Been dipping into a great book by Liz Wells called Photography: A critical introduction seems to cover Foucault, Barthes and many more and takes a postmodernist approach. More when I read more. Like it a lot.

In NZ there’s lot of talk about Second Life and its abilities and functionality for learning and teaching. There’s a BIG project underway called SLENZ which aims to develop and explore some material for teaching and learning opportunities in SL. We’re all getting excited about using it…and there are some interesting projects proposals of which I’ve seen one or two. Had a nice session yesterday with fellow SLers Isa, DanP, Lindis and Enomec……I like the collaborative and sharing nature of it and it reminds me of the old hippie days when we thought it was good to share, give and support. Hmmmm seemed to go during the 1990s so it’s good to see that philosophy return to education. Maybe the postbabyboomer generation has something to offer after all (that’s irony, of course they do).

Two more worth noting: Learning2.008 with Alan Levine and George Siemens as two of the many speakers of note. I could link you to their names, or you could find out about them using the Ning link above. More and more conference hosts are using Ning to advertise their conferences.

E-fest this year in in Auckland (gosh moved away from Welly) on 8-10th September. Theme is about connections: learners, education, organisations and content. Always good to go and hear/see what’s happening in Aotearoa, and having been involved in some projects that don’t seem to get shared about, I’d be keen to get talking about how we can get sharing better…..

ascilite is in Melbourne this year and its theme is ” Hello! Where are you in the landscape of educational technology”….

While I’m still awake: there are difficulties about getting up to go to a conference - you don’t read the list of activities properly, so thinking I was on later event to visit Harlem (yes I did read the pre-conference material) I went back to bed after the opening speech. Yup! I missed Harlem but did get to walk around by myself. There were problems getting into SL and then problems teleporting (maybe too many people teleporting at once?) so I was late to very event then had trouble finding everyone. Sigh. I did get to eat some pork and vegetables though. Great organisation -imagine everyone at the beginning trying to sort out who they were and where they were going. Not all audio worked for everyone.

So - it did seem that Harlem was working as a teaching space and the opening event where Bryan Mnemonic spoke made it all sound really interesting. He stressed the research aspect of it and the assessments students are asked to complete. The Lincoln island was interesting - clearly well researched although I gather some sims were ‘out of time’. At the end-of-conference panel several questions were asked about assessments and collaboration. The general response was that students collaborate better in SL than RL and are energised by it, while one comment was that since people worked in project teams, SL replicated RL.

One of the major issues seems to be that the SL is mature and the audience educators are trying to reach are under 18. I gather some historical worlds have been created in Teen SL.

It was an interesting conference - I’ll write more detailed notes if anyone is interested. There is another conference on August 4th and August 6th - looking at using literature in SL. Might be worth investigating.

I’ll updated this with links- after another coffee. Meantime here’s Iphi at the back as usual.

An interesting conference to attend perhaps. It’s called Stepping Into History and it’s being held in Second Life.

I’m looking forward to being in Harlem in the 1920s and meeting Abe Lincoln (not not in Harlem-it’s another choice). Gosh I think it’s dress appropriately so I can see more SL shopping coming up. Unfortunately for Kiwis it starts at something like 3.00 am and goes to about 10.00 am……on Wednesday.

Merry Christmas! As we celebrate the birth of one of the greatest storytellers it seems appropriate to link to some seasonal silliness: How the finch stole e-learning. A fun animated tale in which the finch learns that e-Learning’s “more than computers and mice”, it’s “…a story told with instructional design”. Certainly brings a smile to our beaks!

Just been at a metadata seminar where there was a lot of jargon! It was an interesting if at times overfull day. Good to hear what the Ozzies are up to and to wander around the thoughts of Gavan McCarthy who wondered about archiving and Douglas Campbell who deconstructed identifiers for us. Judith Pearce at the Australian National Library and Jane Hunter were impressive too. It was a full day with a lot to take in. Can’t help wondering about the energy that goes into sharing information in relation to the quality of content…….ah perhaps I had too much information.

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