Okay, it has been six weeks since my surgery and Dembe has finally returned. Wow, a lot of exciting things have been happening educationally in SL over the past few weeks. Here are a few you might be interested in as an educator:
Info for Educational Grand Writers:
http://sledpicayune.blogspot.com/ if you are interested in SL this site offer information necessary to any educational institution - "The Second Life Foundation for Rich Content has just announced a new round of grants to support the creation of rich content in SL. You can read the official press release about the grants on their Google Group. Applications are due July 25."
Educator Teaching in SL:
2007 SL Best Practices in SL occurred on May 25th, 2007! What a wonderful and exciting educational event and conference. And since it was in SL, a 24 hour conference, many events where documented so you can see and view many of these items at http://www.flickr.com/groups/slbestpractices2007/. To visit the actual conference site in SL please visit http://slurl.com/secondlife/chilbo/42/131/119. More about the conference from the conference notecard: "On May 25, 2007, the first 24 hour international conference ever to take place in a virtual world happened here in Second Life. The Second Life Best Practices in Education: Teaching, Learning, and Research 2007 International Conference was a smash hit.
The multi-sim conference hosted over 30 academic presentations from several countries, including Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States. Participants received gift bags with over 100 educational items to use in Second Life.
What was expected to be a small event turned large-scale when over 1,000 educators from around the world registered to attend the free conference, and over 50 volunteers and 100+ educational institutions, non-profit organizations, and businesses from both the real world and the Second Life world signed up to take part.
Technology in education blogger Ryan Bretag (known as Existential Paine in Second Life) wrote, "There are those rare occurrences where in the moment, you can feel a change, you can feel a complete shift. The past 24 hours I bore witness to that rare moment where you literally witness the shift happening in front of you and know things are never going to be the same from this point forward."
Financial support from Gold and Silver Sponsors provided real-life quality to a completely virtual event. An Australian company, SLCN.tv, provided live voice streaming capabilities for the presentations and conducted live video and audio streaming to overflow locations and via their website at http://slcn.tv to allow educators from around the world to view the conference proceedings on the web.
The conference proceedings are archived on the the website at http://slbestpractices2007.wikispaces.com/ and a second conference is planned in 2008. For more information, please see the website or contact slbpe-chairs@googlegroups.com."
The Conference Schedule:
Keynote Speakers: http://slbestpractices2007.wikispaces.com/KeynoteSpeakers
Presentation Schedule: http://slbestpractices2007.wikispaces.com/KeynoteSpeakers
Conference Team: http://slbestpractices2007.wikispaces.com/ConferenceTeam
Venues: http://slbestpractices2007.wikispaces.com/Venues
Vendors and Exhibits: http://slbestpractices2007.wikispaces.com/Exhibitors
Please check back for more exciting news today and in the future. There is always something new and exciting happening in SL that can enhance our classrooms in some way to produce dynamic learning.
Regards till my next post,
Dembe :-)
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