I am so very pleased to be able to publish this video online! It documents the TAFENSW – Western Institute Tourism and Hospitality Project at jokaydiaGRID and was created by the super talented Kerryj aka Pandora Kurrajong! It was funded by the Australian Flexible Learning Framework.

Huge congratulations to Rob Alderton aka Rob Merchi and her team in the Tourism and Hospitality section at Bathurst TAFE. They have created a fantastic set of resources and strategies which demonstrate a clear and effective use of virtual worlds in vocational education and training. They’ve also demonstrated how immersive learning environments can be used to address distance and offer customised learning options for our students. It has been an absolute pleasure to work with them and to see their students enjoy learning inworld.

A special thanks also to Azzura, Sapphy, Will, Talvin and the kids from Year 9 IT at the Illawarra Grammar School for making cameo appearances in the movie! Yay!

To visit the Virtual Tourism Project inworld, simply login to jokaydiaGRID and teleport to the Western Institute 1 sim. For more information about the project visit: http://bit.ly/virtualtourismnsw.

Developments at jokaydiaGRID Landing Point

We’ve had a fantastic week at jokaydiaGRID this week and firstly I must welcome all of our new residents! It is wonderful to see so many new faces and also old friends from Second Life visiting us! During the course of the weekend, we’ve had more than 60 new accounts created and Azzura and I have had the pleasure of meeting lots of people on their very first jokaydiaGRID Rez Day! Too exciting!

Thank you everyone for joining us on this fantastic adventure in Opensim! I hope that we can continue to support educators and artists to explore amazing and inspiring uses of virtual worlds – discovering the best uses and best practices for each of our homes in the metaverse! Stay tuned as we begin holding more regular community events and activties inworld!

Also, if you have a mad scheme, fantastic idea or suggestion you’d like to share with us, we’d love to hear from you! Feel free to email jokay@jokaydia.com.

jokaydiaGRID Rentals – Our Grid is Growing!

jokay and Azzura at jokaydiaGRID Landing Point

In other exciting news, we’ve also had a number of new sims spring up on the grid this weekend, and we’d like to welcome our new Sim Owners to jokaydiaGRID!

• Longtime jokaydians Pandora Kurrajong and Sapphire Ceawlin have moved into Edvirons to explore various uses of opensim including working with teens, SLoodle and professional develoment for educators
• DawnRyder Wycliffe has moved into a huge 6 sim estate – with plans to explore various uses of virtual worlds for education. She has lots of experience from Second Life – and I CAN’T WAIT to see what emerges at the Rising Hope campus.
• Pathfinder Lester aka John Lester who we all know from his years of support for virtual worlds educators has moved into a lovely sim called appropriately ‘Pathlandia’. You can keep up to date with his exploits both at jokaydiaGRID and on the hypergrid on his blog – Be Cunning and Full of Tricks.

Pathfinder moves to jokaydiaGRID!

At any rate… thank you to ALL of our sim owners for choosing jokaydiaGRID to setup home in the open metaverse! I am so looking forward to being part of your opensim adventures and I’m sure you’ll all enrich the jokaydia Community!

Joining jokaydiaGRID

jokaydiaGRID Rentals!

If you’d like to join us on jokaydiaGRID, please feel free to get in touch. We are offering sims for rent to educators, artists and like-minded business people who are interested in exploring the uses of all virtual worlds, but especially opensim and we’d love to welcome you to our community! Our grid is PG-rated and supported by a community of educators and technologists who’ve been working in and exploring virtual worlds since 2006.

Rental Costs:

• $50.00 AUD one-time setup fee
• $25.00AUD per month for each sim (region).

What is included:

As a special deal for our jokaydiaGRID residents, we also offer you FREE access to our Islands of jokaydia in Second Life resources – including a Sandbox, 2 events spaces, Edusquare – our virtual worlds education directory, Bar@jokaydia, the Beach and various other informal spaces.  Please contact jokay Wollongong for further details or to make a booking to use these venues for private events!

But wait… there’s more! Special Offer for October

To support new residents who are making the transition from other worlds,  jokaydiaGRID is offering FREE Setup until the 30th October 2010! This means a saving of $50.00 aud for all residents who join us during the next few weeks!
To get your rental request started, simply complete the form here and jokaydia Support will be in touch!

Seeya in the metaverse soon!

Wednesday 22 September 2010, 10am – 3pm Sydney Time / Tuesday 21 September 2010, 5pm – 10pm SL Time (PST)

I’m very pleased to be supporting Dean Groom and his team from the Learning and Teaching Centre at the Macquarie University for the Ignite NSW 2010 event which is happening TOMORROW, both in the metaverse at the Islands of jokaydia in Second Life and in real life at the Macquarie Uni campus!

We have a fantastic array of speakers – check out the details below, or visit the IGNITE NSW 2010 Event Website and particularly the Virtual Worlds Event Schedule.

Join us to learn more about a range of fabulous educational projects and strategies being used in virtual worlds and gain insights from some of Australia’s leading virtual worlds educators.

Learning and Teaching Week – “Ignite NSW” – Virtual Worlds and the Quest for Integrated Learning

• Teaching in a Virtual World: A Snapshot and Evaluation of Different Institutions – Sue Gregory, School of Education, University of New England presents a snapshot of how virtual worlds are being used in Australian Education.
• Beyond Second Life - Kyle Gomboy, CEO of Reaction Grid demonstrates and discusses the use of virtual worlds, beyond Second Life such as Unity 3D and Open Simulator, describing the potential and support available to enducators.
• Rules for Engagement in Virtual Spaces - Steve Collis, Director of Innovation at Northern Beaches Christian School promotes the use of the new online spaces at his school. Steve explains some of the issues and projects he has created to engage students in virtual worlds.
• “Who’s leading our students into 21st century learning” - Dr Bronwyn Stuckey, consultant educational technologist and researcher will explore the findings of research into the identity of teachers adopting virtual worlds and games (Quest Atlantis, Second Life, WOW, Reaction Grid) in their teaching and showcase some of their stories. The session will dispel many of the myths that surround the “digital immigrants and digital natives” debate and show that it is teachers confident in their practice and effective pedagogies who are the real change agents in educational environments and that technological skill, age or stage of career development are neither an excuse or barrier.
• The ‘Technospirit’ Sim - Lucy Barrow, Ballarat Grammer School will share an overview of The “TechnoSpirit Sim” which was created by the Ballarat Grammar’s Virtual Worlds Project Team, made up of students and staff. She will explore how the Project Team created different areas of interest including a gallery, meditation garden, presentation area, avatar store, building plots and chapel. We will look at how the TechnoSpirit Sim was used as a Year 8 Elective offering students the opportunity to explore the themes of “Signs and Symbols” and “Places of Worship” in an engaging and challenging environment.

How to Participate

To participate in the event, simply choose one of the options below:

• Join us at the Islands of jokaydia in Second Life! (SLurl)
• Watch us live on the web via the Onlinevents.co.uk website
• Join us in real life at Macquarie University

If you are new to virtual worlds, check out this handy guide to joining Second Life and visiting the Macquarie University Campus inworld.  Please note that we will be using Second Life voice tools throughout the event, so its a good idea to make sure you’ve tested this prior to big day!

Event Times

Our inworld sessions will commence on Wednesday 22 September 2010 at 10am Sydney time / Tuesday 21 September 2010 at 5pm SLT. Check your local time here.

The amazing Henny Zimer aka @Teacherman79 aka Jeff Agemenoni has done it again! Ground-breaking as usual, he’s setup a fantastic 2 week long Virtual Worlds Camp for kids in his local district in Montana. During the camp, the kids are exploring Quest Atlantis and jokaydiaGRID and learning, fun and a little bit of virtual chaos are definitely in order!

The kids range in age from about 10 to 14years, and had their first explorations of jokaydiaGRID today. It was awesome to see them excited to learn and explore…. seeing kids have fun on jokaydiaGRID NEVER gets old! I cant wait to see what they create on the Montana sim over the coming days!

You can also check out some great images captured by the kids via Jeff’s Flickr stream.

Congratulations to Henny and the Montana kids – it’s truly awesome to have you with us at jokaydiaGRID!

John from Onlinevents.co.uk has posted all the videos he recorded at our Unconference and you can view them on his site @ http://onlinevents.co.uk/jokaydiaunconfmay2010.

I’ve included a few highlights below!

A huge thanks to all the presenters, facilitators, helpers and participants who made the Unconference so much fun! Seeya in September for our next unconferencey events!

Image included above by Steph Ridgway on Flickr

Today has been an exciting day on many virtual fronts, and to finish it off I had the pleasure of setting up our newest project oriented space on jokaydiaGRID! The Sugar Sim is jokaydia’s new Art and Design space. It will be used as a gallery space and for all sorts of 3D artyness, and will be facilitated by myself and the amazing Al Upton (aka Al Lurton in SL).

Al has been a resident of jokaydia in SL for a long time now – sharing many of his works and exhibitions with our community… so I’m totally excited that he’s decided to take on a leading role in establishing some creative projects on jokaydiaGRID! Thanks Al!! ;)

We’re obviously going into an intense building and planning phase on the Sugar sim starting today, but in the meantime feel free to drop in and share your ideas for how we can support art and design on the jokaydiaGRID. Do you know a great virtual artist? Got a brilliant installation idea!? We’d love to hear from you!

Further notes, recordings and resources from the session are available in the event discussion forum @ http://www.flexiblelearning.net.au/content/exploring-metaverse-virtual-worlds-and-games-learning.

For those interested in Quest Atlantis:

• For information about upcoming teacher training in Quest Atlantis visit: http://atlantis.crlt.indiana.edu/site/pd_list
• For a course code or further information contact Dr Bronwyn Stuckey – email: bestucke@indiana.edu, twitter & skype: Bronst, Facebook:Bronwyn Stuckey

Special thanks to Jane McGonigal for her inspirational session at TEDTalks which inspired some of ideas for this presentation!

I mentioned this briefly in an earlier post, but wanted to share this fantastic video recorded by the Online Therapy Institute and Onlinevents team during the OCTIA 2010 Conference (Online Counselling and Therapy in Action) held last weekend. This session was held live in Manchester for the conference, via the Onlinevents Livestream (with a chat backchannel) and live in Second Life for a small audience who enjoyed the tour.

During the video Kate gives a brief overview of some of the work she is doing in relation to online counselling in virtual worlds, as well as a brief tour of the new expanded headquarters we’ve just about finished creating for them on jokaydia II.

Huuuge congratulations to the Online Therapy Institute team! I am so impressed by the creative, thoughtful approach you are taking to developing mental health services online and also to creating a community for mental health professionals online (check out the OTI’s website full of tools and resources!). Also big congratulations to Onlinevents team – your mixed reality events skills rock – what a great recording of the session!

If you’d like to check out Online Therapy Square, the OTI Offices and the Onlinevents Headquarters visit: http://slurl.com/secondlife/jokaydia%20II/110/68/24.

Over the next 24-48hrs, jokaydia (inSL) residents will start receiving special (and super exclusive) invites via their Second Life avatars. The invite box will include the note above (larger version for your viewing pleasure here), and some extra information on how to join us in our latest virtual worlds adventure… the jokaydiaGrid!

Please follow the instructions that are included in the notecard you receive everyone! … I can’t wait to share the fun with you all!

What is the jokaydia Grid?

I’ve setup a new grid for the jokaydia Community so that we can fully explore the uses of opensimulator for education, arts and social change. It is designed to extend the work we’ve been doing since 2006 in Second Life and allow us to truly immerse in virtual worlds creation, research … and most important, FUN! Some of our early goals for the grid include:

• 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 post importantly t0 Play! We aim to continue to create a community that learns, inspires, explores and shares.

The jokaydiaGrid is hosted by the lovely people over at ReactionGrid, and we are very pleased to be extending our working relationship with such a fabulous team. For more info, check out their website.

Anyway, I thought I’d answer the two questions I’ve been asked most since we started exploring and creating new options for jokaydia…..

“But What About the Islands of jokaydia in SL?”

I’ll say it again…. jokaydia IS NOT leaving Second Life. The Islands of jokaydia continues to live on in Second Life. and will always be an important part of our suite of virtual worlds platforms and tools. In fact!….check out my OTI@jokaydia Flickr set to see groovy pics from our OCTIA visit to the new Online Therapy Institute Campus on jokaydia, held just yesterday!

We particularly value the connections jokaydia has built with other members of the educational community based in Second Life and will continue to provide events and activities to both jokaydia Residents and our extensive networks. Keep an eye out for our next jokaydia Unconference in SL which will be happening in May.

“Dont you already have a space on ReactionGrid?”

Yes! Our recently launched jokaydia@ReactionGrid sim allows us to learn and share with the fabulous people forging new business and education communities over there in the ReactionGrid universe, and is an important part of our suite of tools.

Our jokaydia@ReactionGrid regions will remain a community space (for regular meetups and discussion), with simple tools (sandbox, events space, tutorials) and resources (landmarks library, tutorials, newbie packs). It will also provide us with a space to explore hypergridding the possibilities for sharing, connecting and collaborating across virtual worlds.  To find out more about how to come and visit us at jokaydia@ReactionGrid click here.

So What’s Happening Next?

To celebrate this great new challenge and adventure, I’ll be releasing lots of new info, tools and resources throughout the week across all of our homes in the metaverse – so stay tuned as it all starts to unfold!

To kick things off – today I’ve kicked off a new @jokaydiGrid Twitter account – which you can follow for news, updates and information about our exploits in a brave new virtual world!

For our extended jokaydia community of family, friends and colleagues – we’ll be inviting you to join us at the end of the week for a grand opening party – details will be revealed shortly!

Let the new virtual worlds games…. BEGIN! :)

With only a few days to go, its time for final checks and downloads in preparation for the jokaydia Unconference 09!

Check out the (almost) final unconference schedule on the jokaydia Wiki where you’ll be able to figure out  which sessions you’d like to attend. There are some seriously fantastic conversations to participate in planned!

Getting Ready!

If you’re new to Second Life, you should also ensure that:

• You have signed up for an account and setup your avatar?
• You have attended a newbie session or spent some time inworld prior to the event to get comfortable
• You have a headset and microphone available and you’ve tested your audio settings.

Signing up for Other Platforms!

As well as our SL sessions, we will be visiting World of Warcraft and Quest Atlantis during during the event. Check out the details below, and if you’d like to attend those sessions, you will need to follow the instructions on how to take part.

Quest Atlantis Virtual World Game for KIDS
(9-15 yrs)

Event Details:

• AEST TIME: 1pm
• SL Time: Fri 8pm
• Check your local time!

Come along and have a guided tour of the Quest Atlantis virtual world. See where curriculum, gaming and social values meet in a project sponsored by Indiana University’s Centre for Research in Learning Technology. This program is offered free to teachers and schools about the globe and is already implemented in many USA, Australian and NZ (and 15 other countries) schools already. Maybe your school could be the next?

PLEASE NOTE: Educators wishing to take this tour will need to register and create an account at: Jokaydia Unconference QA Tour. Registration Code: 121597. Email Bron Stuckey (Bron Bloxsome in SL) bestucke@indiana.edu for further information.

World of Warcraft Adventure!

Event Details:

• AEST Time: 5pm
• SL Time: 12am
• Check your local time!

Join the jokaydians for a visit to one of the other spaces we sometimes reside! Join the Alliance and find out more about World of Warcraft and its potentials for use in education.

Please Note: This event requires you to prepare by downloading software and setting up on the correct realm. For further info see the WoW Adventure Wikipage and register your intention to attend! Email jokay Wollongong for further information.