Tom Boellstorff – Live in Second Life!

Tom Boellstorff​ will be chatting to educational researchers (of virtual worlds) on December 1st 4pm GMT.

Tom is a Professor in the Dept of Anthropology, University of California, Irvine and also Editor-in-Chief of American Anthropologist, Journal of the American Anthropological Association​. The SLurl is: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/University%20of%20Worcester/156/194/25.

This will hopefully be of interest to those that have read his book “Coming of Age in Second Life​: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtual Human”, a chapter of which we use as core reading on IDEL Week 4.

Virtual Graduation, November 24th 11am

UPDATE: November 22nd 2011. A Second Life update is now required. Do take time to download and install this update before Virtual Graduation (or MSc in eLearning Tutorials in Second Life). Download update here:
http://secondlife.com/support/downloads/?lang=en-US

Virtual graduation in Second Life will take place: 11am (GMT), Thursday 24 November at Venue @Vue: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Vue/209/35/28/

All are welcome!

The virtual graduation event will be an opportunity to watch the ceremony together live in Second Life, to support all avatar graduands and to celebrate the graduation with other students and some of the programme team.

If you would like to attend then please do let Fiona Littleton (fiona.littleton@ed.ac.uk) know. Please include your avatar name in the email confirmation as well.

Please do prepare in advance. A new release of Second Life may need to be downloaded. Quick time needs to be up to date. And you may want time to choose your graduation outfit as well! Contact Fiona if you need advice on outfits or if you need Lindens!

Detailed information about Virtual Graduation is available online at:
https://www.wiki.ed.ac.uk/display/VueWiki/Virtual+Graduation

Photos available: http://www.flickr.com/photos/flittleton/sets/72157622913184972/

I hope you will join us.
Fiona

HEA SIG Event, London

Digital games research seminar: critical perspectives and work in progress
Monday 26th September, from 2 – 5 pm
At the London Knowledge Lab
Free to attend.

This is an informal seminar to discuss recent work. Each 10 minute presentation will be followed by 20 minutes of discussion.

Presenters include:
Shakuntala Banaji (LSE), title: Rhetoric of the digital native.
Caroline Pelletier (IOE), title: Hospital drama: Researching simulations in clinical settings.
Diane Carr (IOE), title: Zombies, androids, busted cyborgs.
Natasha Whiteman (University of Leicester), title: Undoing Ethics.

To book a place RSVP to Diane Carr, Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies, London Knowledge Lab. Email Diane on d.carr@ioe.ac.uk.

Virtual Graduation, 4th July ’11

Virtual graduation in Second Life will take place: 3pm (BST), Monday 4 July at Venue @Vue: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Vue/209/35/28/

All are welcome in Second Life! Follow on twitter as well – #edslgrad

The virtual graduation event will be an opportunity to watch the ceremony together live in Second Life, to support all avatar graduands (we expect 5 graduands this year), and to celebrate the graduation with other students and some of the programme team.

If you would like to attend then please do let Fiona Littleton (fiona.littleton@ed.ac.uk) know. Please include your avatar name in the email confirmation as well.

Please do prepare in advance. A new release of Second Life may need to be downloaded. Quick time needs to be up to date. And you may want time to choose your graduation outfit as well! Contact Fiona if you need advice on outfits or if you need Lindens!

Detailed information about Virtual Graduation is available online at:
https://www.wiki.ed.ac.uk/display/VueWiki/Virtual+Graduation.

I hope you will join us.

Fiona

What is “My” Space? – Call for help!

The IT Futures conference, University of Edinburgh will take place on December 14th 2010. Both Hamish and I work on the committee organising this event. The theme this year is “What is ‘My’ Space? – where is the working space in our more flexible working world?”.

The conference will look at both the staff and student perspective of what the working (learning) space is, and is becoming. Where does technology fit in, and how do we work and study in this increasingly mobile world?

Programmme for the day is available at – http://www.itfutures.ed.ac.uk/Conference10.shtml

We would like to get as many folks involved in the conference as possible and as part of this we would like you all students to:
email John Lee (John.Lee@ed.ac.uk)
with the subject line itf10.students
by the 7th December 2010
* an image of “How would you depict your workspace?”
and
* text of 160 chars to describe “What’s important about your workspace?”

We would also like any staff of the University of Edinburgh (and I know some people are both!) to also submit their work but use the subject line: itf10.staff so John can filter.

We will then show an anonymous slide show of what is submitted as part of the conference to stimulate discussion. We would welcome all submissions.