Second Life isn’t the problem, I am. I just don’t seem to find time to go into Second Life enough so that I can find my way around to get the information I am looking for. I did find the "Communities" location but could not find any useful information in that area. When I get frustrated I do not enjoy the experience at all. I am sure there is an easier way to find information but I just haven’t run across it yet. Content changes in SL and it is difficult to know whether or not the information from a Google search is accurate. I know there are great things going on in Second Life but honestly, right now I am feeling that the time I am spending there is not a good use of my time. I work with middle school students and am not able to access Second Life at school. I would love to get into Teen Life, learn about it, and see how I could use it with my students, and I would even be willing to pay the yearly subscription fee for the class to have a site they could develop.
The video we watched was an example of how teachers can bring Second Life content into the classroom without having to access the site online. When I have some free time, I will start looking for ways to share SL content with my students. First I need to get better at finding information!
The ISTE site located at http://slurl.com/secondlife/ISTE%20Island/93/83/30 provides networking, collaboration, and learning.
I found ED TECH Community and asked to join it. ED TECH is a free resource for all teachers. They offer a variety of spaces for inworld education events and teaching, a sandbox, and an informational center. Limited condo space is or was available for free to teachers. Teachers can IM Bcreative Wilde inworld to reserve event locations.
CAVE Island is an island located just south of EDTECH. There is a building for Teacher Education called the Playground. The Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) is a professional association of educators and others who improve instruction through technology. They publish Educational Technology Research and Development, the only scholarly journal in the field focusing entirely on research and development in educational technology. This is a relatively new site still under construction so I will check back on it later.
Applied Research in Virtual Environments for Learning is located at:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/CAVE/11/242/42. It is an American Education Research Association SIG for educators, scholars, and practitioners researching computer-mediated 3D communities. The purposes of the SIG are to, “steward a community of educators, scholars, and practitioners dedicated toward research in and on virtual environments. Using a variety of research methods, we support a diverse approach to understanding the optimal use of virtual worlds and environments for educational purposes. We're interested in developing a comprehensive research agenda, intended to encompass the breadth and scope of learning potentialities, affordances, challenges, and shortcomings of immersive virtual learning environments.”
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