The coming digital campus.
Access management.
Public and controlled access.
Campus security without campus police.
A consideration of access that will be needed in an online campus and what is currently available. A digital campus can offer much greater control of access than is practical in a physical campus. This article is specifically declared Public Domain (CC0).
Universal campus (Kitely)
Access management?
- Public-facing places that anyone can go to without preparation.
- Campus-facing places: access limited to specific kinds of people,
- Registration-facing places: access limited to faculty and students in a course.
- Private places with access controlled by school staff.
Kinds of people on campus
- The general public: Anyone who finds the school on the internet
- The "local" public: Town and Gown
- Commercial supporters: Companies that contribute to the school
- Alumni and other potential supporters
- Faculty
- Invited experts
- Potential students and their parents
- Students registered for specific courses
Public-facing places
A meeting in a web-world
- Web worlds: 3D places running on a browser
- Cybalounge and 3DWebWorldz
- No password, no registration--enter as a guest. Click a link and try it.
- Virtual worlds can serve many markets but need the right product for each market. Use case: Public-facing place: office,sales floors marketing exposition
- No control over who enters these places. They are for school staff to meet the public.
- The staff can eject griefers and can ban the internet address.
- The staff and registration control who can go to areas with controlled access.
Campus-facing places
- These can be web-worlds or installed digital worlds.
- They are open to registered students, faculty, and staff.
- Many are also open to people with a VIP status.
- VIP status is given to supporters, alumni, and others.
- VIP areas mostly are commons areas where different kinds of people can meet.
- Some identification (such as password) is needed to enter the digital campus.
- But no identification would be needed for access to campus-facing places.
Installed digital worlds?
Universal campus (Kitely)
on and installed digital world
on and installed digital world
- These allow large areas with multiple buildings and detailed access control.
- That would look much like a conventional campus.
- They require users have a computer and to install software on it.
- They can accommodate multiple classrooms with individually restricted access.
- And could have a commons area where students could gather socially.
- Scholls are (and need to be) places of social learning.
Registration-facing places
- These are classrooms or other places assigned to classes.
- Access is generally limited to faculty and students registered in the class.
- Access is by assignment to groups by batch registration.
- The school assigns group membership from its own student records.
- Thus students can only enter their assigned places.
- This arrangement is available in Kitely Organizations and web-worlds.
- Access is controlled for each parcel, which might hold a single classroom.
- Access to a parcel comes from membership in a group, which could correspond to the class.
Kitely organizations
- Why I specifically recommend Kitely for hosting a virtual campus (MUVE)
- We can bring schools into OpenSim. Not just people. Whole campuses full of people.
- An online school needs a digital campus. Not just for classrooms, but for many of the services currently offered on a physical campus
- Kitely organizations
Private places
- Faculty offices.
- Medical counsellor offices.
- Vocational counsellor offices.
- Student group offices.
- Access is by membership in a controlling group or by invitation from a member.
Why digital instead of virtual ?
- Virtual: first and older definition (Merriam-Webster):
- Being such in essence or effect though not formally recognized or admitted.
- If a school has a digital campus it can be formally recognized.
- The entry to the digital campus should be right there on the school's web site.
- And the school should be providing the services expected on a school campus:
- Library, career counselling, school news media, etc.
- -
- Besides, virtual is strongly associated with games.
- And even with some unsavory publicity:
- Can you put a high school next to a porno place? Not even in a virtual world. But there are solutions
- -
- Then, too, everyone knows that we are in the digital century.
- 21st century skills are digital skills to fill digital jobs.
- Any forward-looking school needs to prepare students for digital jobs.
- Every school needs a digital focus, even if it is still a brick-and-mortar campus.
- A digital campus better expresses that focus than does a set of old buildings.
- Parents and students want more than a virtual education, but how about a digital education?
- Finally, digital includes more than virtual.
- 3D worlds can serve many educator needs, but not all.
- And there is a large body of digital content available on the flat web.
- There is no reason to abandon existing content that still serves education.
*********************************
Visit me on the web
- Drop by my web offices Weekdays: 12:-12:30 pm Central time (US)
- I am available for free consulting on any topic in this blog.
- Cybalounge and 3DWebWorldz (Orientation room)
- I will be in both places, so you may need to speak to get my attention.
- Web-worlds, 3D virtual worlds running in a browser. Summary
- And we can visit the Writer's Workshop on the Web
- Don't register -- enter as guest.
************************
License
- Original text in this blog is CC By: unless specified public domain.
- Use as you please with attribution: link to the original.
- All images without attribution in this blog are CC0: public domain.
- Second Life, Linden, SLurl, and SL are trademarks of Linden Research Inc.
- Annotated screenshots made with Jing
- This blog is not affiliated with anything. Ads are from Google.
- Selby Evans in Kitely and Hypergrid, Thinkerer Melville in Second Life.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.