Through Despair and Hope: The Circle of Second Life
Virtual Worlds Education Roundtable (VWER) presentation in voice and discussion in text chat
Presenter: Mark Childs (SL: Gann McGann)
Date: 6 September 12 noon Second Life Time (which is 8pm UK time, 3pm US Eastern time)
Location: Second Life http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/VSTE%20Island/27/27/22
In 2009 every higher education institution in the UK had at least one practitioner exploring the use of Second Life (Kirriemuir, 2009).
Since then, the number of institutions using the Second Life platform dropped markedly. Some practitioners began using other platforms, others stopped the using virtual worlds altogether (Childs, 2013). The question of why this occurred will be addressed and what this meant for those individuals professionally and personally.
These experiences will be assessed in order to answer broader questions concerning the role of deploying creative technologies in learning and teaching? What are the general barriers and motivators for experimenting with new technologies, and what is the impact on us as practitioners?
Childs, M. (2013) The Future of Virtual Worlds, in M. Childs and G. Withnail, Experiential Learning in Virtual Worlds, Inter-Disciplinary Press, UK: Oxford
Kirriemuir, J. (2009) Virtual world activity in UK universities and colleges: An academic year of expectation? Snapshot #7: Winter 2009 http://virtualworldwatch.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Snapshot-7.pdf
Mark Childs (SL: Gann McGann) is a learning designer based at the Open University, UK. He has been researching the use of technology in education for 20 years, and teaching about it for ten. He studied Second Life for his PhD, which he completed in 2010.
The moderator will be Sheila Webber (Sheila Yoshikawa in Second Life)
When and where: The VIRTUAL WORLDS EDUCATION ROUNDTABLE meetings start at 12 noon SLT on Thursdays on VSTE in Second Life. We meet at http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/VSTE%20Island/27/27/22
Contact:
Sheila Webber, Senior Lecturer & Director of the Centre for Information
Literacy Research, Information School, The University of Sheffield, 211
Portobello Street, Sheffield, S1 4DP. UK
s.webber@sheffield.ac.uk