Fleep’s Deep Thoughts

Informal Learning
I posted a few days ago about the Personal Economics of Social Media, and highlighted Intellagirl’s slideshow, How Social Media is Pushing Higher Ed into Identity Crisis. If you missed it, I highly recommend it.
In thinking about that post and the responses I received, I started to think about what exactly “informal learning” [...]

Please note: This post will likely be of interest only to those involved in Second Life, and even then a subset of that group, only those involved in the “society” of Second Life that includes the blogosphere community and the various daily rags that chronicle the activities in this world. The rest of [...]

The Viral Professional Development that injenuity has been writing about and the EduPunk flare-up (EDUCATION IS SERIOUS BUSINESS YOU CAN’T PUT PUNK IN THERE!) got me thinking about social media both in the context of a learning tool, but also in the context of a business tool.
We all love free stuff, and I [...]

Dashing off a quick post:
Today the Media Grid Immersive Education Initiative launched the Education Grid on Sun’s Wonderland platform.
Aaron Walsh from Media Grid launched the initiative from within Second Life and the island quickly filled up with many more avatars waiting to get in to join the demonstration.

There are already six nodes on the grid [...]

Cross-posting from various listservs..
The Second Life Education Community Conference 2008 planning team has been hard at work and we have several important updates for you:
The main SLEDcc 2008 website is now available at:
http://sledcc.wikispaces.com. This will be your one-stop-shop for important information about the SLEDcc conference, in Tampa or in Second Life. Please [...]

I received a request from a colleague I met in Second Life to answer four questions her classmates had about virtual worlds in education. The course is:
University at Albany
State University of New York
ETAP 723: Seminar in Technology, Dr. Peter Shea
Module 5: Pedagogy in a Virtual World - Lorraine Emerick/Speranza Serevi & Kevin Goodman/Raxen Gears
http://www.incubatorisland.com/vworld.htm
They [...]

I was hanging out with @malburns and @tarayeats yesterday evening in Chilbo and we were having a wide ranging discussion of all things Second Life, Web 2.0, and virtual worlds more generally, when Malburns mentioned this cute little program at http://weblin.com. He was describing how it gives you a little avatar and you “teleport” [...]

Julynn Lilliehook, Dean of the soon to be opened Second Life Law School, spoke at the “Educational Possibilities of Second Life” series, sponsored by SL’ang Life magazine.
“I have found in both RL and SL that people are very uneducated about the laws that affect them,” she said, “In SL it’s [...]

Life4u reporter Draxtor Despres just sent me an IM about his latest report on the past week’s vBusiness Expo and Federal Consortium of Virtual Worlds in Second Life. I was a speaker for the Education track at the vBusiness Expo and Draxtor interviewed me afterwards. Look ma, I’m on virtual TV!

What follows are some thoughts that have been percolating since I read Peter Ludlow’s critique of virtual campuses in Second Life (Chronicle article) back in early December (talk about a long tail, eh?) and recently re-sparked by some conversations on the SLED listserv. In any case, the question about traditional learning spaces keeps coming [...]