October Blog-o'-the-Month!

Hey, ya'll!!!

Please take time to visit and congratulate October 's Blog-o'-the-Month, e-clippings (Learning as Art)

http://blogoehlert.typepad.com/eclippings/

Voting for October went in favor this American edublogger's "Internal conversation" as described in this quote from his Typepad blog's "About" page:

About this blog... I want to say that while I love having readers, that is not the most important thing for me about blogging. This is almost an internal conversation I am having in a very public way. I welcome and appreciate your comments, ideas, criticisms, and readership.

This blog is primarily about how culture and technology come together over the space we call 'learning.' It covers a lot of ground but the overarching theme (at least in my mind if not always evident) is how these new technologies, methodologies and ideas can be used to create a richer world of learning.

The stellar blogs nominated for the month of November are:

Pooky Media

http://pookyamsterdam.com

Pooky Amsterdam

edbuzz.org

http://edbuzz.org

Daryll Johnson and Shawn Roner

Edtech Jen

http://edtechjen.com

Jennifer Roland

Tim Holt's Intended Consequences

http://webme.com/timholt/Intended_Consequenses/Intended_Consequences_Blog/Intended_Consequences_Blog.html

Tim Holt

In the event of a tie I'll find some groovy randomizing SL tool to choose the winner! Any suggestions? Leave 'em in the info dropbox!

Past Features (Blog Hall of Fame):

Clive on Learning--Clive Shepherd

Technology and Learning--Lee Kraus

PESD Island--Noreen Strehlow

In a Strange Land--Iggy O et al

Second Life in New Zealand--John Waugh, Terry Neal, et al

Hey Jude!--Judy O'Connell

Learning Games--Daniel Livingstone

Learning Visions--Cammy Bean

Dr. Z Reflects--Leigh Zeitz

Hendron's Digest--John Hendron

Phasing Grace--Grace McDunnough

From Mr. A to Mr. Z--Jeff Agamenoni

Around the Corner--McGuhlin.net

Fleep's Deep Thoughts--Fleep Tuque/Chris Collins

NMC Campus--New Media Consortium

PHSPrincipal Blog--Dave Meister

Teaching Math Technology Blog--Maria Anderson

2CentsWorth--David Warlick

The Story of My Second Life--Kevin Jarrett

Oh! Second Life (now Oh! Virtual Learning)--Scott Merrick :)

University of Texas System Poised to Enter 15 Campuses into Second Life--Where is YOUR School?

From statesman.com, an article announcing the entry of the University of Texas network of 15 campuses into Second Life. What about the school where you teach, learn, and work?

UT System campuses join virtual world

University of Texas System sets $250,000 aside for Second Life project.

By Ralph K.M. Haurwitz
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Monday, September 28, 2009

Leslie Jarmon, a faculty development specialist at the University of Texas, sensed that David Prior would bring a certain skepticism to her ambitious proposal to create a series of virtual campuses in cyberspace.

Prior, the UT System's executive vice chancellor for academic affairs, was trained as a geologist. And geologists are all about rocks, oil and other stuff that actually exists.

But he was soon quite taken with Jarmon's pitch to bring the system's nine academic and six health campuses into a three-dimensional, online world of learning, research and collaboration called Second Life. The system agreed to put $250,000 into the project from an account it established to underwrite innovative education initiatives.

"I think we'll want to watch this one carefully," Prior told the system's Board of Regents in August. "I think it's going to be rather interesting." ...Read the entire article at statesman.com

UT (not Tennessee) "Gets It"

Linden Lab is having a field day with the rollout of the University of Texas's new Second Life initiative and well they should. From the official Linden Lab blog:

The University of Texas System is starting a year-long project to explore the use of virtual worlds for learning, and they are bringing their entire 16-campus system into Second Life.

Wow. A large university system actually "gets it." Read more...

Educational Leadership Article Features Quest Atlantis!

An article published this month in the popular periodical Educational Leadership features a number of answers to the question "Why Educators Should Care About Games." Score one more important point for my favorite upper elementary MUVE.

Sasha A. Barab and his collaborators do an excellent job of summarizing the underlying principles beneath the design and implementation of Quest Atlantis, the wonderfully engaging 3D Virtual World(s) I will be introducing to my lucky 4th graders in a very few weeks. Last year's 4th graders got the bum's rush, in a way, not getting "inworld" until late February. I'm hoping for a more intentional and informed experience for all of us this year.

The concept of Transformational Play is key. Say the authors:

Our virtual quests expand on strategies

associated with project-based

curriculums. We focus on building

game-based learning environments in

which students play an important role,

using academic knowledge to make

decisions that influence, for better or

worse, the designed storyline. Thus,

these virtual spaces transform learners

in three ways: (1) they transform a

person from a passive recipient to an

empowered actor, (2) they transform

content from information that the

learner has to remember to a tool that

the learner can use to accomplish

desired ends, and (3) they transform

context from an assurance that "this

knowledge will be relevant in the

future" to a present reality that responds

to the learner's actions.

They even cite some strong research findings that support the contention that this kind of instruction (more like "guidance") yields better results than traditional delivery of the same science content. Yay, I say, just the sort of research we need more of.

I did some posting at my USNLSTech blog last year about our experiences in QA, and I co-facilitated a great "Birds of a Feather" session at NECC09 in DC with the most stellar Bronwin Stuckey, QA mentor extraordinaire. Joining us on the presentation stage were Fil Santiago, Lisa Lynn, and Marianne Malmstrom. Stay tuned for more this year as my new 4th graders get into virtual environments for the first (monitored:) time!

I'm Too Busy To Date Your Avatar!

From pookymedia, Bernhard Drax, Draxtor Despres in SL, comes "I'm Too Busy To Date Your Avatar", an hilarious little ditty likely to get your avatar up and dancing with it! Check it out!

September Rolls into the Blogger's Hut Like a Steamroller!

Happy September, ya'll, and I hope you'll take a minute out of your busy Second Life to drop by the ISTE Island Blogger's Hut, which I maintain for the International Society for Technology in Education, and vote for your favorite of the four stellar blogs for October!

What are they? Wellllllll, that'll just have to wait a minute.

First of all, hearty congratulations to "Clive on Learning," the winner of a close vote during August and September's official "Blog-o'-the-Month at the Blogger's Hut. For those who may not know, ISTE is an over 85,000 member international organization with well over 5,000 of those members in Second Life. ISTE sponsors the wonderful bi-weekly inworld "ISTE Eduverse Talks" series, and episode number 9 just went live at http://iste-eduverse.org. ISTE will be hosting its HUMONGOUS annual conference of teachers, technologists, and member organizations in Denver this summer, and it's undergone a name change: Whereas it has brought its fabulous learning and networking resources to its members for 30 years as the National Educational Computing Conference, NECC (18,000+ attendees in Washington, D.C. this past summer), it will be held in Denver, Colorado this coming summer under the new name, ISTE 2010.

Clive Shepherd's wonderful ruminations on learning (with a focus on e-learning) will run in the RSS feed all month of September, when he will be retired by the winner of the vote for October, between--here it comes, wait for it, wait for it:

The Bamboo Project

http://michelemartin.typepad.com/thebambooprojectblog/

Michel Martin

Donald Clark Plan B

http://donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.com/

Donald Clark

e-Clippings (Learning As Art)

http://blogoehlert.typepad.com/eclippings/

Mark Oehlert

Blogger in Middle-Earth

http://newmiddle-earth.blogspot.com/

Ken Allan

Congrats to those wonderful blogs. Feel free to grab a copy of this image and post it at your site,

along with the SLURL above!

That's it for now, but stay tuned. This August has, according to my twitter feed and my other PLN resources, been particularly rough on technologists re-entering the maelstrom that is the school year. We'll be back up to speed shortly, I have no fear!