Kitely Educators Group

[Graham Mills]

Yes, there is one (and that's its name). It's free to join and a great way to network with other educators!

What else should it do?

[Graham Mills]

I'm hoping to arrange a series of monthly visits to education-oriented worlds during the course of 2014. This is intended not just as an opportunity for educators to present a finished student experience but just as much to enable those getting started to outline their plans, get helpful feedback from others and acquire practice in working with a group inworld. Much of what I do is best described presently as works-in-progress and I'm keen that others similarly placed engage with the visits as well. Some worlds may not be education-specific but still be of interest to students and teachers. Others may be of cultural (architectural, storytelling, role play, etc) or technical interest ("how to get started with X" where X is scripting, animation, mesh, clothes, etc), the latter perhaps including vendor showcases. The visits would typically last 60 min with maybe 5 min at the end devoted to group business and forthcoming visits.

Thus far I've approached a couple of people I happened to see online or inworld. Aaron Griffiths and Kevin McCabe have kindly agreed to participate and I will also do something or maybe even two somethings. The aim is to stage the visits at monthly intervals. I'm aware that there's no perfect time for such meetings and we may, indeed, have to vary the times according to presenter location. However, we could maybe focus on a specific day, perhaps the last Sunday of each month?

Of course, there are other groups doing similar things, notably ISTE in Second Life and Pathfinder Lester's Hypergrid Adventurers Club (HGAC) in OpenSim although the latter is not education-specific. My inclination is to to advertise these events beyond Kitely when the Hypergrid arrives in February/March though to attempt to construct a full programme based on Kitely for the current year rather than have a merged programme with other grids right from the start.

And we need a name. My favourite at the moment is (Kitely) Education Open House but I'm open to suggestions.

[Selby Evans]

I'm hoping to arrange a series of monthly visits to education-oriented worlds during the course of 2014. This is intended not just as an opportunity for educators to present a finished student experience but just as much to enable those getting started to outline their plans, get helpful feedback from others and acquire practice in working with a group inworld.

Thus far I've approached a couple of people I happened to see online or inworld. Aaron Griffiths and Kevin McCabe have kindly agreed to participate and I will also do something or maybe even two somethings. The aim is to stage the visits at monthly intervals. I'm aware that there's no perfect time for such meetings and we may, indeed, have to vary the times according to presenter location. However, we could maybe focus on a specific day, perhaps the last Sunday of each month?

Of course, there are other groups doing similar things, notably ISTE in Second Life and Pathfinder Lester's Hypergrid Adventurers Club (HGAC) in OpenSim although the latter is not education-specific. My inclination is to to advertise these events beyond Kitely when the Hypergrid arrives in February/March though to attempt to construct a full programme based on Kitely for the current year rather than have a merged programme with other grids right from the start.

And we need a name. My favourite at the moment is (Kitely) Education Open House but I'm open to suggestions.

I am quite interested in your plan. Education is one of the main themes of my blog:
http://virtualoutworlding.blogspot.com/ ... orlds.html

I will be interested in reporting on some of the presentations and perhaps carrying some invited blog posts. I have already found some of the benefits Kitely can offer to immersive education and will be reporting on those soon.

Time: A Sunday sounds good to me. But note that VWER (a meeting in SL much like what you have in mind.) does quite well on Thursdays at 11:30 SLT.

I would recommend that you not use Kitely in the title of the group that is to manage the activity--that constricts the interpretation. My recommendation is to use"Virtual Worlds" as the suggested locale. For example: "Virtual Worlds Educators" (VWE). This follows the pattern of VWBPE (Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education), but with a better acronym.

VWBPE is presently organized around an annual conference (in virtual worlds). Possibly it might be interested in expanding to include (and promote) other educational organizations such as the one you have in mind.

BTW, the VWBPE has announced a call for proposals for the 2014 conference; anyone interested in immersive education may want to take note. (See my blog later today.)

Selby Evans

[Graham Mills]

Hi Selby

Thanks for your comment. Yes, I used to attend VWER when I was still in SL and I organised a grid visit during VWBPE a couple of years back when I was on another OpenSim grid (I had Fleep Tuque helping me ad hoc get the avatars from SL to OpenSim; she was amazing). With the advent of the Hypergrid I hope Kitely educators can participate in Kitely during the next VWBPE and maybe we could factor that into the program.

However, I think VWER are much more discussion-based and never did much by way of sim visits or hands-on training although for a short while they had an outpost on ReactionGrid and I believe they also visited Kitely in its early days.

Best wishes

Graham

I'm hoping to arrange a series of monthly visits to education-oriented worlds during the course of 2014. This is intended not just as an opportunity for educators to present a finished student experience but just as much to enable those getting started to outline their plans, get helpful feedback from others and acquire practice in working with a group inworld.

Thus far I've approached a couple of people I happened to see online or inworld. Aaron Griffiths and Kevin McCabe have kindly agreed to participate and I will also do something or maybe even two somethings. The aim is to stage the visits at monthly intervals. I'm aware that there's no perfect time for such meetings and we may, indeed, have to vary the times according to presenter location. However, we could maybe focus on a specific day, perhaps the last Sunday of each month?

Of course, there are other groups doing similar things, notably ISTE in Second Life and Pathfinder Lester's Hypergrid Adventurers Club (HGAC) in OpenSim although the latter is not education-specific. My inclination is to to advertise these events beyond Kitely when the Hypergrid arrives in February/March though to attempt to construct a full programme based on Kitely for the current year rather than have a merged programme with other grids right from the start.

And we need a name. My favourite at the moment is (Kitely) Education Open House but I'm open to suggestions.

I am quite interested in your plan. Education is one of the main themes of my blog:
http://virtualoutworlding.blogspot.com/ ... orlds.html

I will be interested in reporting on some of the presentations and perhaps carrying some invited blog posts. I have already found some of the benefits Kitely can offer to immersive education and will be reporting on those soon.

Time: A Sunday sounds good to me. But note that VWER (a meeting in SL much like what you have in mind.) does quite well on Thursdays at 11:30 SLT.

I would recommend that you not use Kitely in the title of the group that is to manage the activity--that constricts the interpretation. My recommendation is to use"Virtual Worlds" as the suggested locale. For example: "Virtual Worlds Educators" (VWE). This follows the pattern of VWBPE (Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education), but with a better acronym.

VWBPE is presently organized around an annual conference (in virtual worlds). Possibly it might be interested in expanding to include (and promote) other educational organizations such as the one you have in mind.

BTW, the VWBPE has announced a call for proposals for the 2014 conference; anyone interested in immersive education may want to take note. (See my blog later today.)

Selby Evans

[Graham Mills]

I note that the OSGrid VWBPE14 strand (April 9-14th) has sim demonstrations scheduled as well as the usual fare including post-conference grid explorations. It's obviously up to individuals as to how they engage with the VWBPE leviathan (I assume sim demonstrations via Hypergrid should be feasible by then) but my own personal view is that any Kitely group should remain independent of VWBPE and its organisation (even assuming that VWBPE wanted anything to do with a presently entirely nebulous Kitely group, of course). Whether the Kitely group merges into some other entity at the end of the year should be decided at that stage. My preference would be to work with the 200+ educators on the opensim-edu list if anyone (disclosure: I co-moderate that list). YMMV.

[Ghaelen DLareh]

Graham, this sounds very interesting. I've attended one of the VWBPE conferences, and they are fascinating. Can you post a link or send me an IM to subscribe to the list-serve? I'd also like to join the Kitely educators' group.

I don't have much time to do things right now (not even build!), but I'd like to keep up with the activities. Kitely is proving to have a lot of potential for university education as well as K-12. It's nice to meet with colleagues occasionally and bounce new ideas around.

[Graham Mills]

Hi Ghaelen

I've sent you an invite (the group currently has 26 members so not entirely nebulous ) and the listserv details are here. I agree that the VWBPE is an excellent conference experience although I didn't make it to much of last year's. Hopefully I'll get to see more this year with Hypergrid access making it easier to get around.

Graham, this sounds very interesting. I've attended one of the VWBPE conferences, and they are fascinating. Can you post a link or send me an IM to subscribe to the list-serve? I'd also like to join the Kitely educators' group.

I don't have much time to do things right now (not even build!), but I'd like to keep up with the activities. Kitely is proving to have a lot of potential for university education as well as K-12. It's nice to meet with colleagues occasionally and bounce new ideas around.