This is a completely in-world conference on … virtual worlds, best practices and how they are used in education. It is not uniquely focused on Second Life however obviously there is a very strong Second Life bent to the conference owing to where it is being held
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Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Conference 2010
Social Influence in Second Life: Social Network and Social Psychological Processes in the Diffusion of Belief and Behaviour on the Web The PhD thesis, under a Creative Commons licence, of Dr Aleks Krotoski is available through her website; there’s some interesting wordles on there as well. Go here: http://alekskrotoski.com/post/academic-dissertation—social-influence-in-second-life-social-n (Shortened URL) http://is.gd/75yo9 (It was thanks to Aleks showing me around Second Life several years ago that I had the ‘Aha!’ moment, so without her there may not have been a Virtual World Watch and accompanying snapshots.) Aleks is a media and Internet journalist for The Guardian , and a presenter on what many regard as the best TV programme on video games to date (BITS)
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Second Life PhD thesis of Dr Aleks Krotoski
The University of Nottingham have provided an update of some of their Second Life activities; thanks to Andy Beggan for the update and the screenshots: Nottingham has been in Second Life for just over a year and now has 2 islands: http://slurl.com/secondlife/University20Nottingham/100/122/22 Both teaching and research activities have taken place and this year a research project organised by one of our medical students – focused on placebo in a doctor-patient style consultation – is being supported as well. We are keeping an eye of other virtual worlds and have participated in some conversations between Kings, Brunel and the Open University around next steps. We have a dedicated area on our island to support information skills training called the ‘Library Garden’
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University of Nottingham in Second Life
A message from Tim Johnson (aka Karen aka Bluesky Larkham), Senior Lecturer, IHS, University of Worcester, Just to remind you that Eloise (Pasteur) will be presenting the second of our Educators sessions on Thursday 14th January at 1800hrs GMT. The sessioin will be about Creating Immersive Environments. It will be at the usual spot on University of Worcester Island: http://slurl.com/secondlife/University20Worcester/155/198/26 I’m really looking forward to this session and to seeing many of you for the first time this year.
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Creating Immersive Environments: Thursday 14th January
This report is available in PDF format . Summary From input to this and previous snapshots, plus background research, institutional website searches and anecdotes, it is evident that every UK university except one (the University of the Highlands and Islands) has members of staff who have developed, or are developing, something in a virtual world – though that ‘something’, and the use and educational relevance of it, varies extremely widely. This snapshot includes input from new respondents.
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Activity snapshot #7 (Winter 2009)
A message from Anna Peachey: The Open University Virtual Worlds Project is delighted to announce that the Vice Chancellor of The Open University UK, Martin Bean, will be talking about innovations in learning technology on Open University Island in Second Life at 3:30pm GMT (7:30am SLT) on the 16th of December, in a session chaired by Claudia l’Amoreaux, Education Programs Manager for Linden Lab. If you are a confident avatar driver and would like to be in the inworld audience please send your avatar name to virtualworlds@open.ac.uk with the subject line ‘VC EVENT’
Glasgow Caledonian Unversity is planning to use Open Simulator for (some of) it’s Virtual World needs and is going to provide a Module about Virtual Worlds (Second Life and Open Sim) in semester B, starting early 2010. But there was no simple, straightforward way available to register an Avatar in this Open Simulator. You’d need to do this manually, from a command prompt, dive into the world of RegAPI (by Linden Lab, with all it’s disclaimers, Logo’s, Trademark issues, Terms of Service and what have you not) or hack your way into something called OpenSim WebInterface (redux).
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Open Simulator Web Registration at GCal
The First World War Poetry Digital Archive and the Learning Technologies Group at Oxford University have collaborated on a JISC-funded project in Second Life to simulate areas of the Western Front in the 1914-18 conflict. There is a description of the project, plus a video on YouTube showing some of the Second Life areas, features and a small sample of the substantial collection of audio material: However, it’s more fulfilling to explore the environment in Second Life itself. Go in, wander, listen to some of the audio of the poems being read and descriptions (by soldiers) of conditions there
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First World War Poetry Digital Archive
Survey request from Dr Ahmad J Reeves, the Open University. Are you an academic supervising research students (MPhil/PhD) at a distance, using either traditional 2D technologies (like Moodle, Skype, Elluminate, email, etc.) and/or an immersive technology (like Second Life) as well? Or maybe you’re a student who is being remotely supervised by one or more of these technologies
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OU survey: Use of 2D and/or 3D technologies for remote student supervision
IMMERS[ED] 2009; National Workshop on Teaching in Immersive Worlds will be hosted by the School of Computing & Intelligent Systems and will take place in the Great Hall of the University of Ulster, Magee Campus, Derry, Northern Ireland on the 20th November 2009 (registration from 8.30, start at 9.30). Considering using virtual worlds for teaching and want to know where to start?
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National Workshop on Teaching in Immersive Worlds, University of Ulster, November 20, 2009
The JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) have made available an introduction for people in academia to Second Life: Getting Started in Second Life’ answers some common questions like how to set up in Second Life, what the rules of the world are, how to plan lessons and how best to help students use it effectively for learning. The aim of the guide is to present the basics in order to help lecturers experiment, rather than them getting lost in mastering the detail of the virtual environment
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“Getting started in Second Life”
[Message below from the Virtual Worlds mailing list. Note that the RSC-WM are active in Second Life and have recently taken possession of an island; enquire with Jane Edwards for further details.] Dear colleague (apologies for any cross-postings), The RSC-WM invite you to take part in the next Virtual Worlds Forum taking place in Worcester on Thursday 16th July 2009, 10:00 -15:30. This free forum provides a good opportunity to share experience, information and good practice of using a virtual world in a teaching context and to share projects in which you may be involved in using a virtual world (eg Second Life®), your thoughts and ideas on using virtual worlds for education
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Virtual Worlds Forum, 16th July, Worcester.
In this weeks Start the Week with Virtual World Watch podcast , Dr. Anne Cunningham talks about how she ‘got’ Second Life, and some of the work she is doing with this particular virtual world. Anne is based at the University of Sunderland.
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Dr Anne Cunningham
Annabeth is a multi-media artist and lecturer, based in Leeds and working at Leeds College of Art and Design. In this week’s Start the Week with Virtual World Watch podcast , Annabeth describes how she got into Second Life, her art developments within, and her experimentation and educational work with other virtual worlds. Her personal website contains information about her art projects in Second Life
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Annabeth Robinson
The special edition of Educational Research in 2010 will focus on learning in and from virtual worlds (where a virtual world is defined as an environment within which users are represented by and operate through an avatar and can interact with others over the internet or local area network). This call for papers invites reports of original research, reviews of recent research and discussion articles from colleagues working in the area.
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Call for papers: Educational Research in 2010
This week’s Start The Week with Virtual World Watch podcast interviewee is Andy Powell. For historical context, Virtual World Watch was a work colleague of Andy’s from the mid-1990’s at UKOLN (VWW: back row 3rd; Andy: back row 6th)
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Andy Powell: why we funded virtual world stuff
This week we go to the East Midlands, as Andy Beggan , manager of the IS Learning Team at the University of Nottingham, describes what they are doing in virtual worlds there.
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Andy Beggan, University of Nottingham
Jane Edwards is the interviewee in this weeks Start the Week with Virtual World Watch podcast. Jane works in the JISC-funded Regional Support Centre (RSC) for the West Midlands . As she describes in the podcast, some of her time is taken up with activities to support, and progress, the use and development of Second Life within post-16 education in this region
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Jane Edwards, JISC RSC West Midlands
Violent Pillow added an interesting post on The most weird and complicated watches in the world | WireSmashHere’s a small excerptThe most weird and complicated watches in the world | WireSmash : We all know that people with fancy cars, clothes, women also have their fancy
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By: Topics about Humoristic and Funny stuff » Archive » The most weird and complicated watches in the world | WireSmash
A slight departure from our normal focus on the wonderful world of Omega Watches but with good reason! After being seduced by the Apple Powerbook, the computer that has built this site and dealt with all the photography, I purchased new MacBook Pro as soon as it became available. Things being what they are as soon as the 17″ version came out I purchased that as well! Now two MacBook Pro’s is just a little ostentatious so here is my hardly used, almost new MacBook Pro 15″ for sale on ebay. Enjoy and why not make a bid, you can view the ebay listing here
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MacBook Pro 15″ – Grab a Bargain!
Sometimes you just can’t help falling in love…… Strange as I’m not one for complications, don’t own a pink / rose gold watch and prefer a round face but I just have the hots for this wonderful piece from the Omega Museum Collection, in a limited edition of 1,951. A good description here from an old auction: The Omega Museum Collection, “Cosmic”, Collector’s Series Number Two. Produced in the late 1990s
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The Omega Museum Cosmic Moonphase
I’m still a big fan of going the authorised distributor route but the price pressure from the online dealers can only be good news for us buyers, more sellers usually means lower prices and I like a good deal! Amazon just wrapped up its best holiday season ever, with its “Holiday Delight-O-Meter” weighing in at 108 million items ordered, and with jewelry among the most popular items, the company announced Monday. …Several high-end designer watches have also been popular, including the Rolex Daytona Oyster Perpetual Men’s Watch and the Omega Men’s Seamaster 300 M Chrono Diver Watch . Source
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Online Watch Dealers March On – Omega a Popular Choice