About the Islands of jokaydia Project
The Islands of jokaydia Project is facilitated by Jo Kay aka jokay Wollongong. It was launched in September 2007 and aims to provide a space to explore the uses of virtual worlds in education, the arts and social change. We are a community of practice, and have homes in various virtual worlds including our very own jokaydiaGRID running on Opensimulator, along with presence in Second Life, Jibe and Reaction Grid. We are also exploring BlueMars, World of Warcraft, Aion and a number of other virtual worlds and gaming platforms.
The jokaydia Community of Practice
The jokaydia Community of Practice supports a range of events, activities and services. We also host a vibrant community of educators and artists as part of our rental community.
Our homes across the metaverse are designed to provide a flexible and dynamic spaces for educators – which include informal and formal meeting spaces, plus a range of interesting objects and tools to explore; and has been created to assist new residents to gain competency and confidence in using virtual worlds for education, arts and social change.We also support mixed reality events, professional development activities and and training in the use of virtual worlds.
For further information visit:
- jokaydiaGRID Support Site
- Current Residents and Rental Properties pages for info about our Rental Community in Second Life
- Second Life Island Directory for info on the spaces and resources available on the Islands of jokaydia in Second Life.
About jokaydiaGRID
jokaydiaGRID was opened in March 2010 to a small pilot project aimed at exploring the educational uses of opensimulator. The jokaydiaGrid Project has a number of aims including:
- Exploring ways to ‘multi-grid’ – eg. creating strategies, techniques and best practices for creating presence across a range of virtual worlds, and learning how to best use each environment for and to its best advantage
- Engaging kids in our virtual worlds adventures – the jokaydiaGrid gives us the freedom to create a PG environment which is much more viable for k-12 educational use
- Learning about Opensimulator – we are excited to be joining the opensource virtual worlds community and look forward to both learning about and contributing to the development of opensource virtual worlds options for education
- Developing new 3D educational resources – Leveraging off the flexibility available to us on the opensim platform for public and private delivery (without the scary pricetag!)
- … and most importantly t0 Play! We aim to continue to create a community that learns, inspires, explores and shares.
jokaydiaGRID supports a community of educators exploring virtual worlds, events and community actvities. We also provide a rental community and provide virtual worlds content development services.
To find out more, visit the jokaydiaGRID Support Site.
About the Islands of jokaydia in Second Life
The Islands of jokaydia in Second Life currently comprises 4 sims and hosts a range of rental spaces and community resources. It is designed to provide an appealing, community oriented ambience that encourages collaboration and sharing.
Tenants on the Islands of jokaydia in Second Life gain access to:
- Your own parcel of land
- Free access to our extensive collection of community spaces and resources
- Ongoing support includingl and management, building tips and events support
- Access to a range of interesting and engaging community event.
We are also currently offering a jokaydiaGRID Pioneers bonus, which allows all tenants who are renting on the Islands of jokaydia in Second Life access to a FREE! 1600m parcel on the jokaydiaGRID. This offer allows us all to begin to experiment with the idea of ‘multi-gridding’ – eg using each of our virtual worlds environments for its best purpose.
Click here to visit the Islands of jokaydia in Second Life (SLurl)
About the jokaydia @ Reaction Grid
Established in October 2009, the jokaydia @ Reaction Grid sim was our first outpost running on opensimulator. It serves as a space for further exploration of open source virtual worlds platforms and allows us to connect to the wonderful community on the Reaction Grid.
To visit us at Reaction Grid simple search for ‘jokaydia’ on the map.
About jokaydia.com
The jokaydia website has been designed to support the projects and activities happening within the Islands of jokaydia and our community. Members are welcome to contribute to the space. Please email jokay for further information!
About Jo Kay
Jo Kay aka jokay Wollongong (in SL) is a freelance geek, designer, and facilitator based in Wollongong, Australia. She has broad experience in educational technology, web development and virtual worlds. In recent years her work has focussed on supporting the research and implementation of new and innovative technologies for teaching and learning and online community building, with a particular focus on the vocational education sector.
Jo has interests in online culture and social networking and the impacts both are having in the education sector, but also on society in general. Her current research is around virtual worlds, with a particular focus on virtual worlds and the possibilities that they offer for education, communication and collaboration. Jo is owner and manager of the Islands of jokaydia and supports a vibrant community of educators and Institutions on the Islands. For more information visit: http://jokay.com.au.
Special Thanks
We are very lucky to be part of a vibrant education/arts community in Second Life and appreciate the input, support and inspiration we get from everyone. However, there are a number of people who deserve special thanks – including:
- To Azzurra Supplee, one of my oldest friends from SL days – for support in establishing and running jokaydiaGRID, building/technical support and creative input…..oh and shopping!!
- Sean FitzGerald aka Sean McDunnough for his input on the creation, design and implementation of the jokaydia project… and for coming up with our name!
- To our foundation residents – Konrad March, HeyJude Jenns, slammed Aabye, Stephan Bethune and TAFE NSW, Sydney Institute Staff and Bubbling Brooks and LearnScope 2007 participants. Thanks for understanding our vision and joining our new community!
- My Second Life friends and mentors – including AgileBill Firehawk, Corwin Carillon, CDB Barkley, Glyph Graves and many others!
- The fabulous ReactionGrid Team – especially Kyle, Robin and Chris for welcoming and supporting us, and the many fabulous ReactionGrid community members who’ve dropped in to say hello.
- To all the jokaydians! Thanks for joining in with us and sharing your expertise and energy!
Notice and Disclaimer
Second Life is a trademark of Linden Research, Inc. The Islands of jokaydia, wiki.jokaydia.com and jokay.com.au are not affiliated with or sponsored by Second Life, Linden Labs, Linden Research, OpenSimulator, ReactionGrid, Jibe or any of the other gaming and virtual worlds platforms mentioned in this site under nominative use. Please contact jokay Wollongong for further info.
Dear Jo Kay,
Jo Jensen gave me your name as I am doing a MBA thesis about Serious Games (SG).
I’m a French exchange student in Victoria University and I chose to realize my French thesis about the potential and the development of Serious Games. My thesis is only based on SG with training issues, e.g, developed to train employees.
But in a general way, I would really enjoy to have information about development of SG in every areas in Australia (or throughout the world if you know about it).
Moreover, my study will mainly try to understand the slow development of SG in France despite the potential of this new training tool. From my first researches, it seems that SG are not very developed in Australia as well, especially for training purposes in the corporate world.
I would really appreciate to have your opinion about the slow penetration of SG in corporate training programs in Australia. (fear of novelty by HR managers, price of softwares, employee reactions…?)
Thanks to your knowledge and experience in virtual words for educational purposes, I think that any information you could provide me will really have a great added value for my thesis and to have a better understanding of SG.
If you don’t have time for answering me, I will also greatly appreciate any answers from one of yours partners or colleagues.
Thanks by advance for your time.