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At school or college? Have an idea to change the world? ITU Telecom World 2011 brings together thousands of influential delegates from the telecommunications and technology industries to discuss what steps need to be taken to get more of the world connected. And they need your help! We are inviting 10,000 global school children (8-18)  to design the innovations that could make a real difference to their world.(((( Sign up your school or class now, and your students can start influencing thousands of decision-makers in information and technology communications.

"The aim of this small project is to create a map of virtual world based scientific research and educational initiatives at UK universities. The map is being created by Birmingham-based virtual world specialists Daden Limited as part of this year's British Science Festival hosted at Aston University in Birmingham.Virtual Worlds such as Second Life, where users can socialise and connect on-line are already being extensively used by UK Universities and other educational and research organisations - but it can be hard to find out what is going on, and where. It can hopefully become a lasting resource for UK Science which can live on beyond the 2010 British Science Festival.The map is, appropriately, presented as virtual map inside of Second Life where visitors will be able to click on map markers to gain further information on each project, and to be directly transported to the science project location.Users without access to Second Life, or running projects in other virtual worlds, are not excluded from the project. All information will be available through this micro-site, which includes a browser based version of the Second Life map, and lists of projects in other worlds."

"This is an initiative from the University of Otago, the University of Auckland, Wellington Institute of Technology, the University of Canterbury, and supported by Telecom NZ.  It is an open access national virtual world grid based on open source software.  It operates on NZ-based servers hosted at Otago, Auckland and Canterbury Universities, and leverages other national investments in IT infrastructure through deployment on the high-speed KAREN (Kiwi Advanced Research and Education Network). The grid has been set up with an academic focus and will be used for research and education, as well as for proof-of-concept application deployments and testing.  The objectives of the NZVWG initative are to: Undertake both experimental and routine use of virtual worlds in teaching and research;Develop engaging, interactive in-world content customised for NZ use; andDevelop new context-specific plugins enabling interaction between the virtual and real (non-virtual) worlds. "

"At the end of the twentieth century, intellectual property rights collided with everyday life. Expansive copyright laws and digital rights management technologies sought to shut down new forms of copying and remixing made possible by the Internet. International laws expanding patent rights threatened the lives of millions of people around the world living with HIV/AIDS by limiting their access to cheap generic medicines. For decades, governments have tightened the grip of intellectual property law at the bidding of information industries; but recently, groups have emerged around the world to challenge this wave of enclosure with a new counter-politics of "access to knowledge" or "A2K." They include software programmers who took to the streets to defeat software patents in Europe, AIDS activists who forced multinational pharmaceutical companies to permit copies of their medicines to be sold in poor countries, subsistence farmers defending their rights to food security or access to agricultural biotechnology, and college students who created a new "free culture" movement to defend the digital commons. Access to Knowledge in the Age of Intellectual Property maps this emerging field of activism as a series of historical moments, strategies, and concepts. It gathers some of the most important thinkers and advocates in the field to make the stakes and strategies at play in this new domain visible and the terms of intellectual property law intelligible in their political implications around the world. A Creative Commons edition of this work will be freely available online."

The objectives of the NZVWG initative are to:     Undertake both experimental and routine use of virtual worlds in teaching and research;     Develop engaging, interactive in-world content customised for NZ use; and     Develop new context-specific plugins enabling interaction between the virtual and real (non-virtual) worlds. 

(Note - free ebook version) - At the end of the twentieth century, intellectual property rights collided with everyday life. Expansive copyright laws and digital rights management technologies sought to shut down new forms of copying and remixing made possible by the Internet. International laws expanding patent rights threatened the lives of millions of people around the world living with HIV/AIDS by limiting their access to cheap generic medicines. For decades, governments have tightened the grip of intellectual property law at the bidding of information industries; but recently, groups have emerged around the world to challenge this wave of enclosure with a new counter-politics of "access to knowledge" or "A2K." They include software programmers who took to the streets to defeat software patents in Europe, AIDS activists who forced multinational pharmaceutical companies to permit copies of their medicines to be sold in poor countries, subsistence farmers defending their rights to food security or access to agricultural biotechnology, and college students who created a new "free culture" movement to defend the digital commons. Access to Knowledge in the Age of Intellectual Property maps this emerging field of activism as a series of historical moments, strategies, and concepts. It gathers some of the most important thinkers and advocates in the field to make the stakes and strategies at play in this new domain visible and the terms of intellectual property law intelligible in their political implications around the world. A Creative Commons edition of this work will be freely available online.

"A Radically Different World If you think our future will require better schools, you're wrong. The future of education calls for entirely new kinds of learning environments. If you think we will need better teachers, you're wrong. Tomorrow's learners will need guides who take on fundamentally different roles. As every dimension of our world evolves so rapidly, the education challenges of tomorrow will require solutions that go far beyond today's answers. Browse this website to explore the forces shaping our world. Work with us to explore your organization's role in creating the future of learning."

"Open Cobalt Alpha is the first step in a long term project to make available to all people a free and open source platform for constructing, accessing, and sharing virtual workspaces for research and education. This 3D multimedia wiki technology makes it easy to create deeply collaborative and hyperlinked multi-user virtual workspaces, virtual exhibit spaces, and game-based learning and training environments that run on all major software operating systems. By using a peer-based messaging protocol to reduce reliance on server infrastructures for support of basic in world interactions across many participants, Open Cobalt makes it possible for people hyperlink their virtual worlds via 3D portals to form a large distributed network of interconnected collaboration spaces. It also makes it possible for schools and other organizations to freely set up their own networks of public and private 3D virtual workspaces that feature integrated web browsing, voice chat, text chat, and access to remote desktop applications and services."

Hey guys. Just watched a live session online at Cisco w the developers of this system, still in development, but interesting differentiators vs 2Life, e.g. peer-to-peer, nested worlds, oh and its open-source. Thought yaz might be interested in tracking it.

I have personally witnessed the amazing influence video has had on my own students' learning during my past nine years in education. 2011 was no exception in the diverse and powerful videos that some of our world leaders, or future world leaders, created. Therefore, I have decided to list the top 10 educational videos I watched this past year

Latest World Internet Project statistics for NZ

Opinion blog from Mark Pesce about technology, web 2.0, hyperconnectivity, crowdsourcing etc About Mark PesceMark Pesce is an inventor, writer, educator and broadcaster. In 1994 Pesce co-invented VRML, a 3D interface to the World Wide Web. Pesce has written five books, including The Playful World: How Technology is Transforming Our Imagination, which used toys such as Furby and PlayStation to explain our interactive future.

opinion blog about technology, web 2.0, connectivism, future etc. About Mark Pesce Mark Pesce is an inventor, writer, educator and broadcaster. In 1994 Pesce co-invented VRML, a 3D interface to the World Wide Web. Pesce has written five books, including The Playful World: How Technology is Transforming Our Imagination, which used toys such as Furby and PlayStation to explain our interactive future.

PIVOTE is a virtual learning authoring system for virtual worlds. It was developed as part of the JISC funded PREVIEW project, where it was used to develop training material for Paramedic students at St George's Hospital and Kingston University. Although based on the Medbiquitous Virtual Patient standard the feeling of all involved in the project was that the system could be used for any sort of structured learning in virtual worlds. The result was that JISC have funded the creation of PIVOTE - this open source project.

"ITSE is one of many academic organizations that is using the virtual world of Second Life to make it possible for global participants to share their knowledge. This brief tour of ITSE island and a snippet from a recent presentation, gives viewers some idea of how educators might leverage this virtual world for learning."

Article on data caps around the world concludes "Let's hope we never have to move to NZ" ...

"... wearable computers allow people to do things like google information straight into their eyeballs while chatting on the street corner - or project a map overlay on the street in front of them, labeling every store. Or turn the local vacant lot into a wonderland filled with Pokemon characters ready to do battle. This is an augmented reality scenario. Now our technology can actually do this, using smart phones as a crude mobile interface. In these demo videos below, we're getting a first glimpse of what happens when the internet comes out of the box and into the real world"

UNESCO resource on cultural resources - "The World Digital Library (WDL) makes available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from countries and cultures around the world."

"ipadio allows you to broadcast from any phone to the Internet live.  Phone blog, collect audio data, record and update the world, or simply let your mates know what you're doing - ipadio is integrated with Social Media & Blogging platforms"