It's been a great couple of weeks for interesting new Australian presences in Second Life. Last weekend, 'Foul Whisperings, Strange Matters' launched. It's a fascinating take on Shakespeare's Macbeth character, a "timely use of pop culture as an adaptive bridge between classic texts and new media technology". The first five minutes of my wanderings around the build were … [Read more...] about Foul Whisperings, Strange Matters
Education
Second Life – game?
Using games in education is a thorny topic. Which games? Which goals? Which outcomes? Which games will warp and twist the minds of our youth, which will contribute to their ongoing development in a positive way? Games created solely for educational purposes often have their content boiled dry as old bones, all the fun ripped from them in order to create "serious" games. "Fun" … [Read more...] about Second Life – game?
Taking our biases with us into virtual environments.
People are using the same cognitive tools in their social interactions within virtual environments as they would in the physical world. A recent study has confirmed this happens even though our avatars do not necessarily represent a clear picture of the people behind those avatars, with regards to gender, race, and all those other things that we have biases against. The … [Read more...] about Taking our biases with us into virtual environments.
A match made in Second Life.
Public services. Education. What do these two things have in common? Typically, people outside those fields would consider them to be necessary but uninteresting. Many people have experienced the rough ends of these services. You'd think it would be difficult to create a useful and engaging experience in a virtual environment that combined the two fields. In this case, you'd … [Read more...] about A match made in Second Life.
PacRimX, Skoolaborate and Global Challenge merger: the beginning of an Education Grid?
PacRimX (Pacific Rim Exchange) Stan Trevena, director of technology for Modesto City Schools, is the man responsible for the PacRimX project, developed in 2007. The idea was that kids from Modesto and their counterparts from Kyoto Gakuen in Japan would be able to interact with each other in a virtual environment, prior to an international student exchange in which 20 Modesto … [Read more...] about PacRimX, Skoolaborate and Global Challenge merger: the beginning of an Education Grid?