EFL Professor in SL

Machu Pichu Pio is really happy that Latin American universities are working to promote virtual worlds as tools to empower education. That's the case of the Proyecto de Mundos Virtuales - Second USMP  of the  San Martín de Porres Univeristy in Perú.  The USMP has been in Second Life since 2008 The have recently started a series of 3d interviews that have as venue their campus in Second Life.  San Martin de Porres University features a simulation of the beautiful  Citadel of  Machu Pichu   the legendary Inca´s Village, one of the 7 new marvels of the world. The first interview topic explores  Metaverses..  by asking the question .... Is a metaverse a video game?  In this opportunity, Max Ugaz (Maximo Eames) Director de Second USMP Amparo Cervantes A. (Amparo Delvalle) Investigadora en Mundos Virtuales and  Fernando Pascual (Nandi Saenz) Desarrollador en Mundos Virtuales discussed on the topic.  Y...

Pio's friend Carmel Quinze t (Carmen Quintana de Solar) de la Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru (PUCP) invited her for a little chat with her classmates. She wanted to know about Pio's work in Sl as an educator.  Since URBE EFL Center in SL is moving to a new place, probably to Edunation , soon. They improvised a sitting place at the PUCP sandbox. There, Pio rezzed some of her students poster on their latest project " My Face for Peace and Avatars for Peace ". Carmel wanted to know how we integrated virtual worlds in our EFL class in a traditional face to face setting. Pio told her that there were different things to consider before integrating Sl in her classes. We use Sl as any other tool, it's just a mean to introduce, model or present some skills or contents related to the syllabus in the class. Our classes are traditional face to face classes that integrate technology to enrich the educational experience. The philosophy behind this ...

Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education as described in their site, is a global grass-roots community event which focuses on education in immersive virtual environments. What qualifies as a virtual world? A virtual world is an online community that takes the form of a unique environment through which users can interact with one another and use and create ideas irrespective of time and space. Virtual worlds can be either 2D or 3d. They may be co-located or distributed. The core aspect that defines a virtual space is that a virtual environment provides a uniquely shared space for emerging relationships and serves as a foundation for the development of knowledge creation and sharing. Examples include Second Life, OpenSim, Unity, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, World of Warcraft, Eve Online and many others. These virtual environments are characterized by an open social presence and where the direction of the platform’s evolution is manifest in the community. This is u...

This is a nice presentation on Project Managment... It's interesting how some of these ideas can be taken into managing a classroom, a community, a project... Watch live streaming video from metaversetvbusiness at livestream.com Where did we go wrong from Kevin Feenan

When visiting a 3D art exhibition in a virtual world you will encounter a whole new way of interacting with what your senses get... One piece I really enjoy when visiting the  UWA Centenary 3D Art Challenge: REFLECTIONS  was Shenn Coleman's Neurons Sphere. Once you get there, you can click on the blue box and get a notecard. These notecards will give you a little information on the piece you are about to see... some of them tell you what you will need to do in order to enjoy the piece at its best. Sometimes you have to set your graphics, or allow media playing or just turn on your speakers..or they require that you are on a viewer that allows you to see mesh... since most pieces will explore the richness of the elements that 3D virtual worlds offer. Another important element is the good use of the camera... when looking at the pieces you can zoom or rotate the piece the way you want it... something else that enriches the experience is the use of different windlights....