EDTEC700MULE

Annenberg Media provides wonderful resources for teachers of almost any discipline from kindergarten though college. I use the American Passages series in my American Literature classes. Students can watch brief videos, which really bring content to life, but what is great is that Annenberg includes so much more than just videos -- discussion questions, other links to more information, glossaries of key terms, project and essay ideas. The drawback is the passive nature of the site. Students watch videos; they don't create them or edit them. The activities surrounding the videos incoporate reading, writing, and possibly discussing, but these approaches in isolation, as we have seen, do not always provide the most immersive or effective learning experience.

Best practices and lessons learned in building Second Life Operating Room simulation. KUMC

This short article is an interview with John Lester, the former Education Ambassador for Second Life. Most noteworthy is the link within the article to ReactionGrid, the open source Second Life alternative. In the comments section there is a link to Indiana Wesleyan University's virtual world for its MBA students -- done virtually and completely online. Cool!

I was excited to see that The Tech, a wonderful museum in San Jose, CA, has a virtual exhibit. I found it interesting that they have very few traditional exhibits on display. Instead, they share free materials and teach visitors how to make virtual exhibits and display some user-generated exhibits - and there is the possibility that your user-generated exhibit could be displayed in museums in flatland. It's an interesting approach to a virtual museum, and I enjoyed the visit.

My design document included an idea of connecting my senior students in Multicultural Literature class to students in another part of the country or even another part of the world. The goal of the class is to learn about other cultures and SL allows teachers to collaborate with other teachers to do this--inexpensively. The link above is to an article entitled "Student Exchange, Without the Jet Lag: Educational Collaboration in a Virtual World." The article details how students in Modesto, California connect with students in Kyoto, Japan -- it's called the Pacific Rim Exchange. They meet in Teen Second Life on a group of private islands. Eventually, these students will meet in person, however, they get to know each other virtually before they do.

I've been following Kathy Schrock since the mid-1990s when I began using computers in the classroom. I have numerous bookmarks of her helpful websites filled with classroom resources as well as her blogs. She is the technology administrator for the Nauset Public Schools in Massachusetts. An earlier YouTube video has Kathy Schrock aka Kathy Dryburgh (in Second Life), gives a brief overview of what Lighthouse Learning Island is all about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7IC-JeK4Mc&feature=related. In a more recent video, Kathy along with other educators, explain how the Lighthouse Learning Island came to be and what it is currently doing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlwsXsTptbs. The original occupants of the Lighthouse Learning Island was the Nauset Public Schools but since then, several other school districts have joined this virtual learning platform. I was really excited how school districts are utilizing Second Life to offer professional learning development for their educators in Web 2.0 for teaching and learning. Additionally, educators from outside the district have attended these sessions. I'll be looking into how I am able to attend some of these professional development workshop sessions. Unfortunately, on August 1, 2010, Lighthouse Learning Island will be closing due to budget constraints. Kathy has rented a small plot of land on Eduisland 6 (SLURL) and will be announcing any upcoming professional development opportunities through the "K-12 Educators" group in SL. Her new spot is called "Kathy Schrock's Kaffeeklatsch".

Sun Microsystems has done a lot of work in Second Life, and I visited part of their island. It was very interesting, because it showed their approach to moving portions of their business into a virtual world. They have a mix of customer-facing exhibits that include videos and product information, and resources for employees to meet together. Overall, I think they could take advantage of the interactive features of Second Life, but it's good to see companies using virtual worlds in interesting ways. Sun Microsystems was recently purchased by Oracle. It will be interesting to see how it affects Sun's presence in Second Life.

This site's purpose is to "promote an active dialogue concerning aging, the elderly, seniors, health care, policy issues, caregivers, decision makers, educators, and getting older." When you arrive at Gerontology Education Island, you can take a quick tour in a virtual wheel chair. There are also "holodeck" rooms (shades of Star Trek) where you can experience being a health care practitioner working with the aging. This simulation focuses on a different subject matter and demographic than one would generally expect in Second Life, and it demonstrates how adaptable and useful the educational tools of Second Life can be.

video IBM: Inclusive Leadership training via Second Life Demonstrates some of the 3D Instructional Design strategies mentioned in http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2010/12/ibms-principles-of-virtual-design/

GREAT 3D instructional design principles: affordances open layout customizeable interactive consistent ... many principles that parallel good website design

PBS video promo of Deep Down Virtual Mine in Second Life.  Good overview of real problem tied to SL experience

Game challenge learning applying Learning in 3D book principles

Welcome to "Virtual Hawaii." An ongoing project sponsored by NOAA. Not everyone will have a chance to experience the wonders of early celestial navigation on the open ocean, but here, visitors can experience life as it might have been centuries ago in the Hawaiian Islands. Video of "Virtual Hawaii" - Second Life based learning environment

The amount of work and activity that used to take place on this site is amazing. It looks like there is still activity on the webpages that are linked to the SL site. They have ongoing projects where people learn about how they can participate in democracy such as making laws, understand the lawmaking process and other parts of our government.

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.

Hospitals, medical schools and health foundations are staking out space in the online community Second Life, in order to train medical and nursing students in clinical skills and to improve hospital efficency and response to emergencies.

Stagecoach Island is an online virtual world created by Wells Fargo. You can explore the island and its hidden secrets, connect with friends and make new ones, and at the same time learn smart money management.

EDTECH Island Two Years Later: Training Teachers in Virtual Worlds Lisa Dawley of Boise State Implications for design of space, activities and social support to serve learners in virtual worlds

Project Based Learning in Second Life. Easily applied to other MUVEs - especially those that offer learner content creation in-world.

Shambles list of Teen SL projects