Exploring New Learning Spaces

In real lile I would describe myself as shy, maybe those who know me would disagree but it really does take a lot for me to approach someone new.  I just realized that I have turned into a shameless networker in Second Life - begging for access to restricted sims, emailing people that I find on blogs to be guest speakers, etc - pretty much anything that will help the students in my organizational psychology course.  As I sit in a hotel room at the National Educause conference, searching the web for more information, I have suddenly become very reflective on the community that has formed in Second Life - it is truly a vibrant community of practice.

What is unique about this community is that the “experts” are hidden behind avatars.  I meet people at the teachers buzz sessions and other events in Second Life but have no idea about what they do in real life (and that they are truly experts in their fields).  My recent campaign to get access to the LearnLand sim is a great example.  I literally went down the names in the group, IMing anyone who might take pity on the this non-consortium member until finally Mark Oehlert, Booze Allen associate, responded and (I am sure it was his influence) shortly after I was added to the LearnLand group.  Mark - if for some reason you stumble upon this post, would you ever consider being a guest lecturer for my class in Sl as well???

What I was really hoping for was for someone from this project to speak to my students about how virtual worlds are being used or how they might be used for corporate training.  I stumbled upon Brent Schlenker’s blog and his posting about LearnLand and asked him to be a guest presenter (keeping my fingers crossed that he can make it).

Digging around even further and after reading more posts on both their blogs I think I might have met them before in world at various NMC events (LOTS of credit to the work that NMC has been doing, especially these events!!).  Who knew that Mark is ChuckNorris and Brent is Rightbrain?  It is really a small world!

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