Still thinking about this one. I realize that on the surface the personal *list seems a bit redundant. It will mean a lot of @nn for the teacher when %s logs on. Wouldn’t it be more efficient to have them post to, say, a list entitled *OurClass? Yes, I think it would be, if the point of the *list for the class is to communicate with each other and to communicate with the teacher. But I think the idea of having an inMOO blog, or, for the moment, an *list, isn’t necessarily for the purpose of simply communicating with the teacher. I think it has that upside, but there’s more to it than that.

In the case of the MOO…I think one way to think about their *list is as a notebook. And this would work even better if copy and paste worked better in the GUI (why are the toolbar copy and paste functions disabled?) What did you learn to do today? What do you need to remember for the next time? Copy down the code of what you learned (hee, now you know how I remember all the code I learn..I @send it to myself. Better than writing it down, I lose paper). This might be enough for some students, but possibly thinking of it as a kind of reflection paper might work better for others….just a sum up of what you did today, and what you plan to do in the future. This would be a great way to reiterate or change goals midstream. It would also be an easy way for the instructor or tech help (like me) to quickly give help to a student. ie, someone’s trying to do something with a bot that would work much more easily with a simple object and a few good room noises. We could prevent a lot of frustration by being right on top of student goals from the start. And, if we are @subscribe to *Emily with n, we know right away when she’s come up with a new idea, or having a problem with something, or whatever, even if she’s not keen on jumping to and asking about it first. It’s a bit like spying, but my experience thus far tells me that while one of the problems with students not understanding the space is that they tend to act out in inappropriate ways, another one is that some tend to turn inward and not communicate their frustration or problems as much as they might otherwise….if you see someone sink into their chair and look nervous whenever a test comes up in a certain subject, you’re getting the cues you might need to help someone out…but silence can mean many things online. Too many things to make any assumptions….the more lines of communication the better.

Again, what’s the point of the personal *list? As I’ve said over and over, a place for reflection that’s not private but is YOURS, where the topic is YOU and what you’re trying to wrestle with. Where it’s okay to post and say, geez, this stupid bot won’t stop talking. It’s driving me up the wall. or I can’t believe it! I made a chair in my room and it WORKS! or, if you’re me, It compiled! It really, really compiled! I mean, a shy student might be unwilling to post that kind of thing to a class-wide list, but notes are helpful to everyone. And watching classes operate with a BB at one location and inMOO in another…hmmm…there’s something to be said for consistency.

And now for something completely different…
Is it unethical for me to screw around with the say verb in my rooms, having people either be unable to talk, or to have their speech come out utterly differently than it started out? EvaB mentioned that that sort of thing is profoundly ‘unAmerican’ and would get lots of 1st amendment types’ panties in a bunch. Jason always says that these questions can only be answered in context, and I think I deal with the context in each instance that I disable the say verb. And you can always walk out. Right? Is there not enough warning beforehand? Does something like that make people feel somehow violated?

And now to bed!
I