Second Life Education Support Faire January 25th-30th 2009

Greetings!

We have a special announcement for you today!

Inaugural Education Support Faire
To support the educational community, we would like to invite you to participate in and attend Linden Lab's inaugural Education Support Faire! Over the years, Second Life has provided ways for the world of academia to put to use creativity lending to immersive education, distance learning, knowledge sharing, faculty networking--and many other ways to enhance the collective educational community's efforts in the real world. The success of projects surrounding these efforts within Second Life can be attributed to the many innovative educators, academics, and students who have chosen to utilize Second Life for these purposes.

The main goal for the Education Support Faire is to bring together educators, academics, and students to explore the support mechanisms available to residents who use Second Life to enhance real world educational efforts.

With many networks of support provided by and for residents in Second Life, we would like especially to extend an invite to Second Life educational minds to take part in presenting at the Educational Support Faire.

While, as examples, Linden Lab will provide information regarding our Concierge and knowledge base support services, there are numerous resident developed programs in Second Life designed to orient new and experienced educators or help educators explore Second Life educational and academic opportunities. We want you!

The event will be held January 25th-30th, at Supporte /151/152/36 http://slurl.com/secondlife/Supporte/151/152/36. The venue will be built around a natural atmosphere with trees, rivers, and beaten paths, highlighting the theme of 'Ecosystems of Support.' The event will combine both displays and scheduled presentations in a central pavilion.

Organizations or individuals who specifically provide support services for educators, students, or academics in Second Life and would like to utilize space or give a speaking presentation should contact Pathfinder by email (pathfinder@lindenlab.com). Please provide some information about the educational support service being highlighted for booths; if speaking, please specify a day/time they would like to reserve, along with the topic. There will be a finite amount of space, so booths and speaking time at the central pavilion will be first-come first-served.

A final list of scheduled events and participating/presenting Resident Support Organizations will be emailed to the SLED mailing list on January 21st.

If you have not yet joined the SLED mailing list, please check this link for details!: https://lists.secondlife.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/educators

We are excited about the growth of the Second Life educational community over the years, and look forward to highlighting the support that will help educators in the years to come!

Pathfinder will be available to answer your questions about the Education Support Faire in this forum thread.

You can read the original blog post here: http://blog.secondlife.com/2009/01/10/second-life-education-support-faire-january-25th-30th-2009/

Pathfinder will be available to answer your questions about the Education Support Faire in this forum thread.

Here I am!

Pathfinder, is this going to be for both purely in-world educational venues as well or for just mainly out of world educators with an in-world presence?

Edit: In before the off-topic OS whiners

Hi Gordon. We're looking for organizations or groups that primarily focus on supporting the people behind real life educational efforts (e.g., supporting RL students, teachers, professors, researchers, healthcare professionals).

Hey Pathfinder,

100% behind any efforts to grow secondlife and education certianly feels like an important vertical market. How can your average, or not so average, pixel/prim pusher lend a hand to the Education Support Faire?

I was going to reply blasting you for being shortsighted but for the life of me other than places that teach specifically about SL, like NCI, I can't think of any really successful reputable purely in sl education endeavors.

I think if you're not open to the possibility of that and to opening up the same opportunities if one exist now or in the future then that is sort sighted and wrong.

That's a great question. We could definitely use the help from folks who'd like to volunteer to make the event a success.

Anyone who is interested, please drop me a notecard inworld with your name and a summary of things you might be able to do to assist. Perhaps things like being a general guide in assisting folks on the regions, freebie donations of items that educators might find useful, translation services, etc. ?

Helping people learn how to use Second Life itself is a very important thing. NCI is definitely stellar at it. If they or any other organization like them would be interested in participating in the Faire, I'd love to hear from them.

I wasn't meaning to minimize the contribution they make and I hope too that NCI and The Shelter decide to participate.

Pathfinder, one thing you might think of is an event to draw in some of us who build eLearning courses in RL but who have not been able to bring in or approach our existing clients about the benefits in SL.

As an example, we build eLearning courses exclusively in RL. We are a very small niche shop whose clients are associations or members of associations. It might be worthwhile to have an event in SL that talks about how to move existing clients who have eLearning courses into SL. SLOODLE might be one way. Connecting to university LMS's that are not SLOODLEs might be another. Using collaborative tools in-world might be another.

As an aside, one of our clients makes pumps. We needed a quick way for showing pump gears in operation. Rather than create an animation from scratch, we rezzed several gears in SL. Then created a screencast while the gears are in motion. Took that screencast mov and converted it into a Flash movie, and walla, a quick animation of pumps in motion. Creating animations in SL for eLearning courses and then showing clients how to rapidly prototype concepts might be another part of the discussion.

That's a great idea for an event. Thank you! I'm going to investigate the idea further.

Any suggestions on people I might be able to pull together for a panel discussion on the topic?

Would you be interested in participating in such a panel? You came up with a novel use of SL with your machinima-esque gear example. I think that's outstanding.

Sure, would be happy to participate on a panel discussion and will try to think of others who might be interested as well. Small world, I am working on a SL sailing event to link Nautilus City to USS (United Sailing Sims) when the Blake Sea is connected. One of the residents I am working with is with one of the statewide distance learning associations. I'll ping him on this panel for thoughts as well.

While I thought it was our pump client, TexasKat76 Broome corrected me, the gears machinima-esque movie is for one of our health clients whose course is for Assistive Technology.

just a silly question but...do they get free land at the faire? or do they have to go thru an auction

Folks will have plots of land on which they can build their booths for use during the event.

From http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/faire?rdfrom=Faire...

FAIRE

English

Noun: 1. Obsolete spelling of fair.

You should see how we spelled the names of the rest of the 4 regions we're going to be using.

"The Ye"
"Olde"
"Supporte"
"Faire"

Linden Lab. Mangling Olde English since 1999.

Were all those extra "e"s ever pronounced? (O.o)

Pathfinder--NCI would definitely be interested in participating. Feel free to contact me in world any evening, or via email at [email]j.carl.henderson@gmail.com[/email].

I know this is short notice, but if you are up and in world tomorrow morning, come by the next meeting of the SL Education Council. This is a group of administrators from Second Life-based schools that teach classes in SL on SL-related topics. Currently our member institutions include (and I apologize in advance for leaving some out): NCI, Rockcliffe, Insight Virtual, SLLC, Dreams, GQ Start, TUi, Gimpster, the Photo Institute, Sensual Stoneworks, Fermi Sandbox, Sunbelt Uni, Crackerbox School, Teachers Without Borders, and ICE / Institute for Cooperative Education.

It is at 11am SLT, and is at the following location:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Rockcliffe%20X/216/46/21/

Carl, outstanding. Thank you. I will email you shortly.

And thanks for the info on that meeting Sunday. I'll be there.

Hello ...
i'm in i would love to join and do my best

Back on topic, Pathfinder, as Carl said working with the residents who already have established groups going is essential and by working with them not only can you avoid the possibility of a lot of duplicated effort but you can also learn from them and work with them together for a better system.

Even though I have no standing in those groups as I am not an educator or involved with any of them I think that meeting with the groups of educators and the institutions is definitely a good start.

Please do not pick fights in the forums.

Thanks.

-- Katt

Do you only participate on the Sled mailing list? I'm just curious as I'm on a different independent mailing list that would appreciate information like this, have you guys ever considered signing upto such lists in different countries to spread information?

Hi Ciaran,

I set up the SLED list and 3 other education-related lists hosted at Linden Lab (Healthcare, Non-Profit, Teens and Education). I primarily follow those 4 lists closely and participate when I can. If there are other mailing lists you think would be good for me to join, please let me know and I'll definitely join them. I have limited time to follow many mailing lists, but perhaps I could use them to "get the word out" more effectively. Thanks for asking.

Even though those lists are all hosted by Linden Lab, they are definitely international by nature of the subscribers. Also, there are folks subscribed to multiple lists, but the combined total number of unique subscribers for all of them is over 6,000 people.

You can find links to all 4 of those education lists from the SLED information page.