Second Life: Do You Need One?

Part 2: Amareal Jewell looks at learning in Second Life

By Patricia Deubel, Ph.D.

Second Life is a 3D digital world, imagined, created, and owned by its residents, which number more than 7 million from over 100 countries at the time of this writing. It has generated excitement for entertainment, business, and education. And the number of colleges and universities, libraries, museums, and organizations exploring its possibilities is growing. In part 1 of this three-part series, I introduced some resources to help you learn about SL, join, and get the basics about navigation and communication. I also alerted you to some frustrations that you might experience getting your feet wet. Hmm ... did it happen to you when you stopped flying?...

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ESL Social Network/Portal Debuts

English as a second language (ESL) startup AppleESL.com (Hollywood, CA) has unveiled a new ESL Web portal of the same name, which provides teachers and students with online and downloadable tools, materials, activity templates, lesson plans, and audio and video files....

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Northern California Schools Access Pokemon Learning League

Pokemon Learning League is coming to schools in Northern California thanks to a new partnership with the Northern California Media and Technology Consortia (NCMTC) and the Ed1Stop portal. News of the partnership was announced at the 2007 NECC convention, where the company behind Pokemon Learning League, Pokemon USA, also introduced a new online assessment system for the program....

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18 Texas Districts Get Unitedstreaming

At the NECC show in Atlanta, Discovery Education announced that 18 Texas Regional Education Service Centers have signed on for the company's unitedstreaming service through the 2011/2012 school year. The agreement brings unitedstreaming to more than 3.8 million students, or 90 percent of the Education Service Center regions in the state....

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5 Schools and Districts Deploy Angel LMS

Angel Learning this week announced that five more K-12 schools and districts have signed on with its Angel LMS learning management system. While learning management systems/course management systems are typically associated with higher education, Angel said that it's seeing K-12 institutions adopting its LMS "to offer virtual classes and online professional development and to provide 21st century learning experiences with anytime, anywhere access to learning content and resources."...

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Promethean Launches Online Professional Development

Educational software and hardware provider Promethean has launched a new professional development program for educators. The online learning system, Promethean Learning, which debuted at the 2007 NECC show in Atlanta this week, is designed to help teachers improve their skills with interactive whiteboards....

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NetTrekker D.I. Adds Skills Channel to Online Tool

Thinkronize this week added a new "21st Century Skills Channel" to its netTrekker d.i. educational search engine. Thinkronize, a developer of K-12 education technologies, said the addition came as a response to the challenge that K-12 schools are perceived as failing to supply students with skills they need to be effective members of the United States workforce. The announcement was made at the 2007 NECC show in Atlanta....

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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.
• EduHound Site Sets are concise collections of resources focused on specific topics.

The site boasts thousands of visitors per week, as well as a weekly newsletter, EduHound Weekly.

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