OK so I’m thinking about learning environments but this book looks pretty cool and no Shelfari is not working for me.

Technology-Mediated Narrative Environments for Learning (Hardcover)
by G Dettori (Editor), T Giannetti (Editor)

http://books.google.co.nz/books?id=HNDMY5YwCPkC&dq=learning+environments&printsec=frontcover&source=in&hl=en&ei=We7CSbv5GpKWsQP4p8T-Bg&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=10&ct=result#PPP1,M1

I liked this too:

This video from TED (Ideas worth spreading) is a bit of a ‘knock your socks off’ video and definitely worth sharing.

It’s called: Talks Pattie Maes & Pranav Mistry: Unveiling the “Sixth Sense,” game-changing wearable tech

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/pattie_maes_demos_the_sixth_sense.html

Ten Virtual Worlds predictions 2009

Looks as if virtual worlds continue to have a place this year. I guess it’s like the first time people saw movies or tv…..there may have been warnings about the nature of the new worlds….interesting to track.

Any other predictions for 2009?

With today’s launch of DigitalNZ New Zealand’s digital content just got much easier to “find, share and use”. A quick Coming Home search for Frank Clark returns Trooper Frank Clark’s Cenotaph Database record including a link to the digital story we created!
More exciting though is Auckland War Memorial Museum’s hosting of Memory Maker, a web-based video editor based on ideum’s EditorOne. Memory Maker lets you remix selected digitized content from National Digital Forum members (and others) to produce your own video. Not quite a digital storytelling machine, but a promising start.

We’d recommend that you visit this site in SL and try to get to one of the performances this week (NZ times). SEe the link for the link if you see what we mean. It’s a fabulous ‘build’ in SL and well worth a visit.

“You wont want to miss Rollo Kohime’s (RL: Mike Baker, Nelson, New Zealand) live performance in Real Life and Second Life at the Railway Station (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Koru/86/72/21) on Friday, November 28, at 8.40pm (all times are New rollo-mike-fionaZealand time), Saturday, November 29, 12.40pm, Wednesday, December 3, 12.00 midday, Friday December 5, 8pm, and a closing performance, Saturday, December 6m at 12.40pm. Rollo will be dancing in Real Life/narrating/playing his Real Life videos/Second Life Station with Real Life videos and some Real Life audience participation. “

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).

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.

Join Kiwi Educators on Friday May 16th at 8.00 pm (NZ time) (May 16th 1.00am PDT)on Koru,for a two hour session of sharing our SL stories to mark International Day for Sharing Life Stories.

We’ll be using Voice chat to share our stories in a storycircle. Be prepared to speak for no longer than 5 minutes and IM Arwenna Stardust to arrange for the display of any images you would like use to illustrate your story.

With your permission, we’ll record your stories and have them ready to share later.

Even if you prefer just to listen (we’d love an audience!) come and join us at: Kiwi Educators Meeting Area, Koru SLurl: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Koru/156/122/27)