Second Blog

It’s great to know that friends and customers keep you in mind when browsing the Internet.

Today, for example, I got an e-mail pointing out the First European Second Life Conference in Berlin.

According to the invitation, the conference “will consist of a one-day workshop followed by a two-day conference featuring interactive sessions and workshops revolving around Business & Marketing, Education, Art, Design & Scripting and Community & Citizenship.”

While I have yet to find out whether the conference will also take place in-world, it’s definitely a relief that SL is deemed “respectable” enough to warrant an international conference.

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Memo to self: DO NOT write entries for your blog while microwaving porridge.

Yesterday saw another premiere in Second Life: The first Annual Second Life Language Teaching Colloquium (SLanguages 2007) on EduNation.

Organized and hosted by The Consultants-E, the conference’s aim was “to bring together practitioners working (or planning to work) in language education in Second Life for a series of presentations, followed by a panel discussion.”

So did they succeed? Yes, indeed! Despite the fact that the event was scheduled according to GMT rather than SL time, there were more than 50 participants from all over the globe, and discussions in the chat got rather lively during and in between the presentations.

Speakers used PowerPoint presentations as well as a Ventrilo voice server to report on projects done for the English Village Project, the Dunoon Grammar School in Scotland, languagelab.com, the Beach Teacher Collective, as well as the British Council.

The event was rounded off with a Q & A session including most of the presenters.

In case you have missed the conference, you will have a chance to look at the recordings in the archive at EduNation – 178, 40, 22.

Personally, I was glad I came – there was much food for thought as well as a great opportunity to interact with other educators beyond the busy SLED list. Indeed, that was a problem voiced by several participants: Where are the educators in-world? Why are educational areas always so empty? What’s the solution?

An in-world discussion group was suggested and will hopefully be investigated further. Ideas and contributions from all of you are very welcome.

Starting with June 4th, I’m taking part in a course called “Second Life for Educators”, offered by Bill Moseley and Pam Rivers.

The goal is to “get educators thinking about their classes and how the tools they learn to use in Second Life can be personalized for the learning environments that they create.”

Using Moodle as well as live classes in-world, we will discuss a number of topics such as griefing, object persistence and identity as they relate to teaching and learning via SL.

Of course, we have also tried the famous hot tub: