This Saturday at The Science Circle

 

 Saturday October 7

    ~*~

    

    At 10 AM PST   

    Artificial Intelligence And The Metaverse

    By Phil Youngblood

    https://www.sciencecircle.org/event/artificial-intelligence-and-the-metaverse/

 

    The Science Circle (72,129,30)

      

    ~*~

 

    At 9 PM PST   

    World Teachers Day

    Jes Stannard

    https://www.sciencecircle.org/event/world-teachers-day/

    

    The Science Circle (72,129,30)

 

 

    ~*~

    

    NOTE: Non-members required to register once

    IM Jes Cobalt or Nymf Hathaway

╚══════════════════════════════ The Science Circle (72,129,30) ═╝

At the VWBPE

 

It's the first day of the Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education conference, or VWBPE. Despite real-life nipping at my heels, the lag, and the crashing, I was able to catch a little of the Keynote and talk with Patch Linden. There's many other discussions, so come on over and see things for yourself.

To check the schedule, Click Here - https://www.vwbpe.org/conference/vwbpe22-program

Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2FdFXompIUI4zmZ_wP5p0Q

March 31 – April 2, 2022

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/VWBPE%20Gateway%20Pyxis/100/128/24
 
Bixyl Shuftan
 

VWBPE Conference Starts Tomorrow

 *

In every culture, from China in the east to the Indigenous cultures in the west, the phoenix as a symbol of hope and renewal is ubiquitous across the ages. Whether it is referred to as Feng Huang, Garuda, Ho-Oo, Bennu or the Quetzal bird, in every case the phoenix ushers in an era of prosperity and transformation that goes beyond the individual to encompass our home and surroundings.

The world is forever a changed place. Those in education find themselves on the front lines of how the next generation of students are going to perceive and integrate a post-COVID society into opportunities for growth, for renewal, and for a redefinition of the values that once drove us.

The past two years have represented a global case study in real time of the merits and limitations of virtual education: what works, and what doesn’t. Educators have immersed themselves in online learning methodologies that have been mostly talked about but never implemented on a wide scale until recently. There is now a plethora of real-world evidence supporting the practical application of teaching virtually that we have never truly had access to until now.

Like the newly reborn phoenix arising from the ashes of its previous life, virtual education is also experiencing a renaissance of abundance and transformation. Whether it be fully immersive or simple video conferencing, the practical application of tools and techniques over the past two years represents a wealth of inspiration for connecting teachers and students in ways that are comprehensive, progressive, and meaningful.

Join Us: March 31 – April 2, 2022

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/VWBPE%20Gateway%20Pyxis/100/128/24
 

JAPA's Class of 2021

  

A little over a week ago, the Journey Academy of Performing Arts or JAPA held the graduation ceremony for this year's class. It was an event that involved both faculty and students. The Newser's Dancerina Starlight was there. She talked to some of the graduates, as well as the two teachers and one of the other academy staff.
 
Read Dancerina's story in People.
  

Announcement: Help Wanted At Caledon Oxbridge University

 

Caledon Oxbridge University is looking for a few good professors and other interested people,in particular people able to develop and teach classes in Second Life skills.  Caledon Oxbridge University is a long-time new-user help area that is part of the steampunk nation-state of Caledon. 

Read more in Extra.

Eye on the Blog: Introduction to Second Life for Educators - a Course in Spanish Part 2

In the Linden Blog, what's being highlighed is a course inworld aimed at teachers from Spanish language areas to help them make use of Second Life to help teach.

Back in April we blogged about the University of San Martin de Porres Perú is offering a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) called "Introduction to Second Life for Educators" that was specifically designed to help Spanish speaking educators leverage Second Life for educational purposes. Since then the course has been improved and updated, and a new session is set to start on September 29th at Second Life Para Docentes.

About the course:

The Virtual Worlds Project of The University of San Martin de Porres from Perú starts this September 29th the second edition of the MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) entitled "Introduction to Second Life for Educators 2nd. Ed.". The course is free and is designed to train Spanish speaking educators on the use of the virtual world Second Life, and to provide knowledge that allows educators to benefit from its potential, especially in the education field.

 If you or someone you know might benefit from a course like this, you can watch an introductory video (in Spanish) and register at their website. Start Day: Sep 29th.

 The post, along with Spanish translation, can be found Here.

VWBPE Conference

Last week in Second Life, the Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education conference, also known as the VWBPE, took place. Over four days from July 24 to 27, there were various discussions at the sims designated for the event and at various university areas across Second Life. While most of the events were lectures and talks, there were also building classes and times scheduled for DJ music sessions, plus a raffle. Gentle Heron of Virtual Ability gave the opening keynote address (Youtube link). Daniel Voyager estimated the number attending this event alone at over a hundred.

There were a number of topics, such as a few around the subject of the use of virtual worlds for the purpose of education. There was one discussion by Jo Kay about the use of Minecraft to teach children. Yours truly wasn't able to see most off the events that caught attention. One which I did was AgileBill Firehawk's "Confessions of a Quest Designer," in which he used "gamification" to get students to learn. Another was Kristy Handrick's (Hsiao-Chen Han) discussion about using Second Life to conduct research.

Kristy stated although Second Life's audience was potentially worldwide, two-thirds of her participants were from North America. But the advantage of doing research this way was a shortened process time, since she didn't have to do any travel or spend time finding places to stay, "the virtual world reduced the time that is necessary in real world research. … There was no travel cost, no accommodation fees, and I did not need to leave my job. I think we can say that the virtual world is a good environment for low budget research." As the interviews were done in text, she "did not need to spend time transcribing the interview as well. … Therefore, the time to key in data was reduced as well." One challenge though was judging reactions as "there was no body language and facial or voice expression that could be observed." She took some questions and comments after the discussion, notably one person commenting the biggest problem in getting a college to approve the use of Second Life for education purposes was selling the idea to the committee.

On the day the conference opened, Linden Lab had announced the return of it's 50% discount for educational and nonprofit sims. The news was naturally greeted with cheers at the conference, and some thought it had been timed to go along with the start of the WVBPE.

The Closing Keynote was done by Dave Cormier (youtube link). Pooky Amsterdam conducted the awards ceremony.

The WVBPE conference is a yearly event, with information available at http://www.vwbpe.org/ , and has a both Second Life and Facebook groups.

Bixyl Shuftan

SL Youtube: Raytheon & NOAA in Second Life

Although not as many real life businesses have an inworld presence as a few years ago, some continue to do some work in Second Life. One I hadn't heard of doing so was Raytheon, at least until I stumbled across a Youtube by accident.

The video describes Raytheon helping out NOAA bring a number of science teachers inworld "together in one dynamic learning space" at a "NOAA Virtual Workshop of Climate Change" to discuss the latest climate news to share with classrooms, suggesting there were some Raytheon workers also inworld in-avatar.

It wasn't mentioned when the event took place, but the video was uploaded on March 7, a week before the VWBPE(Virtual World Best Practices in Education) conference, so that can be ruled out.

Taking a look at NOAA Island at Meteora, there were no signs of the buildings in the video. So where this was taken remains unknown.

The youtube can be found at :
http://youtu.be/vuR2xeIcnFM . Although one can get copies of the link, the option to embed it on a webpage is gone.

*UPDATE* It's possible that the recording was done in the Energy Island sim, which while around when visited in August, has somehow since vanished, along with most of NOAA Island's other immediate neighbors. I say possible as that sim was closed to public access despite that it seemed to be set up for Education purposes.

Bixyl Shuftan

Teachers Rock Second Life!

With Linden Labs recently having done away with it's discount on educational sims, the subject of teaching using Second Life as the platform has come back in discussion. Reporter Any1 Gynoid attended a meeting of teachers, talking about the subject.

Read the story in People.