Call for participation in a survey about SL teaching practice

About three weeks ago Lili Luo launched a survey to study the current teaching practice (especially pedagogy) on SL, but only 15 responses have been received so far....

Could you please take 5 minutes to complete this survey and share your experience teaching a course in SL?

Here's the survey URL: http://senna.sjsu.edu/survey/phpq6/fillsurvey.php?sid=2

Luo promises to compile the results and send it to the SLED listserv.

SLED Listserv, Lili Luo, 10MAY07

Just Ask the Avatar in the Front Row

"Colleges and universities head into virtual worlds, and student learning and psychology are changed forever."

by Neal Starkman, published on May 1, 2007, in Campus Technology.

A. Sandberg on Converging Cognitive Enhancement (uvvy island, 23-MAY-07, 10am SLT)

Eudoxa will hold a seminar at Uvvy Island in the virtual world of Second Life on Wednesday May 23rd at 19h00 Central European Time (13h00 EST, 10h00 PST)

http://www.eudoxa.se/content/archives/2007/05/presentation_at_1.html

http://uvvy.com/index.php/Sandberg230507

Dr. Anders Sandberg, research director at Eudoxa and research assistant at the Oxford University ENHANCE Project and Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, will talk about his recent publication together with Nick Bostrom from the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University

Their paper Converging Cognitive Enhancements reviews currently available technologies for cognitive enhancement and their likely near-term prospects for convergence of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science and how cognitive enhancement is ideal for achieving convergence.

The paper Converging Cognitive Enhancements is published in the Annals of the New York Academies of Science Progress in Convergence: Technologies for Human Wellbeing and edited by William Sims Bainbridge & Mihail C. Roco of the National Science Foundation.

The Eudoxa think tank is based in Stockholm, Sweden. Their focus is on discussing the societal effects of emerging technologies with dynamist thoughts on experimentation. Eudoxa has published books and reports in Swedish, Danish and English.

Taken from posting to SLED Listserv on 10-MAY-07 by Giulio Prisco

SLEDBuilders Listserv

If you are in charge of building a campus or designing instruction in 3D, I invite you to join the _SLEDBuilders_ mail list.

http://lists.simteach.com/listinfo.cgi/sledbuilders-simteach.com

Did you know...

• Info Island Archipelago is funded by a diverse set of grants and the International Spaceflight Museum was co-founded by a PhD in Aeronautics?
• The two tiers for builders and scripters? Whether you buy services with micropayment or contract with professional who accept university POs, fees range from $5/hour to $80+. Fully decorated university sims are running $10,000-$20,000?
• A four-sim corner will accommodate nearly 100 avatars and may be rented by the day for as little as $40?
• The ICT Library has a demonstration rezzer tool that will let your faculty choose from dozens of classroom settings at the touch of a button?
• Stanford University has a private island used only for research and MIT purchased their island in a unique way after dealing with some legal issues with the TOS?
• You can find campus squatters in skyboxes by "Disabling Camera Constraints" and peeking up there?
• You can log visitors to your email account with a simple script and then offer them membership in your marketing group?
• Creating a "Student Peer Mentor" program may help your faculty get in and comfortable?

These are the kind of issues we will be discussing on SLED Builders.

Posted to SLED Listserv on 10-MAY-07 by Jeremy Kemp

ACHUB MediaCamp07: RL Meet-up in UK

Chris Hambly (SL's Audio Zenith) is planning to put together a REAL-LIFE meet-up around SecondLife, and other social media, in the not too distant future. He writes...

"A big event is being planned for October in UK (ACHUB MediaCamp07), as an "unconference", but I'd love some small barcamp style socials before then, and you'd all be welcome to come along, or set your own up under the ACHUB concept.

We have the ACHUB (http://audiocourses.pbwiki.com/) wiki which has some good events already listed in, any of you can set one up too, there are some basic rules listed, follow them and you can make things happen for sharing ideas and experiences as an ACHUB.

Very informal get togethers, all about sharing, all free, all unconference style.

I'll aim to get a barcamp meet-up in London, UK, fairly soon, so watch the wiki for details. Will be great to have a beer with some of and chat away like uber geeks.

Posted to SLED Listserv 09-MAY-07 by Chris Hambly

Calling all educators: Help needed for non-profit focus group

Sarah Robbins, ("Intellagirl Tully") is the Director of Emerging Technologies for Media Sauce ( www.mediasauce.com). She writes...

One of my first projects is to help out with a focus group for the People's Burn Foundation, a national non-profit organization, working with Campus FireWatch to develop a fire and burn safety program for college students that will help reduce the number of fire-related deaths to college students.

We need your help recruiting college students to participate in the focus group. The purpose of the focus group is to gather feedback from college students after they watch an 8 minute documentary about burn injuries and to determine a campaign strategy for teaching college students about burn and fire safety. "After the Fire," a Pulitzer Prize winning documentary, follows the story of two college students tragically burned in the Seton Hall fire and their recovery process.

The focus group will last approximately an hour, beginning with the video and concluding with a feedback session.

The first session will be on May 21 at 1pm SLT at the ACHUB. All participants will receive $L300 for their time.

This is a great cause and will also provide high education value for students who choose to participate. I hope that those of you who teach media design, communication, or teaching/training will see this is a valuable opportunity to expose your students to really great digital storytelling. The video is bound to spark great discussions about the use of various media and emotional appeal in video.

If you have a summer class or students doing work in SL please forward this along. If you bring a class we'll give you an extra L$ incentive (which is always handy for class expenses).

Contact Intellgirl Tully in-world for more details.

Posted to SLED Listserv on 09-MAY-07 by Sarah Robbins

Learning In a Digital Culture

Eight week course for educators (pilot). Called Learning In a Digital Culture, the course meets on our DeVry GSP Island, but also includes blogs, VOIP, and other components from the culture. Content is split between an experiential romp through SL, and a review and discussion of traditional adult learning theory and how new experience impacts those theories.

Jamison is teaching the pilot which now includes 20 educators, half faculty and half administrators, one fourth with prior SL experience and 3/4 full-blown noobs.

Contact "Virtual Bacon" in-world for more details.

Taken from posting to the SLED Listserv on 09-MAY-07 by John Jamison

SL for Educators Course (June 2007; $350 US)

A colleague and I from Pepperdine University are offering an 8 week online course for educators who wish to learn more and explore the use of Second Life within a framework of educational theory. This will be a pilot offering of the course, and is not (yet) sponsored by or officially associated with Pepperdine University, but will be the same material and activities that would be included in the course should it be picked up for continuing education credit later on. As such, we are able to offer the course at a relatively low cost.

The course will run from June 4 - July 27.

For more information, please see the web site www.bmoseley.com/projects06/ for more information.

Posted to SLED Listserv 09-MAY-07 by Bill Moseley

Semano: Festival of European Song in Moyeno Valo, Rosario

Rosario is a nine sim island being created by Arcada, a university of applied science in Helsinki, Finalnd, La Kolegio Ilana, a institute of philosophical enquiry in Marinetta, Rosario, and other partners. The project has been working away quietly since October 2005. Some of the background details are available at www.marinetta.org and more will be added before mid-summer, when the next version of the site will be launched.

The purposes of the project are educational and the development of the island has been utilised in a wide range of undergraduate and graduate media programs.The methodology is a wholehearted experiment in learning by discovery.

This weekend Helsinki is hosting the Eurovision Song Contest. The video students at Arcada are working with a number of other institutes to broadcast live coverage all week over cable, online and using mobile television. The digital media students are working with the Institute for Technology Tallaight, Dublin to create the annual Semano Semano festival in La Mentala Rosario in Second Life.

This will take place over ten consecutive nights in Second Life (a night being the hour of darkness in each of the six daily cycles).

There will be live streaming from the streets of Helsinki. There will be a regularly updated photo exhibition with photographs from around Europe: an exhibition as live group blog. There will be sky-diving contests. There will be nightly treasure hunts. There will be mass demonstrations of the Rosarian national dance - done in full Rosarian National Costume.

There will be nightly discos featuring a test transmission from LaVoco - the 24 hour radio station launching in Rosario in August 2007, and transmitting throughout Second Life.

There will be guided tours of Rosario, and the usual assortment of freebies. There will be prizes including 3 free apartments for life!

The slurl for Moyeno Valo, the party site, is http://slurl.com/secondlife/Rosario%20B2/159/233/41/

More tomorrow - and please try to drop in at some point. We are running on ten consecutive "nights" so that everyone in every time zone gets a chance to experience the pleasures of the grizondi teleporting network, and other delights.

Posted to SLED listserv on 09-MAY-07 by Owen Kelly

SL Artist Filthy Fluno Speaking Thursday

Details just in.. SL artist Filthy Fluno (aka Jeffrey Lipsky http://www.jeffreylipsky.com ) will be providing a live audio discussion Thursday, May 10, on NMC Campus (5pm PDT). He will be showing a video that demonstrates a time lapsed view of the creation of a painting, as well as sharing his ideas on the capabilities of virtual reality to bridge the international divides of technology, culture, creativity, and artistic expression. Come learn about how art happens in SL.

Join us on Teaching 2 (135,124,22) http://slurl.com/secondlife/Teaching%202/135/124/22

Details: http://sl.nmc.org/2007/05/08/flithy-fluno/

Posted to SLED Listserv on 09-MAY-07 by Alan Levine.

Best Practices Conference Update

Can you believe that in just a few short weeks, the VERY FIRST inworld conference of educators will take place??

1. Are you planning to attend?
2. Do you want to present?
3. Does your college/school/program want a stand?
4. Do you play a game that you want to share?

It is OK if you are new to SL or if you can't be there all day. It is ok if you don't yet have students inworld. And it is OK if you just want to drop in for one or two sessions. Among the long list of talented keynotes and speakers, we have the awesome and lovely Intellagirl Tully and IBM's Chuck Hamilton.

Even if you are only popping in to see one session, we would like to know to expect you (to make sure we have enough chairs and all). As of right this moment, we are expecting about 300 people. ISN'T THAT AWESOME??? But, we want to make sure we have enough room for YOU!

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE register on the wiki at http://slbestpractices2007.wikispaces.com/

If you would like to showcase your work in some way, you can submit your awesome ideas via the wiki, as well.

We hope to see you there!

Posted to SLED Listserv on 09-MAY-07 by Beth Ritter-Guth

Silent Auction for Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund

To benefit the Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund, there is a "silent auction" on EduIsland. It goes from today through Sunday, May 13.

One does not need to be in SL to bid. The bid forms (which have links to pictures of items) are linked from: http://www.oero.soe.vt.edu/sl/index.html

More detailed instructions are found at the SL site and on the bid forms. Going to the SL allows bidders to learn more about the tools on which they might be bidding. The SLURL is: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Eduisland/121/127/23

The following items are available:

1) Many tools useful for educators, donated by Eloise Pasteur, Dagmar Kojishi, Dedric Mauriac, and Ann Enigma
2) A Retail Holodeck Room (with 40 scenes) donated by Bishop Carroll
3) Artwork by Alchimia Jewell and Professor Believeau
4) Misc. furniture

Guardian UK Article: "It's a world of possibilities"

An article from today's UK Education Guardian (May 8, 2007)

"Virtual campuses are springing up in Second Life, as universities discover the advantages of cyberspace."

http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/news/story/0,,2074240,00.html

Posted to SLED Listserv (08-MAY-07) by Andy Fossett

Live video presentation on Sloodle, May 16 (12 PM SLT)

Daniel Livingstone secured a largish grant (six figures in USD) from the Eduserv Foundation to support the Sloodle project. He will outline his work in our Spring Colloquia event with a live video feed to the "SJSU SLIS" sim.

Title: "Immersive and Web-Based Virtual Learning Environments: Bridging the Gap with Sloodle".

...and the formal announcement:

The School of Library and Information Science at San Jose State University is pleased to invite you to attend our continuing Colloquium Series featuring SLIS faculty and invited guests, as they address the challenges and promises of our rapidly changing profession.

Our final Spring Colloquia 2007 speaker is:

Dr. Daniel Livingstone
University of Paisley, Scotland
School of Computing
Title: "Immersive and Web-Based Virtual Learning
Environments: Bridging the Gap with Sloodle"

Wednesday 16 May 2007
Noon to 1:00 pm (SL time)
304 Clark Hall
SJSU campus in San Jose

This will be our first live colloquium available on SecondLife. Please join us there at
http://slurl.com/secondlife/SJSU%20SLIS/175/135

or

Prepare technically in advance to participate in this live venue by visiting http://slisweb.sjsu.edu/sl for set-up instructions, technical assistance, and orientation

and

To access the entire Spring program, visit SLIS's homepage at http://slisweb.sjsu.edu/, where you will also find a complete webcast archive of previous Colloquia presentations.

Posted to SLED Listserv (07MAY07) by Jeremy Kemp

Presentations Tonight and Tomorrow

To wrap up a semester of work in world we're putting on 3 research presentations this week.

The first is tonight at 4:30 SLT -
Religion in SecondLife, presented by me (Kim Chihuly) and Austra Soleil (RL: Austra Zubkovs, a senior in my department)
Park Communication (219, 51, 28)

Tuesday (tomorrow) at 10:00am SLT -
Intellectual Property and Virtual Worlds by Shmapple Patrono (RL: Mike Palumbo, a senior in my department off to law school in the fall)
Park Communication (92, 113, 29)

Tuesday (tomorrow) at 5pm SLT
a live video presentation by 2 more seniors from the Park School of Communication. This presentation is on facebook.
Park Communication (92, 113, 29)

Posted to SLED Listserv (07-MAY-07) by Kim Gregson

Virtual Quests Competition

Some of you may have heard that the Education UK island has launched a Virtual Quests competition. There are three prizes to be won, each of 5000 Linden Dollars each, which whilst not huge, still has good buying power in-world.

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The final date for submissions is 18th May and Professor Bernie Dodge will be our judge. The three winners will be announced at the 'International Best Practice Practice in Education' conference on the 25th May.

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Visit: http://slbestpractices2007.wikispaces.com/ for information about the conference.

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If you would like to find out more about Virtual Quests and the competition, you can visit our Virtual Quests competion page at: http://www.sleducationuk.net/?q=node/4.

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You can also view sample Virtual Quests and more detailed information in-world at Education UK island:

SLurl: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Education%20UK/227/44/21/

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For UK educators, we also have a free land grants programme, which is based on the Linden model, but plots will be available until 31st July 2008. More information and application forms at: http://www.sleducationuk.net/?q=node/5

.

Posted to SLED Listserv on 07-MAY-07 by Chris Swaine.

Global Kids teen-made PSA machinimas release!

As part of an exciting new collaboration last year, Global Kids have been working with high school teens from all over New York City at the Museum of Moving Image in Astoria, Queens during the 2006-2007 school year, on a groundbreaking digital moviemaking project. Students are learning Second Life in-person in the after-school Virtual Video Project, and given the unique opportunity to learn a variety of skills that will empower them to become critical thinkers, media producers, and global citizens.

Just yesterday we released the official PSA machinimas produced, created and filmed by the teens in the program. We are thrilled to share their work with you all. These PSA machinimas will also soon be shown at local organizations, schools, and online in teen spaces such as MySpace and other blog sites.

Please go to http://www.holymeatballs.org/2007/05/vvp_gk_leaders_release_first_s.html

and watch the newly released machinimas!

Taken from posted to SLED listserv on 04-MAY-07 by Tabitha Tsai

On NMC Campus This Week

Digital Print Making from University of Wisconsin-Madison

Monday, May 7, 9:00-10:00 AM PDT

We have a special session scheduled for NMC Campus Teachers Buzz on May 7 at 9:00am PDT. Hosts RuArt Semaphore and Magda Voss help us welcome Prof. Michael Connors and the virtual design team at University of Wisconsin-Madison to learn about work with Digital Printmaking students in Second Life.

Location: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Besma/167/45/122

Info: http://sl.nmc.org/2007/04/24/print-making/

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Eduserv Symposium: Virtual worlds, real learning?

Thursday, May 10, 1:00 - 9:00 AM PDT (U.K. day event)

This year's symposium will attempt to look past the hype surrounding virtual worlds such as Second Life and evaluate whether they offer real opportunities for learners at UK educational institutions. The symposium is intended for policy makers, practitioners and technologists working in the areas of information and communications technology and e-learning service delivery in UK HE and FE institutions. You can participate in one of the venues in Second Life, one is on NMC's Teaching 3

Info: http://www.eduserv.org.uk/foundation/symposium/2007/

Location: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Teaching%202/137/130/22

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Filthy Fluno Comes to NMC

Thursday, May 10, 5:00 - 6:00 PM PDT

Filthy Fluno, a.k.a. Jeffrey Lipsky will create a one-of-a-kind piece of artwork that expresses the culture, people, spirit and history NMC. This artwork will be unveiled to the greater NMC and Second Life communities with a discussion of the specific creative process and its artistic formal elements. Following this discussion, Mr. Lipsky will walk-thru the process of uploading artwork into Second Life, installing it into his virtual gallery, and demonstrating the capabilities of virtual reality to bridge the international divides of technology, culture, creativity, and artistic expression.

Location and details TBA at http://sl.nmc.org/

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Will Richardson Visits for NMC Teachers Buzz

Monday, May 14, 9:00 AM PDT

Blogsar Lumpen (a.k.a. Will Richardson) writer of Weblogg-ed http://www.weblogg-ed.com/ visits for next NMC Campus Teachers Buzz Session.

Location and details TBA at http://sl.nmc.org/

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Posted to by Alan Levine to SLED Listserv (07 MAY 07)

Linden to outsource Second Life orientation

...this could provide some better starting points for students, and you may want to get your institution involved in this programme and create your own orientation experiences.

http://secondlife.reuters.com/stories/2007/05/04/new-orientation-islands-take-off/

Taken from posting by Sean FitzGerald (04-MAY-07) to SLED Listserv.