we suggest you enable the lock. Press
on the lock button and it will turn from “green”
(i.e. disabled) to “red” (i.e. enabled)

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The Auto Slideshow Controls

1. Back - Step back thru the image contents of the whiteboard, it

will stop when you reach the first slide. The Owner can also say 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
'back'

2. Next - Step forward thru the image contents, until the last slide is
reached. The Owner can also say 'next'

3. Slide Show Timer - Touching this button opens a listen dialog with the person who touches it. Saying a number will determine the number
of seconds delay between the images shown, ie. say '5' if you want the slides to have a 5 second delay between them. You have 10
seconds to answer this request, or it will stop listening, also saying something other than a number will also give an invalid response.

Once the timer is set - the button will turn green - to indicate it is in Timer Mode. Whilst in this mode - the slideshow will loop thru the
image contents. To Stop the slideshow - touch the timer button again.

4. Templates - This button replaces the current slide - with a library of background images for use in brainstorming, voting, or even tic-tac-
toe. Clicking on the button will open up a dialog window with the images you can choose. To get rid of this background image, click
either the next or back buttons.

5. Aspect Ratio - The main viewing screen can alter its size to best accommodate the images used or brought into Second Life. There are
three settings:

4:3 - images that were originally 800x600 pixels / or videograbs brought into Second Life.
1:1 - square based images – i.e. 512 x 512 pixels ( useful for displaying many of the textures in Second Life )
2:1 - Panoramic mode - images set to 1024 x 512 pixels

6. TrashCan - clicking this button will delete the image presently shown on the main screen. A dialog window will open to give you a
Yes/No option, just incase you touched it by accident.

7. Owner Lock - When this is enabled - only the owner of the whiteboard can use it.
When the button is Green - it indicates anyone can use it.
When the button is Red - only the owner can interact with the slideshow controls or drag images to the board.

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3. Using Media Browser in Second Life

You can link to an Internet web page through a media browser in Second Life. It is actually similar to the web browser we used daily,
however, it cannot support Flash & Java content and video clips except Quicktime movies.

You need to have latest version of Quick time installed on the local computer in order to show the Quicktime movie in Second Life.

To ensure the media browser is your default browser in Second Life, please follow the steps below.

In the media browser, you can show different web

sites to your students.
2) Select media browser as your
default browser in Second Life

1) Select “Preference” from the

top “Edit” menu.

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4. Artificial intelligence avatar and Voting System

The robot is available from
http://www.pandorabots.com
In Second Life, you cannot stay in your island for 24 hours. If a visitor wants and you can provide some
to ask some questions about your island, a Chat Robot is a possible way to training to your robot to make it
serve this purpose. more intelligent.
You can train a robot as an information desk staff, teaching tutor or To start to chat with the robot,
welcoming mentor. To do this, you just need to prepare a set of questions and type "/chat" (omit the " ") and
answers for training. You may need help from your technical support team free feel to ask your questions
and they can train your robot with the questions. After that, the robot can keep
learning through its conversation experience with people in Second Life.

The voting system, it is an interactive teaching and learning tool. In Second Life, when we cannot meet people face-to-face, this interactive
tool is an option for increasing the sense of immersive learning.

With this tool, you can gather instant feedback from the students and discuss the result with them in class. As experienced, this can also
arouse students’ interest in having virtual lesson in Second Life.

1) The voting system provides three The voting system can help you to collect
option “Yes”, “No” and “Not sure”. students’ feedback immediately.
Students can simply press on the
corresponding bar based on their
choice. The three bars’ height will
show the voting percentage instantly.

2) To reset the system to its initial

state after each round of voting, you
need to press the white button at the
top left top corner of the base unit.

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5. Survey Form

The survey form is a useful tool to collect opinions from your students. Usually, a web-based survey form is
linked to a website. However, inside SL, we can still have a way to run the survey without involving a web site.

In this tool, simply click the QA kiosks and the questions will be shown one-by-one. Answer all the questions
and your results will be sent to a pre-set administrator email address. It should be noted that this tool is
configured to serve one user exclusively. If more than one user wants to fill the form, they have to queue and
wait. To use this tool, here is a sample procedure:

2) Question will be shown in a

dialog box at the top right corner

3) Read the question

1) Click on the QA kiosk

4) Click one of the choice buttons provided

according to your own decision. Your answer will
be sent to the database and the next question will
be shown as in step 2

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6. Calculator

There is a scientific calculator for daily use when necessary. You just need to stand in front of / near the calculator and
press to input the equation you need the calculator to perform for you, like "4+4=" (omit the "), and it will show you the
answer immediately as in real life. The calculator can serve (1) basics functions, i.e. addition, subtraction, multiplication,
division, exponents, and radicals, as well as negative numbers; (2) parentheses, i.e. any number of parentheses may be
used in an expression; (3) trigonometry, i.e. sine, cosine, tangent, arcsine, arccosine, and arctangent; (4) angle modes, i.e.
answers can computed using degrees or radians by inputting "degree mode" or "radian mode"; (4) pi and e are preset
constants, i.e. they can be used in your expressions; (5) variables, i.e. user can define and use variables by “store”
comment like “store foo = 6” and "delete" comment to delete the variable like “delete foo”; (5) answer memory, i.e. the
calculator will remember the answer to the last problem, and the term "ans" can be used in the next expression to refer to
the last answer. There is a sample procedure showed on the next page for your reference.

3) The answer will be shown here

immediately in the conversation area. It
also provides scientific calculations as
mentioned before

2) Type in the numeric equation with

operator, follow by “=” in the “Local
Chat” bar, say 4+4=, on the bottom and
1) Get close to the press “Enter” button on keyboard or
calculator and click on it “Say” button located at the end of the
“Local Chat” bar.

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7. Showing Video Clips/Movies

You can upload your video clip onto the Internet. Then you can show video on the video screen in Second Life. However, the video format
has to be QuickTime movie (i.e. mov) and your local computer used for viewing must have the latest version of QuickTime installed.

1) Click on the screen display.

3) There is a “Play / Pause” and
“Stop” button on the control panel
for your selection when showing.

2) The video will be streamed and shown after

some time, depending on the video size, together
with a control panel dialog box on top right corner

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8. Organizing a Virtual Lecture/Presentation

When organizing a virtual lecture, we suggest:

1. Use voice function to present. (lagging may cause some delay

of the voice)

2. Ask your audience to take a seat before you start to reduce lag.

3. Invite guest speakers from all over the world, Second Life can
help you to break the physical boundaries.

4. Use interactive tools, such as the voting system, to arouse

students’ interest and gather instant feedback.

5. Have a Q and A session, which allows students to ask

questions thru voice or chat function.

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9. Organizing Group Virtual Tours/Field Trips

When organizing a virtual tour or field trip as a group activity, you can:

1. Guide the students to different places in Second Life using the map
function.

2. Ask participating students to offer you friendship before the start

of the tour, you can then provide immediate help to them by instant
messages or offer them teleports when they get lost to join you
again easily.

3. Ask the students to set up the voice chat in Second Life, as well the
microphone & speaker of their local computer used for the tour to
make sure they can listen, and even talk throughout the tour.

4. Ensure all students are familiar with the communication channels

so they can request help easily during the tour.

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