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To help moms who have children with autism and to support Autism Awareness month, Momsfightingautism.com is offering a free virtual conference with 17 different presenters over two days on Saturday April 10th and Sunday April 11th. Attendees can listen and participate from anywhere in the world free.

"In a few years from now, students in schools all over the world will receive part of their education in virtual learning environments. Wearing VR-goggles the students will be able to enter 3-dimensional, simulated places and situations that they would normally not have access to because it would be too expensive, too dangerous or physically impossible. Teaching via VR-technology is spreading widely and international studies predict that this will revolutionise the way we learn."

Play-on: the boundaries between the real and virtual world have gone for kids, it's all just one big world of play.  Now kids arrange play dates in the playground, swapping their penguin names to 'Play-on' after school in Club Penguin.  The new friends functionality will allow kids to find their friends faster, teleporting them to their friends within Club Penguin, regardless of where they are playing from or what server they're on Supportmobbing: Kidanthropy:  Kidsourcing:  Digilinguists:

Through the end of the year, Discovery just sent me a note that they are offering these three common core academies at no cost. Here's the info from Steve Dembo. I've done some work with their SIEMENS STEM Academy and am a sTAR Educator and everything they do is top notch. If you can work it out before the end of the year, this is something you'll want to do. From Steve Dembo: "We know that implementing the Common Core can be an uphill climb. That's why Discovery Education is proud to partner with educators to offer Common Core Academies in ELA, Math, and Leadership at no cost. From now until the end of the school year, educators across America are invited to sign up for an Academy and receive: practical strategies to implement CCSS reseach-based instructional practices best practices in using digital content resources and digital tools for immediate classroom integration Discovery Education Common Core Academies offer one day of immersive professional development and two follow-up virtual sessions at no cost to support educators and leaders in effectively implementing the Common Core State Standards. Educators may choose from three Academies offering a unique combination that brings together best practices in digital integration with proven research-based instructional practices: Literacy and the Common Core in a Digital World Teaching and Assessing Common Core Math in a Digital World Leadership Strategies to Support Digital Literacy and the Common Core"

Great place for online safety - sign up for a school account.

I highly recommend that elementary and middle schools at least sign up for a school code for woogi world - this is a great tool suggested by Hoover City schools for teaching digital citizenship. My daughter (my intrepid tester of all kid virtual worlds) loves it and says she thinks it is great for kids.

The support site for my new private virtual world on Open Sim (from the people at Reactiongrid.) I'm so excited - been using reactiongrid public grid for a while, but now with a private grid, I'll have the best of both worlds. This is gREAT! They are great.

"The iPad generation. That's what I call the children of today. Now that's neither a positive or a negative nickname, just a nickname, however, whatever view you have on it, the impact on our teaching is huge. Children are brought up with bright colours, avatars, HD and 4K screens, virtual worlds full of weird and wonderful characters and then there's school. I believe that it is vital that we, as educators, sit up and take note of this and rather than fight against it, embrace it. Make your teaching as fun and as interactive as you can. Bring lessons to life with hands-on experiences, opportunities to enquire and lessons where the children can investigate the world around them."

"What Makes a Great Teacher? Image credit: Veronika Lukasova Also in our Special Report: National: "How America Can Rise Again" Is the nation in terminal decline? Not necessarily. But securing the future will require fixing a system that has become a joke. Video: "One Nation, On Edge" James Fallows talks to Atlantic editor James Bennet about a uniquely American tradition-cycles of despair followed by triumphant rebirths. Interactive Graphic: "The State of the Union Is ..." ... thrifty, overextended, admired, twitchy, filthy, and clean: the nation in numbers. By Rachael Brown Chart: "The Happiness Index" Times were tough in 2009. But according to a cool Facebook app, people were happier. By Justin Miller On August 25, 2008, two little boys walked into public elementary schools in Southeast Washington, D.C. Both boys were African American fifth-graders. The previous spring, both had tested below grade level in math. One walked into Kimball Elementary School and climbed the stairs to Mr. William Taylor's math classroom, a tidy, powder-blue space in which neither the clocks nor most of the electrical outlets worked. The other walked into a very similar classroom a mile away at Plummer Elementary School. In both schools, more than 80 percent of the children received free or reduced-price lunches. At night, all the children went home to the same urban ecosystem, a zip code in which almost a quarter of the families lived below the poverty line and a police district in which somebody was murdered every week or so. Video: Four teachers in Four different classrooms demonstrate methods that work (Courtesy of Teach for America's video archive, available in February at teachingasleadership.org) At the end of the school year, both little boys took the same standardized test given at all D.C. public schools-not a perfect test of their learning, to be sure, but a relatively objective one (and, it's worth noting, not a very hard one). After a year in Mr. Taylo

Virtual Games to learn science

Oculus rift and a real world driving experience combine. This is amazing considering the high speeds that the car was traveling and the processing power and capability required. There was no margin for error. Wow.

Article by Wil Richardson on Collaboration

Google has a connected Classrooms initiative providing virtual field trips via Google Plus and Google Hangouts. Here are the details from the official Google Blog on how to join in.

Generally adults help young people learn to drive safely before giving them car keys and turning them loose on the streets of the world. Young people also need guidance and adult assistance to learn how to safely navigate the virtual environments of the 21st Century. Schools must be proactive, rather than merely defensive, in helping students acquire the skills of digital citizenship needed today and in the future. Simply banning read/write web tools on school networks is an inadequate response: Educators must strive to learn alongside students and parents how these technologies can be safely and powerfully used to communicate and collaborate.

...As Net-generation teachers reach out to gamers, classrooms across the country are becoming portals to elaborate virtual worlds...

Students in the phillipines have made a wiki in support of Lively. They are sharing their avatars and the rooms that they have made along with screenshots of their rooms and avatars. This is a wonderful thing to see that other kids are using this website. Kids love virtual worlds and there are great applications. Google is making a mistake. I WISH WISH they would listen to these students who see great potential.

ProjectExplorer, Ltd. is a not-for-profit organization that produces FREE online films and educational programming for the kindergarten to 12th grade community. Our virtual fieldtrips showcase destinations around the world. Learn more>

Information for installing sloodle - this is what you'll use if you're running opensim on a server at your school - helps make the teaching with virtual worlds so much easier.

My ninth graders have completed a module documenting how to do various tasks in OpenSim, the virtual world we use that is hosted by Reactiongrid. This wiki has the links, instructions, and other pages with tutorials on how to do various items. I was assessing this today and thought I'd pass it along as there is some great information to show you how to do things. (If you are a beginning second lifer you may also learn some things.)