VWBPE – Ciaran Laval

March 31, 2017

Draxtor Despres To Talk At VWBPE Conference On April 1st.

Draxtor Despres (AKA Bernhard Drax), of The Drax Files : World Makers fame, is scheduled to speak at Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education on Saturday April 1st at 3.00pm SLT.

Draxtor’s discussion is entitled : “Will VR Matter in Education? Lessons Learned from a Second Life Documentarian’s 10 Year Life“.

Draxtor’s talk is part of the Above The Book sessions at this year’s conference and from that link we can see that Draxtor has a very wide level of experience in media and virtual world creativity.

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March 29, 2017

Virtual Worlds Best Practices In Education 2017 Now Open

Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education 2017 opened today, with Arisia Vita playing the tunes as we awaited the ribbon to be cut to officially open this year’s educational conference.

The conference is a peer reviewed community event, with clearly a focus on education and more to the point, education by use of Virtual Worlds. Education is a life long learning pursuit so conferences such as this one are very much welcome.

The conference does not just revolve around educators sitting down and talking about education, as important as that is, there’s also fun to be had, here are today’s listed events :

VWBPE 2017 Grand Opening Ribbon Cutting Ceremony – 11:00 AM – 11:30 AM SLT
Above the Book: Ebbe Altberg: “A Conversation about Education and Second Life” – 01:00 PM – 01:50 PM SLT (This session will be held privately by invitation and streamed to the Main Auditorium.)
Quadrivium Networking Topic: VR Technology on the Horizon – 02:00 PM – 02:50 PM SLT
Social: The Freewheelin’ Electric Tambourine Man Parade – 03:00 PM – 03:30 PM SLT
Social: Lightning Production’s Bob Dylan and The Band Tribute Concert – 03:30 PM – 04:30 PM SLT
The Keys to Legacy: A VWBPE Quest – 04:30 PM – 04:50 PM SLT
Keynote: Celia Pearce, “The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same: Twenty Years in Virtual Worlds” – 05:00 PM – 05:50 PM SLT
Lizards of “ARS”© Installation Participatory Play – 06:00 PM – 06:50 PM SLT
Through the Visual Literacy Lens to Learn Ecosystem – 06:00 PM – 06:50 PM SLT
Quadrivium Networking Topic: Teaching in Second Life, Art and Visual Literacy – 06:50 PM – 07:50 PM SLT

Plenty of varied events, full details and SLURLS can be found here : https://vwbpe.org/vwbpe-news/vwbpe-2017-event-schedule-day-1-wednesday-march-29

I would also advise you to keep your eyes on the main event calendar.

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March 22, 2017

Virtual Worlds Best Practices In Education Conference Gets Ready

Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education conference will start on March 29th and run until April 1st. The event, as the name implies, concentrates on educational use of Virtual Worlds and part of the blurb for the conference tells us :

Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education is a peer-reviewed community event focusing on education in immersive virtual environments. This open conference is organized by educators, for educators, to provide an opportunity to showcase the learning that takes place in this community of practice.

Although the grand opening isn’t until March 29th, there are opportunities to have a peek at some educational usage before that, you just need to keep an eye on the VWBPE calendar to find the details.

The conference will have a large focus on Second Life but will also have representations from educational use in Inworldz , OpenSim and more.

The theme of this year’s conference is “Legacy” and this title relates to the fact that this is 10th VWBPE, which is a very impressive feat.

Whereas the focus of the conference is quite rightly education, there will be a couple of one on one interviews with people whom you may be more familiar with from elsewhere as part of the Above The Book interviews.

Ebbe Altberg and Bernhard Drax (AKA Draxtor Despres) will be featured. A blog post gives details on this event and how you can attend :

This year, VWBPE introduces a new segment this year called Above the Book, conversational interviews with Ebbe Altberg, CEO of Linden Lab, on March 29 at 1pm PST and Bernhard Drax, creator of the award-winning mixed-reality documentary series “The Drax Files,” on April 1 at 3pm PST.

These sessions will be in a private region. To get your invitation to attend you need to submit a question for our guests. Start thinking about what to ask! Questions must be submitted no later than Sunday March 26 at 11:59pm PST (extended from original March 20th deadline).

Still a couple of days left to consider a good question.

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March 10, 2014

Philip Rosedale, Ebbe Altberg And Maria Korolov Amongst Keynote Speakers For VWBPE 2014

Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education (VWBPE) will be holding their 7th annual conference in Second Life and OSGrid between April 9th – 12th this year and the keynote and featured speakers have been pencilled in. Some of them should be extremely familiar, especially High Fidelity CEO Philip Rosedale.

Another familiar name for some of you, especially those in OpenSim circles, is Maria Korolov of Hybergrid Business.

Then of course there’s new Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg, who is a late addition to the schedule, so late that he wasn’t in the email I received about the conference!

The full schedule for the conference will be released soon, but here are the known keynote and featured speakers :

Opening Keynote: Closing the Gap: Virtual Reality & Education

Presenter: Philip Rosedale, CEO High Fidelity

Date/Time: Wednesday April 9th, at 1:00pm PDT

Location: Second Life – VWBPE Central Auditorium

Featured Keynote: Connections in an Open Place

Presenter: Justin Clark-Casey, President OpenSimulator umbrella Overte Foundation

Date/Time: Thursday April 10th, at 7:00am PDT

Location: OSGrid – VWBPE Gateway

Featured Keynote: The Coming 3D Future Shock

Presenter: Maria Korolov, Editor in Chief – Hypergrid Business

Date/Time: Thursday April 10th, at 10:05am PDT
Location: OSGrid – VWBPE Gateway

Featured Keynote: Using Virtual Worlds and Gamification to Enhance Learning

Presenter: Andrew Hughes, CEO Designing Digitally

Date/Time: Friday April 11th, at 7:00am PDT

Location: Second Life – VWBPE Central Auditorium

Featured Keynote: TBA

Presenter: Ebbe Altberg, CEO Linden Lab

Date/Time: Friday April 11th, at 1:00pm PDT

Location: Second Life – VWBPE Central Auditorium

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