Spending 3 days at MIT at the SCRATCH Conference only convinced me more that we are not providing enought opportunities for our students to become creative thinkers. We are so entrenched in attaining higher test scores and meeting AYP we have completely overlooked the big picture. What it is our kids should be and can be capable of doing. Mitch Resnick referred to it as providing opportunities for students to have high ceilings (the ability to do more over time), low floors (the ability to delve deeper) and have wide walls (open to variety of people and ideas).

The Lifelong Kindergarten Lab prescribes the follow process:

• Imagine
• Create
• Play
• Share
• Reflect
• Imagine

We need to bring this process into our classrooms. I for one am going to push the envelope in my school district to make more of this happen. Administrators and teachers need to be providing more opportunities for students to be more actively engaged in their learning. We are totally missing the big picture….the lives that our students will be living. It is a well known fact that the jobs our students will be doing, have not even been created yet. We need to be turning out students who are adaptable. We need to be teaching students to be life long learners, willing to accept the new challenges they face as technology changes the way they live, work and interact with others.

SCRATCh has shown me that students can not just be the players of games but the designers.

Here are some photos of the Kindergarten Lab…wouldn’t everyone like to learn in this space.

It is this class, conferences like the Building Online Learning Communities and Scratch that make me realize how much we need to change the way our classrooms look and feel.

I just got a phone call from a Tech Director from Moore County Schools in North Carolina. He had found LLI in Second Life and was calling me to ask questions about SL. His superintendent had recently been to a conference and had heard about using SL in education. He referred to me as on the cutting edge. If he only knew how dull the edge was with me a SL. I tried shopping for clothes last night for the last class soiree and failed miserably in my shopping efforts,  But, thanks to this class i was able to give him a lot of information that he did not have about SL. I also turned him on to Peggy Sheehy and Ramapo Island.

What was most interesting about our conversation was that he did not have any idea that kids and adults were isolated from one another. He had found it odd that there was only colleges and universities present and wondered where you would find K-12 institutions which is why, I am sure, he contacted me.

The following is posted from the forums for my personal preservation:

First, I checked the copyright date and was interested to find this was written 2000. A time long before the volcanic eruption that created SL. It is difficult for me to take the wayback machine and think of the community of inquiry prior to my experiences in MOODLE and SL, since I do not have much to base any prior knowledge. My Masters’ work was conducted in world, in the Grad Center, with regular face to face meetings. We had the benefit of synchronous and asynchronous, while interacting with one another during class and the connection of a real time instructor.

I will fast forward to Spring 2008, Teaching and Learning in Virtual Worlds. All three of the required elements, due to the avatars, the class meetings and the guidance of our instructor has being strongly in place. No we have not seen one another but i think we have a pretty good idea of the types of people we all are. Our voices speak in our forums and we can sense angst and uncertainty after difficult tasks. Conversely, we share successes. We have a group in our class actively collaborating on a final project which I hope, we all, can take advantage of using with our teachers for professional development. Jane has asked us all if we would be interested in collaborating with her to better her favs by writing brief descriptions of each of the island to make them easier for the users. We have offered assistance to one another and have developed a sense of collegiality.

I have read posts and had to extend my cognitive presence, I have experienced, “a sense of puzzlement, information exchange, connected ideas and applied new ones.”

The social presence of this world is incredible, if this is not a place to find, “emotion, risk-free expression, collaboration (who of us have not made a friend in-world who has helped us in a difficult situation). This is truly an envrionment where the social presence is rich and engaging.

The teaching presence, was it Jim who counted 500 posts. That is a pretty prolific number. Who has kept the pace, our instructor. She has, “deined and initated discussion topics, shared personal meaning and helped focus our discussion.” This, I am sure, has been a major challenge.

I have just come from a conference regarding technology integration using the many wonderful tools available to educators today. A professional development model was present 23 Things for the 21st Century. Essentially it is a professional development model that gives teachers 23 tasks to complete in 10 weeks to become adept in the world of Web 2.0. The modell is totally online and each student uses a blog to report on their successes and failures with the tasks. I found the idea of having 25 student and having to monitor 25 blogs daunting. It appear to me that for cognitive presence and social presence to exist, the teacher presence would be essential to the success of the online learning experience. The facilitator is key. In the words of Peggy Sheehy, ” A million computers cannot replace one good teacher.”

I went to the NOAA site that was in Esme’s Fav List. I wasn’t too impressed. I think I am jaded because I think there was somewhat of an attempt to emulate the Weather Channel with a plane ride and some other features. None of it was nearly as much fun as extreme action at the Weather Channel Island. I do have to say that NOAA does provide more factual information. if you are looking for a site for students to learn about the oceans and the atmosphere there is information to be found. But compare it to the testis tour…no comparison. Of course, I took a few snapshots. I am finding it interesting that in RL I forget to even bring my camera much less take pictures.

Now that I have finished entertaining half of the Western Civilization for the past 5 days I can get back to work. I have a thousand posts to read. ARRRGH.

I don’t know if there is going to be more information in the forums regarding the project but my thoughts are these. I have looked at the rubric and the forums and in-world participation is far more weighty than the final project so how important is the project?

I am thinking I need to focus on this opportunity to meet, talk and potentially plan with Peggy Sheehy. She has a project in place and has already had experience, a positive one with Fred/Gus from Firesabre, with establishing a presence on the Teen Grid.

I am wondering if attending her breakouts at the Alan November Conference, a personal interview and the development of an action plan on how I will move my district into the virtual worlds would be an acceptable project? An additional part would be to chronicle what I learn from Peggy to the class. There were definitely two or three others interested in the concept.

I am hoping that my approval for the Teen Grid comes through prior to the conference. I hope to get a glimpse of the Teen Grid but don’t know if that is possible. One thing I know for sure is I do not want to make any mistakes and get banned.

If this project is feasible, then I will ask Esme for an extension on my proposal until the 19th, the day after the conference ends.

I am going to post this in the forums as well. I may want to begin some of my post in both places since I want a record of this after the course ends.

I have spent the better part of this week at the Weather Island. It is a great place to have fun. It features skiing, mountain biking, a plane ride into a hurricane and surfing.

My first take on the island was….a great place to have fun but was there any real educational value to it. I mean I can do all of these activities but what am I learning about the weather.

This island was created in 2003. That is five years ago. Pretty early adoption by the Weather Channel. I was a little surprised to find the the welcome to Weather Island was done by Stephanie Abrams. Stephanie Abrams is her name in RL. It was funny because I played the introduction last weekend and by brother-in-law calls from the other room, “Hey, that’s Stepanie Abrams.” I was surprised that she used her real name since everyone that I have encountered in SL has another name.

As I said earlier the island has places to ski, bike, surf and ride a plane into a hurricane. This was way fun, particularly the surfing. I was an avid surfer in high school and college and I might as well say thay it had a pretty realistic sensation to it. I even got Esme to join me to “hang ten” as we to say. When I was inside the wave in was a reminder of being in the “green room.” The green room is when you are inside of the wave and it is cresting over the top of you. As for the biking, it was fun, and skiing well I had a lot of trouble getting the boots and skis on. Not surprising because in RL I could never get a pair of ski boots to fit because I have a bad paw. During my skiing experience skiing experience I crashed and burned so much I could not even take pictures. I ended up flying ot of the ski area and landed in the desert! Flying the plane was a hoot. Seeing the eye of the hurricane was great.

As for the Weather Island, I realized after about my fifth visit that the best value the island had for me was learning how to attach articles to me and take them off. I tried some new poses. Learned to follow directions by reading notecards. My evaluation would be that this is a great island to use to learn how to survive in SL but not where to learn about the weather.

I have created a little movie to let other see what an avatar can do at the Weather Island. Enjoy, I did!

This class got up and running faster than our previous one. I think most of us are at least getting more comfortable in SL. Voice continues to be a problem for me. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it does not. Actually, I always get the voice, just not through the headphones. I really want to nail that down. I feel this is a vital skill to have if I ever expect to provide professional development in SL.

This class featured a guest speaker Gus Plisskin/Fred Fuchs from FibreSabre Consulting. He informed us on how we could, as educators use the SL Teen Grid with students. SL has incredible security for keeping adults off of the Teen Grid. He emphasized that if an adult tried to get an account on SL, Linden Labs goes as far as contacting the FBI and report your attempt.

While I considered what of Gus had to say pretty much an infomercial I found it extremely informative. So much so, that when I encountered a Noobie at the ISTE Headquarters looking for Esme on Sunday morning, I was able to tell her things about the Teen Grid and its accessiblity by adults. We even became friends and I promised to email her how to contact Fred which I will do today once I have time.

In the meantime, I have contacted Fred and made inquiries about getting on the Teen Grid. I believe I will get another avatar as suggested and try to participate in an already up and running project in the Teen Grid before I ever consider the purchase of land, etc for my district. I think I can swallow a $2000.00 expense next year. But, before I make this expediture I need to know exactly what project it is and the logistics of completing it with a group of students. I also need to find a teacher willing to take this kind of leap. This possibly may be an after school activity that I organize and work with a teacher to provide.

After Fred left we took a break and then we went into hell mode. Esme had plans for us to break into groups, based on how comfortable we were in SL and the idea of building. We were sent off in different directions to view videos and try to build. Other already more accomplished builders and SLers went with Esme to do an activity around education in SL, I think.

Esme was not gone long! Several frustrated builders were freaking out, include me in the pack. The easy video, building a holiday box, was not showing on the correct screen. We were watching how to make a flag that waves. That is a joke. I couldn’t build the flag pole much less a flag that waves in the wind. We were then led to another video screen but that one showed the same video.

Oh thank you, thank you Eru for being a patient teacher. She helped me and I cannot remember who right now complete our boxes. I will have to go back through the notecard for the class to remember who my equally frustrated partner was. I am still having difficulty with our duel identities. What a lesson in perseverance that was! But we managed to complete our holiday boxes and make it back to the wrap up of class in time.

Esme, as usual, had more planned for us than we could complete. There is a SLOODLE box hanging our there that has me quite curious and a quiz in the forums I am reluctant to take.

Right now what I want to learn the most is how to run a video and ppt on a whiteboard. I feel that will be a very useful skill if I ever want to provide pd in SL for teachers. The verdict is out as to if I will EVER want to build anything in SL. But, I need to practice those skill to be able to make and informed rather than infirmed decision on that one.

PS Subsequent posts in the forums has given some tips on voice in SL. I plan to try them out shortly to try and nail that skill down. I have been a little lax in my work this fortnight as there was the last few days of school and a trip out of town to visit family for a long weekend.

I have started to visit some of the sites on Beth Konkhe’s list of recommended educational sites in SL. I went to Bowling Green State University Virtual Camput

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Right at the front gate it says it is a violence free zone. I roamed around for awhile. I discovered that as the description Beth had provided that this was a resource for the faculty and students of Bowling Green. Faculty can set up office hours, have private residences, hold classes but nothing I could particularly use other than the ideas for how to use SL for an academic organization office building.

Because of the heat I decided to take a dip in the water fountain out front to cool off.

I then went to EdTech Island sponsored by Boise State University. The welcome center was pretty unassuming, but what a find! There are plenty of resources here. What a place to learn about teaching in SL! I spent about 2 hours just exploring this Island. It is fantastic. I also managed to pick up a FREE teacher resource kit that I cannont wait to go to Lighthouse Learning Island and start to unpack it. Here are some pictures of EdTech Island.

Okay, so what is a MMOLE?

Some of the topics we have covered were also topics at EdTech.

Belonging.

Safety and security/Knowing if someone is truly a friend

The benefits of gaming in VWs

Do you think that Boise got the idea for the scavenger hunts from Esme to learn about how to get around in SL?

A podcast in SL….I need to learn how to do this.

Blogging in Education…Both Boise and Bowling Green had set up blogging for teachers and students

I highly recommend a visit to EdTech Island
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I have also signed up in Google Groups to be a SL DEN member. I will be receiving daily emails from then.

I went to Campus Second Life today. I had listened to the podcast so figured it was a good time to go. The podcast was a great overview of using SL in education and some of the resources available to educators in SL. I like listening to the podcast and while they were talking I could check things out like the Studio Wiki Texture site. I bookmarked that to check out later. I also signed up for Real Life Second Life Group. I also have the SLED Blog bookmarked for further esploration. I checked out the Second Life Convention in September as well.

My trip to Campus Second Life was a little disappointing. I found myself restricted to a lot of places on the campus. I wonder why. I never found the sandbox. Although I really don’t need it with the MCGC Sandbox. The only thing that would be nice is I might meet up with someone in the sandbox at Campus SL to learn from.

BTW there were two people on the campus that were talking. So I checked out their profiles (something I find myself doing more and more.) The male avatar had a police record for an assault with an invisible weapon. I assumed this was an abuse report. Do people get some kind of punishment like the inability to participate inworld?

The only totally cool thing I did in Campus SL is found a friendly campfire and posed for the first time. I relaxed by sitting leaning on a log with my hands behind my neck. My legs crossed and I rubbed my feet together. I also lay down reading a book on a blanket. I sat in another location as well.

I feel that Campus SL deserves another look but today, I did not find much.