Second Life: Do You Need One?

By Patricia Deubel, Ph.D.

Second Life appears to be the biggest online community to hit the Internet in recent times. It's a 3D digital world, imagined, created, and owned by its residents, which number more than 7 million from more than 100 countries at the time of this writing. It's not a site that most K-12 educators would consider using, as Second Life requires residents in its main grid to be at least 18. A number of businesses, universities, libraries, museums, and a few educational organizations that cater to K-12 have joined Second Life, and at least one middle school, Suffern Middle School (NY). As a newbie, I wondered what the excitement is all about and decided to explore. What I found was that reading about Second Life and actually experiencing it are a world apart....

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Discovery Adds Planet Earth Series to Unitedstreaming Plus

At the 2007 NECC convention taking place this week in Atlanta, Discovery Education announced that it's adding content from the BBC/Discovery Channel series Planet Earth to its unitedstreaming Plus and Science Connection services. Educators will be able to access video from the series, as well as teaching additional resources....

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50 Schools and Districts Chalk Up CMS to Blackboard

At the 2007 NECC show happening this week in Atlanta, education technology developer Blackboard announced that more than 50 K-12 schools and districts have recently signed up to use or upgrade the company's course management system (CMS)....

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Elluminate Releases Live! V8

Education technology developer Elluminate has released Elluminate Live! V8, an update to the company's flagship e-learning, conferencing, and online collaboration tool. The new version adds a variety of functional enhancements and is available now. The company's vRoom, a free conferencing tool based on Elluminate Live!, is also being updated to incorporate some of the functionality of Live! V8....

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Interwrite Updates Bluetooth Classroom Pad

Interwrite Learning has announced an update to its Interwrite Pad, a wireless (Bluetooth) interactive pad designed for classroom use....

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Forsyth To Roll Out Angel LMS

Forsyth County Schools in Georgia is switching its course management system district-wide over to Angel Learning's Angel LMS. District representatives said Forsyth was making the switch in order to add new online learning capabilities for its high schools ad middle schools....

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Inspiration Launches Online Learning Community

At the 2007 National Educational Computing Conference (NECC), Inspiration Software kicked off a new online community for educators. The site, dubbed Inspired Learning Community, is designed for educators as "a place to discover and share ideas and resources for effectively using Inspiration Software's visual learning products to develop students' critical thinking skills across the curriculum," according to the company....

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• JULY 5-7, 2007
  Mobile Learning 2007
  Lisbon Portugal
• JULY 7-12, 2007
  BbWorld '07
  Boston, MA
• JULY 9-12, 2007
  Teaching History with Technology Workshop
  Noble and Greenough School
  Dedham, MA
• JULY 12-14, 2007
  2007 International Conference on Information
  Communication Technologies in Education
  Crete, Greece
• JULY 15-18, 2007
  National Conference on Differentiated Instruction 2007
  Las Vegas, NV
• JULY 19-20, 2007
  ICEL 2007: The International Conference on e-Learning
  New York , NY
• JULY 24-28, 2007
  EDUCAUSE/ Cornell Institute for Computer Policy and Law Seminar 2007
  Ithaca, NY
• JULY 25-27, 2007
  Mid-America Education Technology Conference (2007)
  Bonner Springs, KS
• JULY 30-AUG. 2, 2007
  Campus Technology 2007
  Washington, DC

Find more events at THE Journal's online Conference Calendar.

Share Your Best Practices

T.H.E. Journal is currently looking for the following types of articles for future issues and for our eNewsletter, T.H.E. SmartClassroom:

• School Perspectives - discuss a specific topic, trend, or concern about education technology.
• Case Studies - have you implemented technology and learned a lot from the experience? If so, share your efforts about what worked -- and what didn't.

If you have a potential article, or questions about the above topics, please e-mail [email protected]

EduHound.com

• EduHound Directory is a highly specialized K-12 educational directory with categorized resource links.
• EduHound Lesson Plans feature thousands of free lessons that meet state and national standards.
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The site boasts thousands of visitors per week, as well as a weekly newsletter, EduHound Weekly.

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