VSTE

Virginia Society for Technology in Education

VEPLN

VEPLN Summer of Survival

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Picture from MinecraftThe Virtual Environments Professional Learning Network (VEPLN) will be sponsoring the second annual Survive the Summer event at VSTE Place in Minecraft.

WHAT

Yes! We are doing this again! Shorter and sweeter, this summer, July 2 through July 31, VSTE Place will hold its second Summer of Survival! Participants will be able to warp to survival mode for a completely different Minecraft experience. We will discover why our students beg for survival mode at school.  It's challenging, but fun, and we will need each other to survive!

There will be specific tasks for participants to complete for a certificate from VSTE. You may be able to use that in your district for professional development points or recertification points, but managing that will be strictly up to each participant. We will be here to certify that you participated and to make sure we are all having fun learning about the gaming aspect of Minecraft. Kim H. and Lisa A. will run the course for VBCPS. Laura B. will be running a course for other teachers. Please contact one of us for details.

WHY

The VSTE VE PLN has enjoyed learning to build together in VSTE Place, our Minecraft server, for a while now. We meet there the first Monday of the month at 8 PM Eastern time for networking. We have had speakers, guest teachers, students as teachers, and fun activities. We do most of these things in creative mode.

Many of us have expanded our classroom practice to include teaching and learning with Minecraft. We have both after school clubs and create learning experiences for the instructional part of our students' day. During these activities, inevitably the students request, or rather plead, for survival mode. Therefore, we have decided to dive into Survival mode this summer to see what all the fuss is about.

JOIN US!

To join us  on VSTE Place, the VSTE Minecraft server and/or participate in VSTE's Summer of Survival! email K4sons@gmail.com with your PC Mojang Minecraft account name. minecraft.net

K4sons will reply with the server address after she has added you to the whitelist. Warp to SOS2018, /warp sos2018. our survival world, is at spawn. You will see it immediately. Veteran players have been building a safe area for you that looks remarkably like Jamestown!

Website https://sites.google.com/view/vstesofs17/

Building In Second Life: An Introduction to Rokuro

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While many people experience Second Life as a consumer, one of the powers of virtual environments is the ability to learn to build in three dimensions. On Monday, May 21, at 8 PM, the VE PLN will host Norma Underwood who will teach participants how to create sculpted prims, or complex shapes that are difficult to produce with the standard building tools in Second Life. Creating these prims is easier than it might seem, even for beginning builders. Norma will introduce participants to the open source program Rokuro. You can download it here:  https://kanae.net/secondlife/rokuro.html
Don't want to download the software? You can still participate in the making of sculpted prims even if you don't download the program. There will be plenty of pre-made sculpt textures for you to use. If you can create a cube, Norma will help with the rest. Did I mention it is very simple? Oh, and fun!

Second Life is free to access. You need an account and software to access the virtual world.

We recommend setting up an account at the Rockcliffe University Consortium's Gateway here: https://urockcliffe.com/reg/second-life/ Download and install the software. While your Second Life viewer (software) is open click this link http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/VSTE%20Island/61/104/22 and voila! Look for an avatar on VSTE Island and say, "Hey, I'm new!" We will take care of the rest.

The VE PLN shares news, events, and resources at their Google Plus Community. Click here to join.

VE PLN Sponsors Literary Studies Group

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VSTE's Virtual Environments Professional Learning Network (VE PLN) is pleased to announce the formation of the Second Life Literary Studies Group. The purpose of the group will be to discuss literary works, usually short stories, and share better ways to teach literature and English, in general. The next meeting will be on Thursday, May 10, 2018, at 8 PM, and the group will be discussing the short story "The Star." This short story is available at:

https://sites.uni.edu/morgans/astro/course/TheStar.pdf

Second Life is free to access. You need an account and software to access the virtual world.

We recommend setting up an account at the Rockcliffe University Consortium's Gateway here: https://urockcliffe.com/reg/second-life/ Download and install the software. While your Second Life viewer (software) is open click this link http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/VSTE%20Island/61/104/22 and voila! Look for an avatar on VSTE Island and say, "Hey, I'm new!" We will take care of the rest.

The VE PLN shares news, events, and resources at their Google Plus Community. Click here to join.

The Beauty of Second Life

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From Kim Harrison (Thunder) and Lisa Alconcel (Jazmemo)

picture of Second Life trainOne of the reasons we love Second Life is the beauty created by the users. There are some amazing sims to wander through and enjoy. For instance, the Linden Endowment for the Arts gives artists grants for six months at a time. There are also historical simulations and culturally significant educational sites to visit. Science and health sims provide experiences that cannot be duplicated in the physical world.

 

On Monday, March 26, at 8 PM EDT, "Jazmemo" and "Thunder" will show you how to use your in-world camera and lead you on a tour through some interesting sims to take SL photos and return for show and tell. What will you discover? You might think you are living Ready, Player One!photo from Second Life

​ If you don't have a Second Life account get one, it's free, at https://urockcliffe.com/reg/second-life/. Download and install the software. While your Second Life viewer (software) is open click this link http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/VSTE%20Island/61/104/22 and voila! Look for an avatar on VSTE Island and say, "Hey, I'm new!" We will take care of the rest.

VE PLN: Unraveling the Mysteries of Instagram

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VSTE's Virtual Environments Professional Learning Network (VE PLN) is pleased to welcome Andrew Wheelock, AKA Spiff Whitfield in Second Life, who will help unravel the mysteries of Instagram for us. In discussing digital citizenship recently we discovered that many of us "don't get it." We went to Andy for help. Our discussion is bound to go beyond Instagram as we navigate social media and digital citizenship topics.

Andrew Wheelock is an innovative Technology Integrator at Western New York Regional Information Center currently living in Buffalo, New York.

His blog is http://www.coffeewithageek.org/ where he interviews Edtech leaders from around the world.

He's also Spiff Whitfield, the leader and founder of Virtual Pioneers, a group that meets every other Sunday evening in Second Life to promote and tour simulations about culture, history, and other social studies topics.

In 2016 Andrew Wheelock received The Thinkerer Award which is granted during the Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education conference in the spring, as a lifetime achievement award for consistent selfless service towards the promotion of learning, community, and educational practices using immersive environments.

Andrew created a virtual exhibit in an Open Sim called the Islands of Enlightenment http://islandsoe.weebly.com/ which includes a place designed to help students learn about The Holocaust  Reimagining The Diary of a Young Girl: Anne Frank for the 21st Century.