Week+III


 * Dembo** (2008) //Virtual Worlds for Educators//

mentions interactive learning environments (The Discovery Education headquarters) discusses classroom uses of Teen SL

p49 quoting Will Richardson, columnist for District Administration, "We're still struggling to get our brains and our practice around the idea of publishing and collaborating on the Web, much less delivering content or workshops in these synchronous, online, user-created spaces. Until we are able in some systematic way to re-envision teaching and schooling to embrace the potentials of anytime, anywhere learning, we're going to have a very difficult time understanding hoe to leverage the possibilities."

(QUESTION- this was written in 2008 and still talking about the newness of SL and the thoughts of using it as an ed platform. So how long does it take a technology to become mainstream enough for people to view it as common place enough to use it in education? What are the issues here? similar to gaming as educational? Why do some institutions 'see it' earlier than others?)

p50-1 National School Boards Assoc. "recommends school districts take proactive approach about social networking- educatos who have spent time in a virtual world are better equiped to explore the issues with students"

p52 Discovery Educator Leadership Council- volunteer educators who mentor other new SL educators

virtual worlds as a new "critical literacy"

"Forward- thinking districts are ensuring their teachers become accustomed to interacting a virtual environments so they can leverage these technologies as they become increasingly available."

professional development workshops= collaboration

talking about Teen SL primarily logistics and opportunities
 * Czarnecki, K**. (2008). //Building community as a library in a 3D environmen//t

p25 describing TSL ... "profound ability to collaborate with others and amount of control and creativity over one's environment)

points out that purchasing land is really buying server space, processing speed, and hardware maintenance- each island is the same as one server- the sme as buying a domain name

purpose of TSL and Eye4You Alliance (sim owned by Charlotte and Mecklenburg County exploring what teens can do/learn with their own VW

p26 (similar to RL) "library services should be center of community- being knowledgeable about the community but also by bringing community together- invite partners into the library (to give programs etc) works well in VW Too- NASA has presence and can (does) have activities for teens YA book talks (alsi with YA authors) reference services- people holding office hours- experts on topic will be there (trying out real time co-browsing where 2 people look at website at the same time without having to leave SL to do ti)

comin up with new ways to intereact with teens when conducting a reference interview.