Second Life College Fair and Wrap Up of Second Life and Lunch This Week

Last weekend I planned to pop into Second Life to attend one of the presentations at the 2009 Second Life College Fair on Saturday. The plan was to look around at the various booths, catch the "Using Second Life For Agriculture, Animal and Poultry Science Instruction" presentation from the folks at Auburn University, then pop back out again. Instead, I logged in a little earlier for the "Teaching International Courses in Second Life" presentation and just couldn't leave my seat. In fact, I came back the next day and didn't miss any of them except Claudia Linden who started things out. Needless to say I thought all of the presentations were fantastic. It was exciting to see how other colleges are using Second Life in the classroom.


I had to pick just one presentation to tell you about, I have to say that John Fillwalk's presentation about "Bridging Realities - Approaches to Hybrid World Education" (Ball State University) blew me away. One of the things he talked about was Flickr Gettr, which can search Flickr for images from a text search from within Second Life and make the images appear in-world on a series of prims. I'm not doing this justice by trying to describe it to you. It's uber-cool and should be experienced to be appreciated. You can find a public access Flickr Getter fountain on NMC island here: http://slurl.com/secondlife/NMC%20Campus%20West/132/92/21   It's art...it's tech...what's not to like?

The display booths for this year's fair will remain up until November 13, so you still have time to look around.

Here are some helpful links to help you find your way around:
Fair map http://bit.ly/SLCF09map
Welcome Area http://slurl.com/secondlife/International%20Schools%202/89/15/21
Kirkwood Community College booth http://slurl.com/secondlife/International%20Schools%203/175/221/21


This week's Second Life and Lunch featured a real world event, the NISOD Webinar, "Enhancing Instruction and Engagement with Second Life." The presentation seemed to be geared more towards those who are not in Second Life yet to encourage them to sign up. It was a "preaching to the choir" moment for our group. With a speaker from Texas State Technical College in the lineup, I had hoped to hear more about how they have recently graduated a student from their Digital Media Certificate Program through classes offered completely from within the virtual world of Second Life. They mentioned it, but didn't go into it with much detail. You can find out more about it on their Web site at http://v.tstc.edu/ and even find links to a news story about the graduation ceremony held within Second Life.

That's it for this week. I hope to see you at next week's Second Life and Lunch.