The document contains 118 pages of keynotes, papers, case studies, posters, panels, and breakout sessions by some well-known names in the educational community of SL, with a preface by Claudia and Pathfinder Linden.

Well, anyway, to anyone who is interested in joining us on Thursday, August 9th 2007 in the 4 Cani Della Cittá in Cologne, welcome! Speaking from past experience (see my post from July 13th), it will be worthwile indeed to meet some interesting people and have fun talking about all things SL.

Here’s the Wiki registration page: Stammtisch SL.

Since the round table has a business focus, most of the participants came from companies or agencies active in Second Life or – as in my case – are interested in the educational potential.

Because of the success of this first evening, the event will in the future take place monthly on every second Thursday, alternating with Duesseldorf (every fourth Thursday).

If you’re interested, I suggest joining the Second Life group called “SecondCommerce Cologne/Duesseldorf” and take a look at Second Commerce in XING.

It will include  

Sounds definitely interesting – even more so if they keep their promise of also scheduling events at “times friendly to North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia”.

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.

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.

As always, the event was very well attended, and the presentation was definitely worth listening to!

In talking about how educators, trainers, and students of learning may benefit from using Second Life, he covered the following topics:

It’s good to get confirmation that the number both of educators in SL (as is obvious when looking at the extremely busy SLED mailing list) and of actual classes is very much on the rise – so we’ll hopefully be able to convince more and more sceptics that SL isn’t all sex and games.