Abraham Lincoln that is. The Alliance Libraries have secured funding for a "Land of Lincoln" immersive sim that will recreate Lincoln's birthplace, his Springfield house (please resist comments about Bart!) and will also look at his White House time.

This new area will run on a similar basis the Renaissance Island which looks at Tudor England, and is inhabited by volunteers who largely dress and talk in appropriate period style, as well as having the period setting. Land of Lincoln is still at the planning stage, if you would like to be involved please join the google group for discussion.

The other day I was in a class, and in the wrap up at the end I was asked to say what I thought the differences between working for an educational institution and a commercial one were in SL. It's a situation I'm fairly well positioned on, I've worked with a range of both types of organisations. One group I haven't worked with is the "city council" or similar who try to sell their city and build it anew.

I came up, at short notice with a few differences. I've had a think and refined them a bit, and thought I'd share them and ask for your input and thoughts. You never know, it might be a good tool for one group or the other to learn (I'd suggest commercial to learn from educational - education seems to be booming in SL, although there are some corporate good practise elements from the commercial end too).

1. Build type:
• Educators are more likely (say 50%+) to eschew a "corporate build" - the administration office block or similar. Of those that do have such a thing a high proportion are likely to subvert it somehow elsewhere in their build.
• Corporate types are much more likely to go for "the office block" - I'd say 95%. They clearly identify their office as their corporation.
2. Build nature
• Educators tend to focus on the results. That's both in terms of meeting the educational needs, and being relatively happy if nothing happens, nothing happens, then a finished build appears.
• Corporate types tend to want regular reports, plans, milestones etc.

So, they're my thoughts. What do you think? Just Askin'

You may, or may not remember a piece I wrote in July about the report into the use of SL by UK Higher Educational establishments.

The snapshot has been updated, and the new version is available in pdf via this website. It also includes references to the writings of one Pasteur, E. which makes me feel inordinately proud!

If you'd like to read more about what Eduserv are doing in SL their main page is here. There are two further reports to come, one next March, the final one in September 2008.

Starting this Sunday, August 12, NMC launches a fascinating new symposium discussing creativity and education in the virtual space. By the looks of things, this is a very serious conference, charging entrance fees and asking people to register early. The event will contain six different components that search to dissect the issues at hand through a six-day schedule. The structure includes (from NMC):

• Studio Sessions - self-paced, hands-on studio sessions in machinima, fashion, sculpture/modeling, and virtual photography with access to expert instructors;
• Breakout Sessions - highly interactive 90-minute sessions on topics like basic and advanced building concepts, avatar design, scripting, machinima, photography, creative teaching techniques, and more;
• Featured Sessions - keynotes, panel discussions, tours;
• Learning Exposition - a showcase of easy-to-learn techniques, links to educational sites, and video learning;
• Parade of Sims - a set of tours led by the people who built and created some of the most sophisticated islands in Second Life;
• Social and Arts Events - a special series of exhibitions and performances, including DanCoyote and his talented ZeroG dancers
  

Although registration is now closed, I will be searching for participants who wish to share their experience with our readership. Feel free to contact me if you wish to talk about the events you're attending or your general impressions.

If you talk to educators in Second Life, you often hear three things mentioned as clear benefits of Second Life, whatever your discipline:

• Immersion
• Visualisation
• Collaboration

In a lovely example of the second and third of these, and adding to the first Andrew Lang (Professor of Maths, Oral Roberts University), Jean-Claude Bradley (Professor of Chemistry) and his team (Drexel University) have worked together to make a 3D representation of a molecule which animates and runs through the first steps in an imine synthesis, part of making a proto-type anti-malarial drug.

As Jean-Claude comments in his blog this adds a whole new dimension in teaching these reactions - students and teachers can walk around the molecule and see the bonds break and reform, a big change to looking at figures in a textbook. See if for yourself at Drexel Island.

Way back when, I kicked off classroom teaching at NCI, with a Basic Building class that ran every week for over a year. These days I'm out of the education loop at the NCI, but I really wanted to see how the classes are being handled, and I have an especial affinity for the Basic Building class.

With that in mind, I looked up a class that was on at a convenient time, and quietly slipped in to see how Kerhop Seattle handled his Basic Building class at NCI South yesterday.

Don't worry, this is not glossolalia; those initials refer to San Jose State University's School of Library and Information Science, which is opening on May 16th. In addition to the usual festivities, there will be a simulcast of a talk on virtual learning environments by Daniel Livingstone, a lecturer at the University of Paisley, in Scotland.

Beyond this, however, is the wonderful video the referred site provides visitors. Not only is it a well-composed piece alone, but it also evangelizes SL quite thoroughly, cementing its place in the role of valuable educational content. Do check it out!

I've just received word that the registration site for SLCC 2007, taking place in Chicago from August 24th-26th, is now open! The cost of the full weekend will be $185 USD, or 50,000L. The event will be held at the Chicago Hilton where there will be four tracks: Business, Education, Social, and Machinima.

There will also be an optional Masquerade Ball, sponsored by Strokerz Toyz, for an additional $5 USD, or 1500L. The registration caps at around 850 or 900 residents, so if you would like to attend, it's advised that you register now! For more details, please visit the official blog for SLCC 2007.

The Art Institute Online is launching a student community in Second Life. The Island will double as both a meeting area for their diverse student body to collaborate and socialize, and as a class room for their actual online courses. Currently only one class is planned for the virtual campus is a new Business Communications course. If this class is successful, look for more Second Life based content from the Institute.

While using Second Life for teaching a class is not uncommon these days, using it for a primarily online institution is an especially appropriate match for the Virtual World. I have taken my share of web based distance learning courses and something is always lost in the translation from the classroom to the web slide show. Adding in the embodiment and collaboration provided by the virtual world, and we may have found Second Life's killer ap.

According to The Hamilton Spectator, Mohawk College is one of the newest schools to set up a virtual campus in Second Life. Mohawk is hoping that the island can act as a recruiting tool for perspective students. The build began in October and includes the obligatory building modeled after some area of their real world campus. Other features include interactive galleries that profile students and the college's 40Th anniversary.

Lately it seems that for colleges the Second Life island is the new black. Everyone is seemingly jumping in with a new build designed around some part of their real world campus. While I think it is great that so many Universities are getting their feet wet in Second Life, I would like to encourage Universities to come up with something beyond rebuilding the real and begin to explore expanding upon it.

Update 1: The image is now the logo of Mohawk College

If you are an educator in Second Life, there are absolutely tons of opportunities for you to grow and build your Virtual World Education prowess in world. One such opportunity is the Second Life Learning Community (SLLC) meetings. The next meeting will be held today at 4 PM EST on Ohio University's virtual campus.

Other opportunities can be found on the Second Life Educators (SLED) mailing list. You can find it here. I belong to a number of mailing lists for different gaming issues and the SLED list is one of the most active and interesting of them all.

There is an article up on CNN.com about educators in Second Life. To which I had a very similar reaction to as Raph Koster who titled his post about the article "Another day, another SL mention on CNN." I kind of wish I had thought of that first because it made me chuckle. It is true Second Life is getting a lot of press lately and seemingly more press about if it should be getting so much press. But no matter your stance on the issue, I think one place Second Life deserves the coverage is in relation to education. The actual heart of the issue for me is explained in the CNN article with this statement: "The three-dimensional virtual world makes it possible for students taking a distance course to develop a real sense of community, said Rebecca Nesson, who leads a class jointly offered by Harvard Law School and Harvard Extension School..."

This cuts to the point of a growing issue related to distance learning. While many schools are moving towards distance learning is the learning provided with conventional distance learning a good way to learn? I would argue that it isn't. While students commonly score well on distance learning exams this learning may not transfer into the real world as well as learning gained in a class room. The addition of students and peers found in a class room can not be replicated on a website based learning environment. I believe that Second Life and other virtual worlds provides a way to have both distance learning and collaborative class room style learning at the same time.

Zack Stern on our parent site Joystiq covered this article as well, and did a pretty good job. One thing that I Second Life Insider readers understand, but is an important addition to his coverage is that while Second Life is an interesting and presumably powerful platform for education Kids these days shouldn't be using it for education because of the age restrictions. Should we be making more of an effort to differentiate between Second Life and the Teen Grid?

Followed a link to a blog about the use of SL in education. Some of the links on that page do indicate that people are using SL in innovative ways, but a lot of others are simply replicating their classrooms in SL and using the platform as a virtual classroom.

This is SUCH a waste. SL has the potential to offer people an interactive, 3D space in which they can be active and doing, thinking, interacting with the environment. You can set up places which can be explored, puzzles to be solved, where things are learned in an active and not a passive way. If you are just replicating a classroom in SL, you're not taking advantage of the amazing potential of SL for learning.