June 2009

Three great YouTube videos about Educational uses of Second Life

June 29, 2009

Hey everyone, this week I am on vacation with my family, and unfortunately, the Internet connection at the scenic Powhatan Resort here in Williamsburg, VA hasn’t been working since I arrived here on Saturday. I’m going to have to postpone my final post in my series on using Virtual Worlds in Education until next weekend. In the meanwhile, here’s a few great YouTube Videos about using SL for educational purposes:

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6 Examples of Using Twitter in the Classroom

June 24, 2009

[NOTE: I have published an update to this post, titled "100 Ways To Teach With Twitter". This newer post contains the links below plus a new set of articles that provide a much more robust set of resources for ideas about teaching with Twitter. I highly advise clicking through to that article. Thanks! - KW Feb 8, 2010] [...]

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Using Second Life for Educational applications

June 21, 2009

The 3rd part in a series of posts looking into the use of Virtual Worlds in Education After spending the last two weeks researching what’s going on with the use of Virtual Worlds in education related applications, I came away feeling that Second Life (abbreviated ‘SL’ from here forward) is by far the predominant tool in this [...]

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Cool insight into the future of virtual worlds & virtual reality

June 17, 2009

During my research over the last two weeks into Virtual Worlds and their use in education, I came across this incredible video demonstration of Lionhead Studio’s Project Natal. The gaming company has created a truly interactive virtual world environment, where people can interact with a very real seeming young boy named Milo. This is absolutely amazing - so much so that I simply had to mention it here, as my mid week post.

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Using Virtual Worlds in Education (Part 2)

June 14, 2009

Investigating VW alternatives to Second Life, for educational applications Last week, I focused on education related uses of the premier Virtual World application - Second Life. This week I am looking into other Virtual World environments that are being used for education and instructional applications. There are dozens of Virtual World applications in existence today, and some have areas devoted specifically to use [...]

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A couple articles about one professor’s use of Twitter in the classroom

June 10, 2009

University of Texas History Professor Monica Rankin has been getting some press lately about her use of Twitter in the classroom. I thought this made for an interesting brief mid week post, and it also serves as a nice follow up to my February post about educational application of Twitter.

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What’s going on with Virtual Worlds in Education today?

June 7, 2009

Exploring current uses of Virtual World tools in educational applications

Over the next few weeks I want to catch up with what’s been going on in the fascinating world of “virtual world” tools (like Second Life) and how these tools are being used in educational applications.

Second Life remains the “gold standard” in Virtual World applications, but there are many other VW tools available, and we will consider some of those in our exploration. When I first experimented with Second Life a year or so ago, the laptop I had at the time was pretty old, and it …

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Fun tool for the classroom - simple Crossword Puzzle maker!

June 3, 2009

This week’s mid week post is a little lighthearted - this is a fun little tool I came across (thanks to Buzz Garwood and his blog at thisweekinedtech.blogspot.com). This tool will allow you to create a simple crossword puzzle by plugging in a bunch of words and clues.

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