I couldn’t resist this cool tool, and hope it brings back some good memories for those who attended. For me the memories of techical dramas, stress and hard work are fading, and I’m focussing on the conversations, new learning, connections and innovations that came out of the event. Thanks to everyone how attended, contributed, commented, criticized, praised and recorded the event!

The posters will be displayed in Second Life until 5pm on the 6 December 2007, so drop inworld and check out yours and other team members posters. To teleport to jokaydia click here.

On Friday I will start pulling it all down… so we can prepare for our next adventure adventure…. hosting the International Edublog Awards 2007 in Second Life!

A two day old blog makes it to the Featured Blogs page!

Thanks to James and the team at Edublogs!

Keep following us over at http://eshowntell2007.edublogs.org to get updates on conference happenings over the next few days… and did you hear there is a competition!

I’ve set up a blog on Edublogs especially for the event. Click here to visit.

If you’re attending the conference… I’ve love to hear your comments! Also, you might like to enter the photo competition!

I’ll be back blogging on jokay.com.au on Saturday. Seeya at the conference!

Over the last month or so, I’ve been working with the NSW LearnScope team to prepare for their end of year festivites. The major focus of my work has been getting ready for the virtual portion of eLearning07 – the NSW LearnScope end of year event. I’ve written a detailed post about what I’ve been up to on the NSW Learnscope Blog.

The process has been lots of fun, and I’m really looking forward to the event. If you’re interested, you are welcome to attend:

• Some of the panel sessions will be broadcast in Second Life and Adobe Connect throughout the 2 days – we’ll post specific info on the eLearning07 Protopage shortly.
• Sean FitzGerald aka Sean McDunnough will be coordinating tours and demos in Second Life at the live venue throughout the event. Come and say hi in-world and meet him and other conference participants.
• Visit the eLearning07 Virtual Conference Centre and Poster Display on jokaydia.
• Join Kathie Warren and Alex Hayes in the Adobe Connect Room for discussions and sharing throughout the event.
• Attend our Connected Keynote Panel which is being hosted by Bee Dieu aka Bee Kerouac live in Second Life. It will also be broadcast in Adobe Connect commencing at 12:30pm on Friday 2 Nov (AEST). For our virtual participants that’s 6pm on 1/11 SL Time or you can check your local time here.

For more information visit the eLearning07 Protopage or the NSW LearnScope blog. Looking forward to seeing you at the event!

For those who are interested, there’s a recording on from my recent Elluminate Session for the Flexible Learning Framework’s eTools n Tips Event.

Access the recording here and the Slides here. I also provided a handout for participants which you and download here.

Also, for those who attended and wanted the links I referred to during the session:

• Second Life in Education Wiki: a range of resources for educators exploring Second Life for use in Education and includes a detailed overview of Educational Uses of Second Life
• Getting Started in Second Life: a useful resource for setting up and getting into Second Life for the first time
• Educational Uses of Second Life: a detailed overview of projects currently happening in Second Life
• Sean’s FitzGerald’s Virtual Worlds Presentation: Virtual Worlds – What are They and Why do Educators Need to Pay Attention to Them?
• Video: Introduction to Second Life
• Second Life Website – Education Section
• Second Life Website – System Requirements
• SimTeach Wiki – resources and information from the Educational community in Second Life
• International SpaceFlight Museum:
  - Spaceport Alpha in Second Life (SLurl)
  - International Spaceflight Museum Website
• Second Life Library
  - Second Life Library 2.0 – InfoIsle (SLurl)
  - Second Life Library Blog
  - YouTube: Tour of InfoIsland
  - Virtual librariesinteract.info: Blog central for Australian Libraries in Other Worlds
• GippsTAFE’s Paluma Resort in Second Life
  - Innovative Practices Project Report: Virtual Worlds – Real Learning
  - Article on the Project: Can Vocational Education Learning Outcomes be Achieved in SL? (pg 4)
• UC Davis Medical Center’s Emergency Workers Simulation-based Training
  - CNET video – Saving lives in the virtual world – CNET News.com
• Genome Island:
  - Genome Island (SLurl)
  - SLNN Article: Swimming in the Gene Pool
• Temple of Isis:
  - The Temple of Isis (SLurl)
  - Flickr photo set – Temple of Isis
• Teen Grid Info:
  - Teen Grid website
  - Teen Grid resources on SimTeach
  - Skoolaborate – Collaborative high Schools Project based in Australia
• Jo Kay’s Virtual Island – jokaydia (SLurl)
• Virtual Hairdressing Salon (SLurl)
• Sydney Institute LearnScope Project

Upcoming Regional Event for LearnScope – which will be happening in both Wollongong and jokaydia on the 24th of September and is going be a very challenging – but I’m also expecting very exciting day for me!

Read more about it here and here.

Looking forward to seeing some of you there!

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.

eNetworks and the Australasian Second Life Showcase

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.

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.

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!