Is an online gaming environment a virtual world? Can a virtual world be purely text-based? One of the best presentations at last week’s #relive08 conference was by Sarah “Intellagirl” Robbins who spent half an hour with us distilling two years of her research in classifying virtual worlds. She has identified four main criteria: Persistence: a […]
Report from day 1 of #relive08 – Researching Learning in Virtual Learning Environments There can’t have been many conferences in the World yet where people’s name badges include images of their avatars. This sometimes weird crossover between real and virtual worlds began with comments such as “Hi there! I expected to see your name hovering […]
This is the sort of thing which would have some of the free spirits who thrive in the relatively anarchic and regulation-free virtual worlds emerging on the Internet up in arms. However as our institution puts more of its learning activities into environments such as Second Life there are many policy issues emerging to which […]
America is obsessed about the price of oil which has hit $4 per gallon (about $1 per litre or £0.50). With a society and economy built on cheap fuel which until recently cost $30 a barrel, is now $139, and is predicted today to rise to $250 next year due to speculators and growing Asian […]
When Karl Harrison demonstrated a stuffy looking lecture video – complete with a blackboard – within the SecondLife island he’s created, my heart sank. I’m at the Shock of the Old Conference in Oxford, as usual on the look out for good examples of using technology in effective ways rather than just for the sake […]