A K-20 educator's grant-funded, four- to six-month, fully-part-time (partially full-time?) immersion into and exploration of the world of "Second Life"
Tonight’s Speaker Series event on ISTE Island, 6pm SLT:
Join author/educator Cathy Arreguin (SL: Mari Asturias) of San Diego State University, as she discusses her paper for Global Kids summarizing the SLCC 2007 Education Track proceedings, emphasizing important concepts and examples especially useful for K12 educators and others wanting to incorporate best practices into their Second Life instruction. Joining her will be Dr. Ross Perkins (SL: Milosun Czervik) of Virginia Tech, who will provide additional insights into effective MUVE-based instruction NOT covered during the SLCC 2007 Education Track. This fast paced hour will also highlight practical examples and activities designed to inspire K12 educators new to virtual worlds. Cathy and Ross co-authored Real-Life Migrants on the MUVE: Stories of Virtual Transitions, published May 2007 in Learning & Leading with Technology. As former classroom teachers, they share a passion for equipping teachers in effective and creative uses of technology for instruction and learning.
I’m sitting in the lobby of the Nassau Inn here in Princeton and I have to say Princeton is BEAUTIFUL. I have never been here before and I’m just blown away. Walking the campus this afternoon was truly an experience. The place feels like Disneyland for the world’s future power elite! Just so inspiring!
I only have a few minutes before I meet Vicki Davis and we head over to the venue but I wanted to share about last night. Unfortunately, I can’t get a solid EVDO signal anywhere and my Flickr pics are just not making it. So they will have to wait…
A bunch of us had dinner last night at the Alchemist & Barrister … Vicki, Robin Ellis, Pat Sine, Sandy O’Neill, Jenny Hunsinger, Nancy Willard, Kristin Hokanson, Kathy Schrock, Ann Oro, anyone else? The food was good but the conversation was great as we all got to know each other, shared about our work, the state of edtech in schools, cybersafety, social networking & communities, you name it. Yeah, we talked shop all night. Why are you not suprised? :)
We made our way over to Roberson Hall where we located “Bowl 16,” the room where our meeting was held. I wish I could post a pic with this post. It was spectacular. Soon after the session got underway we were standing room only. Vicki fired up a CoverItLive.com live blog and we were off! Better to check that log than have me recap the whole evening. In short, Kathryn Montgomery, School of Communication, American University was amazing, I happen to have a link to her presentation here. Nancy Willard started off with some references to digital natives that had me groaning a bit (we’ve all sort of moved past that euphemism) but she quickly transitioned to a powerful, research-backed, informative and personally riveting presentation on cybersafety. This lady knows her stuff. I’ll try to get a link to her presentation but Vicki will definitely be featuring her on an upcoming Women of Web 2.0 broadcast.
This morning, we’ll be listening to academics presenting a panel entitled “What Does the Research Have to Say,” featuring some of the people who have published work in Volume 18 Number 1 of Children and Electronic Media, the professional journal that this conference is built around. Then, from 10:30 to 12:00, our panel takes over. It’s called “Innovative Uses of Technology in the Classroom” and features Vicki Davis, me, and Dan McVeigh from Oceans of Know. We’ve got lunch and a keynote from Nancy Willard (the same talk as last night I think) and then from 1:30 - 3:00 a panel will present on “Professional Development and Technology.” Kathy Schrock is on that one, along with Barry Joseph from Global Kids and my good friend Rob Mancabelli from Hunterdon Central Regional High School. (I really, really need to insert hyperlinks into this post…later, I promise.)
The room we are going to be presenting in is INCREDIBLE, a huge, “Paper Chase” style lecture hall on the Princeton Campus (Roberson Hall). It holds 200, I’m told, and, well, you just have to see pictures. It’s absolutely world class - with one major exception. There is essentially no power anywhere in the auditorium other than on the dais! So, people that were told to bring their laptops had better have their batteries charged!
I’ve got to get running, Vicki will be here soon, and I need to go over my notes. I will be speaking about Peggy Sheehy’s Ramapo Islands project in Teen Second Life. Specifically, I’ll be profiling three projects: “Of Mice and Men,” a role play like you’ve never seen in a classroom before; the “Body Image Unit,” which was a middle school health class’ exploration of identity and self image; and “The Cay,” a language arts project used by a special education teacher to reach and powerfully engage his students. Can’t wait!
Ok sorry for all the text, pics are coming, I promise!
Last night’s visitors to the ISTE Island Auditorium got a real treat as we had one of the most powerful presentations of recent memory (at least it was for those of us who believe in the power of blogs).
Konrad Glogowski (SL: Konrad March) joined us to talk about his PhD research regarding blogs and community in an 8th grade classroom. He eloquently described his experience as a writing teacher and how his old paradigm (”teacherly voice”) ultimately shifted, bringing him into the student’s “edublogosphere” as a participant rather than an evaluator. He also described how comments, not blog entries, drove the discussions, facilitating deeper and deeper connections between students.
But what I really liked was his analogy of being like the artist Carvaggio, who was known to paint himself into paintings. Konrad, too, believes educators should immerse, or embed, themselves into their classrooms, visibly, materially, and mentally, stepping away from the traditional role of evaluator.
Unfortunately, Konrad ran out of presentation time before he could let the other shoe drop, which as many of you are probably thinking, has to do with the actual implications for authentic assessment of student writing. He’s not abdicating his role as an educator; far from it. He’s advocating a new approach!
Fortunately, he will be coming back to ISTE Island soon, on a Thursday night social, to follow up his talk and get into details as to what this means in real terms for us as classroom teachers. Stay tuned for more details on this follow up session.
On Thursday night from 7-9 pm, there will be a free community seminar entitled “Children and Electronic Media: Parenting in the Technological Age.” This workshop is intended for everyone but especially families. It will be presented by Nancy Willard, author of Cyber-Safe Kids, Cyber-Savvy Teens. Registration is not required but it will be packed so plan to arrive early! For more information, click here.
On Friday, there will be a full-day conference entitled “Students and Electronic Media: Teaching in the Technological Age.” Timed to coincide with the release of the professional journal Children and Electronic Media, Volume 18, Number 1, this event will focus on recent relevant research (as featured in the journal) as well as testimonials from educators (that’s us!). I am on a panel entitled “Innovative Uses of Technology in the Classroom” with Vicki and Dan McVeigh from Ocean of Know (which I blogged about a while back). I’ll be presenting about Second Life, specifically, Peggy Sheehy’s work at Suffern Middle School in Suffern, NY. Registration IS required for this conference. For more information and to register, click here.
Finally, the official conference flyer is available here (967kb .PDF).
This is a special week for us at ISTE - we have TWO Speakers Series presentations for you!
The first is tomorrow, Tuesday, April 22nd at 6:00 pm SLT at the ISTE Island Auditoriumwhere Konrad Glogowski (SL: Konrad March) will explore some of the key findings of his recently completed doctoral dissertation on classroom blogging communities. Specifically, he will discuss the impact of blogging communities on the role of the teacher and the implications of this impact for teacher professional development. Konrad will also discuss The Virtual Classroom Project, his current professional development initiative on the island of jokaydia in Second Life. This will be a voice presentation, please be sure you have a working voice setup prior to the event.
Then, on Thursday April 24th at 3:00 pm SLT (note the EARLIER than usual starting time!) at the ISTE Beach/Campfire Areawe will be hosting Pastrami Linden who will discuss optimizing the new Windlight viewer, particularly for older hardware. For those of you who haven’t seen it, Torley Linden’s Graphics Preferences Guide video tutorial shows what just about each and every option does, and might be good to review in advance (but is not required.) This will be a voice presentation, please be sure you have a working voice setup prior to the event.
Ana Alves (SL: Irah Anatine) just announced the latest in the series of presentations by Mr. Paulo Casaca, a Member of the European Parliament in Portugal’s Socialist Party, which will be held on her sim, Babel, on Wednesday, April 30th, at 2:30 pm SLT/PDT. Free registration is required.
Mr. Casaca is reportedly the first member of the EU parliament to use Second Life to reach constituents worldwide. His presentations are always informative and fascinating. I have been impressed by his frank and direct assessments of the situation in Iraq, as well as the absence of political rhetoric from his talks. Who needs US-centric media spin? Hear directly from experts like Mr. Casaca and make up your own mind.
Thanks to Second Life, you really get the sense that you are “there” in person as he delivers his message to a worldwide audience. Questions (via text IM) are answered personally via voice. His English is flawless, even through his distinctive accent. Thankfully, voice quality has been excellent every time I’ve been there; Irah and her staff also work hard to ensure avatars have working sound setups (and muted mics). These are world-class productions! Podcasts are also becoming available as talks are given.
The session title uses the word “debate” but I think that term is meant in the figurative sense, as I am not aware of plans for someone else to be on stage with Mr. Casaca. The Q&A portion could easily allow that, however.
This promises to be a great and very popular event. Register now and I’ll see you there!
We had a terrific turnout last night and one of our most information-packed sessions ever. Powered by great questions from the audience, the meeting ran until 7:45 pm SLT!
Havok4 is currently being rolled out across Second Life (literally as we speak), with the goals of a more realistic simulator experience, increased viewer stability, and greater design capabilities for inworld developers. These improvements are important to all residents, but especially to educators who wish to use Second Life as a “hands on” educational environment.
Bernajean Porter kindly forwarded me this link today, and after reading the article and watching the video below, I have renewed optimism about the future of virtual worlds, particularly in education.
Not because I think a Segway-style interface for Second Life will transform teaching and learning in virtual space, but because really, really smart people continue to work really, really hard on technologies that push virtual worlds forward. That, and the educational community, overall, remains largely unfazed by the negative press we continue to see in the popular media.
Really does make one wonder what the press was saying about the Internet in the early 1990s. That would be an interesting search…
So we had our regular club meeting yesterday, about five of the group made it into my lab. We teleported over to our plot on Alpha and discovered that a huge section of the Scholympia was missing! I had planned for us to discuss what was going to happen before things started disappearing, but, we took it all in stride and began to talk about what to do with the space. In the meantime, I returned some of the leftover parts to make the gaping hole symmetrical.
Soon the site looked like a crazed construction zone with people building and terraforming like crazy, trying things, experimenting, putting people in boxes (thanks, Chippersmass Schomer!).
Topper Schomer came by and joined the team and watched in amusement as we n00bs flailed about almost without a clue (JPSkater777 was doing a pretty good job actually). As soon as his permissions were squared away, Topper went to work. As one of the most experienced terraformers in Schome Park, he made quick work of our cavern space, tunneling down well below the waterline, even connecting us to the inland waterway that runs through Alpha. You have to see the pics - it was amazing!
As the end of our club’s hour meeting approached, JP decided we needed a proper covering for the now-gaping hole in Scholympia, and he quickly came up with a solution involving large square prims. With our ‘door’ in place, yet out of sight, our space was officially now under construction. Can’t wait to see what these kids dream up next week!
