Mariis' digitale refleksioner

On Friday October 15th, a total of more than 200 museums, churches, exhibition halls, galleries, political institutions, and other venues will open their doors in connection to the annual “Night of Culture” that has been a Copenhagen event since 1993. As part of this event, the Danish Ministry of Science has asked me to participate by presenting research, teaching, and learning in SL.

The event will run from 6PM until midnight (local time), and I will be in the Ministry together with one of my MIL-students, Inge Knudsen, from Business College, Horsens.Inge is a highly experienced SL educator and builder, who has run in-world courses on English, Chinese and Cultural Understanding among other things and last year she won the Danish Research Network’s annual Innovation Prize because of her work in SL.

Inge and I discussing part of her presentation for the “Night of Culture”.

In-world we will be accompanied by MIL alumni, Per Christensen and two of his close colleagues, Nicolai Green Hansen and Erik Hansen – all from VIA University College. Per and his colleagues are currently preparing for a cross-cultural collaboration with a Chinese University on their island Innovative Learning, where it is also possible to see and experience another build that last year won the Danish Ministry of Education’s annual e-Learning award.

Nicolai and I discussing part of their presentation for the “Night of Culture”.

We are all still in the process of planning this event, and there are several challenges. The Ministry has put together an extensive program (in Danish) including lots of interesting activities all night. This means that it is impossible for Inge and I to foresee how many guests will find their way to our presentations. Last year approx. 1000 guests participated in the Ministry’s activities.

We have two rooms at our disposal, and so far we’ve planned for one of them to be the “Teaching and Learning Room”, while the other will be the “Presentation Room”. In the “Teaching and Learning Room” planned in-world session with Inge and Per will run twice the hour, and guests in this room will be able to participate via guest-avatars. In the “Presentation Room” several computers with logged in guest-avatars will enable guests to explore and participate in different in-world places/events covering education, business, art, music, RL rebuilds and not least places/builds NpIRL. Inge and I will oscillate between the two rooms, and in between scheduled sessions, we’ll be available for questions and discussion of the many, different research, teaching, and learning potentials of a medium like SL.

We are also in the process of preparing note cards covering all sorts of topics, events and locations – and I encourage other SL residents to send me (Mariis Mills) suggestions of interesting locations/events. The entire event will take place from 9AM – 3PM SLT. Putting together a program for a 6 hours in a row event is quite daunting, and I personally find that the biggest challenge lies in trying to convey a sense of meaning of SL for RL-guests just passing by…

When we’re done planning, I’ll update this post with SLurls to locations where it will possible to join us in-world.

/Mariis

UPDATE – program

Most of the activities are directed towards the RL guests visiting the Ministry – and they will be in Danish. However, Inge Qunhua will do her sessions in English too, if anyone asks her. Inge will teach the audience how to introduce themselves in Chinese and there will be general lessons in understanding the Chinese culture.

Inge’s sessions will take place on her Island, Danish Visions. The first session starts at 10:30 AM SLT, and she will repeat it every hour until the last one at 2:30 PM SLT.

In between Inge’s sessions there will be live music and other activities on her Island.

For those interested in the Danish VIA-session please have a look in the group “Kulturnat 2010”, where you find all sorts of notices with LMs and further details on the in-world program.

In one of the two rooms in the Ministry, we will, starting at noon SLT, be streaming from Pop Art Lab, Claus Uriza – and later on we’ll visit The Yard Club, where there will be “Open Mic” with Torben Asp.

SLurl to Pop Art Lab

SLurl to The Yard Club