Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Conference opens today

The largest educational Conference in Virtual Worlds gets underway today, with presentations taking place in a variety of virtual worlds – including Second Life, OpenSim/Jokaydia, and Cloud Party. The Conference as a whole will include lectures, workshops, poster presentations, machinima presentations, and a wealth of social events, and will run from 6am today, Wednesday 24th June to Saturday 27th June when the final party closes at 10pm.

Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education is a global grass-roots community event which focuses on education in immersive virtual environments. The open conference is organized by educators, for educators, to provide an opportunity to showcase the learning that takes place in this community of practice.

Over 2000 attendees representing 90 countries participate in 150-200 online presentations including theoretical research, application of best practices, virtual world tours, hands-on workshops, discussion panels, machinima presentations, and poster exhibits.

Innovative educators will be sharing their achievements and challenges that they face in enhanced learning technology as well as their vision of future collaborative learning in virtual worlds and games. The conference will be covered across virtual worlds and will host presentations in Second Life, OpenSim/Jokaydia, and Cloud Party. If you have a passion for virtual worlds, the topics covered will help shine a spotlight on the possibilities for their many uses in education.

Many of the presentations will be streamed and should appear embedded on the Home Page – and if not, can be accessed at: www.metaversetv.com/vwbpe. But – if you can – attending and soaking up the atmosphere will be awesome. The place to start (in Second Life) is the VWBPE Gateway. Links to all the locations – in Second Life, the Jokadia Grid and Cloud Party – are to be found here.

You can see the full schedule of events here.

Today, the opening keynote will be given by Gentle Herson of Virtual Ability at 7am SLT and Saffia Widdershins will be presenting at 11.55am, with a lecture on Turning Film Noir into Fun Noir – Creating a Narrative-driven Interactive Online Environment – just two of the many excellent events schedule for today.