This page on Schome’s forums appeared in my referrers log yesterday. The thread is a couple of months old, but people are apparently looking at it anyway. So…
If you’re going to tell me that I’m a “stupid person” who is “so desperate for attention that they love to criticise,” in response to my “scathing attack on your work,” at least have the decency to do so where I can see it without it happening to pop up in WordPress’ stats page. You probably feel the comment is hypocritical – but the difference is, I have a space for you to leave comments. You do not. At least, not an obvious one.
If you care, the comment that annoyed me was that of being “the first” to work things out – people have worked out said things before. Without just checking the code, because the physics code remains hidden. That is all.
Also, I made a new category solely for this post.
“Likely to incur wrath”. Lol. Well – I guess that, after all, any piece of blog post can incur wrath nowadays. I may even switch to WordPress just to have that category and put all my posts in it. xD
So, getting back to the point… I don’t know about physics in SL, Schome park or any of their activities, but I’d suggest you to be understanding. IMHO, the posts seem to have been written by students (I’d hope they aren’t teachers, honestly, at least) in the middle of an attack of rage, so… Even if they do deserve to be respected, I would not pay a lot of attention, personally.
What is decent or not could be subject to discussion, indeed, but I don’t think it is worth it in this case. I don’t see the point, to be honest, in beginning a discussion over the relevance/usefulness/originality of their work as it is a private project, and not one that could have an effect on the whole TG. They’re the ones paying for the land, so I guess it’s up to them to use their stuff efficiently or not.
Well, off to kick with my dead ankle. T_T
Wait, you just did a traceback on your own blog?
That’s… well, I thought that was impossible. I thought some sort of weird loop would happen.
Also, proving a programming language from within an implementation is rather pointless. If I was doing something like that, I’d shell out some cash for the most recent havok (they already payed for an island, I bet you have enough money for a simple license), and develop a program that would do this. It would be more accurate (than SL), and produce some neat videos of cool stuff happening.
Couldn’t resist – fair point about giving folk the chance to respond to comments posted about things they have said – and the Schome community forum that you referred to does just that – anyone can register and contribute to the discussion – indeed we would love you to do so Katherine cos you are cleary doing interesting things in TSL and we could learn a lot from you (which is at least part of the reason that we keep watching your blog!
Hope we can enter into more constructive dialogues in the future …
After uncovering what this was all about I’m afraid I have to agree with Katherine. The Schome community staff are very kind and supportive, they have organised some great things but it does strike me a little odd that the main thing going on in Schome Park II doesn’t acctually seem to be teaching, although us SParkers (residents of schome park) are learning all the time, it seems to be more about Second Life’s interface, building and scripting instead of archeology, ethics and philosophy, physics, languages, reading and writing and artificial intelligence. I’m sure it would work much better if as well as discussions there were more practical learning events. I also think there needs to be more emthasis on the fact that schome park’s main priority was meant to be ‘a new education system for the information age’. There should be more advertisements for the lessons and discussions so more people could get involved. I reckon that with the entrance of these new SParkers – which I’ve been told there will be a large number of – there will be a major increase in the amount of people involved in these lessons, which I’m thinking that this will allow the schome staff to show us that they can be very good at this.
Yours sincerely
Faz.
Well said Faz …
I agree about the need for more focussed activities to be scheduled which are not to do with using the Second Life interface – this is something the staff have been discussing for a while (a tension between wanting to support students in taking the lead and being more proactive in setting up activities ourselves) – good to know that you think we should be more proactive – rapid change in stance coming up.
Re future learning systems – we are actually learning a lot about important issues from what has happened – your observation about us not ‘teaching’ but folk “learning all the time” is interesting in that context. If we take the whole environment (schommunity website) which includes Schome Park, the wiki and the forum then there has actually been a lot of other learning taking place too – the level of debate in the forum often maps onto Stage 5 of Salmon’s model of CMC interaction (which we rarely see in our undergraduate students) and some of the issues you are tackling (eg governance, copyright, how to deal with people who don’t conform) are pretty scary (impressive).
However, key message for me is that more direction in-world with staff being more proactive would be good. We will act on that. Thanks.
PeterT
(This time noting the last few entries in this thread on Schome’s forums.)
I think that you misinterpreted what I said – I’m not unhappy with you, as such; I just didn’t see the point in what you were doing. I also don’t appreciate people criticising me for things I have said where I can’t find them easily (especially when the comments so far out of line with what other TSLers say about me – admittedly on my own website). I don’t mind if you do so here, nor will I censor them (although if you’re too inflammatory, the spam filter might anyway). I am unhappy with Global Kids, but that’s another issue.
I would rather have constructive dialog with you and/or your project, rather than useless name calling. Thus far I’ve had useless name-calling and seemingly off-topic comments. Firing back insults is not going to result in you coming out of things “sounding reasonable and worth supporting.”
Side note: saying “I would reply, but I won’t.” counts as a reply, “mgaved.”
I agree with you totally about the desirability of constructive dialog (and criticism) rather than ‘useless name calling’.
Let’s draw a line under what I believe was a one off incident of flaming several months ago – and move forward more positively.
Do you still wonder what the point of the Schome Park Project is?
Have you seen the report that we wrote on the schome-NAGTY Teen Second Life Pilot? – might help explain what we are doing – you can download it from http://kn.open.ac.uk/public/document.cfm?docid=9851
The Schome & Second Life page in our wiki will put this in the broader context of why we are using Second Life at all – see
http://schome.open.ac.uk/wikiworks/index.php/Schome_&_Second_Life
PeterT
PS I’m interested in the extent to which we can attract you to take part in our forum discussions (cos a forum is really a better environment for dialogue than a blog (IMHO)) – http://schome.open.ac.uk/forum … ;O)
Having read both of the above, I have little to add. Except that I now know what NAGTY stands for.
And yes, a forum is better for dialog than a blog, despite what Linden Lab seem to think. However, I strongly suspect that, were I to join said forum, I would be unwelcome either in an outright flamey way or a general refusal to talk to me way. Plus, joining communities always scares me. (I was in Second Life for a good three months before I spoke to anyone. I spent most of that time scripting.)
LOL – I am warming to you Katharine! I had not perceived of you as someone who was scared of communication!
I assure you that you would be very welcome in the schome community forum – that initial flame on your blog was very out of character.
I would guess that a lot of folk in our forum are watching this discussion – so they will know that I’m keen to see if we can engage you in dialogue in the Schome forum. Now I’m not saying that folk won’t offer you constructive criticism if they disagree with things you say – but they won’t ignore you and they won’t attack you (and if anyone does I have total confidence that someone else will put them right).
Who knows – maybe we could find a way to give you access to Schome Park itself if you wanted to find out what we are really getting up to …
Surely you would just have to add me to the access list, seeing as I’m on the same grid as the sims (if not the people on the sims… depends how recently it was all set up there.). Although I suppose there’s probably a legal mess involved that says “No.”
As for joining your forums… fine. :p
Commentless, yet stealing cyberspace.
Each to his own, though.
._.
/me goes to rant elsewhere.
right, i’m stuck in a difficult position here; I love the concept of Schome because, well, I havent had the best of times with the current school systm, and I beleive it flawed.
though, I must admit, we have moved away somewhat from the topics of archology, phyiscs and philosophy, and moved onto more ‘vague’ elements; the A.I. Emporium, Bright SParks.
but, alas, PeterT wonders off and only pops up once a fortnight, until he hides again, looking for funding or more ways to promote Schome.
so, I concur with Faz; there is no reason to promote Schome if it’s going to be little more then a hang-out.
by the by, however, I must thank you for your excellent work on the bots!
Ta de ta
-Hapno
I have to agree with Hapno that there is little point in Schome Park if it is little more than a hang-out. I also agree that at the moment – with the exception of the machinima work, and some archaeology that will be happening shortly – there is a lack of focussed activity at the moment. However, we are in the summer recess – and posted info stating that we were running at a lower level of activity over the summer on the wiki – so this shouldn’t come as any surprise to you.
Come September we will be having a recruitment drive – wanting to increase the number of registered users of Schome Park to around 400 (we think that will give us a sufficient core of users to provide the sort of buzz that is necessary for an island – nothing worse than an island with one or two people on it). As the recruitment drive kicks in we will be increasing the level of staffing and of focussed activities. Staff are using the time during the recess to plan activities and prepare resources.
As for me (PeterT) “wondering off and only popping in once per fortnight” – Schome Park (ie going in-world) is one part of working on the Schome Park Project. The wiki and forum are equally important elements in the project – as discussed in the schome-NAGTY Teen Second Life Pilot Final Report. On any large project it is quite normal for staff to take responsibility for specific aspects of the work. As the director of the project my main jobs are to do with the project’s direction and coordination, ethics and child protection, staffing issues, fund raising, and research. Day to day in-world support is not part of my remit – nor is moderation of the wiki or forum (there are other staff with responsibility for these aspects of the project). However, I do think it is important that I keep in touch with what is happening which is why I spend as much time as I do in the forum – and using the wiki and coming in-world when I can.
So – you can expect to see a major increase in activity both in terms of numbers of participants and ‘organised events’ come the end of the summer recess. However, being realistic I don’t expect that I will be spending more time in-world (much as I would like to).
See http://www.schome.ac.uk/ for more info on Schome and the Schome Park Project.
I like to add that there is also ‘SHOUT’ the Schome Park Arts competition, see forum.
Additionally the Machinima group encourages ALL Schomers/SParkers to work and to be involved in film making. There is plenty of creative work to do, e.g. making of props, sets and even acting. So, we do not hang about as we are busy
Pigment is always there between 17.00 – 19.00 to teach photography and machinima.
It would be nice to have more students
> nothing worse than an island with one or two people on it
It depends on the circumstances – if I want to get on with something, then I don’t want lots of people around (as it’s highly likely that I’ll end up talking to them instead of doing what I was going to do :p)
On the other hand, though, there are cases where you *want* lots of people around to talk to – you may get an idea for something to do or you might just want to chat.
Um hello Katharine. I just wanted to point a few things out (I didn’t get to see all the other comments, so I am sorry if they seem repeated).
1. We actually need publicity if we are going to carry on with our project, we need funding and if we have more publicity the more people will want to fund us.
2. We might find it necessary to censor things as they may be breaking the AUP and could create negative publicity if they were left on view.
3. I am not being nasty here, yet you act like it was an honour to have you looking around and reviewing our work, it wasn’t neccessarily but we did enjoy talking to you sometimes.
4. If there are flaws you could actually point them out in a nicer way rather than be sarcastic and overly critical.
Thanks,
Daisy
You may “actually need” publicity. I have no objection to that. I object when publicity is a primary consideration over anything else.
Congratulations for actually admitting that you censor criticism. Removing negative statements will simply hide the bad publicity until it’s placed somewhere you can’t control it. I could, for instance, lock comments on these posts and delete everything any of you said (not that I would).
I never said it was an “honour” to have me there looking around. I did say that I suspect that the only reason I was invited was so that I would retract previous statements that I had made. Although the experience just reinforced them.
If you want people to not be critical when pointing out flaws, I advise that you all be a touch less sensitive to criticism.
And you posted this on the wrong post. If comments are closed, it’s because they aren’t wanted any more. Not because I want them in the wrong place.
Sorry if this is in the wrong place – but this discussion doesn’t seem to be moving us forward very constructively and it would be great if we could turn it around …
Problem solving …
Katharine – if you are now back from your trip to LL then I will email you personally to see if we can resolve the issues that led you to want to leave Schome Park – cos as I said elsewhere, anyone leaving the Schome community for negative reasons feels like a failure to me.
I sincerely believe that any problem can be resolved if people can:
a) agree that there is a problem
b) agree what the problem(s) is/are
c) recognise other people’s perspectives and concerns (which may well be different to their own)
d) genuinely work together to try to solve the problem(s)
Where things go wrong is where we focus on the people or personalities involved rather than on the problem itself.
Publicity …
The issue of publicity is a red herring IMHO – the thread that kicked this all off was one that I started in the forum in which I suggested that it might be a good idea if we explored the possibility of folk in Schome Park developing scripts for folk on the Main Grid – the stimulus for this was a scrip that someone developed that I thought lots of folk on the Main Grid would find useful – and a desire to provide a focus for scripting talent within the community which met real needs of other people in the wider world. The element of publicity would have been a welcome side effect – but certainly not a driving motivation. Authentic contexts for engaging in real purposeful activity which might enhance learning and collaboration was the key driver. As I am sure everyone would agree there was a need to up the level of focussed educational activities on Schome Park towards the end of the summer recess!
Censorship …
On the issue of censorship – the guidance that I give to moderators of the wiki and forum is to take action in relation to messages/content that are in breach of the Acceptable Use Policy (AUP). The AUP, which you can read at http://schome.open.ac.uk/wikiworks/index.php/Schome_Park_Acceptable_Use_Policy, does not say anything about criticism not being allowed – indeed one of the things we actively encourage people to do in the schome community is to constructively criticise things and behaviours. We do discourage folk from criticising people – though again I would prefer us to respond to this by explaining why it is inappropriate and ineffective, and by modelling alternative and more productive ways of making criticisms rather than by deleting material. Now I cannot claim that we don’t sometime overstep the mark and/or are not sometimes a little too paranoid when it comes to child protection – we all make mistakes. I think that making mistakes is unavoidable, and is a good thing so long as you learn from them …
(Ok so I know that we haven’t learnt not to be paranoid about child protection – I guess the consequences of something going wrong on that front are too serious to ignore).
Blimey – I have rabbited on a bit haven’t I. I’ll be in touch with you via email K. – very much hope we can move forward positively together to sort out this mess.
PeterT
Sorry about that Katharine, I seemed to get a little carried away there, and I just wanted to say you are a great scripter (well, coming from me that isn’t much, given my scripting abilities)