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[SL] Best Practices For Education in Second Life The following best practices were developed by Global Kids, Inc. through the summer 2006 Camp GK in the teen grid of Second Life. Over four weeks, 15 teens spent three hours a day, five days a week, participating in interactive, experiential workshops about pressing global issues. Over the course of the program the teens picked a topic of concern -- child sex trafficking -- and built a maze to educate their online community and inspire them to take action. In its first eight weeks, the content-rich maze was visited by 2,500 teens, amongst whom over 450 donated money to an international organization committed to eradicating this global crime against children. Below is a review of general concepts. For more details download the pdf. Best practices for working in TSL 1. What happens in the teen grid stays in the teen grid. 2. Create multiple places of meaning. 3. If you build it, they will come. 4. Go beyond TSL. Best practices for bringing a youth development model into TSL 1. Build, build, build! 2. Don’t just build; design and manipulate avatars. 3. Think globally, act locally. 4. Know when teens know best. Best practices in workshop design and facilitation in TSL 1. Use real world content when addressing real world issues. 2. Don’t wait until someone has the floor to start typing. 3. Don’t fear multiple communication channels. 4. Incorporate processing into the activity, not just as a final step. Best practices in program design for TSL 1. Employ effective, rigorous, targeted recruitment. 2. Replace the dominant TSL culture with the GK Island culture. 3. Carefully design and build the tools required. 4. Ensure the program is designed for the recruited participants

Online gaming can help students develop many of the skills they'll be required to use upon leaving school, such as critical thinking, problem solving, and creativity, agreed educators who spoke during an April 16 webinar on gaming in education.

gaming and simulations are highly interactive, allow for instant feedback, immerse students in collaborative environments, and allow for rapid decision-making

repeated exposure to video games reinforces the ability to create mental maps, inductive discovery such as formulating hypotheses, and the ability to focus on several things at once and respond faster to unexpected stimuli.

nd since the outside content doesn't pass through Linden Lab's servers, it won't necessarily appear exactly the same way and at exactly the same time to all viewers. The company is currently working on allowing people to associate live Web content with so-called prims, the geometric building blocks that Second Life denizens use when creating virtual objects. Web content could then be stored on a portable object that a user's avatar can carry anywhere in the virtual world. "You can take it out and show it to someone without that land having to be yours," Miller says.

A virtual whiteboard, for example, might display a document, which two users could work on at the same time. In addition, he says, the company is building a programming interface that will allow other developers to import different types of media--Flash, for example--into Second Life without any change to the virtual world's underlying code. Miller says that companies or individuals will then have much more flexibility to use the types of media that suit their purposes within the world.

However, Rivers Run Red's Bovington says that Second Life tends to be the cheapest, most versatile way for a company or individual to try out Web integration. Although it has fewer security features, he says, it requires a smaller initial investment.

(no new virtual world supports the Mac these days, in spite of the “promises” done to “support it soon” — with “only” 8% of market share and growing, the Mac is simply not interesting for developers to focus on)

Being — like all Google products! — a Beta version, there are perhaps 40 or 50 available options (not the “millions” announced by Google reps) and they can be somewhat configured, but the choices are confusing and very, very limited.

“Linden Lab” room a close second. Figuring out that here I would already find a few familiar faces from Second Life®, I went for that one. The choice was certainly correct — Dusan Writer, Grace McDunnough, Jurin Juran, and likely a few others (sometimes it’s not easy to figure out who’s who!) were around in the room, testing the cumbersome interface. And cumbersome it is!

n January 2007, Eslteacherlink.com constructed English Village,  an immersive 3D simulation for language learners and teachers across the globe!  At English Village teachers meet students in REAL TIME, using an avatar, Virtual white boards, VOICE, 3D objects, and role playable holodecks to provide 21st century learning.

Futuristic, yet Practical Instead of keeping our island flat, and having the majority of our buildings  on the ground level, we have situated 13 glass classrooms along a 120 meter high, horse-shoe shaped mountain ridge. Below the steep mountain ridges, lies a welcoming sandy beach that reaches out into a c resent moon shaped bay area. This large open space is used frequently by our teachers for special learning activities, such as market place and carnival role play scenarios.

The Onion Our meeting area is in the shape of an Onion, and is constructed of 100% virtual pink stained glass.  We actually never planned to use a giant onion as our central meeting area... but it actually does a great job of representing  the organic nature of our island ~ We build. We make mistakes. We learn.... and sometimes we cry!  So.. an onion - is perfect. Everyone begins in the onion. When an avatar teleports to our island for the first time, thats where they land - smack dab in the center beautiful pink wonder.  Around the edges of the onion are several multi colored hamster tubes sprouting out - connecting to each holodeck classroom. Inside the hamster tubes are convenient People Movers - you know, the ones you see at the airport.  Here, avatars just click on the red loading ball, and they are instantly moved along the pathway 100 meters to their destination.  This saves virtual transport time.

There's also a more academically respectable software platform for 3D interaction, known as Open Croquet, which is backed by computer industry luminary Alan Kay, one of the originators of object-oriented programming and graphical user interfaces.