Mark Childs is a teaching development fellow at Coventry University, and a PhD student at the University of Warwick. Mark is involved in several Second Life-oriented initiatives, and also teaches using this particular medium. He has some interesting things to say about his work, as well as some of the student issues he faces when they encounter Second Life for the first time…
Like many other academic Second Life developers, Mark can also be found on Twitter.
Mark’s presentation on Second Life and Theatron gives an insight into why some people find using a virtual world beneficial from an education perspective, and other’s don’t:
In today’s “Start the Week” podcast, VWW says hello and requests information about virtual world activities from the UK Higher and Further Education sector.
There is a permanent page on this website with more details about the kind of information we are looking for. So basically if you are in a UK university and you are teaching, developing, researching or doing something else with virtual worlds (note: not just Second Life), then we’d love to hear from you.
It’s 16th March, so in today’s Start the Week podcast Sheila Webber describes some of the information science-oriented work she has been doing in Second Life.
Sheila is the most well-known, and possibly longest developer and teacher, of Second Life in the UK academic library and information science sector. She has a reassuring low-tec page of work and personal information at the Department of Information Studies in the University of Sheffield, where she is a senior lecturer.
She also maintains an entertaining (but also informative) blog about her Second Life activities, Adventures of Yoshikawa, which is written in the style in Bridget Jones(!)
And now … episode five of Start the Week with Virtual World Watch.
In this weeks podcast, Virtual World Watch has a phone conversation with Simon Bignell. Simon has been a long term developer in Second Life, and a contributer to most of the snapshot reports. As well as developing a substantial presence in Second Life, he uses the virtual environment for both teaching and research.
Simon Bignell is leading a new JISC-funded £38,000 research project called PREVIEW-Psych. The project is a collaboration between University of Derby, Aston University, Coventry University and The Higher Education Academy Psychology Network.
Simon blogs over at www.miltonbroome.com; some of his Second Life presentations can be found on Slideshare. The presentation about teaching and learning in online virtual worlds is worth a look:
It’s time for episode four of Start the Week with Virtual World Watch.
Today, we interview Daniel Livingstone from the University of the West of Scotland (previously Paisley University). Daniel multitasks as a lecturer in matters media technology, a developer and as a researcher in virtual worlds. Daniel can also be found on Twitter.
In the podcast, Daniel describes his work and projects such as Sloodle, aspects of using Second Life in his work, and whether the case has been made yet (or not) for whether Second Life has a role in teaching and learning.
Some of Daniel’s presentations are on Slideshare, including his 2007 “Virtual Worlds for Education” slides:
