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Teaching in SL

Over the years, I have been incorporating more and more technology into my chemistry classes. Now that I retired in 2015, it is fun to look back at what I did. Here's a PP presentation I gave long ago. http://www.chem.tamu.edu/class/fyp/keeney/secondlife/Integrated%20Technology-its.ppt I am editing this in 2017.

Fall 2010 was my 3rd semester at trying to incorporate optional weekly review sessions into SL. Optional for a few reasons. (1) My classes are large; I teach two classes of about 250 students each, so obviously I cannot have everyone in SL at the same time. (2) I do have a few students under 18 - which is problematic. (3) Some students are very uncomfortable in SL. Here I'll be blogging about the trials/tribulations of encouraging students to get involved in SL. Here's the link to a video clip of a tour of my area: http://www.chem.tamu.edu/class/fyp/keeney/secondlife/drwendy-in-SL.mp4

Chemistry World is the island Kurt Winkleman and I developed to see if first year chem students can do labs in SL. This blog is not about that project.

You can visit researchgate.com to keep updated with our papers.










Thursday, December 16, 2010

Made our local newspaper!

Hi, all - The TAMU Health Science Center had their ribbon cutting yesterday on their new SL islands that are connected to our islands.  We had about 20 people in SL for the event.  Our local paper reported it and here is the link to the article:  http://www.theeagle.com/am/Profs-teach-online-with-virtual-A-amp-amp-M .  I made the front page!  This was a big deal - the Nancy Dickey, the president of HSC and past president of the AMA gave a speech in SL and even one of the Lindens, Teeple Linden, was there to talk of the importance of the educational mission of Linden Labs.  I asked him about the disappearance of the educational discount and the hardship it was placing on us university folks.  He said I should drop him a notecard with my concerns.  That is one of today's projects for me.
Posted by Wendy at 10:20 AM 1 comments

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Chemist as Artist Project

I'm now creating another chemistry learning module in my area of Second Life - Chemist as Artist, where students are given a molecule (created by Hiro Sheridan's molecule rezzer), then they have to link the atoms & bonds together, make a copy, rotate each one to form two different orientations, and draw them in 2-D using solid lines, wedges and dashed lines.  My hope is that students will begin to be able to do the reverse:  look at a 2-D drawing and in their minds' eye be able to picture the 3-D molecule.  Here is the powerpoint presentation, which you can also view in SL. 

Posted by Wendy at 4:42 PM 0 comments

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Dr. K's Molecule Game

Well, after hours and hours and hours of playing with objects, scripts, permissions (agh) and instructional design, Dr. K's Molecule Game is ready for folks to try out.  My student avatar could get through it so I'm hoping it is now working well.  If you want to try and you're not a chemist - here are the answers to the 5 stations:  6, 2, 63, nitrogen trifluoride, and 13, in that order.  Please give me feedback.  Its purpose is three fold: (1) to help my students learn to work within Second Life, (2) to have them apply a bit of chemistry knowledge and (3) to introduce them to the 3-D nature of molecules. 
Posted by Wendy at 6:25 PM 1 comments
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