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I’ve unfortunately been sidetracked by real life and unable to attend many of the NMC’s Symposium on Creativity sessions which have been held this week inworld. However, I finally made it to a few sessions today… thank goodness for weekends!

Anyway, first up – Corwin Carillon’s great session on his uses of holodecks and scripting to create great spaces for learning, which are learner centred rather than teacher centred.

This presentation was described as follows:

Shifting the Power from Teachers to Learners
Nick Noakes (aka Corwin Carillon), Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Both in K-12 and in higher education research literature, there have been repeated calls for shifting the power balance in the classroom from teachers to learners (Weimer, Baxter-Magolda, Mazirow). This session will highlight how the affordances of Second Life’s scripting language and the use of Second Life groups can be leveraged to create on-demand tools and environments that self-directed collaborative learning groups can control. The teacher can be there or absent, but the teacher’s role can shift substantially from one of intervention and control to one of resource expert and facilitator.

Corwin’s session was lots of fun and very hands on. To check out how he uses scripted tools visit his space at Boracay.

Next up, I managed to make it to most of Anya Ixchel and Kim Pasternak’s session, which was focused on using drama and roleplaying strategies to create engaging learning activities in Second Life.

Their presentation was described as:

Teaching On the Second Life Stage: Playful Educational Strategies for Serious Purposes
Angela Thomas (aka Anya Ixchel), University of Sydney and Kim Flintoff (aka Kim Pasternak), Edith Cowan University
Theatrical spaces have historically been places used to teach, purge and shape culture. For over a decade, virtual reality has offered a new kind of theatrical space; now, with the rise of social networking spaces, many more people are using the potential of the web to perform, critique and comment on cultural issues. Second Life provides a new and exciting space where students can explore issues that are both personal and global in significance. Teaching strategies which incorporate dramatic and theatrical components are perfectly suited in the Second Life environment for engaging students in playful but meaningful reflection on such issues. This session will involve participants in role-playing, reflection and discussion.
Participants will also be encouraged to brainstorm the possibilities of incorporating such strategies into their own educational programs.

This session was lots of fun – and included the crowd getting involved in a great role-play around the fate of Second Life and its governance.

I’m definitely going to point a few LearnScopers in Anya and Kim’s direction for some ideas on how they could be using these strategies.

Now…. back to building that island……

Right now, I’m sitting at Decka’s Decks on the Terra Incognita sim with a small bunch of avatars in Second Life. We are attending the SL version of the University of Southern Queensland’s Faculty of Education Symposium on Online learning using virtual worlds.

The conference is described as follows:

This symposium will bring together a group of international leaders, developers and practitioners in the use and development of 3D technology in university teaching and learning and academic libraries. They will showcase a continuum of 3D applications ranging from 3D learning objects within a web page, through small “rooms” with class avatars accessible from a web page to interfacing 3D worlds with the Learning Management System (using SLoodle – a mash up of Second Life and Moodle) and the use of fully immersive virtual worlds (including Second Life, ActiveWorlds and Croquet).

Check out the Symposium website for more info.

All is going impressively well at the moment… Decka and her team are managing a video stream into SL.. so participants can engage via the live event, via the web or via Second Life. Each and every time I attend an event like this it reminds me what a powerful tool Second Life is for communicating, sharing and networking.