Immersive eLearning Environments: Why They Work | OpenSesame eLearning Blog

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” —Maya Angelou eLearning courses provide opportunity to create simulated learning environments, where learners can experiment safely and demonstrate skills. Immersive eLearning environments emotionally engage learners by adding verbal and nonverbal social cues to text.While considering the differences between a classroom and an internship, my research focuses on reasons why organizations use simulations for employee training courses. The marketing language varies — situation-based, scenario-based, experiential, virtual eLearning environments — but here’s my definition:

via Immersive eLearning Environments: Why They Work | OpenSesame eLearning Blog.

 

Blog | Exploring the virtual classroom | Feminist pedagogy in the metaverse

Once More Down the Rabbit Hole

June 22, 2012

Hamlet Au has done an excellent writeup of Cloud Party. It’s a WebGL-based virtual world, which means that any browser that can handle WebGL* can get you there, just by using a link (pretty well the majority of browsers). Although there’s no viewer to download, to fully experience the programme you must have a Facebook account. It’s deployed on Amazon servers, which means it will be fast and reliable, and the concurrency rate is 25 avatars to an area. I haven’t been able to figure out whether unused areas are automatically shut down, as in Kitely. If they are, that will increase performance and lower pricing. Participants can use the system tools to build, and they can also import mesh objects, which means that SL content developers will have a market for their goods in both Second Life and Cloud Party. The most eye-opening aspect of Cloud Party isn’t available yet: they say it will soon be able to run on phones and tablets (it’s already set up in on the entry page). This is something Second Life people have been demanding for years.

via Blog | Exploring the virtual classroom | Feminist pedagogy in the metaverse.

 

WEEKLY EVENT on Sunday June 24, 2012 at 8AM SLT (US Pacific) HUMANE EDUCATION DRUM CIRCLE

WEEKLY EVENT on Sunday June 24, 2012 at 8AM SLT (US Pacific)
HUMANE EDUCATION DRUM CIRCLE

MEETS FEED A SMILE — WITH POETRY!

Click SLURL to Teleport: http://slurl.com//secondlife/Alison/197/205/22

In Humane Education, the world is our classroom: sustainability, human rights, and respect for all beings are topics, that we can integrate into any K-12 or higher education subject, such as STEM, Civics, Language Arts, etc. An excellent introduction to Humane Education is a famous speech by Zoe Weil at TEDx: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5HEV96dIuY And I have posted extensive Humane Education resources at: http://carlicann.wordpress.com/ i.e. links to repositories with 1000s of online lesson plans.

This week’s Poetic Drum Circle is dedicated to Feed a Smile. Feed a Smile is an exemplary Second Life charity campaign. Hosting monthly Poetic Drum Circles… and daily live music events with the finest musicians in the Virtual Worlds. Each L$100 donation feeds a meal to a Kenyan School Child. To date: 63,667 meals have been donated by Second Life Citizens. This is an amazingly successful EDUCATIONAL charity that is having significant Real World impact. Join us!

Visit Feed a Smile’s website for more info: http://feed-a-smile.blogspot.com/

New World Notes: Cloud Party: New Facebook-Based User-Generated 3D Virtual World Supported by SL Co-Founder Cory Ondrejka & Ex-Cryptic Studios CTO Bruce Rogers

If you’re not a Facebook user (and a lot of NWN readers are not), here’s what Cloud Party has so far:

Along with an avatar you control with point-and-click interaction or MMO-style keyboard controls, there’s a virtual currency system (Cloud Dollars), user-to-user chat, and direct interaction with world objects (with physics, etc.) Judging by the name, I’m guessing there’s some kind of cloud streaming involved, but however it works, the 3D graphics are pretty smooth for Facebook. (I haven’t had a chance to interact with other avatars, but then, I’m early to the Cloud Party party.)

via New World Notes: Cloud Party: New Facebook-Based User-Generated 3D Virtual World Supported by SL Co-Founder Cory Ondrejka & Ex-Cryptic Studios CTO Bruce Rogers.

 

RFL of SL Updates: Relay For Life of Second Life 2012 Shatters Records!

Saturday, June 9, 2012

Relay For Life of Second Life 2012 Shatters Records!

Relay For Life of Second Life Raises 1.5 Million US Dollars

~~~

The Relay For Life of Second Life is proud to announce that due to the dedication and commitment of our volunteers and supporters, we have collected 1.5 million in US dollars (USD) since 2004 to support the fight against cancer. This is an increase of $500,000 since we reported $1 million In April 2011.

via RFL of SL Updates: Relay For Life of Second Life 2012 Shatters Records!.

 

MUVEs for learning « Mariis’ explorations of 3D remediation

MUVEs for learning 7 June In the beginning of his book “Being There Together – Social interaction in Virtual Environments” Ralph Schroeder 2011 provides a definition of Multi-User Virtual Environments MUVEs:

via MUVEs for learning « Mariis’ explorations of 3D remediation.

 

Nitely on Kitely | The Metaverse Tribune

When I sent a late afternoon query to Kitely I didn’t expect to be Skyping face to face with Co-Founder and CEO Ilan Tochner less than two hours later. It was in the wee hours of the morning in Isreal, Mr. Tochner’s home base, but he was anything but tired. He had a lot to say. In future columns (and today), I’ll try to cover some of the things we talked about.

via Nitely on Kitely | The Metaverse Tribune.

 

Virtual Worlds Timeline: Origins & Evolution of Social Virtual Worlds

In the summer of 2006 to mark the tenth anniversary of the first Contact Consortium conference Earth to Avatars Allan Lundell and Bruce Damer (that’s me!) started to digitize all the video taken of that and other significant events in the virtual worlds community of the mid to late 90s. This archive quickly grew to over 3000 hours of material and gave us a renewed understanding of the importance of those pioneering days and the people who made it all happen. As we spread the word about this effort, an expanding group of people emerged and offered to help us chronicle the birth and evolution of social virtual worlds (worlds in which the main activity is creative or social versus structure game play). This group of people included the pioneering inhabitants of the spaces; employees and developers from the original companies; and the designers and artists who crafted the first generation of avatars and environments. We then started to realize the unique opportunity (and the size of the task) before us: that we had the means, the materials and the people contacts to make possible a comprehensive history of the medium of “social virtual worlds”.

via Virtual Worlds Timeline: Origins & Evolution of Social Virtual Worlds.

 

Virtual Worlds Research Network: Resources

Resources

We encourage contributions to this developing list. Please contact us (VWResearchNetwork [AT] gmail [dot] com) to suggest additions. Where possible, descriptions are taken from the websites of the referenced organisations.

via Virtual Worlds Research Network: Resources.

 

5:1 – Assembled 2012

Virtual worlds research, it appears from the papers in this issue, is still in its infancy. As these five papers highlight that role of virtual worlds in student experience, identity in virtual worlds, and use of virtual worlds by people with disabilities are some of the areas that require further investigation, experimentation, analysis, and discussion.

via 5:1 – Assembled 2012.