Second Life Learning Curve

All of us in Second Life were “newbies” at one time. Second Life is full of people who will help “newbies”. If you are a company or university who wants to start using Second Life it is very important to make it “comfortable” for newbies.

Joe Sanchez in his blog The Educators Coop” discusses his and his students adventure into Second Life.

Web 2.0 – Math

“Web 2.0 has the potential to change the way we learn and teach mathematics not unlike what Apple Computer did back in 1984 with their launch of the Macintosh, which changed the way everyone uses computers today,” according to Ihor Charischakof CLIME Connections, the Council for Technology in Math Education (2009). However, math education has not kept up with Web 2.0.

In this article of THE Journal (Transforming Education Through Technology) Patricia Deube talks about what can be done to improve the teaching of math. She links and discusses many great websites.

Natural Math
Social Math

She also mentions Scratch which is a programing tool for kids created by MIT Media Lab.

This site is full of links, if you teach math, or just want to learn more for yourself, this is a great site.

MaMachinima International Festival (MMIF)

This weekend is a unbelievable Machinima festival in Second Life.
http://MMIF.org
http://mamachinima.blogspot.com/
http://twitter.com/Mamachinima

Stop by and check it out…

School of the future.

Looks like Finland is attempting to do thing right.

Learning in 3D – talk at Metanomics

The video is up at the Metanomics site. If you were unable to be in Second Life, this is worth while seeing. Tony O’Driscoll and Karl Kapp’s new book is a necessary reading if you are at all interested in virtual worlds for learning and teaching.

As Roland Legrand says in his blog:
“In my experience many young people do use social networks such as Facebook, but they don’t blog, don’t know what a wiki is, don’t use RSS-feeds and are bewildered by Twitter, let alone that they have the faintest idea of how to use a virtual environment for learning….That does not mean we should not use social media tools to facilitate learning, and immersive environments are such a tool.”

According to the Information Solutions Group (ISG)

More females play social games (55% vs. 45%).
- In the UK, the percentage of female social game players is slightly higher at 58%.

Social game players average 43 years in age. 20% are less than 30 years old, 21% are 30 – 39 years old, 20% are 40 – 49 years old, while a total of 38% are at least 50 years old.
- Social game players in the US tend to be older than those in the UK with 46% at least 50 years old, compared to only 23% in the UK. The average age of US social gamers is 48, while UK social gamers average only 38 years old.

Less than half (43%) of those in the US who play social games are college graduates with 28% receiving a 4-year degree.
36% have completed some college or trade school.