AVWW08 – Starting today!

Published: 28 November, 2008Posted in: events, jokaydia, news, virtualworldsTags:

Koala Island

Koala Island

I’ve spent several hours today helping to get ready for the Australasian Virtual Worlds Workshop 08, which we are proudly supporting…… and as you can see from the images above, Koala Island (SLurl)and the Islands of jokaydia (SLurl) are ready to go! ;)

The AVWW08 event builds on the successful ‘Discover Your Second Life’ workshop hosted at Monash University in 2007 and is being hosted by Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne this year, whilst a number of Australian sims are providing venues inworld.

The line up of presenters looks great too with Guest speakers including Larry Johnson (CEO of New Media Consortium), Bruce Joy (CEO of Vast Park), Chris Collins (Director of Enterprise Business Systems of Linden Lab) and Keren Flavell (Executive Producer of SLCN.TV).

I thought it might be handy to publish the schedule here – note AEST and SLT times! ;)

SCHEDULE: Day 1 (Friday 28th Nov 2008)

9.00am AEST – Keynote Speaker 1 Larry Johnson, CEO of New Media Consortium

9.30am AEST -Panel Session 1 – Learning Communities

Panel members: Mandy Salomon – Virtual Environments and the Health Sector, Cheryl Long and Dave Pollard – Simulating Real-Life Community Building in Virtual Worlds, Jenny Grenfell – Blended Worlds :An Arts Education Experience, Peter Rive – How to enable knowledge exchange in Second Life in Design Education?

11.00am Panel Session 2 – Pedagogies

Panel members: Bronwyn Stuckey – Real Learning In Virtual Worlds: Case Studies Of Quest Atlantis In Australian Schools, Elza Nogueira de Souza Barros – Virtual world education at University of Pernambuco, Andrew Cram – Meaningful learning activities: A framework for using virtual worlds to develop problem solving expertise, Westley Fields – Skoolaborate – A global initiative: Teens and teachers collaborating in a Virtual World.

12.10pm Panel Session 3 – Collaboration

Panel members: Greg Wadley – Collaborative building in Second Life, Matthew Mitchell – The Key Contribution of 3D Virtual Worlds, Assessing sustainable urban planning in SL

2.00pm Keynote Speaker 2 Keren Flavell, Exec. Producer of SLCN

2.30pm Panel Session 4 – Regulations of Virtual Worlds

Panel members: Alberto Rizzo – Rethinking Educational Innovation and Change, Darren Palmer et al – Virtual Worlds, Education and Regulation, Ian Warren et al – Views on Regulating In-world Behaviour in Second Life, David Vaile – I’m god!, No I’m god: An imaginary jurisdiction dispute between Telstra and Linden Lab

4.00pm – End of Day 1 Open Discussion

SCHEDULE: Day 2 (Saturday 29th Nov 2008)

9.00am Keynote Speaker 3 – Chris Collins, Director of Enterprise Business Systems of Linden Lab (InWorld)

9.30am Panel Session 5 – Virtual Worlds construction

Panel members: Georgia McGregor – The World is not enough: Spatial construction in Virtual Worlds, Samar Zutshi – Interoperability in VWs: Open Source and Open Protocols, Om Gupta and Ray Jarvis – A new 3D simulation platform based on Half Life 2 Game, Dale Linegar – A practical guide to Second Life projects in secondary school classrooms

11.00am Panel Session 6 – Business and Enterprise

Panel members: Mary Gordon – Real Life Brands in Virtual Worlds, Lindy McKeown – Virtual Worlds as corporate learning environments, Danny Stefanic – Evolution of virtual worlds and open standards, Suku Sinnappan – Business Models in Viurtual Worlds

1.00pm AEST – Keynote Speaker 4 Bruce Joy, CEO of Vast Park (RW

1.30pm AEST – Panel Session 7 – Virtual World Tool Design

Panel members: Amanda Kerr – Freedoms and Constraints of Virtual Design, Brian Quinn – Creating terrain and learning artefacts in Second Life and using Opensimulator to view terrain, Nauman Saeed – Effects of hedonic behaviours on User acceptance of MUVEs in education, Lisa Dethridge – Melbourne Gothic in Second Life

3.00pm AEST – End of Day 2 Open Discussion

3.45pm AEST – Closing remarks

4pm AEST – Social Drinks – Student Centre @ Koala Island

On Saturday, jokaydia will be hosting a number of sessions, and I’m really looking forward to it hearing perspectives on virtual worlds construction and business and enterprise in virtual worlds. To join us teleport to the jokaydia Meeting Hall (SLurl)!

If you’d like to keep up with proceedings throughout the conference you can obtain all the landmarks and inworld schedule at Koala Island (SLurl), Swinburne University of Technology’s presence in SL.

Outside SL, you can listen to the audio stream @ http://75.126.100.42:8060/, watch for tweets (use the #avww08 hashtag so we can find yours!), view images from the event on Flickr (tag your images with avww08 so we can see yours!) or keep an eye on the coverage happening over at the Metaverse Journal.

Hope to see you at the events!

About the Author

Jo Kay aka jokay Wollongong is a freelance digital designer and facilitator working in virtual worlds and educational technology. She helps educators and organisations to use new and innovative technologies for learning. Jo is the owner and facilitator of the Islands of jokaydia Project – a space for a vibrant community of educators to explore the use of virtual worlds in education.