Yesterday was the first run of edna workshops conducted online using Live Classroom during the day and Second Life in the evening.
It was a long day for those who signed up for the full menu. Breakfast with Kerrie Smith and Gemma Mayfield at 730am Adelaide Time covered the me.edu.au service and discussed social networking. I presented on Creative Commons licensing and searching at the more reasonable hour of 930am (Kerrie is definitely a morning person). Lynley Clark and Kerrie were on hand to help out.
The next session in the afternoon from Belinda Spry and aided by Pru Mitchell and Gemma delved into digital literacies. What a great discussion everyone had!
The last Live Classroom session of the day on Learning Without Borders from Cecily Wright aided by Pru Mitchell is already getting rave reviews.
The text chat that can go on as the presenter is talking is really valuable. It’s like having back channel conversations going on within the session, rather than on other sites like Twitter.
There were some technical snags — firewall issues, proxy settings and headsets deciding not to cooperate at the last minute. Some we’ll be able to learn from, some will help in our evaluation of the tool itself and some were just Murphy’s Law.
The final session of the day was in Second Life on my home island of jokaydia.
Konrad March of March studios (for whom this event was in the wee hours of the morning) selflessly volunteered as our in-world machinima camera man and hung in there for the entire event.
Joanna McKay - owner of the islands of jokaydia took everyone on a tour of the island she has developed for Swinburne University of Technology, then a virtual hair dressing salon for TAFE students and a tour of the Kangan Batman TAFE building.
Then Dean Groom and Judy O’Connell of the Second Classroom project presented on their work with secondary school students in virtual worlds.
I rigged up my mobile phone to stream live video from my computer monitor to the qik.com web service - you can view the video and see the “behind the scenes” image of the geekery behind it on my kerryj.com blog - http://kerryj.com/2008/06/18/geeking-out/
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