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This Special Interest Group welcomes educators, administrators, and educational technologists who are interested in the development of any 3D Virtual Environment platform for connection and collaboration. We intend to be a valuable pivot point for all things virtual environment.

This video clip from Sports Coach UK has some valuable coaching tips for new and inexperienced coaches on how to create a positive learning environment for youngsters.

The top-down, authoritarian model found in most classrooms today looks very different from the model many students experience when they learn online. The classroom's hierarchical approach, with the sage on the stage, requires, (and, ultimately demands) passivity and deference on the part of the learner. Informal, interest-driven networked learning, with its access to large stores of information and variety of opinion, on the other hand, takes a much different view of authority. It's usually peer based, largely democratic, meritocratic, often creates dissonance due to variety and demands evaluation. Knowing what we do about active learning, one would seem clearly superior to the other.

Barack Obama has only four years to save the world. That is the stark assessment of Nasa scientist and leading climate expert Jim Hansen who last week warned only urgent action by the new president could halt the devastating climate change that now threatens Earth. Crucially, that action will have to be taken within Obama's first administration, he added. Soaring carbon emissions are already causing ice-cap melting and threaten to trigger global flooding, widespread species loss and major disruptions of weather patterns in the near future. "We cannot afford to put off change any longer," said Hansen. "We have to get on a new path within this new administration. We have only four years left for Obama to set an example to the rest of the world. America must take the lead.

** good to share with PLC Copyright for Kids: A Three Part Lesson One of the most challenging aspects of my job is teaching copyright to elementary school kids. They honestly just don't get the idea that they can't take others' work and then claim it as their own. It's widely known that the problem lies with 20th Century teaching in a 21st Century environment: When finding information is no longer a challenge in the age of the Internet, why do we continue to assign research projects that register way-low on Bloom's taxonomy (Remember, Understand)? We need to cater our projects to the higher levels, like analyze, evaluate and create. So if I'm going to walk the walk, I need to create a project that helps students to evaluate, analyze and synthesize information and ideas about COPYRIGHT.

ELIZABETH KNITTLE, technology integration specialist for the Barnstable Public School District in Massachusetts, took her first tentative steps in the 3D online virtual world known as Second Life about two years ago. She wasn't impressed. "I looked around and I thought, this is crazy," Knittle recalls. "I just couldn't see the value of it, so I left. But then people starting blogging about it-- a lot of people-- so I had to reconsider. I decided that if I was going to understand this thing and be able to answer questions about it intelligently, I really just had to suck it up and get in there and participate. Once I connected with people inworld, it made all the difference." That early buzz among K-12 educators centered on Second Life's potential as a learning platform. And in the last few years, many colleges, universities, and libraries have established resources in what has become the preeminent multiuser virtual environment (MUVE). Today, more than 100 Second Life "regions" are used for educational purposes.

An incredible collection of personal learning environment diagrams - web 2.0 style listing web 2.0 tools

A list of links to support the use of Web 2.0 tools for teaching and learning in the K-12 environment. (There are many items here, so be sure to visit the additional pages or choose to see 100 items from the bottom of the page.)

The world is full of visionaries and people who want to make a difference in the world, and many of those people share their knowledge online through their blogs. Whether you want to change the world through environment, humanitarianism, business, or any other way, there's a blog out there that can offer you guidance and inspiration. Read on, and you'll find 100 blogs that can help you change the world.

Are you a professional developer, a high school teacher, or university faculty? Are you finding that some of your adult students born between 1976 and 1995 maybe even up to 2001 have specific needs that are difficult to meet in a traditional classroom situation? This generation is what we call the "Generation Y" high school and college students. You may be a Gen Yer or "Millennial". Think about what type of learning environment works best for you. If many of your students are the Generation Y, here are some ideas that might help you when you design your learning activities:

Always On Teaching, Learning, and Living with laptops both in and out of the classroom. Whether you're a teacher just starting out with mobile laptop carts or working in a 1:1 environment, find the tips and techniques you need to succeed when learning goes 24/7. Join Katie Morrow and Michelle Bourgeois as they share ideas and resources for teaching and learning with laptops.

The purpose of this site is to take an extensive list of websites that are considered high quality, reliable, and valuable and organize them in a way that even "non-techy" teachers can utilize them. It took around 10 years to collect these resources, but new ones are found every day. All of these websites have been recommended by other teachers and educational organizations and qualify as "the best". You'll find support for all core curriculum areas. In addition, you will find lesson plans, multimedia, and primary sources to enhance your students' learning environment.

Google is secretive about its energy consumption and carbon footprint. It also refuses to divulge the locations of its data centres. However, with more than 200m internet searches estimated globally daily, the electricity consumption and greenhouse gas emissions caused by computers and the internet is provoking concern. A recent report by Gartner, the industry analysts, said the global IT industry generated as much greenhouse gas as the world's airlines - about 2% of global CO2 emissions. "Data centres are among the most energy-intensive facilities imaginable," said Evan Mills, a scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. Banks of servers storing billions of web pages require power.

This interactive site could be a great addition to webquests about ecology or business.