website tracking

Thursday 27 May 2010

Virtual World Project Reviews


As part of my regular house keeping work here at Shimmer Island, I recently decided to take a look at the resources available in the main hall area of the facility. I am really pleased to say that the main tutorials continue to be popular with visitors and so they have remained as they are. Looking over at the smaller hall, I decided to remove the usual video display of project work and replace it with a new feature. If you teleport over now you will find some new books have appeared. These are project overviews with student feedback statistics of trials that I have carried out in the virtual world. Touching on each resource will produce a pdf file. I have more in the pipeline so you may like to teleport over now and then. Please feel free to take a copy and if you find the survey results useful, then they are free to use, I will only request that you site the original source. if you have any further questions about use or the projects themselves, then please feel free to IM me, Skipper Abel here at Shimmer Island.
regards Skipper

Monday 17 May 2010

Tranceformational Learning


I came across a really interesting site the other day, which I think you will find is well worth a visit. The site is called ImagiLearning, by the way its not their actual logo that I have used here in the post. The key thrust of the group who run the site centers of what they call Tanceformational Learning or TL. What is TL, well here's a paragraph from one of their pages:-
Tranceformational Learning blends the elements of learner centered instruction, concepts of game design, current brain research, and virtual world technologies to create experiences that engage the full mind of the learner in learning that goes beyond the traditional. Since the brain does not always clearly distinguish between "real" and "virtual" experiences, if we can create activities that trigger emotional, visceral responses leading to increased synaptic connections...learning is enhanced. Rather than simply connecting the new content to 'normal' patterns in the brain, Tranceformational Learning leads the brain to make wider and 'altered' patterns of synaptic connections with the new learning. We believe the result is increased learning.
They have a presence in Second life which naturally gets my interest and I suspect the interest of many who are wondeing where these new web 2.0 and 3.0 tools are likely to take us.
please comment with your views, regrads Skipper

Sunday 16 May 2010

Solar Cell Project Feedback

The latest virtual world project, which involved my project BTEC level 3 students building solar panels in OpenSim has now come to an end. As you can see from the accompanying screenshot there has been a good amount of activity taking place.

The feedback report from my students is available from this link. Please feel free to take a look, If you have any comments, then by all means drop a reply to this posting.

For more details of the project, you may like to visit my OpnSim blog at http://bcopensim.blogspot.com


Kind regards Skipper