Virtual Worlds in Education Forum, 17th March 2009

From RSCWMWiki

Jump to: navigation, search

University of Wolverhampton, Science Park, Tuesday, 17 March 2009

There was a good turn out to the forum with around 30 people from a variety of supported sectors.

Contents

Welcome

Crispin Dale, Principal Lecturer, Tourism/Technology Supported Learning, from the University of Wolverhampton, welcomed the delegates.

Surveying Virtual World use in UK Higher and Further Education

John Kirriemuir
First up was John Kirriemuir, surveyor of virtual world use in UK universities and colleges, author of the UK Snapshots. John gave a very informative and interesting overview of virtual activities in the UK HE and FE arena which he has been researching for his latest UK Snapshot.

You can read previous Snapshots and listen to John's weekly podcasts with people working (or learning) in the UK education sector on the Virtual World Watch website http://virtualworldwatch.net/

If you are currently using a virtual world for teaching or learning, please get in touch with John: john(@)virtualworldwatch.net

John's Flickr pages for "UK Universities and Colleges in Second Life":

http://www.flickr.com/photos/silversprite/sets/72157603982005324/

Tour of British Council island in Second Life

Graham Stanley
Next we had an in-world talk and walk around with Graham Stanley, aka Baldric Commons. Graham is an English as a Foreign Language teacher with the British Council in Barcelona. He met 'Ladyjane' on their new main grid island, along with a couple of colleagues and we were taken on a tour and Graham described how this has been developed over the years on the Teen Grid. He took questions at the end which were relayed via avatar!
British Council demo

Graham's ...

... blog: http://blog-efl.blogspot.com/

... Twitter: http://twitter.com/grahamstanley

... Email: graham.stanley@britishcouncil.es





The Quest for Learning

Andrew Craske
Andrew Craske bksb Business Development Manager for 'Never Winter Nights' gave a presentation and partial demonstration of the game environment that people have been using for teaching. "The Quest for Learning" is a resource designed for learning literacy, numeracy and problem solving skills, particularly successful with engaging disaffected learners.

bksb Never Winter Nights http://www.bksb.co.uk/2009/products.aspx



Presentations from the floor

After lunch the floor was opened up to the delegates to share their virtual world developments. These included Denise Doyle, Gemma McLean, David Burden, Mark Childs, Alan Wells and Andrew Rothery.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Shri Footring for writing a blog entry about the event: http://shri.jiscinvolve.org/

and to John Kirriemuir for Twitpic-ing: http://twitpic.com/26elh

Facilitator's Contact Details

Events

The Reality of Virtual Worlds - Regional Conference

Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge Campus, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire

31 March 2009

RSC Eastern Events page

Learning in a Virtual Worlds Conference 2009 in association with the University of Sunderland and sponsored by The Higher Education Academy

University of Sunderland, Sir Tom Cowie Campus , Sunderland

21 April 2009

RSC Northern Events page

Retrieved from "http://wiki.rscwmsystems.org.uk/index.php/Virtual_Worlds_in_Education_Forum,_17th_March_2009"