Hi, Ellie,
Yes, I did. Several of us there snagged the chatlog. Lorelei very
graciously translated the voice chat into text, which was a true gift.
Bluewave Ogee made the presentation. She covered an awful lot of
information. Bluewave described some exciting projects that some of
the schools have started that are amazing for happening so quickly
after startup. I was particularly intrigued by the work from MD
Anderson.
The most important part to me was that this project has one year of
funding. For the project to persist, the various UTx campuses would
have to buy in and commit to ongoing funding. At least, that's my
understanding, I might have misunderstood. I see this really as a test
of SL for higher education. Right now, a lot of schools are watching
what happens with UT. I overheard a conversation in our University
administration building last week where a couple folk were talking
about what UT is doing, while rolling their eyes and laughing. That is
not the response I would hope for from academic administrators. Not
because of anything they did or said, but because I would hope that
using SL would be so OBVIOUSLY useful that there would be nothing to
laugh about. I see what is happening at UT as an opportunity for ALL
of us to show the potential for SL to succeed. I see success on the
part of UT as success for us all.
So my main thought after hearing the presentation is how do we, as the
education community in SL, assist UT in achieving their goals? How do
we help?
This applies generally as well. A group of us met to talk about using
SL for learning continuity in case of a pandemic. (I'm still working
on the minutes, people, my apologies for it taking so long.) The gist
of the conversation focused on how new teachers could bootstrap SL by
building on what other teachers have already done. People talk about
barriers to entry. How do we lower the barriers to entry for SL? A few
ideas were:
- a list of teachers who would volunteer to allow new teachers
observe their SL classes;
- a list of learning spaces that could be reserved for class use by
teachers who can't afford their own space;
- office hours in SL by current teachers, allowing new teachers to
come ask and learn;
- a couple consolidated locations for free teaching / learning
resources for new teachers, perhaps at NMC and ISTE.
The next question would be how to ensure that new teachers can EASILY
find these resources? We talked about SimTeach, wondering who founded
it, who's in charge, and how lively it is. Could it serve as a home
for some of this? Is there a way for Linden to build into the avatar
creation process an easy way for folks to be "gifted" upon arrival
with tools to support various common activities (with education
specifically highlighted). Could we get a selection of educational
freebies put in the Library?
Everything we can do to make education easier for new teachers will
ultimately increase our own effectiveness and success, and will
increase the credibility of SL for this purpose with our own
administrators.
- Patricia / Perplexity
On Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 12:40 PM, S Collingwood <
[hidden email]> wrote:
--
Patricia Anderson / SL: Perplexity Peccable
[hidden email] OR
[hidden email]
Emerging Technologies Librarian, Health Sciences Libraries
University of Michigan
1135 East Catherine
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
_______________________________________________
Educators mailing list
To unsubscribe
https://lists.secondlife.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/educators
