February Blog-o'-the-Month at ISTE Island!

Welcome Judy O'Connell's "Hey Jude!" blog to the RSS feed in the Blogger's Hut at ISTE Island in Second Life, chosen by vote on a polling object and now featured in the Hut with its topic headers happily inviting the browser to open up and check out the incisive and informative blog posts Judy shares. This past week's post, for example, is entitled The Fastest Search on the Planet? and begins...

An impressive performance indeed! The interface is nice, the results seem good,and the way this works is the best way I have seen of demonstrating to students to the value of choosing good search terms...READ MORE

And whilst I'm mentioning the Blogger's Hut, get thee on over there (SLurl) and try your hand at voting for one of March's nominees. They're all international, "honoring the International in ISTE" and they all have an education-in-virtual-worlds focus. Who knows? You may find a new favorite for your very own RSS aggregator! The nominees are:

• Teaching in Second Life--Nergiz Kern http://slexperiments.edublogs.org/
• Second Life Education in New Zealand--John Waugh et al http://slenz.wordpress.com/
• Leading Virtually--Surinder Kahai et al http://www.leadingvirtually.com/ and
• Terra Nova--Edward Castronova et al http://terranova.blogs.com/ (blue)
  

By the way, much-many thanks to shamblesguru Voom for his ongoing collection of blogs at his own shambles.net resource center. I'll mine it again, I'm sure!

We're Scheduled for NECC2009!

Just checked my presenter's login page and our two workshops at NECC2009 are now scheduled!

These are both fee-required 3 hour workshops, one for "n00bs" and one for "experienced users only" and they're limited to 30 participants each, so hurry on out there and get registered for the conference then get your housing (filling up fast!) and sometime in mid-February, when the workshop program is announced, go back online and get registered for the workshop that fits your needs! I'll remind you here once the schedule is public!

Here's the skimmy:

TA405 Introduction to Education in Second Life: n00bs UNITE! [Workshop : Hands-on] (43604107) Scheduled: Tuesday, 6/30/2009, 8:30am–11:30am
Co-presenters Cathy Walker, John Miller, Lisa Linn, Peggy (Norton) Sheehy, Jane Wilde, and Jeff Agamenoni

and

WA507 Educators' Toolbox and Skill Set: Instruction and Presentation in Second Life [Workshop : Hands-on] (43605147) Scheduled: Wednesday, 7/1/2009, 8:30am–11:30am
Co-presenters Cathy Walker, John Miller, and Marianne Malmstrom

Yay!!!

IBM Demos OpenSim "Brainstorm 3D"

From Virtual Worlds News today comes an intriguing (that's the third time today I've used that word--I must be in curious mode) story about a new OpenSim project that's been in pilot mode for a while at the house of our blue-suited ones, IBM. It's called "Brainstorm 3D" and the word is that they're rolling it out to selected clients and expanding the access to more departments in their own company. According to the article, it's a mashup of Lotus Sametime and OpenSim built for real-time distance collaboration within a global corporate structure.

I don't want to hijack the image, provided in the article but I'm not at all above linking to it...:)

The article adds, "IBM is also working to bring virtual world experiences behind the corporate firewall. That's easier to do with OpenSim, but IBM is continuing its work with Linden Lab to do the same for Second Life." I suggest you read the whole thing if this interest ya. It certainly interests me, if only that "behind the corporate firewall" has the education corollary of "behind the school or school system firewall." The sooner we get our kids understanding how to learn and collaborate in all kinds of ways, the better, in my not-so-humble opinion. Safety and security are huge issues, and this may help move the ball down the field a bit more. Every little bit helps...

Bloom's Taxonomy Inworld!

Hey, ya'll.

I've been doing some 'sploring over the last few weeks and stockpiling some points of interest for you and your own explorations. The first thing I need to share with you is the Revised Bloom's Taxonomy put up by Thursday Xu (RL Iowa State's Rex Heer). For a teacher interested in new ways of looking at pedagogy and such, it's a must-see.

This platform, and the 3Dinternet in general, could stand for more of us to be this creative in using its strengths to display, hence to help teach and learn, concepts that are just not simple. Heer/Xu seems to have it going on, I submit, and I look forward to his future work. As your avatar takes in the scaled presentation, you can click on each block to be rewarded with chat text providing a concrete example of a lesson in which that particular understanding can be mastered. Very, very, very cool.

The other aspect of the work is that its creator seems uninterested in profiting from it, at least in a monetary sense. He has been promoting it on the SLED list, looking for feedback to improve it, and when I ran into him during my explorations, he simply gave me one. Now, as I talk to educators new to Second Life about its potentials, I can whip it out of my inventory and let them romp on it while I chat. Very, very, very cool. Did I say that already?

While you're there checking out the Bloom's, pop on over off away from it and walk up the prototype learning theory tower, which represents, as you climb up it, a continuum of learning experiences that Virtual Worlds have to offer educators and students. OMG he's at it again! Another visual tour-de-force! Another way to help us help others to see what those of us already exploring virtual worlds for education already know! Very, very, very COOL!




Have a great Martin Luther King Day, and if you're not yet in Second Life, come on in!

Innovate-online Special Issue Deals with Education in Virtual Environments!

Hey, ya'll,

Thanks to Gia and the other organizers of the "Pixel Meets Person" meetup at Kensington Square London yesterday. I managed to drop in for a few minutes and snag a quick dance. It was great fun viewing the video stream of the human folks at the Greyhound in England and chatting with folks all over the world who dropped into SL for the event!

In other news, the fantastic Innovateonline.info has published a special issue on Virtual Worlds education that should be of interest to anyone who reads O!VL!. The journal is peer-reviewed, and this special issue has been overseen by our colleagues Beth Ritter-Guth, Timothy D. Shields, and Phillip Long. Read about early successes and failures using MOOS and MUVES, about the use of "intelligent agents" to expand the potentials of the platforms, and about how innovative educators are leveraging VEs to enhance the lives of persons with disabilities. Very heady, interesting, and engaging stuff, all of it.

Cheers, and stay warm!!!

Educational Uses of Second Life Video!

Doing a little maintenance at the SLeducationVideos ning site, I found this fab video from Mary Ann Mengel, added in November (yes, I'm a SLacker). Have folks who need to see what it's all about? This is a good resource!

Daniel Livingstone's "Learning Games" Carries January Blog-o-the-Month!

Congrats to the Daniel Livingstone, our friend across the sea, for winning out in a VERY close race for the January Blog-o-the-Month at the Blogger's Hut on ISTE Island in Second Life! Grab the image from here, Dan-me-boy, and format it at will for your own blog, if you wish. (It looks good in the sidebar :)

The RSS feeder in the hut will display Daniel's "Learning Games" blog topics as new ones are posted throughout January, and a simple click on the object will serve up the feed for browsing his thoughtful, insightful, and dare I say often controversial thoughts on living and learning in our digital worlds.

My dear friend Giannini Rossini suggested our diversion into blogs international and I'm thankful for her idea. ISTE is, after all, an international organization, with over 85,000 members worldwide, nearly 4,000 of them in Second Life, a platform that continues to serve the ISTE community well.

It's never too soon (though around noon on January 31 it will be too late!) to go to the Blogger's Hut to vote for your favorite in the offerings for the February feature! Those include:

Ubernoggin--Sarah Robbins
http://ubernoggin.com/

"HeyJude"--Judy O'Connell
http://heyjude.wordpress.com/

Beth's Second Life--Beth Ritter-Guth
http://bethssecondlife.blogspot.com/

Quisitivity--Gerald Aungst
http://www.quisitivity.org/

and
Rammy Urriah of Second Life--Mal Burns
http://rammy-urriah.blogspot.com/

Cheers, and here's to you for a fabulous, sharing, learning, loving 2009!!!

Native American Celebration in Second Life!

Happy New Year, friends, PLN, readers, and those who may've stumbled here for the first time!

There's a bunch going on in the MUVErs arena, and I'll surely report out here when it's reportable, and meanwhile I'm posting today to share something fun and educational that I stumbled upon while exploring the SL Winterfaire offerings last week.

It's a lovely build that celebrates Native American cultures, sharing through very well-done text/image card displays (which I generally don't like, but these seem to work quite well in the setting) information, both factual and legendary, mostly about the Cherokee Nation and its culture.

One very cool feature at the site is a free (for two rezzes) loan of a horse to ride about the sim on. I didn't take advantage of that kind offering, deferring to my trusty Pegacorn from S. Haras, but I did take a paddle in the build's adjacent Openspace Sim lake in the loaner canoe. There's also a loaner jetski there, too, but I managed to jump the lake's central ski-jump ramp through its ring of fire using my canoe. Can't paddle that fast in real life, now can I?

I highly recommend you go visit Ravencatt at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Ravencatt/227/104/22.