This week we’re going on a roadtrip! We’ll be meeting at the fabulous University of Western Australia campus in Second Life for a tour from their very dedicated project coordinator Jayjay Zifanwe.

The UWA team are developing a fantastic space, which includes spaces for collaboration and learning, and their most impressive feature – the 3D Art and Design Competition Galleries where you can check out the latest works in the competition.

For more info check out the video below, which was created by a UWA student, and gives you a glimpse of the space. (With just a little humour.. ‘dancefloor coming soon!’.. teehee!) You can also check out the project blog.

Event Details:

• Tour Meeting Point: UWA ‘s Island Landing Point (SLurl)
• Date: 1 November 2009
• Time:  9pm Sydney Time / 6pm Perth Time / 2am SL Time
• Check your local time here

We’ve got two events coming up this weekend… hope you can come along and join us!

Saturday 21 March 09 – jokaydia’s Monthly Newbie Session

Today we’ll be meeting at the Newbie Garden for some basic skills and dressing up, followed by a visit to Edusquare to explore the resources we’ve established there. After that we’ll go exploring!

• Time: 2pm, 21 March AEST / 8pm, 20 March SLT (Check your local time here!)
• Meeting at the jokaydia Newbie Garden (SLurl)

Sunday 22 March 09 – jokaydia Roadtrip – Theme: Educational Resources

This week we’ll be exploring a number of spaces that provide resources and information for educators in Second Life, including:

• NMC Learning Sim (SLurl) – includes demo’s, tools and open resources for educators in Second Life
• ISTE’s Educators Orientation and Headquarters (SLurl) – which includes newbie info, resources, and slurls to educational spaces in SL
• International School’s Island (ISI) (SLurl) – Information, Curriculum and Technology Towers – which provide a range of resouces for educators – both specifically SL and relating to ICT in education more generally.
• InfoIsland’s ICT Library (SLurl) – one of the oldest educational resource respositories in SL, it includes a large collection of  tools and scripts that would be useful for instruction (both commercial and “free” tools)
• Tech Virtual Museum’s Interactive Exhibits Design Tutorial (SLurl) – a resource for anyone seeking to create an immersive or virtual exhibit in Second Life

We’ll finish up back at jokaydia’s very own EduSquare (SLurl) for a short debrief and discussion about how we can further develop our resource repository on the Islands of jokaydia!

• Time: 2pm, 22 March AEST / 8pm, 21 March SLT (Check your local time here!)
• Meeting at the jokaydia’s Edusquare (SLurl)

We’ll be meeting at Edusquare @ jokaydia (SLurl) in just over 2 hrs for our regularly scheduled roadtrip! I hope you can join us!

The aim of each roadtrip is to give participants a taste of an educational genre or technology… and this week it’s all about Science!

Second Life offers a range of opportunities to explore science including simulations, virtual experiments, scientific symposiums, exhibits and displays. There are a huge number of very successful projects in SL which illustrate all of these strategies, and the spaces I’ve chosen for tonights event is but a small snapshot!

Event Details:

We’ll be starting the tour at Edusquare on jokaydia and have four locations planned for the visit as detailed below.

• Date: Sun 22 Feb 09
• Time: 8pm AEST / 1am SLT (Check your local time here!)
• Location: Starting at Edusquare @ jokaydia (SLurl) and visiting tour locations listed below.

Tour Plan

I’ve included entries from the SLeducation Wiki – Educational Uses resource below which detail the fantastic locations we’ll be visiting. SLurls, links and further info are included. Participants will be provided with a Tour notecard at the beginning of the event.

Location 1: Scilands Archipeligo

Scilands (SLurl) was founded in April 2007 by an international group of scientists and educators from universities, research laboratories, museums and scientific agencies and is dedicated to exploring science and technology in virtual worlds. It’s members include the National Physical Laboratory (UK), NASA Ames Research Center, San Francisco’s Exploratorium hands-on science and technology museum, Elon University, the University of Denver, NOAA, the Imperial College of London and the International Spaceflight Museum.

The aim of Scilands is to bring together scientists and educators to explore how Second Life can be used for education (formal and informal), public outreach, knowledge transfer, simulation, research, conferencing, meetings, and giving presentations.

There are many resources and spaces to explore at Scilands including:

• NOAA’s Islands – Meteora (SLurl) and Okeanos (SLurl)
• the International Spaceflight Museum (SLurl)
• Nanotechnology Island (SLurl)
• UK Future Focus (SLurl)
• Spoland – the Exploratorium (SLurl)
• Genome Islands (SLurl)
• the Space Studies Institute (SLurl)
• Second Earth (SLurl)
• Biome (SLurl)
• Tech Virtual (SLurl)
• University of Denver Science School
• Second Health

For more information visit the Scilands website, read the Scilands blog, view a map of the Scilands continent, check out the Scilands Classroom website or watch walk-thru video of Scilands on Youtube.

Location 2: Genome Island

Originally developed by Professor Mary Anne Clark aka Max Chatnoir, a Professor at Texas Wesleyan University, Genome Island (SLurl) is focussed on using Second Life to teach genetics. Using the building and scripting tools in Second Life, she has created laboratories where students can take part in virtual experiments that produce analyzable data. The Island is also designed as a place where students and other residents can meet and talk with professional geneticists. The Island includes a range of interesting areas, including:

• the Abbey of Saint Thomas in Mendel’s Garden (SLurl) which is focussed on the laws of inheritance, which were discovered by Johann Gregor Mendel in the mid-nineteenth century
• the Tower (SLurl), which includes a Genes are DNA (Hershey-Chase) Experiment, DNA Models, a virtual DNA Sequencer, a model of the human chromosome and also includes quizes, notecards and links to additional information
• the Terrace (SLurl) – which houses a giant model of a Eukaryatoic Cell which residents can enter and interact with
• the Gene Pool (SLurl) which is situated by a lovely virtual pond and includes a series of displays which illustrate Protein Synthesis
• the Cattery (SLurl), exploring genetic inheritance.

To find out more about Genome Island visit the Genome Island webpage, read an article on the Islands from Educause or watch a video about The Tower at Genome Islands on Youtube.

Location 3: Timeline of Earth

The Timeline of Earth (SLurl) has been created by students in the ASTR 202 “Exploring Life in the Universe” non-major astronomy class at the University of Arizona over 2 semesters. During the course, students in the class create, research, build, and script exhibits for ’spotlight times’ during the Earth’s 4.6 billion year history.

Visitors are invited to walk the timeline in a spiral pattern and click posters and models for information about the Earth and life of Earth during that time period. The display includes ‘immersive boxes’ where you can listen to the Moon landing or watch a dinosaur bite the dust!

The project is set to continue in 2009, with further details and exhibits planned.

For more information read an article about the Timeline on the NMC Campus blog , view images of the Timeline on Flickr, view screenshots from the project, read Astronomy in Second Life: A User’s Perspective (PDF) which includes extensive information about the project or watch a video fly-thru of the timeline on Youtube.

Location 4: Exploratorium Island, Sploland and the Splo Museum

The Exploratorium – the museum of science, art and human perception in San Francisco created the very first museum in Second Life in April 2006. Since they they have developed interactive science museums at three locations Second Life. Each allows residents to explore art and science whilst having fun. You can visit ‘The Splo’ at their original location – Splo Museum at Midnight City (SLurl) and visit them at Exploratorium (SLurl) or Sploland (SLurl) Islands which are located within the Scilands continent.

The Exploratorium’s spaces in Second Life house more than 100 exhbits including:

• optical illusions and perception exhibits,
• a 3D map of the nearest stars
• the Pie Ride
• the Distorted Room
• the Orbital Experience where visitors ride around the orbit of the planet of their choice
• Splo Box – science and humor and art
• the Steampunk Museum which contains puzzles and curiosities
• Peeps Pond
• PI Alley, which was created for the Exploratorium’s annual PI day celebrations
• Moucault’s Pendulum
• a Brownian Motion simulation, where visitors can ride inside the polen spores in Browns original observations
• PI Henge, a tribute to the world of imaginary numbers

Th Exploratorium has also hosted a wide range of events in Second Life including the 20th Anniversary of PI Day Celebrations, the Transit of Mercury – broadcast live from Kitt Peak National Observatory to Second Life and theTotal Eclipse broadcast live from Turkey to Second Life.

For more information watch a video tour of Sploland, read the paper: Creating Museum Content and Community in Second Life or find out more on the Exploratorium’s Virtual Worlds website.

Additional Spaces to Explore

Of course there are many, many other Science related spaces to visit inworld. For those interested in exploring further, you will find additional about each of the following below on the SLeducation wiki:

• International Spaceflight Museum (SLurl)
• NanoTechnology Island (SLurl)
• NOAA (SLurl)
• Abyss Museum of Ocean Science (SLurl)
• OneClimate (SLurl)
• Centre for Water Studies @ Better World Island (SLurl)

Also, I’d love to hear about the other sciencey spaces you think should be on the list – please add them in the comments!

Seeya at the Roadtrip!!

After the success of a number of road trips last year – including our visit to see Glyph’s great artwork and our visit to the Tempura Sim for the Facilitating Communities Online Course, we’ve decided to schedule regular road trips this year. Our aim is to get out and about and see some of the magic of Second Life and connect further with the broader SLeducation and arts communities inworld.

The events will include group tours of various spaces, and we’ll identify a theme for each trip. Where possible we’ll also try to arrange meetups with sim owners and creators of the projects we’re visiting.

You can contribute to the planning process by visiting the Road Trips page on the jokaydia wiki, where there is space for participants to add suggestions for places to visit and comments and feedback!

Our first road trip will be to visit the SLoodle team – who hold a fantastic meeting every week in the SLoodle classroom. We’ll be meeting at 8:30am AEST on Wed 11th Feb (1:30pm SLT) the SLoodle classroom (SLurl). As usual – you can check your local time here!