IRL Conferences

RL conference on SL

MariisLeave a comment

On Friday October 31st University of Southern Denmark (SDU) will host a Danish 1 day conference on SL.

Speakers are:

  • Linda Hauchildt Nielsen (Centre for Educational Media, CVU Lillebælt)
  • Inge Knudsen (Horsens Business School)
  • Cynthia Grund and Jesper Pilegaard (University of Southern Denmark, SDU)
  • Sisse Siggaard Jensen (University of Roskilde, RUC)
  • and me …

We will show and discuss some of the potentials we see in using SL in different areas of the educational sector. Come join us :-)

Registration before October 20th is required. For more info look here.

/Mariis

Danish seminar on SL and horisontal learning

MariisLeave a comment

From MIL alumni, Inger-Marie F. Christensen , I just learned about an interesting Danish seminar on SL and horisontal learning on September 24th at Southern University of Denmark (SDU).

From their website:

Vi står i disse år over for nogle store samfundsmæssige udfordringer, som ikke mindst kan ses i relationerne mellem virksomheder og medarbejder. Fra virksomhedernes side er der en øget vægt på, at den enkelte kan organisere sit eget arbejde, der nu mere ses som en helhed bestående af forskellige og stadigt varierende opgaver end som en fast jobfunktion med faste arbejdsopgaver. Samtidig er der blandt medarbejderne en stigende erkendelse af, at livslang læring ikke bare er en mulighed, men en nødvendighed for fortsat at være en attraktiv arbejdskraft.
Særligt i de regionale yderområderne har disse tendenser ført til et stigende behov for udvikling af nye fleksible uddannelsesforløb og læringsmiljøer. Dette seminar vil med udgangspunkt i Second Life søge at belyse, hvordan ny teknologi kan være med til at løse kompetenceudfordringen i yderområderne.

And there is an impressive (for Danes!) list of speakers:

Niels Henrik Helms, Direktør, Knowledge Lab
Karsten Petersen, formand, udvalget ”Regionale kompetencer”, Region Syddanmark
Flemming Just, Institutleder, Institut for Forskning og Udvikling i Landdistrikter
Nick Wilson, Direktør, Clever Zebra & vBusiness
Tony Breindal, Direktør, Breindal Media
Åge Staghøj, Chefkonsulent, VIA University College
Cynthia M. Grund, Lektor, SDU
Anja P. Nielsen, IBM Virtual Worlds Community
Steen Morten Grønbæk, Produktudviklingsleder, EUC MIDT
Bjarke Liboriussen, Ph.d.-stipendiat, SDU
Ulla Schaltz, Museumsleder, Lolland-Falsters Stiftsmuseum
Lene Vestervang, Direktør, Vestervang Consult

Unfortunately I’ve applied for a Phd-course that day, but if it doesn’t go through I’ll be there ..

Read more about the seminar here

/Mariis

Joining Second Life Community Convention – SLCC08

Mariis4 Comments

I have to break “the vaction silence”, since I’ve just been granted permission to participate in the Second Life Community Convention in Tampa, Florida in the beginning of september :-)))))))))))))))))

I’m just so thrilled, excited and relieved that my bosses granted me this trip. Being a PhD-student can be quite a lonesome endeavor and I’m really looking forward to meeting up with other avatars both on a social and on a professional level.

Unlike many other SL researchers, I don’t have an island of my own, where I can experiment, and – even though I’m conduction a Action Research-project on my own teaching – my interest is also in looking on other peoples educational designs, which means that my project hopefully will be based on multiple cases.

I’m quite confident that the SLCC08 will give me an opportunity to meet competent and relevant people, who might be interested in discussing and documenting their educational thoughts and designs with me both at the conference and later on in-world :-)

/Mariis, now in an even better vacation mood!

Conference on Knowledge Media – January 2009

Mariis2 Comments

From my MIL colleague Christian Dalsgaard I learned about an interesting conference on “Knowledge Media” on the 19th and 20th of January 2009 at Aarhus University, Denmark. Christian and his colleagues from Center for It and Learning will be organizing this event, which has 4 main themes that will provide the focus for the conference:

  1. Knowledge sharing in a global perspective
  2. New learning environments: Web 2.0 and Social Software
  3. Knowledge media
  4. Between formal and informal learning

And so far they’ve announced these leading keynote-speakers:

  • Terry Anderson, Athabasca University, Canada
  • Friedrich Hesse, Knowledge Media Research Center, Tübingen, Germany
  • Lars Qvortrup, School of Education, University of Aarhus, Denmark
  • Jørgen Bang, Institute of Information and Media Studies, University of Aarhus, Denmark

You can read more about the conference here

/Mariis

Virtual Policy ’08 in SL

MariisLeave a comment

Today I attended part of the Virtual Policy ’08 conference on innovation and govenance in virtual worlds.


List of speakers July 22nd

Ren Renolds from The Virtual Policy Network explained that the purpose of both the network and the conference is to bring people together to stimulate converstions about virtul policy, especially intellectual property.

Richard Allan (European Director of Government Affairs CISCO) gave an interesting keynote addressing several important questions for our legislators to consider. Among other things Allan spoke about his personal use of different avatars in different situations – something which was highly commented both by RL and SL audience.
I guess this question whiter or not to present yourself in an anonymous way in virtual life causes quite polarized views. I personally still only have one avatar in SL, and this is primarily because I want my students and my other relations to be able to trust me, but I have to admit, that it’s a tricky issue .. and for sure something I’ll return to during my PhD.

The conference was streamed to us in the SGI Nexus Event Auditorium, but unfortunately especially the pictures were very poor – in fact very pixelly and multi-coloured. Anyway, the sound was ok most of the time, and I do think that’s the most important.

Annie Mullins (Vodatone/TeachToday), Andrew Burn (University of London), Anna Peachy (The Open University) and Andy Powell (EDUserv) discussed the learning potential of virtual worlds. Andrew Burn told of differentiated experiences, with improved effects in distance learning, the use of virtual worlds as new, expressive media and the possibility of virtual field trips and role play. And in general many positive reactions from different types of students, except some on-campus students, who really did prefer face-to-face encounters. In the midst of the discussion, we received a very interesting link to a paper on experiences with teaching in SL by Diane Carr.

Andy Powell spoke of the lack of “hard methodological evidence” of the effect/impact of learning in virtual worlds. There are plenty of good private teacher anecdotes, but for virtual worlds to truly become embedded in our schools/institutions we need hard evidence ..

Unluckily Linden Lab sent a message on region maintenance at the end of this session, so I chose to return to RL, but I’ll be back tomorrow to listen in on at least the discussion about intellectual property.

/Mariis