Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education 2010 conference.  That’s the official name.  Dates, 12-13 Mar. 2010. 

I reported on it before, when the call for papers was announced:
Virtual World, Real Education in Second Life

Now all the papers are in and the conference planning gets underway in earnest.  The Lindens are giving us 20 sims for the conference-- to be available about now.  So the builders can get busy on the design.  And the Program committee can get busy on reviewing the papers. 

The Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education (VWBPE) conference is a community-based project, with meetings held entirely inworld (in a virtual reality).    It is by nature multilingual.  That means we have to accommodate newcomers with many different languages.  In the next section I describe our efforts in that direction.

Newcomer’s first question in SL: Why do I want to be here? That’s the same question as with any other software.  Do I really want to climb this learning hill?  (We geeks call it a learning curve to make it sound easy.)  The answer comes by exploring what you can do.  If you like what you find, you will probably want to climb that learning hill. 

The Hobo Helpers group is developing the HH Travel Service to make it easy for newcomers explore the parts of Second Life that appeal to them.     We want to help the newcomers will find what they seek.  

Who would be interested in HH Travel Service?

1.  Community Gateways, the Lindens and others who want to help newcomers find their Second Life destinies

2.  Destinations -- places that want to attract people, especially newcomers.  That would include

• Music venues
• Malls
• Role-playing estates
• Educational estates
• Business estates
• Museums
• Art galleries
• Others (TBD)

3.  People interested in rail and other transportation models in SL.

Viv Trafalgar wanted to give me a sneak peek at some of the new content coming for Heritage Key. I'd cast some doubt last fall on how well it worked for my class. So now I'll begin a few dispatches on what we found, on my return visit. This post focuses on the Tomb of Tut. I'll turn soon in another post to the orientation experience for Heritage Key.

I'm pleased that on almost all fronts that worried me, Rezzable's team has made some dramatic improvements to the areas I'd ticked off: lag, navigation, avatar customization, and stability.

What is it that we can do with the internet + virtual environments?  You have no idea.  And we only have a glimmer.  But here are a few hints.  

Powerliner = power user of online services

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The Streamy awards

“As the first and most prestigious awards devoted to honoring excellence in web television, the Streamy Awards identify and celebrate the pioneers laying the groundwork for a new and dynamic entertainment medium. “

In Second Life, we produce a lot of videos.  That is a lot like producing web television.  So much so that several performers and video producers in Second Life will submit their work for the streamy awards.  Here is my promotional theme:

Vote to Promote

A vote for these people is a vote for Second Life video.  Maybe it will get some notice from the SL blogosphere.  Maybe it will get Streamy to set up some VR categories for next year.  

Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education 2010 conference.  That’s the official name.  Dates, 12-13 Mar. 2010.    

Call for Proposals: Paper and Poster Sessions.  Submissions are due by Monday, February 15th 2010

The Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education (VW-BPE) is a community-based conference to let  participants of virtual worlds  share current teaching, learning and research experience and practices in 3D virtual environments.  Conference presentations focus on teaching/learning, scholarly work, projects, events, activities and innovative tools for education in virtual worlds.  Conference presenters’ focus on the identification of ‘best practices in education’ designed for 3D virtual world technology.

The conference will be held in several Second Life estates:

A Job Interview You Don't Have to Show Up For 
From the Wall Street Journal Business Section

You don’t go to the interview, you just send your Avatar.  A number of companies, such as Microsoft and Verizon, are using Second Life to interview potential hires.  Remarkably this article is not the usual smear job.  No sex and violence.   Reasonable coverage.  The article is two years old and written when Second Life had not introduced voice, but is otherwise informative. I looked around for information to update the story and develop content for newcomers,  

Three Christmas Plays by Avatar Repertory Theater
Michelle Fowler

Does your Christmas look less like Norman Rockwell and more like Norman Bates?  Does your family put the "Diss" in "Dysfunctional"?  Does your Uncle Fred use the Andy Williams' Christmas Albums for target practice?  Well, welcome home Buckaroo!  The actors of the Avatar Repertory Theater (A.R.T.) invite you to "The Real Christmas Story", starring Y.A.D.F. (your average dysfunctional family).  These original Christmas stories will premiere on Friday, December 11, at 5 pm California time (pst) at Rockcliffe’s Dove Theater.  Two other performances will be presented on Saturday, December 12 at 3 pm pst, and Sunday, December 13 at 2 pm pst.

Virtual worlds in your browser with meshes means a brave new world to explore online. Check it out now.

Nortel’s web.alive beta 1.0 was launched in January 2009 after being under development as Project Chainsaw. The web.alive platform consists of a web browser embedded UNREAL 2.5 gaming engine which NORTEL licensed from EPIC and the Diamondware VOIP spatial audio. The really neat thing with the UNREAL 2.5 engine rather than other platforms out there is the ability to be able to import very high polygon meshes that provide for more realistic modeling and environments.

A while back, I started talking about how we Second Lifers need to move from the Second Life communication systems to the straight internet systems that really work. 

• Outworld tools for promoting for inworld events
• Out of the Box for Collaboration Networks in SL

And more recently, I described how Google Wave is changing the way I do things in Second Life blogging.

• Informational Networking
• Google Wave and the Ecosystem of Second Life

The outworld network

A notecard sent out by the University of Western Australia tells the story of how second life pros are now turning to outworld promotion channels.  These are the links in that notecard.