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.
An important part to note about this conference is that educators do have time for fun and there will be social activities to enjoy, these include :
This year the VWBPE social activities offer creative, fun events that take advantage of what is not possible in real life but is easy in a virtual world. For example, you will have a chance to swim as a mermaid or merman, fly off a mountain top on a hang glider, visit the Octopus’s Garden Palladium under the sea, jump on the Legacy Party Barge and tour the conference venue from a different perspective. You will not want to miss our opening and closing Lightning Productions Legacy tribute concert performances of the music of Bob Dylan with The Band, and the Beatles.
The conference is free to attend, with the costs of hosting the event paid by sponsors.
Education in Virtual Worlds and going for Virtual Reality is likely to prosper in the future, the distance learning opportunities are very impressive and as more immersive technology progresses, the market is likely to grow.
Therefore these sort of events are worth keeping an eye on, even if you are not an educator yourself.
Personally, I’ve been taking a sneak peek at Chemistry World, which is part of Texas A&M’s University presence in Second Life and was opened to the visitors yesterday after a chemistry session.
Education, Science, Art, Discussions and networking across the world are all possible via Virtual Worlds and VWBPE does a very good job of highlighting this.
I will hopefully have more to write about the conference before, during and after the event.
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