Meeting Other Teachers in Virtual Worlds - a Brief Get Started Guide

I write this post with the aim of providing some simple, brief, specific steps for teachers who are curious about virtual worlds, not for students (in this instance!), but for teachers.

I suggest you 1. read instructions below and get up and running RIGHT NOW and then 2. attend the Newbie session on the 5th of May 2010.

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All you need to know to benefit from a virtual world as a teacher are these basics:

A virtual world is a 3D online space that you can see on your computer screen and move through by walking or flying around. "You" are represented by a walking figure on the screen - a figure whose appearance you can change and adapt, and this representation of 'you' is called your 'avatar'. As you walk around the world you can see other people (in the form of their avatars), you can text chat with them, sometimes voice chat with them (with a headset). 

The benefits of bothering are:

1. You can network / conference / connect with / share ideas with / debrief with colleagues in rich and psychologically compelling environment, from the comfort of home. 

2. Plenty of teacher conferences are held in a virtual world, and the best face to face conferences run a parallel conference in a virtual world - i.e. the speaker broadcasts their voice through a microphone to the people in the physical room with them, and into the virtual space too. This means you can attend conferences you have neither the time, money, or approval to attend in real life, from home. And if it's boring you can unplug! (Can't do THAT at a face to face conference!)

In particular, there are lots of unConferences - an unconference is a get together of teachers where anyone who wants to can share what they've been up to. It's a conversation rather a presentation, on the assumption that we are all experts through virtue of practical experience! Why learn from one official expert when through conversation you can pick the brains of many?

3. It's a heck of a lot of fun. 

So let's get specific - what to do if you want to dip your big toe in?

There are various communities of educators in 3D environments, but for simplicity let's look at "Jokaydia", and how to access Jokaydia.

STEP 1; First, go to the Second Life website and click join now - you'll get an account and a chance to download the Second Life program, which is what you use to go into the 3D world.

STEP 2; When you run the Second Life program for the first time you get taken to a tutorial space where you can learn the basics of moving around in the world. To finish the tutorial you end up leaving the tutorial space by 'teleporting' to the 'mainland'. Once you've done that, you're free to go where you want.

STEP 3: To get to "Jokaydia", either do a search for Jokaydia from within the Second Life program, or just click here: SLurl: http://slurl.com/secondlife/jokaydia/108/159/23 

Jokaydia is a series of islands built by, and frequented by, a bunch of motivated educators, especially from Australia. Drop in, and you may well find people there - approach them and type in "hello I am new here!" and see where things go from there!

Jokaydia was and is pioneered by educator Jo Kay for whom I have profound respect and admiration. Now that you have access, have a look at upcoming events: http://jokaydia.com/jokaydia-events-calendar/

You'll see there is a "Newbie Session" on Wednesday the 5th of May 2010 - this would be your perfect opportunity to get basic advice and make some contacts!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jokay/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

There are also plenty of other events coming up, including an 'unConference' you can attend later in May.

Other Universes:

For the record, 'Second Life' is not the only virtual world system, and Jokaydia exists in other virtual world systems too. It is pan-dimensional!!! There is "ReactionGrid" and also "JokaydiaGrid" - both easy to access, and functioning very very similarly to Second Life. Jokaydia Grid in particular has the advantage that you can take groups of students into the space, for free! No rush at all, but if/when you're ready, there are instructions for accessing these worlds here: http://jokaydia.com/venues-and-resources-on-the-islands-of-jokaydia/jokaydia-reactiongrid/ (for Reaction Grid) and here: http://jokaydiagrid.com/signup-for-jokaydiagrid/ (for Jokaydia Grid). 

This is easier than it sounds - it's like belonging to multiple websites... this is multiple virtual universes! 

Also checkout http://wiki.jokaydia.com/page/Main_Page for much more information!

See you in there!

The Best Bits of my Crazy School

Here are the 'Best Bits' of my school that might spark of your own ideas for your own teaching/learning context. I'm suddenly getting about 150 visitors to HappySteve per day, up from my normal 20 or so, so I thought I'd throw an overview out to you all of the ventures that have me so damn excited about working where I work. 

Technology is not the point. Some projects below use technology heavily, but the million dollar question is are students engaged and extended?

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'The Matrix'

 Known by various names, this program runs in Years 5, 6, 7 and 8 - we throw all students from that academic year into one large space with few walls, or no walls, for a cross-curricular program lead by a cross-curricular team of teachers, where the students self-select into a matrix of activities ranging from simple to complex, and a wide range of multiple intelligences. In Year 7 students spend most of their time in this sort of environment.

The result is a sight to behold! Teacher collaboration and openness rather than territoriality. Student motivation sky high as they become educational entrepreneurs rather than passive recipients. A sense of movement and momentum towards the creativity end of the learning spectrum. An almost zero level of conflict / disengagement.

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The Real Audience Project

 We want every class to have a publishing presence online. No matter what the students are producing, the teacher ought to be redirecting their creative creations to the web for the world to see and comment on. We call this the 'Real Audience Project', and have set up www.realaudienceproject.com where ALL of our students' publishing projects will appear.

The Real Audience Project includes basic web publishing such as http://nbcsnews.wordpress.com (12,000 visitors now!! The students can imagine themselves on the stage of a stadium, and this fuels the care and attention they give their writing).

Also audio publishing in projects like http://wordsworthreflections.wordpress.com, where students ring a local number from their phone and what they say appears instantly (over 4,000 visitors), http://youtube.com/frenchfm, and our radio station (open: http://209.119.13.39:11300/listen.pls in iTunes to listen in). 

Also print book publishing at http://stores.lulu.com/realaudienceproject - we have had 80 or 90 sales now at our little book store. People order the books and they arrive via mail. It's great for our students to be able to say they are published authors, and again, the care they put into their work is due to the publishing process.

Also, teacher publishing at the real audience project dot com you'll find our teacher tweets and blogs. The benefit for them is the same as for our students - publishing sharpens your mind, raises your standards, and rewards you with recognition. Step 1, get your teachers to blog - it's the launchpad for a learning journey.

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Virtual Worlds

 Since the start of 2009 we have had a virtual island that students can access from school or at home.Our students have build and coded the world themselves, and they teach each other the expertise they acquire. Teachers also use it in class to target specific skills. We use 'Second Life' for our original island, but now have a much cheaper second space which we run with a free program called 'Open Sim'.

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Beyond Borders

 I launched Beyond Borders in 2005 to provide locked, moderated web spaces where students from multiple schools could work together on collaborative projects. We've had well over 3,000 participants 

from all over the world. It's a great way for teachers to help their students lift their horizons beyond the claustrophobic perspective of their classroom.

Beyond Borders is the main reason why those lovely people gave me those lovely awards. 

Yes you can participate, for free! (I run full training sessions too). 
 

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Online Study

In 2006 we started offering HSC (the last two years of High School for ages 17 & 18) courses in an entirely online mode. Some teachers, including me, put their hands up to set up and teach these courses. We now have over 300 students from all over the state doing one or more subjects with us, and  it turns out they perform better in the HSC than face to face students. When a student owns their own learning, and is able to learn according to their own rhythm and preferences, they do better than when plonked in a classroom in front of a boss who tells them what to do and when to do it. 45% of our 2009 students scored in the top two bands of the HSC.

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Moodle for Everyone

  

All our classes have a Moodle page equipped with learning
resources, assessments and communication tools. Our online infrastructure is of
benefit to all our students. This is exerting strong pressure and influence on
our face to face classes. Teacher roles are shifting, as well they should in
the information age, from source of knowledge to coach/mentor.

Here is our Primary age Moodle site.

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And finally, a concept I can't recommend highly enough to leaders of other schools:

  the Sydney Centre for Innovation in Learning (SCIL)

It's just a name. By giving something a name, it exists, right? Back in 2005 our principal labelled it, and it existed! SCIL is a label that gathers a whole range of innovative practices around the school. It 
mobilises, supports, and rewards teachers for taking risks. Teachers trying new ideas and talking online about them have access to the title SCIL Associate which is a career aspiration, a map for understanding what the school is on about, and an easy way to open doors to conversations with other educators.

Five years later we also have a building called the Sydney Centre for Innovation in Learning. See some photos of it here: http://scil.nsw.edu.au/scil-building/ As you view the photos, note that this is where our Year 8s often spend their time learning. Notice that there is no obvious 'front' of the class for teacher talk? There are, however, enough seductive and varied learning spaces to cater for the 140 inquisitive minds who are thrown in their with 6 cross-curricular teachers. Among these are a camp fire, a cave and a wateringhole , metaphorically speaking, spaces designed to facilitate mythically universal modes of learning.

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Post Script: We've now launched a teacher training institute, under the auspices of the Sydney Centre for Innovation in Learning, driven by the very teachers who have been instrumental in the above initiatives. Our motto for this is "PD Like No Other". Attendees at ACEC2010 will know how I feel about traditional PD!!! If you want to replicate some of the ideas above, come and spend the day with me or my colleagues - you can see the ideas in action with the students, and we'll work with you step by step to adapt the ideas to your context.

Come and visit us! Book up for next term! What ya waiting for?

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There are plenty more, but the projects I have mentioned are some the more mature initiatives. Our informal motto is "Do, then think!" (our official mission is "Excellence in Education, Christianity in Action") and these are some of the projects that have survived, while in background we have plenty of other risky initiatives that may succeed gloriously or fail dismally.

See the reactions of previous visitors here.

I am going to reorganise my blog as soon as I get the time so instead of having to trawl though the archives or click on some messy 'category' links, you'll get a clean table of contents so you can get further information on the various initiatives I've had a personal hand in.

Sunday, April 11, 2010 at 10:04 PM

Welcome dear fellow educators. I am @steve_collis. I teach at an amazing school in Sydney, Australia, in awe of the sheer potential of young minds. 

We're living in scary and exciting times, a time where humility, and LEARNING is needed - for teachers, for leaders, for our young people. 

Follow me on Twitter. Subscribe to my blog. Hear the voices of our students. Visit us!

Gary Stager speaks, and it's well worth a listen.

I'm posting here with people who did not attend the recent Australian Computers in Education Conference - which I imagine will be most people reading this.If you didn't pick up on it on Twitter, I tried to broadcast as many of the presentations over my webcam as I could - with the kind permission of the presenters involved. 

Gary Stager was not only enthusiastic about me broadcasting his talk, he was enthusiastic about me recording it too. I am delighted at the new culture of sharing, and delighted at the idea that you don't have to spend money and travel and a week's worth of time to get the benefits of a big national conference.

The highlight of any conference for me is meeting like minded educators, but at most conferences there is a talk or two I can really get my teeth into - in this case:

Stager's presentation was another major highlight for me. He is intelligent and he is sincere. If he is not exactly the epitome of gentle diplomacy, well, I don't really care.

I found his talk to be insightful in some very particular ways. 

For one, he is insightful about the importance of 'expectations'. Our expectations of ourselves, and of our students. 

For another, he is insightful about the importance of language. We create reality with our words, right? I appreciated his remarks about banal words like 'content'. It has been a New Year's Resolution for me to expand my vocabulary - not so much for how I speak but for how I think, because I think with terms that betray wrong assumptions. 

Ok I will now shut up about the insights I found in Stager's talk. It comes very highly recommended. I am watching it back over and over! 

ACEC Presentation: Professional Development and the Web

This is my post for a conference presentation at the ACEC conference in Melbourne. If there is a video stream you can watch it here: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/technology-in-education-show

Below you will find the 'main bits', an embedded chat system for use during the session, a link to an 'etherpad' where you can add your own links and other insights, and hopefully even a video transmission of the presentation itself.

SOME ACTIONS TO TAKE DURING PRESENTATION (OR AFTERWARDS):

Explore the links at the bottom of this post, text chat with attendees & virtual attendees.

Leave a comment on this blog post giving your perspective or story, or introducing yourself.

Connect with me! Subscribe to my blog using the link in the right margin, or send me a twitter message to @steve_collis, or come visit my school: http://scil.nsw.edu.au/pd/ Also I am running a free online seminar myself in a few days. Please email me at scollis then the @ sign, then nbcs.nsw.edu.au to get an invite.

Click here and add to the resources contributed by others related to this presentation: etherpad

Get a Twitter account, then go to: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=acec2010 and click on people's names and click "follow" to connect to other ACEC attendees. Send a tweet to them and say "hello, I am at ACEC too!" 

Go to http://edublogs.org/ and start your own blog now!

Go to www.secondlife.com and join up, install Second Life software. enter the virtual world, then go to the educators spaces: Jokaydia or RezEd

The Live Chat System: (sent tweets including the text #acecpd and they will be included)

The Main Bits:

Twitter:

Explanation: http://www.commoncraft.com/Twitter

How to get started: there are heaps of tutorial videos, e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0xbjIE8cPM (google "Twitter Tutorial")

Twitter Etiquette: http://www.chrisbrogan.com/a-brief-and-informal-twitter-etiquette-guide/ and plenty of others (google "Twitter Etiquette")

I recommend using Tweetdeck (download here: http://www.tweetdeck.com/download/)

Blogging:

Explanation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN2I1pWXjXI 

Start a blog by going to:http://edublogs.org/, www.blogger.com, www.wordpress.com, or www.typepad.com - they're all free.

Some Teacher Social Networks:

http://oznzeducators.ning.com/ - especially for Australian and New Zealand teachers

http://www.classroom20.com/ - big worldwide network with a lot of activity!

http://acec2010.ning.com/ - for ACEC attendees (and anyone else too, I think!)

http://rezedhub.ning.com/ - focussing on virtual worlds for learning

http://technolanguages.ning.com/  focussing on language teaching and learning.

Live Webinars:

Past meetings of the OZ/NZ Teachers Network: http://edhouse.wikispaces.com/Meeting+topics

Classroom 2.0 Events: http://live.classroom20.com/archive-and-resources.html

The Educators PLN: http://edupln.ning.com 

Meetings/Communities in 3D Virtual Worlds:

Jokaydia - http://jokaydia.com/ (a community that spans various 3D environments, with lots of Australian teachers)

http://www.rezed.org/ - a thriving international community of educators with regular get togethers in 'Second Life' - scroll down to the bottom of their page for lots of useful links.

To travel to these spaces, log into Second Life and then search for "Jokaydia" and "RezEd" locations and teleport there.