So yesterday I had a quick conference call with Pandora, Bron and Sapphy, who are all having fun down at the ACEC 2010 conference down in Melbourne this week. They were asking about how we could pull virtual participants into Bron’s Virtual Worlds Unconference session which she’s facilitating today at the real life venue (see details below!).

The big challenge was to find a way for virtual and face to face participants  to participate in the discussion without neccessarily all being logged into Second Life. And so began the jokaydia Chat Bridge mission! ;)

Chat Bridge tools have been around in Second Life for awhile now. We used Chase Marellan’s great chat bridge service for the Edublog Awards in 2008 with great success, and we’ve also experimented with SLOODLE’s web-intercom tools which are handy if your working with a class group. But neither of these fit the bill for this event as we have no budget to pay for a service, or time to enrol everyone at the face to face event in a moodle chat!

So after a bit of searching around I found Quickfox.net’s IRC Chat bridge tools which allow you to connect local chatters in Second Life with participants in an IRC Channel. You can get the tools inworld here (SLurl) and there’s info about the service here.

This is great – and its free too… woot! But your basic IRC channel is a bit of a stretch for newer user who perhaps havent ever used those types of tools before.

So the next step was finding the tools to embed the IRC chat in an easy to use web page on the jokaydia site… and Mibbit.com is the solution. They provide a simple to use widget that lets me embed my chat on my blog page easily. Its free if you are happy to put up with their ads and there’s even a Mibbit Plugin for WordPress which makes it super easy to setup!

I’ve setup our Chat Bridge area in EduSquare @ jokaydia in SL (SLurl), as that’s one of the spaces we’ve tended to use regularly for demos and discussions. All residents of jokaydia will be able to pop out the tools via the Rezzer button I’ve setup on the wall – so feel free to drop in and try it out!

You can access the Web-based chat room via the new Chat Bridge page which is here.

ACEC 2010 Visits jokaydia!

So back to Bron, Pandora and Sapphire at ACEC! Now that we have our chat bridge setup, its time to test it! And we’ll be doing just that during Bron’s session today. Details are below … all welcome to attend!

Event Details:

• Unconference session at the ACEC 2010 event happening in Melbourne, Australia. Click here session for details!
• Facilitator: Bronwyn Stuckey
• Time: Thursday, 8 April 2010 13:30 – 15:00, Melbourne Time!
• SL Time: 8:30pm SLT, 7 April! Check your local time here!
• Locations: Conversation Pit at the ACEC venue in real life,EduSquare @ jokaydia in SL (SLurl) and here in our web-based chat below!

Special thanks to slammed, Stephan and Bron for helping me test the chat bridge tools! Next job is getting to work in jokaydiaGRID too! ;)

Where in the world is the Second Life in Education Wiki!!??

Funny you should ask that! ;)

The new jokaydia Virtual Worlds in Education wiki includes all of the resources that were previously available at SLeducation.wikispaces.com, the well known wiki which was created by Jo Kay and Sean FitzGerald in late 2006 to document the emerging uses of Second Life in education.

I am now working on a broader collection of Virtual Worlds in Education resources… stay tuned as things develop! For further information or to make a suggestion, please email: joannamkay@gmail.com.

Please Update Your Links!

If you have included links to this resource on your website, forum or social network, please update it now! The new address is: http://wiki.jokaydia.com!

I’ve been working on updating our jokaydia.com sites as part of the whole ‘moving the wiki’ process and have a few groovy new resources to highlight!

Check out the new and improved:

• Events Calendar page, which includes details of upcoming and past events
• jokaydia @ ReactionGrid Page – which includes a signup tool and information about how to visit us at ReactionGrid. Feel free to use this page to help your colleagues and students to get setup for ReactionGrid!
• jokaydia @ MetaPlace Page – which includes information about how to access our MetaPlace space
• About jokaydia Page – which includes information about the jokaydia Project and our online spaces and places.

What About that Wiki?

The wiki move has commenced, and you’ll see both migrated and new resources there soon. For a sneak peak, check out wiki.jokaydia.com. I’ll make further announcements when the resource migration process is complete.

Dont Forget – First EduMeet Tonight!

The first official EduMeet@jokaydia will happen this coming Sunday 11 October on ReactionGrid and will focus on playing and planning!

• Location: jokaydia@ReactionGrid
• How To: Simply signup and join us on the jokaydia Sim on the ReactionGrid. You can find the signup page here, and information on how to login here. To locate the jokaydia sim use the map to search, or contact jokay Wollongong if you need a TP!
• Time: 9pm AEST / 10am GMT /3am  SLT
• Check your local time here!