Visit the ISTE SIGVE Wiki for News and Opportunities!

I've been soooo busy, with (not that anyone's counting) now only 37 days from this moment to my arriving in Denver for the International Society for Technology in Education's 2010 Conference and Exposition, the firsts iteration of what was formerly called NECC. I've been attending this conference more or less consistently since 2002, and I can safely say I can't imagine a more rewarding experience for an educator or an educational technologist who is in the mood to learn, which I am, most of the time.

This year is a special one for me. As a result of helping out with the Second Life Playgrounds at previous NECCs, and co-facilitating last year, we proposed a new Special Interest Group be formed. The SIG Virtual Environments was indeed officially recognized in October of 2009, and we've been going great guns so far. Note, to put this in context, that this 100,000+ member organization recognizes only 20 Special Interest Groups. In our first nine months we've

1. grown from a core of 10 or so to around 70 members, depending on which iteration of our community you look at
2. populated a growing wiki with massive amounts of information that will be useful for virtual worlds educators and researchers for years to come
3. presented four extraordinarily interesting and informative monthly (3rd Tuesday of each month) ISTE SIGVE Speaker Sessions on Virtual Environments topics by experts in topics including Science Sim, Quest Atlantis, the New Zealand Virtual Worlds Grid, and ReactionGrid--and scheduled more through July 2010
4. organized plans for the first ever Virtual Environments Playground at ISTE 2010 in Denver, Colorado and in virtual worlds all over the metaverse
5. Brought ISTE into ReactionGrid with ISTE Islands 1 and 2, slated for public open house during ISTE 2010, June 27-30.

Please visit the SIGVE wiki, join up as you see fit (you do NOT have to be a member of ISTE to participate), and keep your finger on that internet pulse to catch leading practitioners share their practices at the SIGVE Virtual Environments Playground. Come see what I mean...