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What: Using a “23 Things” approach as part of an information literacy class

When: Tuesday 13 December 2011, 12noon SL time (8pm UK time, see http://tinyurl.com/czarcan for times elsewhere)

Where: Infolit iSchool in Second Life:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Infolit%20iSchool/125/240/22/

Sheila Webber (Information School, University of Sheffield, UK: Sheila Yoshikawa in Second Life) will describe how she used a “23 Things” approach with her class of Masters student in the Information School, University of sheffields. The class size was 115 students and the majority are international students, particularly from China. “23 Things” is an approach that originated with public librarians developing staff knowledge of Web 2.0 through use of blogging. Presentation in voice, discussion in text chat.

A Centre for Information Literacy Research event.

–
Sheila Webber, Senior Lecturer & Director of the Centre for Information Literacy Research, Information School, The University of Sheffield.
Second Life & Twitter: Sheila Yoshikawa
The Information Literacy Weblog: http://information-literacy.blogspot.com/

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The next Research Seminar on our Second Life Island is on Thursday October 27th at lunchtime (1200hrs UK time) that’s 8am SLT. Our speaker is Gann McGann (Mark Childs), always lots of fun, so be ready for a stimulating discussion on the ethics of teaching in virtual worlds.

For more detail see the blog:

http://digitalliteracywork.wordpress.com/research-seminar-at-uow/

Whilst there see the Special for December 1st with Tom Boellstorff. We’re still at the same place:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/University%20of%20Worcester/146/207/26

• January Thursday 26th 2012, Shailey Minocha (Shailey Garfield).
• November Thursday 24th 2011, Gemma Tombs (Gem Bolissima).
• October Thursday 27th 2011, Dr Mark Childs (Gann McGann), Ethics of teaching in immersive virtual worlds (IVWs) – see more detail below.

Hi Everyone! You are very welcome to come to the Research Seminars we hold on University of Worcester Island in Second Life once a month. http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/University%20of%20Worcester/145/188/25

A different person each month leads the seminar. Each person has carried out research into education in Second Life, the researchers come from a range of different backgrounds and include Educational Technologists, Lecturers, Librarians, Sim Managers and VW Technology Developers.

The seminars are held:

• On Thursdays.
• At 1200hrs GMT (or BST in the Summer), that’s 4am SLT.
• Last for about one hour.
• The speakers might use voice instead of text so please check your earphones before hand.
• Please remember to bring a packed lunch

Advertisements supplying information about the up-coming seminar are sent out in advance in Second Life. If you would like to know more please send a Note Card to Bluesky Larkham or email Tim Johnson

Dr Mark Childs October 27th 2011

This discussion leads from my previous Worcester Island seminar, which was on students’ responses and resistance to learning in virtual worlds, and asks the question that, given those responses, what are the ethics of expecting students to learn in a virtual world?

The value of virtual worlds in certain learning and teaching situations has now been demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt through many case studies of effective practice, although the full range of effective uses are still being determined. There are still certain risks involved, however. The questions to be discussed in the seminar are:

• What are the risks?
• How do we limit these risks?
• What are the ethical implications?
• Do the risks outweigh the benefits?
• What general principles should inform our practice?

This will be a guided discussion, rather than a presentation, since there are no firm rules once you’re this far down the rabbit hole.

November 4th to 6th, 2011.

The event will be fully online and everyone is invited.

Detail

This year’s theme: Games, Play and Community.

Virtual Worlds Graduate UnSymposium is a community building event that provides opportunities for graduate students, alumni, and educators to share innovative practices, network with colleagues, and explore opportunities for professional development, enhancing research, teaching, and learning. This UnSymposium is particularly interested in works in progress, sessions that provide ample opportunity for symposiast participation, and cutting edge uses of technology in education, research, and virtual worlds.

This is a fully online, free conference. Conference location will be in Second Life, Jokaygrid, World of Warcraft and other locations based on speaker and participant request.

The Virtual Worlds Graduate UnSymposium welcomes graduate work, presentations, facilitated discussions and non-traditional presentations from everyone. Possible topics include (but are not limited to):

1) Games and Virtual Worlds -What are you researching and what are you learning? Tell us what virtual worlds and games are out there. Please consider submitting discussions, thought pieces and experiments also. Potential topics include:

• The Future of Education in Games and Virtual Worlds
• Assessing and Evaluating Games and Virtual Worlds
• Alternate Reality Games
• Augmented Reality and Gaming
• Games Design for the Classroom
• Teaching through Games
• Mobile Games
• Case Studies of Games
• Exploration of New Games
• Hybrids or Games that allow content creation
• When the line blurs – virtual worlds/games
• Mixed Reality Games
• Storytelling and Narratives in Games
• Serious Games and Simulations

2) Play – What are you playing? How are you and your students playing? What opportunities, networks, tools and techniques are available for learning and play? The focus is on the discovery of those opportunities, for play, learning, research, practices your colleagues should know. Potential topics include:

• Immersion
• Reward Systems In Games
• Pointification
• Leveling
• Player Motivation and Learning
• Player Types/Student Learning Styles
• Reward Typologies
• Strategy and Tactics
• Roleplay
• Puppetmaster
• This is Not at Game
• Identity in Games
• Avatars and Toons
• PVE, PVP and Roleplay – Can’t We All Get Along
• Hero’s Journey and Archtypes in Games
• Grinding, Equipment and Loot
• What is a LEET player and how do they learn
• Strategy and Tactics
• Overcoming Challenges
• When Cheating Really Isn’t

3) Community – You’re not playing alone. So share what types of communities you are playing with and what type of communities you see developing when your students play. Potential topics include:

• Machinima as a way of sharing with the Community
• Games as Shared Narratives
• Mentors and Elders in Games
• Gaming and Networking
• Social Networks and Social Capital
• The Social Gamer
• Gaming as a Community
• Casual Game Play as a Community Building
• Reciprocity and Altruism in Games
• Cohorts in MMORPGs
• Guilds and Community Building
• Game Culture

Proposals are welcome from any and all. Please be creative, fun and engaging! Also, unusual formats, technologies, and the like are encouraged. Preferences will be given to proposals that utilize unusual formats, innovative technology and encourage participation from the symposiasts. Proposals about and in Virtual Worlds and MMORPGs other than Second Life are welcome.

The Program Group will be working with all presenters to assist in developing a singular and engaging experience for all participants.

Deadline

To submit, please email vw.symposium@gmail.com. Your proposal should be a doc, docx, or rtf by October 15, 2011.

Website

http://vw.unsymposium.org/cfp-2011

Twitter

Twitter hashtag: #vwgus

November 28th and 29th, Madrid, Spain.

Website

http://europe.immersiveeducation.org/events/ied-europe-summit

Topics of interest

Topics include, but are not limited to:

• Blended/Hybrid learning
• Personalised learning
• Intelligent agents in learning
• Edutainment & Game-Based Learning
• Location-based and contextual learning
• Immersive Educational technology markets & challenges
• Virtual and mixed-reality for education
• Educational software/hardware
• Intelligent classroom
• Virtual laboratories and tools
• Pedagogy for the Internet Age
• Innovations in the teaching laboratory
• Student assessment in high-tech teaching environments
• Cultural dimensions of educational technology
• Educational technology innovations
• Social/Collaborative learning
• Smart educational environment
• Teaching strategies to maximise benefits of emerging technology
• Future research issues for Immersive Education

Important dates

• Paper submission: 30th September 2011
• Notification of acceptance: 14th October 2011
• Final paper submission: 28th October 2011
• Summit: 28th-29th November 2011

http://www.virtual-worlds.net/vw2012/

Where and when

3-5 July, 2012, Paris, France

Subjects

Topics of interest for the conference include, but are not limited to:

Virtual World applications

- Video games and entertainment
- Educational, medical and business solutions
- Virtual economies
- Social and philosophical implications
- Virtual Worlds and Ecology

Virtual World technologies

- High performance and low latency solutions

Virtual and Augmented Reality

- “Avatarization”
- Human-machine interfaces

Virtual World fundamentals

- Artificial physics and chemistries
- Complex systems, emergence, self-organization

Artificial Life

- Artificial life and ecosystems
- Evolution, co-evolution and adaptation
- Collective intelligence, cooperation, communication

Artificial creatures

- Avatars
- Virtual creatures
- Intelligent agents
- Conversational agents

Dates: papers

Paper submission deadline: 16 January 2012

Notification of acceptance: 05 March 2012

Early registration before: 15 March 2012

Final paper deadline: 05 April 2012

Dates: demos and posters

Short Paper submission deadline: 16 January 2012

Notification of acceptance: 05 March 2012

Early registration before: 15 March 2012

Final poster and demo deadline: 05 April 2012

Prague, Czech Republic

Website

http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/at-the-interface/education/experiential-learning-in-virtual-worlds/call-for-papers/

Dates

Abstract submission: 30th September 2011
Paper submission: 27th January 2012
Conference: 12th to 14th March 2012

Call for papers

Interest in virtual worlds and their application to learning has increased dramatically in recent years. They play an increasingly important role for people in both social and work-based contexts, and they challenge many of our assumptions about how we work, teach, learn, and relate to each other. There are many different types of virtual worlds and they are used for a multiplicity of purposes including gaming, play, social networking, learning and development, work, and even business. The experiences gained in virtual worlds impact who we are in the physical world, and vice versa. What are we learning through those experiences and how transferable is that learning from one domain to another?

The main aims of this conference are to increase our understanding of experiential learning in virtual worlds, to examine formal and informal learning in such worlds, and to critique both their essential characteristics and future possibilities. For the purposes of this call for papers, we define virtual worlds as 3D, immersive graphical environments representing realistic or imaginary worlds, in which users are co-presented as animated characters (avatars) and interact with each other and with the worlds’ contents. However, we recognise both the complexity and contested nature of experiential learning in virtual worlds and welcome papers that challenge this definition.

This conference will be of interest to educators, researchers, students, independent scholars, trainers, virtual world users, and anyone interested in what happens in virtual worlds and what it means for us as human (or virtual) beings.

As it is such a broad subject area, Experiential Learning in Virtual Worlds precludes a definitive list of sub-topics, but the following list is indicative of the kind of topics or themes envisaged by this Call for Papers:

• Art of building a virtual persona
• Arts and entertainment in virtual worlds
• Assessment in virtual worlds
• Blended learning approaches
• Case studies of experimental projects
• Communication modes and etiquette
• Conflict in virtual worlds
• Education and training in virtual worlds
• Emerging technologies within higher education
• Identity and citizenship in virtual worlds
• Immersion and presence in virtual worlds
• International technology challenges
• Online communities, formal and informal
• Play, fun, fantasy and horror in the virtual world
• Psychology and affect in virtual worlds
• Role switching between traditional and virtual organizations
• Scenarios, simulations, role-play and experimentation
• Serious games
• Sexuality and (in)appropriate behaviour in virtual learning worlds
• Skill development in MMORPGs
• Teaching
• Technology convergence
• Types of virtual worlds
• Understanding mortality in virtual worlds
• Virtual and global teams
• Virtual world pedagogies
• Work-related learning in virtual worlds

Papers will be considered on any related theme. The Steering Group also welcomes the submission of pre-formed panel proposals. Papers will be considered on any related theme.

300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 30th September 2011. All submissions are minimally double blind peer reviewed where appropriate. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 27th January 2012.

The final programme for the Innovative Research in Virtual Worlds conference, being held at Coventry University on Thursday 3rd and Friday 4th November 2011, is now available to view on the conference website:

http://wwwm.coventry.ac.uk/researchnet/LearningInnovation/2011Conference/Pages/Programme.aspx

We have a great selection of interesting and diverse virtual world topics by over 20 speakers, separated into two identifiable strands – “Innovative Research” and “Innovative Demonstrations”, on themes such as identity, pedagogical design, student experiences of learning in virtual worlds, proxemics and spatial practice, and futures and visions.

Dr. Gary Priestnall and Professor Mike Sharples from the University of Nottingham, UK, will be opening the conference with Virtual worlds from lab to field: learning about landscape through high fidelity virtual models, and Professor Judith Molka-Danielsen from Molde College University, Norway, will be opening the second day with Innovations for learning in virtual worlds.

The conference is being held at Coventry University Techno Centre, with an evening dinner on Thursday 3rd at St. Mary’s Guildhall in Coventry.

Registration is open until October 28th. For those who are interested but unable to attend in person, the sessions in Room 1.3 (see programme) will be streamed live into Second Life. Please see the conference website for the SLURL.

We hope to see you there!

If you have any queries please contact me on c.tombs (@) coventry.ac.uk or 02476 158265.

Register here: http://wwwm.coventry.ac.uk/researchnet/LearningInnovation/2011Conference/Pages/Registration.aspx

Best wishes,
The Learning Innovation team

A tweet by Jane Chandler, a speaker at the #ReLIVE11 conference today.

Look out for ReLIVE11 on Twitter, using #relive11, and on Flickr (pictures will be posted during the conference).

Watch the keynotes – Robin Wight, Andy Piper and the panel session of Bill Thompson, Ian Hughes and Rebecca Mileham – live as they happen.

Hang out at the conference cafe opening in Second Life on Open University 2 Island, at http://bit.ly/oGFEDH.

Immerse yourself in the launch event, a classical music concert on Open University 2, from 8-10pm (UK, 12-2pm SLT) on Tuesday the 20th of September. No registration is required for the event, which is free and open to everyone regardless of ReLIVE physical attendance (subject to island capacity). This event is provided by Music Island Concerts – please see below for more details.

Music Island @ Sea Turtle Island was founded in 2007 as an artist collective by a small group of international professional and amateur classical musicians and music educators. The initiative is led by Kate Miranda/SL, a Canadian arts administrator, who has provided administrative and promotional support for the project since the founding. Educational projects have included music appreciation sessions, performance practice for community conservatory students & college students, and professional development opportunities for professional musicians. This session will consist of two musical performances interspersed with comments from the artists about the works and their experiences as professional musicians performing in Second Life. To listen to this session you need to ensure that your Second Life viewer is enabled to listen to streaming audio in preferences.

Additional Music Island Information:

Music Island Livestream – archival video stream & live events on the web
Music Island YouTube Channel – archival video
Virtual Concerts in the Park, Kate Miranda, Journal of Arts Management (2009)
Lessons from Four Years of Concerts in the Park, Kate Miranda, (unpublished) scheduled for publication, fall 2011
Second Life makes classical fans feel at home, John Terauds, Toronto Star 2009

12 pm (noon) Young Zeid (Xi Yang, RL), violin

Xi Yang began his distinguished music career when he was a student at the Conservatory of Music in Beijing, China where he studied both violin and viola Performance. He had his first solo debut when he was 9 years old. By the age of 12 he made an average of 200 solo appearances a year in China. He won the National Violin Competition in Shanghai and made his solo debut with the Beijing Philharmonic Orchestra. He then, toured China with the Beijing Youth Symphony as a soloist and concertmaster. At the age of 17, he was a semi-finalist in the prestigious Jacques Tibaud International Violin Competition in Paris, France. The youngest violinist entered the competition for that year which earned him a place in the Encyclopedia of Chinese History.

Arriving in the United States, Mr. Yang won a National Strings Competition in Arkansas and has performed numerous solo recitals, chamber music concerts and gave master classes to young string players from many public schools and colleges. A graduate of Indiana University School of Music, he studied violin and chamber music ensemble, from baroque style to modern composers, under the guidance of James Buswell, Nelli Shkolnikova, Josef Gingold and Rostislav Dubinsky. “Mr. Yang has all the ability and potential to become one of the greatest solo violinists in the world today…” ( Isaac Stern 1987, Indiana University )

Mr. Yang was the Principal Violist for the Florida Philharmonic Orchestra, Florida Grand Opera and the Principal Viola with the Symphony of the Americas. He is also the Assistant Concertmaster and a guest conductor, soloist with the Raleigh Symphony Orchestra. A well established violinist and violist in the Triangle area and beyond, his students are age from 7 years old to adults. He is a member of the Arcangelo Piano Quartet and Duo Appassionato.

Fostering the next generation of musicians is important to Xi Yang. He is the founding music director and conductor of the Youth Symphony of Florida.

1 pm SLT Sandia Beaumont, piano

Sandia Beaumont is a classical pianist and harpsichordist from France who has been performing in Second Life for several years for her own enjoyment and personal professional development. Second Life has allowed her to explore repertoire that her professional life does not. This year she has performed several concerts with organist, Shprav Oodles, recently performing the Mozart K.488 Concerto for piano and organ at Music Island.