Module 3: Ability to discover new opportunities

A big thank you to Nelson shall be the first statement in this post. His help in preparation and object organization in Second Life is really very helpful!

The module is based on a presentation but it tries to open the minds of the participants to get a feeling for upcoming opportunities and possibilities.




The trainers of this module, coordinated and supervised by Aura Haidimoschi are from Romania. So the idea was born to take one of the most beautiful castles of Romania as model for finding opportunities - and - the time when people just thought about Dracula movies when seeing a Romanian castle are past!

Just have a look on this nice picture - this time from Real Life ;-)

Module 2: Build and manage teams

The two sessions of this module have been given by George and me, Gerhard aka. Dorothea Dollinger.

It started with some team building exercises like taking a group snapshot at a defined place or looking for hidden objects on the campus.

Several tools have been used in this module which have been new for the participants but already well-known for the blog readers. Nevertheless I would like to mention them here from a trainer's perspective.

A panel for brainstorming, here for possible roles of people in teams:

The tool can be configured to accept messages from just the owner, a group or from the public and it receives messages on a specific channel, e.g. 27.

Writing
/27 showme
into the text entry line of the local chat sends the message to channel 27 and the board displays it. There the texts can be repositioned by standard Second Life editing. This tool proved to be very useful.

Presentations on a "Zebra presenter":

These steps are already quite common to trainers:

• Creating a presentation in Powerpoint,
• saving it as serie of jpgs
• checking the filenames to be in alphabetical order,
• uploading the images to Second Life,
• editing a "Zebra Notebook",
• dragging the slides (already called Second Life textures) to the content folder of the notebook,
• setting a presentation wall,
• checking the channels of both devices ..

..
and ...

relax and present B-)


And - last but not least - a simple task: creating an object and applying a texture for being used as wallpaper. In a classroom a trainer would keep the most important facts as posted sheets of a flip chart on the classroom walls. The 3D environment gives an advantage: there is much space and those objects can be recycled to 100%. No paper wasted, no whiteboard pens to refill and finally no dirty fingers from cleaning the whiteboard :-)



It's funny to teach here!

Module 1. Communication Skills General Introduction to SL -basic

Session 2

The 2nd Session of Module 1 was launched on Thursday the 16th of September. The trainers were Gerhard and George while the participants were mainly from Greece and Italy. First of all Gerhard offered some L$ to all participants and explained them the usage of money in SL. Especially for the VITA training it is needed in order all to be able to upload pictures on SL.



The teacher also explained the hearing ability of avatars and let them experience it by talking while being in different distances. (e.g. 10, 20 and 40 meters away).



The main aim of Session 2 was that all participants get familiar with building, resizing, moving, rotating and copying objects. This was achieved by several exercises and the practice of all trainees. Gerhard also explained how to upload images and use them as texture of objects. He asked of all participants to make an object, upload a picture of them and put it as object's texture. They all did it successfully!

Finally there was an exercise in order to understand the basic principles of communication. The trainer provided a topic list of main communication principles.

1) effective listening
2) barriers in communication
3) name 5 dos for business communication
4) name 5 don'ts for business communication
5) effective internal communication (in the SME)
6) effective external communication

The students in groups discussed about one communication principle, agreed on a list of main points, created a powerpoint, saved it as jpg, uploaded it to SL and put it on a presentation panel.



That was the end of Session 2. The third and last session on Module 1 is set for Monday the 20th of September.

Module 1. Communication Skills General Introduction to SL – basics +

Session 1

On Tuesday the 14th of September we launched the second turn of VITA training in our campus. Participants from our target group started their learning experience in VITA Campus and Second Life in general.

Gerhard, the trainer of Session 1, welcomed the participants in Vita Campus and explained them about the basic communication options in SL (chat, written text, speak, IM etc.). The trainees practiced their ability to chat and send private messages to one another.

Then, by the help of Gerhard, they learned how to move and fly around and they had the opportunity to explore specific places in the VITA Campus such as the Greek temple, the Colosseum and the Library.

An other subject was the control of the view in SL and the different "looking" possibilities the camera control provides.

A very important issue was the familiarisation of the trainees with the inventory. The trainer put some country hats on the floor and asked from the participants to find their national hat, take a copy (which they could then find in their inventory) and wear it. Then they managed to learn some of the properties of the objects and how to pass them to one another. At the same time they learned how to take snapshots of their current view in SL and store them in their computers.

Finally Gerhard explained to everyone what are the advantages of having friends in SL, how to offer friendship and how to offer teleport.

The second session of Module 1 is planned for Thursday the 16th of September.

3rd Session about Negotiation Skills

Today was another session about negotiation skills.

In this session the trainers(Giovanni and Sara) asked to trainees to divide in groups and work together to negotiate in a specific product. For this, the trainers gave the exercise by notecard.

After this, each group had 30 minutes to organize the ideas and think about negotiate strategies to achieve the group objectives.



After this time, the groups debate their ideas and discuss in group.

In final, was presented one powerpoint presentation about these negotiation strategies, in order to consolidate what was done during the exercise.

Module 3: Ability to discover new opportunities Session 2 (May 7, 2010)

The session of yesterday started with a presentation given by Aura about Profile of an Entrepreneur and next given by Eugen.

After that each trainee presented and comented the results of their homework (answered a questionary). We made a small break, and the trainees assisted to the presentation about where to find information about business opportunities presented by Aura.

After she show some pictures of Peles Castle, located in Romania and we have a discuss to create a business ideia involving the castle.

Module3: Discovery New Opportunities

Today was another training session of vita Project!

This session was the first of three session about discover new opportunities in business.

This session start with the small presentation of trainees.

After this, the Trainer started one powerpoint presentation about "Ability to discover new opportunities". With this presentation, trainees learned about what is an Entrepreneur and some caracteristics. They also learned about Niches and Swot Analysis, brainstorming and another things.



In final of presentation, the trainers asked to trainees to having a discussion about discovery opportunities of business in their countries. The discussion was very productive, with some good results.

Tomorrow there is another session about this module.