Teachers Buzz Session

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The NMC Campus Teachers Buzz is taking a rest. We thank all of our participants over the last 19 months, and given there are a number of other groups providing places in SL for these conversations, we are looking ahead to some new community building activities.

Join us for the NMC Campus Teacher's Buzz Session, a chance to talk about virtual teaching with your fellow faculty!

The NMC is offering a regularly scheduled, informal discussion session for practicing teachers using Second Life, or those just plain interested in the idea or process of using SL for a class. Not a series of lectures or presentations, we envision more of a relaxed coffee hour to share the "buzz".

  • Purpose: Open discussions about the practice, process, development, support of conducting courses or classes in Second Life. Focus is on pedagogy, practicalities, best practices, and assessment. This is not meant to infringe on the Second Life in Education Group (meets Wednesdays) but to have a place for people to come and talk mostly about the needs for practicing teachers.
  • Audience: Anyone currently teaching, designing a class, or just curious to learn more, wide open and participatory
Buzz Photos
The 5 most recent photos from Flickr for the tag 'teachersbuzz'
NMC Teachers Buzz 14 April 2008NMC Teachers Buzz 14 April 2008NMC Teachers Buzz 14 April 2008NMC Teachers Buzz 14 April 2008NMC Teachers Buzz 14 April 2008

more...

  • Schedule: Meet every other week on Mondays, alternating 4:00 PM or 9:00 AM SLT (PT) -- See World Clock 4:00 PM / 9:00 AM for your local time
  • Location: On NMC Campus at various locations, sometimes a field trip elsewhere. Most NMC Campus is not private; but to get to most places you must join our campus group , a self service operation.

[edit] Past Buzz Sessions

Teachers Buzz Home :: Archives : 2007 | 2006

  • Apr 14 16:00 SLT/PST For anyone who likes visual organisers, this was an excellent session with Graham Mills who demonstrated a number of tools for teachers in Second Life. First up was StoryMachine, a gadget that rezzes prim-based nodes to order from a simple notecard-based script. As with other similar tools, the nodes can be linked using particle streams. StoryMachine, however, is a little different in that its script can change the display *dynamically* as well as link to other media such as images and audio clips. Graham discussed some of the possible applications of StoryMachine now and in the future, as well as describing other approaches he has been experimenting with in Second Life. This session was hosted on Edunation II.
  • Mar 31 6:00pm PST/SLT - Millennials Go to College: Traits, Parents and What Teachers Can Do. Jatt Writer (aka Jan Morrison, Washoe County School District, Reno, Nevada State and Federal Programs Dept. Project Director) led a discussion on the topic of Millennials Go to College. This Teachers Buzz talk was a follow up to the Nov. 26, 2007 Buzz on Millennial Students, which focused on the characteristics of the Millennial Students. See a table from Jennifer James' PhD on Net Generational Markers for a review of those characteristics. In this Teachers Buzz, we discussed: 1) the seven core traits of the Millennial generation (special, sheltered, confident, team-oriented, conventional, pressured and achieving), 2) the transition in 2010 from Boomer “helicopter” college parents to Gen-X “stealth fighter” college parents, and 3) what teachers in SL can do to engage our Millennial students
  • Mar 17 9:00am PST/SLT WebMon, Slider, and VidMon: Access to web sites, textures and video for libraries, museums, and elsewhere. Bucky Barkley gave a great talk and demo of 3 specific tools which are applicable in a wide variety of projects. WebMon - launches web addresses in an external browser, customize the menu for different languages, give supplemental notecards, and much more. SimpleSlider/Slider - rotate textures, give out items on a per texture basis (notecard, lm, object, texture), and visit web sites per texture. VideoPoster/VidMon - per person video, either one (poster), or from a menu (VidMon). What is per-person? Multiple screens per parcel - each person watching 1 at a time independent of everyone else
  • Sat. Mar 8 4:00pm PST/SLT This was a special Teachers Buzz as part of the The Virtual Worlds: Libraries, Education and Museums Conference. This was a wild discussion on the topic of Library Support in Second Life which focused on two key questions: 1. Have you used library support inside or outside SL for you SL teaching? If you have, in what ways? 2. What types of library support and integration in SL would you like to see?
  • Mar 3 4:00pm Gaming and Learning in SL presents "Windbag", the whimsical text-based game of hilarity and language immersion fun! Jeremy Braver led us through one of his latest designs for gaming and learning in SL. This game is a mod of a similar social game called 'Balderdash'(and Call My Bluff on the TV in the UK). As previously seen at the SLoodle Moot and other meetups, "Windbag" has proven to be a hit. Jeremy demonstrated the game with participants and talked about future developments including being able to author this with your own word customizations. We also discussed the possibility of having pics and sounds files, in addition to text. Windbag will remain on Boracay for a few days if you'd like to pick up one of your own for a low, L$300 price tag. http://tinyurl.com/2xwr2o
  • Feb 18 9:00am Virtual World Project @ Otis College of Art and Design - Otis Island (128,128,0). This was a Teachers Buzz field trip to Otis Island, home of Otis College of Art & Design. Mrags Writer (aka Otis Faculty Michael Wright) shared the results of his recent project where sophomore students learned design and production process by creating thematic art projects in SL. Mrags gave a brief overview and then took us exploring the student projects and then a follow-up discussion.
  • Jan 21 9:00am The SaLamander Project is an open Second Life education community with a mission to develop a searchable peer-reviewed database of educational builds and tools in Second Life. Using inworld tools - such as the Salamander HUD and on-location surveys - the project hopes to assist SL Education to develop the common language and set of "best practices" in the emerging profession of 3D Virtual Education. By making well crafted virtual educational learning materials accessible to more educators and providing useful and timely feedback to builders and scripters, the SaLamander Project hopes to provide an ongoing service to the Second Life Education Community. Presently in the beta stage, The SaLamander Project is now planning to anchor it's activities and practices toward developing a showcase of exemplary Second Life Learning Materials to be presented at the next Second Life Community Conference in September 2008.

[edit] Topics

The format is open to discussion, and we would prefer it arise from those that show up.

  • Orientations for students
  • Balance and integration of SL/RL activities
  • Tools
  • Faculty development (see NMC's Faculty Certification project)
  • Privacy issues
  • Using media
  • Guest speakers (showcases, tours, ??)
  • In-world facilitation
  • Human subjects protection issues
  • Related to human subjects issues, above: Linden Labs' additional layer of so-called protections, notification, etc.
  • Approaches for uploads, esp. alternatives to paying 10$ Linden for each upload
  • Securing locations: is posting "class in session" a good enough "block" from disruptions? Or is a more secure environment needed?
  • Flexible spaces
  • Archiving learners' projects
  • Digital Storytelling in SL
  •  ??
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