Volume 38 Nº 2: July 2002

Gary Crew - live online: a virtual interview in LC_MOO

Jennie Bales

On 14 November 2001, eighteen students from two schools in Tasmania and Victoria logged on to computers and laptops in their school libraries in preparation for an eagerly anticipated online author visit. At same time, but far away in distance, Gary Crew was connecting from his office desk in Queensland, the star attraction for a virtual author interview. The online setting for this synchronous meeting was Learning Communities MOO (LC_MOO, 2000) hosted by Charles Sturt University. MOOs ( multi-user object oriented domains) are accessed with client software and a telnet connection or via the World Wide Web. They provide a virtual environment that supports real time communication between players logged in to the same environment, creating a 'same time, same place' context for discourse. Virtual 'spaces' in a MOO consist of interconnected rooms and objects that participants can inhabit and interact with. Communication is achieved through the use of commands that present dialogue and emotive responses onto the screens of all people sharing a common 'space'.

Jennie Bales is a teacher-librarian and the ICT resource teacher at Summerdale Primary School, Launceston, Tasmania. Her interest in online communication is being explored through doctoral research undertaken with Charles Sturt University.