This year’s Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education conference aims to focus on imagination. Themed Imagination Around the World, this free virtual event takes place in Second Life on March 12–13. Second Life is growing as a venue for education at multiple grade levels. According to Nielsen, Second Life is the second most popular PC game worldwide (behind World of Warcraft). Imagination is sometimes neglected in traditional education settings, but is actually IMO the most important area to develop. Without imagination and creativity what are we? The VWBPE 2010 committee wants to highlight the importance of stimulating the imagination as a means of “sharing knowledge.” Education in virtual worlds relies heavily on collaboration and communication, but would you say that it is more collaborative than traditional education? I guess the answer is, “it depends.”
VWBPE 2009 talk on the U.S. Department of Education’s Handheld Augmented Reality Project (HARP). The project is geared towards engaging middle school students in collaborative learning games. In the video O’Shea differentiates augmented reality as a merging between physical reality and virtual reality.
In general I think that smart people will find ways to educate themselves. I’d like to see learning environments that give students the opportunity to specialize at younger ages. In other words I think it would be beneficial to gear high-school and even some middle-school students towards the subject areas where they excel rather than forcing everyone study every subject (even when they’re just not built for it). Each student might not be as well-rounded but as whole each generation still would be. There’d be more positive engagement and less dropouts. Virtual worlds may be a great resource for accomplishing this because of their ability to open the imagination and at the same time foster communication among like minds across the globe. Thoughts? Anyone planning on attending the conference?
