Virtual Learning Environments

Your project may introduce a change to the way in which the nonprofit engages in outreach. In order for your project to be sustainable, what do you foresee will need to happen within the nonprofit?

The sustainability of our project lies in Globalhood’s commitment to the nonprofit community in Second Life, and commitment to maintaining their space. As part of the tenant agreement, Globalhood committed to maintaining an SL presence for a minimum of two hours per week, and at least two hours per month of volunteer service in the Nonprofit Commons. Having no previous SL experience, the Globalhood staff will need our help in introducing them to the platform. Our team, led by SL veteran Waxalka Zoom, will provide the Globalhood staff with training and continued assistance and instruction in that process.

Future goals:

Frank and the Globalhood kids will return from the Dominican Republic in mid-August. Upon their return, we plan to:

1. Coordinate with the ethnography team to obtain media that the Globalhood kids developed during their DR trip. We hope to display some of their video, photography, blog postings, etc in the Second Life office.

2. Throw a launch party in-world. We will use the Nonprofit Commons How To guide to promote our event, reaching out to TechSoup, Nonprofit Commons, and both Social Marketing and Virtual Learning Environments students.

We are aware that this project is a work in progress and will continue to develop and grow. Waxalka and Aiyana were SL members before the course, and will continue to be available for SL training in the future. Waxalka in particular has taken an active role in facilitating this project. She has made a commitment to the Nonprofit Commons, offering her skills in creating machinima for Globalhood and other nonprofits associated with the NPC. AliQuig’s SL experience was limited to the perimeters of this course, but she will see the project through the launch party.

Note to Jason and Josephine: our group is also willing to collaborate with fall semester (or any future semester) SM and VLE students, should they be interested in taking Globalhood’s SL presence to the next level.

Also, to our classmates with an interest in Second Life – we can always use volunteers! Bonus points if you have building experience or can create machinima.   Admin work and simply maintaining an avatar in the office is appreciated as well.  Contact rubioj05@newschool.edu or quigleya@newschool.edu if you’re interested.

P.S. Sarah/Billy/Emogene of the ethnography team – we’ll be in touch, once we’ve all had the chance to finish up our summer semester coursework.

Originally from http://vlegroup9.wordpress.com/2008/07/30/project-summary-cont/

- out of order but here is the final ppt

Originally from http://changingfaces.wordpress.com/2008/07/28/final-report-for-social-marketing-and-vle-class/

Originally from http://vlegroup9.wordpress.com/2008/07/26/project-summary/

So far in this class we have worked and read about different forms of virtual learning environments. For this section of the class we were asked to work with the online education site/application titled moodle.

After review the site several times I found it to be an up and coming server. In other words I think this site and idea is going to be big. For most of my classes at The New School I have used blackboard. I have heard from some students and teachers that blackboard is too rigid and not user friendly enough. I like blackboard and love that it lets me take online courses but I also feel competition makes better products and moodle is competition.

Pros

Easy to use navigational settings allow access to lessons, notes and tools for learning.

Fairly simple to navigate website links.

Expansive ability to teach one-10000etc.

Cons

Large download to ones own computer.

Not like a simple Google group app or similar.

I really like how expansive this program could be for educators. It really seems to give good learning modules and ways to make the program run specifically to your needs. My only concern is that in the age of blackboard, Google features, Second Life, will this succeed or be too primal in its initial setup. It’s good but it needs to advance. The site seems rigid and not graphically pleasing. In today’s age it’s not real simple to get running. Only time will tell if this site will continue to flourish and become a household name like Second Life.

Hi folks,

I tagged this on my del.iciou.us bookmarks but I wanted to highlight it here, too.  Interesting article in today’s NYTimes on company’s employing virtual technologies in the face of rising gas costs.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/22/technology/22meet.html?_r=2&th&emc=th&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Maybe it’s only because I’m paying more attention to it now, but I feel like in the past several months, there has been a real explosion of new internet technologies for academic and professional initiatives.  This article ties in to what my group is doing in SL, because it points out  another way to collaborate, besides traditional “face2face” meetings.  And most importantly, it brings it down to a practical, simple rationale that we all can wrap our brains around – $$money$$.  Virtual meetings = no spending money on gas and transportation expenses.

Guerrilla campaigns are going to extremes but will the message stick?

By Nat Ives, The New York Times

I find the idea of guerilla marketing very interesting because it is something you will NOT see in Orlando, FL. As you leave Orlando International Airport, there is a huge sign that reads “Welcome to Orlando, the City Beautiful.” (A guerilla marketing campaign could start with that sign.) The Disney influence is seen throughout Orlando in the clean streets and lack of graffiti.  It’s easier to understand why this type of marketing might work in larger cities with a different mystique than Orlando, e.g. NYC or Los Angeles.  Is it possible to take some elements of this type of campaign into Second Life and would it help spread the word about our Globalhood site?

The article describes Le Tigre’s sticker campaign in New York and quotes the Chief Executive as saying “We’re not going to go the traditional advertising route at all. We want to stay as irreverent as possible.”  First of all, it’s simply not possible to place signs on just any property in Second Life the way marketers can in RL.  Landowners and renters have control over “permissions” in Second Life in a way that simply does not exist in RL. Therefore, the permission of the owners or renters is a prerequisite but it does not mean a similar “irreverent attitude” cannot be utilized in a creative way.

Another example in the article describes six men and women flashing their underwear at strangers outside Grand Central Terminal. Again, in Second Life the permission of the landowners and/or renters would have to be secured before any such stunt could be planned.  Islands and the mainland in SL are rated Mature or PG and this is very important to take into consideration when marketing in SL.  In some Mature areas, a stunt like the Health & Racquet Club used, flashing the club’s logo and the name of the class, would be a total yawn. In PG areas, an owner can just “evict” your avatar with a few keystrokes so it might be a waste of time trying. However, if a “search and locate” plan was implemented first, then it would be possible to find sites in SL where such a stunt would garner attention in a positive way.

In many ways, SL is already swimming in advertising so it is difficult to claim individuals’ attention.  Some experts claim that guerrilla efforts are exactly what consumers don’t want. As J. Walker Smith says in the article, “People more and more want to set their own terms for doing business in the marketplace. One term people are demanding nowadays is the ability to escape from marketing and advertising when they don’t want it around.”

I believe this is even truer in SL than in NYC!  People escape to SL because it IS different from RL so that is a fact to always keep in mind when planning a marketing campaign.  However, the attitude of the street team members that they want to make things happen is a good mentality when marketing to avatars looking for relief from a humdrum RL. I think the best idea we can take from this article is planning “street stunts” and applying to owners of certain islands for their permission. It will take more preparation upfront but with imagination and a creative use of media such as animation, or machinima, positive energy & attention can be brought to our non-profit site.

If your target is engaged, they are getting your message. That seems to be the philosophy behind the campaign in the case study “How to Turn Video Contest Into a Viral Extravaganza & Get Millions of Views on YouTube”.

The study looks at a 2007 campaign by eBillme, an Internet site for billing. The idea was to target online shoppers to trigger awareness and to “create a groundswell of recognition” that would get online retailers to follow consumers to the eBillme website.

The relatively simple campaign plan involved a call for video entries into a “Shopping Confession” contest. The incentive –four runners up get $1000 and a grand prize winner. They created a url www.shopandconfess.com for contestants to post their entries on, but all of the videos were housed on YouTube.

To build buzz around the contest, eBillme’s PR firm sent out notices to newspaper reporters and tv producers in the top markets around the country. They also ran ads on eBillme’s home page, as well as sending out emails to subscribers.

Ultimately, the group received 46 submissions that fit their criteria for entry of creativity, production and entertainment value. One of the entries was among the top videos of YouTubes home page for two days in a row, and was viewed 766,000 times!

The campaign garnered national media attention, in USA Today and The Daytime Show—a syndicated show that airs in 9 major cities around the country, as well as local coverage in Chicago, which was the home of one of the contest winners. There was mention in a total of 31 media outlets, which drove visitors to YouYube to screen the video and raised awareness of eBillme (although I had never heard of it prior to reading this case study).

The simplicity of this campaign was probably the biggest contributor to its success. It used a familiar and popular site-YouTube-to host its videos. By using YouTube, they had the added attention of people that surf the site for amusing videos every day. Instead of solely people who already had some knowledge of the contest.

The instructions were also simple. While there was some technical skill required (in shooting, editing and uploading the video) but not so much as to be offputting.

The simple program also has legs, after the Christmas 2007 launch, eBillme has done multiple contests with different themes each month. Again, simplicty, fun and most importantly a connection with the audience are the elements that will keep this program going.

Originally from http://socialteaching.wordpress.com/2008/07/21/grassilli-response-to-%e2%80%9chow-to-turn-video-contest-into-a-viral-extravaganza-get-millions-of-views-on-youtube%e2%80%9d/

Originally from http://4globalhood.wordpress.com/2008/07/21/culture-as-cure-reading-response/

Originally from http://changingfaces.wordpress.com/2008/07/20/reading-response-youth-social-action-building-a-global-latticework-through-information-and-communication-technologiesthe/

More on media uses to raise awareness. See this HIV campaign using video and a storytelling format:

Originally from http://vlegroup9.wordpress.com/2008/07/17/hiv-still-a-big-deal-campaign/