Busy in Real Life & Second Life!

Posted on July 13, 2007 
Filed Under aflf, conferences, education, secondlife, sleducationwiki, tafe, tours, virtualworlds

It’s been a busy month, both in Second Life and in the real world… but I haven’t forgotten this blog! ;) Time to catch up on a few things - including some stuff that I really should have linked to weeks ago!

eNetworks and the Australasian Second Life Showcase

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We delivered 2 presentations presentations for the Australian Flexible Learning Framework’s E-Learning Network’s e-Trends Online Conference. Check out the proceedings and recordings on the conference website - including Sean’s fantastic presentation on Virtual Worlds which you can listen to here (recorded Elluminate session).

We also presented an In-world Event: Showcasing Australasian Educational Projects in Second Life - which was a hoot. Representatives from a range of educational projects came and shared their ideas and expertise and we have a great crowd of educators with us at the event. Sean’s written a great blog post about the event here, and also done a great job of putting together the event documentation. View the slides from the event below:

The slides can also be viewed in-world at Jo and Sean’s Virtual Meeting Space: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Wasp/74/31/86/

The generosity of our presenters was amazing and I think the crowd enjoyed hearing about the projects they are working on. It was certainly a thrill to ‘max out our sim’ with 40 participants at our space in Wasp for much of the event. A great learning curve for us too - which has given me lots of ideas about how we can explore running mixed-reality events and conferences in Second Life.

Relaxing at the Learnscope Lounge

Yesterday we held the first of two workshops for NSW LearnScope - focussed on helping people find their feet and get started in Second Life.

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The sessions went well I think, and we managed to move a group of 15 newbies around to a few spaces in Second Life including our space in Second Life - Jo and Sean’s Virtual Meeting Space, Terra Incognita (SLurl) - Decka Mah’s fantastic action learning Island, the Heart Murmur Sim (SLurl) - where we saw a great example fo training in Second Life and Prim Hearts Amusement Park (SLurl) - which has some fantastic rides.

As part of supporting these events, I’ve established the LearnScope Lounge in-world.

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It provides a base for the participants from our workshops to use during their explorations. The Lounge is an example of how easy it is to setup a simple space the group to use as a meeting point, and includes a bunch of tools and resources including notecards for newbies, our slides and resources and some examples of cool tools including Angrybeth’s Whiteboards, a Podcaster and free virtual Learnscope t-shirts (Virtual Schwag!)

All NSW LearnScope particpants are welcome to visit and use the resources. I’ll be maintaining the space until the end of August. Visit @ http://slurl.com/secondlife/Wasp/10/90/89.

An Island?…..

In the last month or so we’ve been busily working on some new plans in-world…. including exploring options for purchasing and establishing our very own virtual Island. I can’t decide what to call it though….. Suggestions in the comments greatly appreciated! ;)

I’ll reveal more in the very near future, and am excited by the prospect of a new challenge in Second Life - planning and implementing my very own Island is an exciting prospect! I’m especially interested in developing some more extensive orientation resources for our participants in-world, as well as spaces for arts, community and educational projects.

Coming Up…

The next few weeks are likely to be busy too - with Session 2 of our Getting Started in Second Life workshops for NSW Learnscope Team Members, a session for the NMC TeacherBuzz group, an eNetworks 2007 Tour, a Knowledge Tree podcast and the kick-off of the Sydney Institute’s Second Life project…… so I better get back to work! ;)

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