This was the first presentation at the Education Faire, Pathfinder gave the wiki address as a starting point:
This was not a formal presentation but more a question and answer session, I recorded a few key points
- Linden Labs are looking at better ways of supporting all but there is a team specifically supporting educators and working on how to proactively support educators better in Second Life - there are likely to be changes around the tickets system and knowledge base.
- The SLED list continues to be a powerful support group, 5,500 people on the mailing list, the largest of all mailing lists hosted by Linden Lab.
- The SLED Blog is also now very useful with added articles etc.
- Someone asked about the Lindens and Real life educators meeting with each other regularly – Pathfinder considered that to be a useful suggestion
- Pathfinder mentioned resident run organisations - meeting, products and services that help people become more confident in using Second Life for education.
- There are 46 or 48 groups at the fair - the idea is that educators meet up and help each other.
- If you want a Linden to speak at events in world - there is a form on the web page –“Request a speaker" http://lindenlab.com/pressroom/speaker.
- Someone asked how many educators there are in Second Life but although there are thousands of educational establishments in SL, having received the educator’s discount, it is hard to know exactly how many there are because several educational institutions share some of the islands. It is hard to identify educational plots on the mainland as well, so no-one knows just what percentage of educators are working and collaborating in Second Life.
- Someone asked about group numbers, saying that 25 is not a big enough number - historically groups are linked to permissions and data packets etc., it is not easy to change it. The Lindens are working on how to improve the groups system. Pathfinder mentioned subscribe-o-matic http://www.subscribeomatic.com/ as a way of coping, groups use this tool to send messages, which is all many groups actually do.
- Pathfinder talked about how useful wikis are when it comes to sharing information with a group. Wikis could be used for centralising things: They could link up different educational wikis to improve accessibility for educational resources. http://sleducation.wikispaces.com
http://www.simteach.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
http://slhealthy.wetpaint.com/ - centralises information on heath care a very focused wiki
- There was a query from Language Lab about bring education and business together - as a business their path often does not cross educators. Pathfinder said that Language Lab may be invisible to him because it is a business so there is an issue - and it is part of the next level of the support systems - to get all educators recognised as educational.
- Someone raised the fact they when they search for education they often get SL training show up – there are issues with the language / terminology of education, Second Life education in Second Life and Real life education in Second Life.
It was a very interesting start to the Education Faire, I hope to attend a few more sessions.
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