Group items tagged

Although physical education in second life would be more of a skills analysis or cognitive application as opposed to actual physical activity, there are breakthroughs in virtual reality applications for physical education.

I feel strongly about kids actually having to go out and participate actively in "real life" sports. I do however see the benefit of using virtual reality to improve mental strategies and to develop skills independently. Virtual reality in sports and fitness can help to encourage young people to be more active. This article describes some of the advantages and disadvantages to using virtual reality in sports and fitness.

we're here because we can tell stories, we can be inside art, we can give context to conversation and learning and collaborating in ways that are, simply, impossible in nearly every other medium, including reality. Dusan Writer blogs of interactive, collaborative narrative (storytelling) as the compelling reason for virtual worlds such as second life.

For those of you interested in using virtual reality in teaching mathematics, here is a paper written by four professors about their experience in trying to find ways to make mathematics more interesting to their engineering students. They designed a virtual reality math lab to be taken with a math class. One of the most popular lab components was the flight of a soccer ball. In a 3D setting, the students could stop the ball in time and then practice their mathematical skills by plugging in coordinates that would project the flight of the ball. 20 out of 20 students said that they felt the lab had helped them to enjoy math more. The professors felt their overwhelmingly positive response would lead them to develop more math labs for their students in the future.

Here is an interesting article on how virtual reality is used for physical rehabilitation. People in the rehabilitation community and neuroscientist question whether virtual reality truly affects the nervous system or if it just serves as motivation for the patient in a controlled environment.

students working within the 3D virtual reality environment tended to improve spatial skills, including kinesthetic and logical abilities.

How you appear in the virtual world could affect your behavior in real life, according to researchers at Stanford University. Andrea Seabrook speaks with Stanford's Jeremy Bailenson about his research into how people interact psychologically with their virtual-reality representations.

Medical training programs are springing up in virtual reality, and they may bring big changes to the way health-care professionals learn their craft. Example of medical school training simulation in Second Life

This is a wiki that explores educational uses of different virtual learning environments. It was really interesting learning about programs/tools other than SL, such as augmented reality. Click on the "About Us" link to find out more about the Horizon Project.

NPR always has something great to teach. This was a great story about how virtual environments are used to make the world a safer place.

One of the greatest challenges we face as high school physical education teachers is getting our students to be motivated. Although it is costly to have this sort of virtual reality equipment at our school, it is something that we can possibly plan for the future and have as an activity for days in which our teaching areas are affected by rainy day, construction, testing, or for students who cannot have long exposure to the sun. Sounds fun ☺

Yeah, I think in PE (or in any content area), finding a way to connect with our students and motivate them is crucial. I envision being able to integrate a Wii game system with a 3D Muve so that our students will actually have to be physically active in order to move their avatar in the virtual world,

Carolina, Does the P.E. curriculum call for daily physical activity? Perhaps one or two days a week students can meet in a computer lab and work in SL. They could build a gym, and post fitness goals on its walls. Also, there are many web sites out there that they could use to calculate calories in and calories out. Just a thought... Great article. ;)

Make a point of checking out Rich White's Greenbush Labs blog for some fascinating and relevant ideas. See the augmented reality ZooBooks-http://bit.ly/9pUQNt, the 3D desktop, Bumptop, and Google 3D map view http://roots.greenbush.us/?p=924.

Brain scans of avid players of the hugely popular online fantasy world World of Warcraft reveal that areas of the brain involved in self-reflection and judgement seem to behave similarly when someone is thinking about their virtual self as when they think about their real one.

Profiles of 5 Second Life users with rich life experiences that contribute to the community in Second Life: Holocaust survivor, Grandson of slaves, Broadway singer, Obama's tech chief, etc. Highlights interesting demographics (age, accomplishment)

I found this use of virtual reality to be very interesting. At George Mason University, professor Chris Dede has helped create a collection of three virtual worlds that allow students to see the interaction of molecules, gravity and electrostatic fields from an up-close perspective. Students are able to become the ball that gets thrown and see what happens to it when it collides with another object. Students can also become a hydrogen or oxygen molecule and see what happens as they combine to create a drop of water.

Here is an interesting letter from an associate professor of physics at Elon University about his experience with using Second Life in his courses. He seems to really enjoy using new creative tools in his courses and is constantly looking for new ways to do things. He has tried many different representations of virtual reality. In general, he had assumed that all of his students would be fairly technically competent, especially in building in Second Life, but found that most of them fumbled around at first. Once they got on to it, they did quite well. He also took part in the Second Life Planetarium that has already been mentioned by one of the other students.

Kidz Connect is a program that helps connect young people from different countries and learn about each other's culture thru the process of music, dance, digital art, and storytelling within Teen Second Life. Kidz Connect holds events during the summer and throughout the year wherein collaboration between various schools and organizations in dance, music, theater, and multimedia art are organized. The collaborations culminate in mixed reality performance combining the various live performances and multimedia art with performance interactions in Teen Second Life.