MUVE's+and+Professional+Development

Kelley Straight's Resources:

I spent a great deal of time researching professional organizations and other sources to gain more information about multi user virtual environments. I explained in my discussion post this week that I am a novice in this area, so I had a lot to learn. The two professional organizations that I found were the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) and the Discovery Educators Network. There is an area within the ISTE site titled ISTE Island. They have broadcasts in second life that allows educators to communicate and also learn from other educators what they are doing in their classrooms. The Discovery Educators Network provides many resources for educators including lesson plans, professional development, blogs, forums, and webinars. There are approximately 5,500 members that participate in the forums to discuss past and upcoming events. As I was looking through some of the forums, I noticed that they had taken a virtual field trip together. There is an event link on the page, so educators can stay abreast of upcoming events.

The New Media Consortium Horizons Project focuses on providing information for new and emerging technology. They also provide the research and analysis of the technologies that are being used at different institutions. The site has free, open forums mainly in the form of a wiki to contribute and retrieve information. Classroom 2.0 is a personal learning network that allows educators to share ideas and lessons that pertain to technology. This is a great place to explore and learn about the different web 2.0 tools available to use.

I feel that these resources will be helpful for my colleagues and their professional development. I would suggest that they use these resources to stay abreast of and to learn about various technologies available and how they can be used in the classroom. The fact that they are able to receive professional development without a face to face session will be appealing to most of my colleagues. With the demands of everyday life, these resources make it more manageable to fit into all of our busy lifestyles.

Kelley - I am glad you located Discovery Educator Network. I had not thought about them when I was searching and look forward to checking out their island. It took me a while to realize I should be searching for the names of specific organizations. Once I got past that, I begin to find a lot more hits that are related to technology. Did you have any problems in that respect? - Margaret

Hi Margaret- I honestly struggled tremendously with this task. I felt myself feeling confused for most of my searches. I actually starting reading articles about second life and MUVE's and that is where I got my ideas for my searches.

Margaret Ridgeway's resources: In exploring Second Life (SL), the hardest thing for me was staying focused on what I was trying to do or find out. Each time I would get sidetracked by something I would see or a place to which I would like to teleport. One example - I am not a shopper, but shopping in SL (all the freebies) was kind of fun. I finally settled down and forced myself to actually do work. I found ISTE to be one of the largest educational presences that offers training or workshops and another one was EdTech. It seemed though that most of these were devoted to teaching someone how to create objects and worlds while learning to use SL. While down the line I would like to do this, right now I would prefer being able to key in to simply using worlds which are already created that I can use in my classroom. I did notice that ISTE had a board from which you could teleport to other worlds that were more content related. Another good resource in SL that I think would be helpful is Edutopia. This world had a good bit of gaming and role play activities that aims at engaging learners. As for my personal learning network, a group I discovered in SL was called Virtual Pioneers, which is devoted to learning how to use SL in the social studies classroom. I decided to join that group and hope I can learn more about using SL with my students.

At this point, I am not exactly sure my local colleagues are ready for PD in SL, even though I can see how it might help to facilitate professional development workshops. One education world I visited was the Greenbush Education Island. While there were no activities going on at that time, they did have a theater with a connection to Adobe Connect. Obviously, they use this for their meetings, and I would like to contact someone to see how they like the virtual meetings. Eventually, this information might be an opening for using SL for professional development in my district. However, I actually think giving educators an opportunity to use SL with their students might be a better first step to opening that door. Once they see their students engagement, they might be a little more receptive.

Dan Whitney's Post

I will have to admit that my experience with multi-user virtual environments has not exactly been productive so far. Sanchez said that two of the barriers to learning in Second Life were technical difficulties and that it was time consuming. After experiencing some of the technical difficulties of Second Life and hearing a friend say that Activeworlds was less time consuming and easier to use I decided to give Activeworlds a try. After three days of bumbling through Activeworlds I have realized that it is pretty time consuming and confusing as well.

I started out pretty excited about some of the resources that had been described on Activeworlds’ home page, but once I entered the site I had an extremely difficult time locating said resources. The resources are there, but there is a definite learning curve to Activeworlds, and the average person is going to spend a long time exploring how to use the site before they can take full advantage of it. Although the River City Project is primarily a science project originally funded by the National Science Foundation, it definitely seemed like a resource that would be useful to History teachers as well as it has students travel back in time to address 19th century issues. As we just finished a unit on 9/11, I would have liked to have had access to SIDRIS’ 9/11 page several weeks ago. Overall though, I am struggling to navigate through Activeworlds which is why it would be a challenge to encourage my colleagues to use a MUVE.

With what I know now there would be no way I could convince my colleagues to use a MUVE. The best I could do would be to show them a site and then let them explore that site. Unfortunately, many would immediately begin to wonder what the benefits of MUVEs are. With more time and practice, I would be able to highlight some of the resources that my colleagues would find useful, but to be honest, I have no idea how much more time I would need to be able to do that. As I said earlier, I have been bumbling along for three days, and I still feel lost. Hopefully, I will begin to get my bearings soon.

Sanchez, J. (2009). Barriers to Student Learning in Second Life. //Library Technology Reports//, //45//(2), 29-34.

Hello Dan, I understand your frustration with both websites because I also became a member of both. I also found navigating them time consuming and tedious to learn. I spoke with the technology teacher at my school and she said to choose one and learn its capabilities, its technical problems and features to the point where you feel comfortable to asking a colleague to join you in the virtual environment. Once you are that comfortable you can be your colleagues guide within the world and you hone your skills as well.

Valerie Richardson's Response

Like many of you I am a novice with the multi-user virtual environments. Although they may eventually be very useful in K-12 education in the long-run, getting started and acclimated to the virtual environment is time consuming and tedious. They are not very user friendly and for educational purposes need to be more direct with participating in and obtaining educational information. The two professional organizations I found were the National Council for Social Studies (NCSS) and the International Society for Technology Education (ISTE) both offered professional development in the latest technologies however, the NCSS was more specific to my content area. ISTE provides educators with a broadcast in SecondLife (SL) so educators can communicate and learn from one another. The NCSS has a link that provides teachers with virtual environment resources, lesson plans and professional development. ISTE also also a wealth of resources on emerging technologies and how they will be utilized.

Edutopia is one site that I uses to stay abreast of new and emerging technologies in education. They have members who utilize various technologies in their classrooms and then write reviews, blog about or even make videos to show how to use the technology most efficiently. If you become a member you will become privy to a wealth of resources and lessons to use in class as well as various webinars and other profesional development events to expand not only your knowledge of emerging technologies but information on how to utilize it, school/district adoption and resources to finance purchasing various technologies.

T0 get my colleagues to engage in a professional development utilizing a MUVE I would start within my department and ask they visit the NCSS website they join a MUVE. I would also allow for time to learn how to navigate the MUVE and become apart of a community within it. Then after everyone is comfortable I would ask the technology teacher to help develop a professional development within the MUVE regarding our content area. This would only come to fruition after I feel comfortable as a member of a virtual world.

Hi Valerie, I found it to be time consuming and tedious as well. I think you have a good plan for moving forward with this. I am just worried that if I am feeling this way (and I am willing to try anything) then this is going to be a hard sell for my colleagues.