Moo session

I got into the session and learnt a fair bit about it without being very active. Although I lurked most of the time, I was able to move around the site, save a log, take a few courses, talk and emote a bit, try most of the buttons and to project a slide.

Compared to Second Life (SL) or even some of the Blogger interfaces I've seen, I found the interface very 'old time' - lots of flowery description about the gorgeous environs but no pictures. I think the Moo needs a facelift. I think it was designed to provide the virtual multimedia experience that SL can but it looked to have been designed last century.

I didn't realise who 'Hopper' was until the very end. I didn't get it even when Hopper held up the signs. In terms of its taxonomy, I would put it somewhere between a chat room and SL. It also had elements of a book in that it asked you to visualise what was being described in pictureless text. I liked the idea that people could go to different rooms and I found the emoting was fun. Unfortunately at the end of a hard days teaching, I wasn't as sociable as some of the people in my room.

I think it could be a good 'discovery learning' resource but (perhaps because I was just getting familiar with it) I got the impression that the technology sort of got in the way of communicating and learning. I suppose OUR learning was to engage with the technology rather than communicate anything too profound. If that was the object, I had a positive and useful experience.