9
June
2009
Hi all sorry I have been a bit quiet of late. Anyway yesterday I went on the Jokaydia Road trip in Second Life . Jokaydia is the learning community I am studying for the first assignment. On the road trip I visited a number of different education islands that may be of interest to the rest of the group. After the first assignment is completed (as we all do not have much time at the moment) I am offering to take interested class members around some of the education Sims in Second Life. If you are interested please let me know and I will forward the SLur (Second Life URL) to you. Alternatively you can go onto to the Jokaydia web site and go and explore independently
Url is in my delicious page or here it is below
http://jokaydia.com/
See you inworld
Purplegrrl
Oringally posted on Elearning Experience One Ning 23rd March 2009 http://utselearning2009.ning.com/profiles/blogs/jokaydia-road-trip
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9
June
2009
I have been very lucky over the last two years my PLN has been expanding and the contacts and the resources that I have gained from my network are ever evolving. Today I was taking to a colleague in the lunch room as one does about what we were doing at uni and he sent me a real life website of a similar project we presented to you on Sat. Just wanted to share and it is nice to see theory in practice. 
http://wiki.tafensw.edu.au/sydney/mylearning/index.php/Secondlife_library_project_ltm
Originally posted on Elearning Experience One Ning 25th May 2009 http://utselearning2009.ning.com/profiles/blogs/how-fab-are-pln
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9
June
2009
After writing the reflection on the group work assignment tonight have decided to do some more research into how to faciliate a group more effective or find ways to encourage more learning espisods in the next group work assignment. Even though I am a trainer I think it takes a great deal of skill to encourage “social learning” in a group. Hopefully by the end of the Masters I would have acquired these skills.
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9
June
2009
At the beginning of this course this year I felt frustrated that I had to do the this subject again because of misadventure. However for me I got so much more out of doing this subject again. The see how the Web 2.0 technologies had evolved over the past year was amazing and how much my excitement about learning about them had increase. I believe that this subject has reignited my passion for learning that I thought I had lost. It has challenged me and has made me consider further postgraduate study ie a PHD in education further exploring how Virtual Worlds can be used in education. I am excited to what possibilities may come my way am ready to embrace the challenges ahead with open arms
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11
May
2009
I know I Know this was ages ago but am finally catching up with all my Blog posts so bear with me.
On March 27th -29th March The Virtual World Best Practices in Education (VWBPE) was held in Second Life. Jokaydia the learning community I am involved in presented a session which I was lucky to be part of the panel. “The islands of Jokaydia : Creating Communities of Practice in Second Life”. In this session panelist talk about the various learning communities which they were creating as well as describing their involvement in Jokaydia. The second part of the session was a tour of various locations of Jokaydia (not dissimilar to the road trips that Jo Kay aka Jokay Wollongong runs on a monthly basis in Jokaydia) and a practical lesson on building. I found this experience invaluable not only because I got to be on a panel for the first time but also made many contacts in particular a Lecturer from Scotland who teaches graduate students about virtual worlds she is not only a great sounding board for ideas but has provided me with a different perspective on how virtual worlds could be used for educational purposes.
References:
Virtual Worlds in Best Practice Conference in Education Wiki
http://wiki.vwbpe.org/index.php?title=Main_Page#Presentations Accessed March 2009, May 2009
Virtual Worlds in Best Practice Conference in Education Blog http://www.vwbpe.org/ Accessed March 2009, May 2009
Jokaydia Blog
http://jokaydia.com/2009/03/25/jokaydia-at-the-virtual-worlds-best-practices-in-education-conference/ Accessed March 2009-May 2009
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29
March
2009
Welcome back to my blog, In this blog I am going to share my reflections on various elearning technologies and theories. i Have a passion for new technologies and enjoying trying things out and seeing if they fit the desired outcomes. Have two key area’s I am particularly interested in, firstly seeing how social network/elearning technologies can be used to forward social justice and environmental causes and secondly looking at how Second Life and other Multi User Virtual Environments can be used to educate.
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4
June
2008
Identity – What does it mean in second life, well I did the worst tonight I identified a friend by their real name in a in a SL group he was having problems with his speaker and was just trying to help hmmmm. and said $#$#$# this is how you use the voice function doh. The other thing which I have found amusing is my avatar purplegrrl has more of a net presence than my RL identity hmmmm.
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19
May
2008
As you saw from my last post I am currently involved in a group assignment to create an educational community in Second Life. After observing and being a participating in a couple of those community I thought to myself “Wow by the end of my masters I may really be able to create one of these worlds (or islands) and use it for both educational and social networking purposes” I have been playing and using web since 1995 and when I look at Second Life and other multi-user virtual environments and think look how far we come. Anyway I digress (as I often do when writing my blog posts)
Anyway on Saturday I was chatting to a group of students from the E-learning experience class (who is in a another group) and one of them asked me “why Second life I cannot see the educational benefit” and I said there is a perception that places like Second Life are just places where people to cyber date (and other things which I will not go into as I do not want to lose my PG rating on this blog) or social network. I see it so much more than that and 200 educational universities and educational institutions that use Second Life obviously also agree. (Kelton 2007: 3)
I thought why not Second Life as adult educators isn’t it important to use every tool that is available to us provide educational experiences that are both simulating and relevant
” According to metrics data published on July 10 2007, by meta Linden over 26 per cent of those who have Second Life Accounts are between 18 and 24 years old and another 38 per cent are between 25 and 34″ ( Kelton 2007: 3)
As adult educators demographically our students are the group who uses Second Life.
The exciting part of SANJT project is that it demonstrates to non users of Second Life how beneficial this medium can be. A nursing student who lives in a remote area can experience on one level the different scenarios that they will encounter when they are actually in a hospital without them having to make a costly trip to the main university campus (which may be 200km away case in point Southern Cross University).
This is not to say that Second Life is the be all and end all but it should not be discounted because of stereotypes that are promoted by the media (the media has been doing this since the internet has been being used on a mass scale).
References
Kelton, AJ 2007, Second Life: reaching into the virtual world for real-world learning, EDUCAUSE, accessed 7 May 2008, <http://connect.educause.edu/Library/ECAR/SecondLifeReachingintothe/44919>.
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17
May
2008
We are now onto the next assignment we are still in second life but this time we are creating our own community. We are looking using second life to help nurses who remote from their university to participate in clinical practice. Am a bit out of practice writing story boards but am am excited about this project have so much reading to do
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3
May
2008
I must admit I thought observing a learning community would be much easier than it really is. The first problem I have found is sometimes when there is an learning event I am unable to attend as I have other commitments (mainly work) as many of you may have read in my previous blog entry I am studying a group in second life. Like most people I can only attend these events in my spare time (which seems less and less these days) as I cannot down load second life on my work computer and have a play/or be part of the learning interaction. the second problem is That I have been easily distracted by the other things on second life namely going to parties have learnt a lot about how people interact on this medium but not really helping with my assignment. Thirdly finding time to read the readings so I can situate my experiences intotheoretical framework. Has anyone else had these problems so I am alone in this dilemma?
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