As one of the activities of the MUVEnation course one was supposed to explore different educational places and write a description about the places.
We will try to answers to the following questions:
The first one (ISTE) is, in my opinion, the must active, with numerous groups, with volunteers (professors) at convenient timetables, been there to help new SL members, and an important number of activities (lectures and social). There are periodic activities (tuesdays talks and thursdays social gatherings).
I joined the Emerging Technologies task force (ET group), since it's a subject of my interest and seems to be very active. So the educational issues are addressed by lectures, social gatherings and special interests groups (focus groups). The target, no doubt, are teachers and professors. In fact it's motto is: "Providing leadership and service to improve teaching and learning by advancing the effective use of technology in education" and about ISTE SL: "ISTE's Second Life space provides a venue for educators to network and learn from each other about real-life education opportunities and best practices in Second Life".The owner is The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) a non profit organization that also is home of the National Educational Technology Standards (NETS), the Center for Applied Research in Education Technology (CARET), and the National Educational Computing Conference (NECC). Important: there is a Google Calendar for ISTE activities and plenty on information board In World.
The second one (NMC) is a large collection of campuses (including ones of very prestigious --Ivy League-- universities such as MIT) with classrooms, meeting places, recreational places, boards, etc. Not that active as ISTE, in fact I only found one person and she was a beginner, searching as me, what to profit from the place. Later I've found that in the web place there is a NMC Campus Events. I'm not sure if for free or open to the general public. The owner, New Media Consortium is a non profit organization that state: "The goal of the project was to create an immersive 3-D virtual environment for higher education and museum professionals to interact, collaborate, and experiment that would provide a low entry threshold for newcomers, while simultaneously exploring the boundaries of what is possible", so again, the target are the teachers.
The third (Virtual Education), a much modest but nonetheless not small, provides a large "virtual infrastructure" for teaching and meeting, but also provides "Live virtual concerts" which I found a very good strategy to promote the social network of the island and grow the community and also other amusing activities such as scuba and sky diving. Again, I did not find any "living thing" around. Lonely ride. I could not find the owner.
Some pictures of the places are in my Flickr account.
Let it be usefull to you,
William
We will try to answers to the following questions:
- In which way does this location address educational issues?
- According to you, which is the target audience of the educational events/action taking place in the location?
- Who are the owners of the location and how is it organized (is there a community, group, etc)?
- What resources are present?
- The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE),
- The New Media Consortium (NCM) and
- The Virtual Education Island (VE Is)
The first one (ISTE) is, in my opinion, the must active, with numerous groups, with volunteers (professors) at convenient timetables, been there to help new SL members, and an important number of activities (lectures and social). There are periodic activities (tuesdays talks and thursdays social gatherings).
I joined the Emerging Technologies task force (ET group), since it's a subject of my interest and seems to be very active. So the educational issues are addressed by lectures, social gatherings and special interests groups (focus groups). The target, no doubt, are teachers and professors. In fact it's motto is: "Providing leadership and service to improve teaching and learning by advancing the effective use of technology in education" and about ISTE SL: "ISTE's Second Life space provides a venue for educators to network and learn from each other about real-life education opportunities and best practices in Second Life".The owner is The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) a non profit organization that also is home of the National Educational Technology Standards (NETS), the Center for Applied Research in Education Technology (CARET), and the National Educational Computing Conference (NECC). Important: there is a Google Calendar for ISTE activities and plenty on information board In World.
The second one (NMC) is a large collection of campuses (including ones of very prestigious --Ivy League-- universities such as MIT) with classrooms, meeting places, recreational places, boards, etc. Not that active as ISTE, in fact I only found one person and she was a beginner, searching as me, what to profit from the place. Later I've found that in the web place there is a NMC Campus Events. I'm not sure if for free or open to the general public. The owner, New Media Consortium is a non profit organization that state: "The goal of the project was to create an immersive 3-D virtual environment for higher education and museum professionals to interact, collaborate, and experiment that would provide a low entry threshold for newcomers, while simultaneously exploring the boundaries of what is possible", so again, the target are the teachers.
The third (Virtual Education), a much modest but nonetheless not small, provides a large "virtual infrastructure" for teaching and meeting, but also provides "Live virtual concerts" which I found a very good strategy to promote the social network of the island and grow the community and also other amusing activities such as scuba and sky diving. Again, I did not find any "living thing" around. Lonely ride. I could not find the owner.
Some pictures of the places are in my Flickr account.
Let it be usefull to you,
William
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