Closing Thoughts....and thanks

Closing Thoughts....and thanks

by Tia Carr Williams -
Number of replies: 5

As this is the closing day of our Serious Games/Virtual Worlds event, I would like to thank everyone who participated and everyone who contributed to making this a truly wonderful experience for me and Therese.

We both feel that we have learnt a good deal we didn't know before and met some wonderful new people through the experience.

Certainly, going to Reuters, London, as the guest of Ron Edwards, was a direct bonus from hosting this event and I have to report that it was a fantastic experience. A room filled with earnestly interested top drawer executives, all seeking the solution to a next generation educational environment or deliverable.

In particular, I want to give a shout to www.Guintilabs.com, www.learningguide.co.uk and www.datmedia.co.uk, all of whom have products that will revolutionise online learning. Guintilabs have a click and drag 3d environment creation capability and I encourage those who are interested in using Virtual World environments for a younger audience to check it out. Members of this forum may also be interested in www.movinglearning.com which is happening in both the UK and Holland during June and I will also be attending that event.

Clearly, from what I heard and learnt fron the Reuters event hosted by Ron was that everyone is seriously interested in new technologies as teaching tools which of course means that it begins in the classroom.

Does anyone have any closing thoughts about how they would want to go forward around this topic?

I would also invite anyone who wants to continue the conversation, to join us at www.amodus.org.uk  where we have a Serious Games group.

Much thanks also to Sylvia for inviting us to host and we hope everyone who joined us has found something beneficial to take away.

Tia

In reply to Tia Carr Williams

Re: Closing Thoughts....and thanks

by Therese Weel -
It's done!

Attached is the summary of our discussions for the past three weeks. 

While pulling the summary together I was in awe of just how much ground we covered in the past three weeks and the insight that has been generously shared from this peer group.   We had some challenges, absorbing and navigating the scope of this topic as well as some technology issues  as we experienced virtual worlds first hand.   This is a good thing,  since we experienced what the average person faces when using these tools. I`m glad we had so many working teachers and parents in this group who were able to speak realistically about the value they have found and placed it in  perspective given their work in child development and the educational system.

I say farewell but not goodbye as I`m sure I will bump into many of you again at upcoming scope conferences.  Thank you to all for your participation and a special thank you to Tia and Sylvia for making this experience a positive one.

I'll leave you with one more bit of info. On Friday I heard about a conference offered by the TLT group. 

Exploring Educational Potential of Second Life - Online Virtual World
Ilene Frank and Drew Smith, University of South Florida;  Steve Gilbert, TLT Group

They have an awesome flash presentation here:

http://www.c21te.usf.edu/materials/edusl/player.html

The archive of a previous friday live presentation and a 1.5 hr recording from March 2007 is here:

http://www.tltgroup.org/OLI/20070323SecondLife.htm

http://www.c21te.usf.edu/materials/edusl/player.html

And an link which I highly recommend bookmarking is the Second Life Annotated Bibliography on the educational value of Second life by Mark Pepper.

http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~mpepper/slbib

 

In reply to Therese Weel

Re: Closing Thoughts....and thanks

by Emma Duke-Williams -
Thank you so much for this summing up. I'd not been able to get into this conference as much as I'd have liked - the first week coinciding with a holiday didn't help matters, but I do intend to read over all the messages when I have a little more time.
In reply to Therese Weel

Re: Closing Thoughts....and thanks

by E.A. Draffan -
Thank you so much and I do apologise for not been more involved.  I really hope to catch up with it all soon.  Have a lovely summer. Best wishes E.A.
In reply to Therese Weel

Thank you everyone!

by Sylvia Currie -
Thank you Therese and Tia for bringing this excellent topic to us and for such an excellent and thorough job of facilitating. The summary you produced is so useful, and you're right Therese, it does make you realize how much ground we covered.

Thanks everyone for your contributions, and especially our event leaders Ron Edwards, Dan O'Reilly, Margaret Corbit, and Samia Khan who took us down different paths and exposed us to new worlds. Also, Corinne Brooks generously provided some playtime and support with IndustryPlayer. Now this is the problem with acknowledging individuals; you can be sure I'm leaving many participants out! Just know that all participation is appreciated. :-) Our 3 weeks together was enjoyable, informative, enlightening, and full of adventure!

The next SCoPE seminar is Supporting and Advancing Online Dialogue with Cindy Xin May 7-27. More details will be available soon.

In reply to Sylvia Currie

Re: Thank you everyone!

by Corinne Brooks -
Thanks for your thanks. Just a mention that IP educators accounts can still be opened --- and are now automated so I don't have to add individually (YAY- nice side effect for me), so if anyone didn't get a chance to play feel free to sign up using an educational email address (ie not hotmail, gmail, yahoo etc).