Ruby (on wheels)

I’ve just noticed that the last speaker of “Bo”, a language that used to exist in the Andaman Islands, has died. What struck me particularly about the report was the sentence “Boa Sr spent the last few years of her life unable to converse with anyone in her mother tongue.” That’s a very poignant thought. Also, I wonder what it’s like to know that when you die, your language will die also?

I suppose, though, that the idea of a language dying only becomes distressing if you believe, as I do, that language, culture and a way of seeing the world are all bound together. So when we no longer have that language, we also no longer have that unique way to conceptualise the world around us. In 2002 Davie Crystal published Language Death (see a preview of the contents here). He mentions that the death of a language is “everyone’s loss”, reminding me of Donne’s “and do not ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee”.

Read the article in the Guardian here.

virtual graduation - photo courtesy of F Littleton

November 26th saw a new innovation for virtual worlds. Some students who are distance learners were graduating, but were unable to come to the ceremony – Fiona Littleton, working with colleagues in informatics, created the first Second Life graduation held in parallel with McEwan Hall graduation. 4 MSc graduates graduated in Second Life with 2 graduating at McEwan Hall. The live feed from McEwan Hall was streamed in to Second Life.

21 Guests in total attended the ceremony in Second Life – university staff, current students and visitors from other universities.

The event has now been nominated in the edublogs “best use of a virtual world in education” awards. To vote go to http://edublogawards.com/2009/best-educational-use-of-a-virtual-world-2009/ I must admit, it’s a difficult vote – I was also impressed by the Virtual Round Table conference, and CANVAS …

BBC Coverage:
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/edinburgh_and_east/8378291.stm

More details on the Virtual Graduation:
www.wiki.ed.ac.uk/display/VueWiki/Virtual+Graduation
or contact fiona.littleton@ed.ac.uk

More details on MSc in E-learning:
www.education.ed.ac.uk/e-learning

update: the virtual graduations have won the Edublogs awards for the “best educational use of a virtual world” – see all the award winners here

OK so the blog is looking a bit dismal again, but at least this time I’ve got a fairly water-tight excuse – ended up in hospital at the beginning of October, finally got diagnosed with viral labyrinthitis, and still off work (yikes!) and finding out for the first time in my life what I’m supposed to do with doctor’s lines and such-like. I thought earlier today that I would try reading some blogs, as a nice easy way to get the brain functioning again (yes – I heard you snigger). And then I came across a writing challenge in Miss Leonie’s blog and I got caught up in the general optimism of actually writing something that could approximate to a novel. It seems there’s been a challenge on for November. I’ve got this very small suspicion that before the end of November I won’t be able to complete the NaNoWriMo challenge, which is to write 50,000 words in one month. It’s still November (he he) so I guess I can still join in.

The idea is to get writing. Yes, always easier said … Miss Leonie has outlined the challenge here and the basic idea (hope you don’t mind me summarising it here – it’s so that I can remember what I’m doing!) of the first part is in one week to:

• write an outline of a story
• make it minimum 1,000 words
• must include at least 5 chapter ideas
• must include at least 3 characters

So I’ll have a go. Why not? By this time next week I’m supposed to post/photograph a blurry image of my first words just to prove that I’ve done it.

It’s a bit daunting, not just because I might find out that the wonderful best-seller is not that good after all, but also because I’ll keep reading the blogs of Miss Leonie, Loobylu and Tracylee, and they’re all just way too interesting for me to be able to keep up :’-(

I headed in to Edinburgh today, which is unusual for me on a Saturday, but there was a bike rally on and I thought I’d show some support. Although this wasn’t an SMC event, several SMC members turned up to support the general biking community (in particular, Edinburgh bikers and those who, like myself, commute into Auld Reikie every day). We met up at Hermiston park-and-ride – first time I’ve ever been there and I can’t say the experience tempts me to rush back; something to do with no coffee machine and the toilets locked …

A sizeable group gathered and at 12 noon we headed off, following the police car and flanked by police riders. There had been a few rumours about the police wanting to get this over with ASAP, but we actually kept a fairly slow 10-15mph for most of the route. Every so often we got some waves from friendly pedestrians, who most likely had no idea what we were doing. The busiest area was the Grassmarket; plenty of people watching us and bemused tourists obviously wondering if they should look as if they expect this sort of thing every Saturday in Scotland’s capital. We reached the end of the route at Holyrood Park without any incident; the police outriders had done a fab job. There were a couple of speeches, urging us to lobby our councillors or (if we live outside Edinburgh) one of the ones marked on the sheet for general receipt of letters. The SMC contingent retired to a nearby coffee shop and sat in the sun to tell tales of biking daring-do.

Did we achieve anything? Difficult to say so yet, but hopefully some lobbying will make some waves.

Was it worthwhile? I’d say yes – seeing quite a number of people there does give the feeling that there’s enough motivation to get something done, and hearing the examples of other places in England where the idea has been successful does give a sense of purpose and hope for change.

I thought it was brilliant seeing the huge range of people – young racers, parents with kids, middle-aged sensible types (hmm … wonder who they could be …) and there were great photo opportunities Oh – and the sun came out!

At the beginning of August I attended a really stimulating PALA conference (I have to add that I’ve never yet been to an un-stimulating PALA conference) and my ego was thoroughly boosted by people actually coming to my presentation (even though it was on the last slot of the last day …). I’m still working on the conference proceedings – when ready I’ll be putting a copy on my Mendeley profile but will let you know about that later. Oh – OK – here’s a rough outline:

My presentation was about analysis of text in Second Life (SL). I gave a quick overview of what SL is (with screen-shots mainly provided by my excellent colleague and SL-wizard, Fiona Littleton). The rest of the talk was in three parts:

• a rather tongue-in-cheek examination of how conversations in a virtual world could be likened to creating fiction, and thus could be examined with analogies to text-world theory
• a specific example of discourse/conversation analysis of an episode where politeness theory was demonstrated (this and the other excerpts from our conversations would not have been possible without the expert input from my colleague Clara O’Shea. Yes – you are already beginning to wonder how much of this presentation was actually mine. I wonder too)
• examples of the types of humour present in SL conversations; these I have found to be different from email discussions but similar to chat forums, even in an academic session

So hopefully that’s whetted your appetite a bit …

Anyway, the next ego-booster at the conference was some other participants who approached me afterwards and asked if I could contribute something to a volume. Of course I said yes, and of course I’m now panicking …

So off to SL and books and theory, and exploration of literature in SL (as this is, after all, a PALA discussion). My explorations so far have not uncovered very much of interest in the literature in SL. It seems that there’s a general consensus that the idea of SL came from a novel (as with many great ideas that came from science fiction, I’m led to believe). I’ve also discovered that there are quite a few “libraries” in SL, and some publishing houses also have “stores” (one of which is an Irish pub). But the books themselves – what a let-down! Awful. What happens is: you find a book (on a shelf, or on a poster) and you click on the object. Then a window with text opens up, ready for you to read. That’s it. You read this g**-awful font in a pathetic wee window.

So I think it’s about time we created some really innovative literature in SL.

How about a narrator (the author?) who appears and invites you to listen to the story? There must be some kind of variation on an audio-book that would be interesting? And why not have you whisked off to a location where scenery unfolds around you as you “read” the story? I don’t think I’d like to have avatars acting out the story (Mr Darcy would just not work) so we could leave that out. And would it be possible to have interactive stories where you create the next part? Oh, yes, that’s right – already been done (but the people who are creating books in SL seem to have forgotten this particular literary device).

Personally, I think that even given the drawbacks of paper (it can get soggy if you read in the bath; it’s hard to hold up when you have to shield your eyes from the sun on the beach) I still like the old-fashioned books. But I’d really like to try out something new and different too … new stories in new formats.

I’ve got some ideas for the story I’ll be writing …

PS if you’d like to see an example of an innovative multi-media narrative, try Inanimate Alice