An Introduction to Second Life, 29th January 2010

Introductory classes run inside Second Life every Tuesday at 1.30pm U.S. Pacific Time. The SLURL for the SLOODLE classes is: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Sloodle/108/30/23

You can also join the Sloodle group in Second Life: Sloodlers

Fire Centaur has many video clips to help with your sloodling: http://www.youtube.com/user/fire2006

Blackboard users might like to investigate: The ANGEL Second Life User Group. The ANGEL Second Life User Group is for those interested in using Second Life with ANGEL products.

Other groups you may like to join in Second Life: Real Life Education in Second Life - a group for real life educators and academics using SL for real life eudcation and research.

Also, on the second Tuesday of every month, UK Educators meet in world for open discussions on a variety of topics. Notification of these events are sent through the JISC mail list.

Firewall Configuration How to configure your corporate firewall to access Second Life

Sheila Webber's blog on her Second Life activities: http://adventuresofyoshikawa.blogspot.com/

The SLURL for Infolit island: https://exch.wlv.ac.uk/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://slurl.com/secondlife/Infolit%2520iSchool/114/191/22

OpenSim

I shall try to add more information here as I find it. The following is taken from a recent post on the JISC mail list. Bromley College is using OpenSim:

In the last week we have begun to open our OpenSim platform for student access here at Bromley College. We thought it would be a good idea to have a record of their progress in the virtual world, and so we have launched a new blog http://bcopensim.blogspot.com. Please feel free to visit and comment.

If you have any particular questions or requests then again please feel free to contact either Clive Gould (Clive Pro) cliveg@gmail.com or Barry Spencer (Vega Starlight) barrys@bromley.ac.uk

"Comparing OpenSim with Second Life" from Rezzable.com: http://rezzable.com/blog/rightasrain-rimbaud/comparing-opensim-second-life

The Virtual World Watch Snapshot from October 2009 looks at Choosing Virtual Worlds for Teaching in Education and is well worth reading. It gives lots of comments from people who have tried or are currently using OpenSim and section 3 considers OpenSim and Second Life side by side. Click here for the report

Teen Grid

For the 13 - 17 age group, Teen Grid is your Second Life option: http://teen.secondlife.com/

Wikipedia entry on Teen Second Life: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teen_Second_Life

Global Kids Online Leadership Programme: http://olpglobalkids.org/

Global Kids Curriculum - useful resources to help you get to grips with the basics of Second Life/Teen Grid http://www.simteach.com/wiki/index.php?title=GKCx/Table_of_Contents

Graham Stanley (aka Baldric Commons) has worked on Teen Grid as a TEFL teacher with the British [Council in Spain. See one of his presentations: http://secondlife4teens.wikispaces.com/#toc3

British Council for Teens youtube videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/britishcouncil4teens http://www.youtube.com/user/britishcouncil4teens]

Where to get land in SL

Places where educators may be able to get cheap or free land )please let me know if this is incorrect:

formerly ‘Education UK Island’ now owned by Leeds University
Campus:Second_Life
EduNation – Free Space (Gavin Dudeney, “Consultants-E”)
Nature Publishing Group, Elucian Omega island IM Secondlou Skytower

Not necessarily free or cheap: - NMC Virtual World (for full sim = $5000 £3,097.12 per annum)

See our wiki page about the [JISC RSC WM Island].

Forthcoming in-world events

12 - 13 March 2010 Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Conference 2010 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 SL bent to the conference owing to where it is being held.

Website URL :: http://www.vwbpe.org