Week+3

=Week 3: May 17 - May 23=

Virtual Worlds: Workplace of the Future?
Regardless of the specific discipline we're teaching, the general goal of education is to prepare our learners for the future. If we accept the premise that the future of work will involve increased telecommuting in many fields, then what can the virtual worlds of today teach us about the workplace of tomorrow? This week we'll explore business and industry use of virtual worlds, tour corporate and "in-world" business locations in Second Life, and discuss the murky area of legal issues and governance in the metaverse.

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__**Second Life Locations**__

START LOCATION:
 * [|University of Manitoba Campus in SL]

SIMS TO VISIT:
 * [|Cisco Systems] - Modeling products in use (Model Home)
 * [|Manpower] - The future of virtual work, interactive presentation
 * [|crayon's Virtual Thirst campaign for Coke] - Engaging customers in marketing and product design
 * [|Warner Brothers Gossip Girl] - Creating fictional places from popular TV show to extend a narrative

OTHER BUSINESS, ECONOMIC, & LEGAL LOCATIONS:


 * [|IBM] - Large campus, much of it is private for employees only
 * [|NBC Universal Headquarters] - Dance floor and stage for auditions
 * [|Nota Bene] - First avatar notary in Second Life

__**Assignments (generally due the following week)**__


 * Second Life Skills**
 * Complete the Global Kids Curriculum[| Level 3: Snapshots] lesson
 * Visit the [|Ivory Tower of Primitives] and complete the first two levels (floors) of this walk through tutorial. A complimentary resource for this tutorial is the Global Kids Curriculum [|Level 2: Introduction to Building]
 * Take a snapshot of yourself working on the Ivory Tower of Primitives tutorial to include with your forum post.


 * Reflection**
 * Forum Post 5: Tell us about your experience completing the Ivory Tower of Primitives tutorial - did you find the tutorial easy or hard? As a walk-through, self-paced tutorial, do you think it was well designed? Why or why not?


 * Forum Post 6: Did you find the Miendlarzewska paper had a compelling argument for why companies should be investigating virtual worlds for better customer interaction and product development? Why or why not? Now that you've had some experience with Second Life yourself, what do you think are the biggest obstacles to enterprise use of virtual worlds for training and development?

__**Readings for Week 3 Discussion**__
 * Miendlarzewska, Ewa Aurelia and Koslov S., (2009) //[|Organizational Learning in a Networked World: Co-Research and Co-Design with Customers]//
 * James Grimmelmann, //[|Virtual World Feudalism]//, 118 Yale L.J. Pocket Part 126 (2009), http://thepocketpart.org/2009/01/19/grimmelmann.html

Additional readings:
 * Driver, Erica and Driver S. (2008), //[|The Immersive Internet Make Tactical Moves Today For Strategic Advantage Tomorrow],// white paper
 * Kozlov, Slava and Reinhold N., (2008) [|To Play or Not to Play: Can Companies Learn to be n00bs, LFG, and Level Up?]

__**Projects/Papers**__


 * Project 1**: Using the [|Projects & Events evaluation matrix], **attend two [|live events in Second Life]** and evaluate the experience using the matrix. Write a 2-3 page single-spaced paper describing your experience, and justifying your evaluation scores. Paper and evaluation forms are due June 26, 2009 at midnight EST to fleep.tuque@gmail.com. Final documents should be in either .doc and .xls format OR in Google Doc "Document" and "Spreadsheet" format. Username to invite is fleep513@gmail.com for Google Docs only.