The Story of My “Second Life”

Monday, November 11th marked the start of National Distance Learning Week, an event envisioned and created by Dr. Ken Hartman, Academic Director at Drexel University Online. (For more about the event, check out this article in the Philadelphia Inquirer.)

National Distance Learning Week was created to promote and raise awareness of distance learning in K-20 education. Distance learning represents everything from the creation of K-12 online schools like the Florida Virtual School (expected to serve over 100,000 grade 6-12 students in 07-08) to groups of traditional schools banding together to promote the use of videoconferencing in my own state, to fully online institutions like Walden University, where I teach part-time.

Second Life is clearly distance learning too, so when Ken asked me about holding a meeting in-world to promote the event, I knew we wanted to do something. I figured I could count on ISTE to provide the meeting space and logistical support (and I was right!). All we needed were panelists, and after a flurry of emails and schedule checks, we were thrilled to be able to get these three veteran educators to join us for an our or so this coming Wednesday:

• Lindy McKeown (SL: Decka Mah)
• Sarah Robbins (SL: Intellagirl Tully)
• Peggy Sheehy (SL: Maggie Marat)

We were lucky to find Chris Collins (SL: Fleep Tuque) available to moderate. We are going to highlight the great work of these pioneers and help spread the word about Second Life as an educational platform. We are expecting a capacity crowd, and will be using voice, so, plan to arrive early. We will begin prompty @ 6:00 pm SLT at the ISTE Auditorium:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/ISTE%20Island/201/46/23

Volunteers will be on hand to help everyone get going with voice if needed. So please plan to join us! Hope to see you there!

-kj-