One of the greatest things about Second Life is how it facilitates global connections. And, one of the greatest things about being the person responsible for the ISTE Second Life Speaker Series is that I get to find cool, interesting, innovative people from all over the world to give presentations about their work. Last night’s presentation on ISTE Island was a beautiful illustration of both!
We were joined last night by iAlja Writer (RL: Alja Sulčič), co-founder and self-described (though I certainly agree) ‘virtual community expert’ at Artesia, a small start-up in Slovenia specializing in online learning communities.
Coming to us at 3:00 am local time, iAlja was terrific in her text-chat presentation, the slides for which you can access here. Her talk spanned many forms of online communities besides Second Life and her experiences with adult learners. She explained how she has used these communities effectively, their relative pros and cons, and some of the unique cultural and behavioral challenges she has faced.
As someone who teaches online at the graduate level () I really related to the stories she shared, how she encountered and dealt with reticent students, occasional plagiarism, and a culture of learners completely new to online education. She described, in particular detail, difficulties getting students to blog, which hit home for many of us in the audience of about 24. After her presentation, a lively Q&A session followed.
iAlja says this was her first presentation in Second Life, but you’d never have guessed it. Her visuals were perfect, her text chat presentation was entered on the fly (not cut-and-pasted), and she even gracefully recovered from an unexpected crash (what? Second Life crashes periodically? Who knew?)
All in all it was a great night and a wonderful opportunity to benefit from the firsthand experience and perspective from an educator half a world away, an opportunity none of us would have had without Second Life!
-kj-
3 responses so far ↓
1 Alja Sulcic // Feb 20, 2008 at 7:00 am
Thank you so much for this great post and of course the chance to present at ISTE. It was a memorable night for me, and I hope to get the chance to attend more future events at ISTE – you have a great crowd there :)
2 Alanagh Recreant // Feb 20, 2008 at 10:31 am
I am so sad I missed iAlja’s presentation. I have known her for some time in Second Life and I, too, consider her a virtual communities expert – and so much more!
3 Pages tagged "slovenia" // Feb 25, 2008 at 7:21 am
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