SLENZ Update, No 159, January 19, 2010

Now the summer holidays are over… Back  to Broadband and the virtual worlds … ‘Reality exists in all worlds’ One world: The reality of vacation land… Sitting on a golden sand beach near Splitapple Rock, in Tasman Bay, New Zealand, being warmed by  the late afternoon summer sun, I wondered about virtual worlds and what [...]

SLENZ Update, No 157, December 22, 2009

ascilite 2009 – AUCKLAND, NZ Virtual worlds might not be quite  there but ASCILITE shows  the way forward Second Life – ‘This will change everything…’ Scott Diener The Auckland University-Boise State collaborative post-partum haemorrhage nurse training scenario, presented by Scott Diener (Pix: Merle Lemon) When Scott Diener (pictured right),  associate director, IT services, Academic Services, [...]

SLENZ Update, No 155, December 11, 2009

ascilite 2009 VW leaders establish  New Zealand virtual worlds’ education group The University of Auckland’s Dr Scott Diener presents at ascilite 2009 ….  he is one of Australasia’s leaders in virtual world tertiary education. The New Zealand Virtual Worlds Group (NZVWG), an independent, not-for profit association for people interested in virtual worlds and their use [...]

SLENZ Update, No 150, November 17, 2009

The potential: “Daddy, Miss America wont share her toys.” Obama vision could be crippled by rich, greedy US institutions … and commercial interests who want an arm  and two legs. 1. Sharing knowledge – The Gronstedt Group begins tour  of the SLENZ birthing unit. The more time I spend in Second Life and  other virtual [...]

SLENZ Update, No 148, November 4, 2009

SLENZ PROJECT – final F2F SLENZERs celebrate ‘completion’ of virtual world  work … now  team awaits official evaluation The SLENZ Project team … final face-to-face meeting and debriefing. The SLENZ Project team celebrated its successes last week at a real life face-to-face meeting in Wellington, New Zealand. The meeting, which  included a warts-and-all debriefing of [...]

SLENZ Update, No 140, September 28, 2009

THE SLENZ PROJECT Virtual world makes mastering interview skills  much easier … when virtual ‘really feels real’ “Fabulous”,  “amazing” and “fantastic” were only three of the superlatives used by the  more than 20  educators and researchers who toured the SLENZ Project’s two builds on Kowhai  in Second Life and listened to commentary from educators, developers [...]

SLENZ Update, No 132, August 25, 2009

Virtual world experiences … Do SL memories  have same quality as RL memories? A “personal” view A question of memory … sailing on the Dreaming Sea, Daedelus, in SL There  is no question one can use  a virtual world to learn or train  but there is a question still hanging over what educational benefits MUVES [...]

The SLENZ Update – No 101, June 18, 2009

Is there really virtual world promise in peer-to-peer … at this stage? As if,  worrying whether the soon-to-be-released Second Life Viewer 2009 will  require educators to completely revamp their techniques and training of students, was not enough, we still have to wonder whether we might not have backed the wrong  horse and that the possible [...]

The SLENZ Update – No 57, March 12, 2009

EVENT “Virtual Worlds – Best Practices in Education” Conference March 27-29, 2009 in Second Life. Following considerable  SLED list debate on the “future” of  the SL education conference  – especially, apparently, from those MUVE “believers” who who want a  “real life” gabfest experiences that one travels to -  Pathfinder Linden  has posted an interesting interview [...]

The SLENZ Update – No 45, February 10, 2009

SLENZ pilot progress An outsider’s view … The creation and melding together of the design and development phases of the SLENZ pilot programmes has proven a slightly more difficult process for the SLENZ team than initially envisaged. “We are making progress, albeit slower than I anticipated or would have liked,” joint project leader Terry Neal [...]