Virtual Worlds Come Alive at AECT 2008 Convention

From the pages of TechTrends comes the following excerpts on the first AECT 2008 Virtual World Convention...
Thursday morning, November 6, 2008 began like most days at the AECT Convention with technicians frantically checking equipment, making last minute adjustments; presenters hustling to locate their rooms; and participants maneuvering to find a good vantage point, booting notebooks, and logging on to networks. But this was not just another session.After months of meetings, preparation, and anticipation, it was finally time to unveil the long-awaited venture into the unknown, to “go where no convention has gone before,” well, at least at AECT.

The makers of Second Life, Linden Lab, a San Francisco-based corporation, define their creation as “an online society within a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents, where they can explore, build, socialize and participate in their own economy” (Linden Lab, 2007). SL provides a collaborative, immersive, and open-ended experience where people create and inhabit a virtual world of their own design.

The Horizon Report on Emerging Technology 2008

The annual Horizon Report describes the continuing work of the New Media Consortium (NMC)’s Horizon Project, a five-year qualitative research effort that seeks to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, or creative expression within learning-focused organizations.

The main sections of the report describe six emerging technologies or practices that will likely enter mainstream use in learning-focused organizations within three adoption horizons over the next one to five years.

ROLE PLAYING IN EDUCATION

A revised paper (2002) by Adam Blatner, M.D. on role playing, a derivative of a sociodrama, is a method for exploring the issues involved in complex social situations. It may be used for the training of professionals or in a classroom for the understanding of literature, history, and even science.

Trajectories from today’s WWW to a powerful educational infrastructure

Jeremy Roschelle & Roy Pea present a study on an optimistic view of potential benefits of today’s web, utilizing a framework that emphasizes: (a) making learning more accessible; (b) promoting improved learning; and (c) containing costs. They do not provide a sense of where the web is going, and how its trajectory of development may more fully meet educational needs, but a prospective about emerging web technologies and its importance to educational research communities, and to briefly highlight key trajectories of web development for learning communities.

Evaluating coursework in computer games degrees: Students and assessors as virtual characters

This paper explores a relatively new area in the design and development of assessment procedures for the evaluation of coursework and student performance on computer and video games degrees. Emphasis is placed on an assessment which involves the development of and interaction in a virtual world, where lecturers and students are represented as virtual characters.

Learning fire investigation the clean way: The virtual experience

Virtual environment based on the scene of a burned down house, as an alternative to having them undertake investigation of a real fire scene, has been implemented. This paper describes a quantitative and qualitative study exploring the effectiveness of this(PBL)teaching resource using the virtual world.