Open Source, Copyright and Plagarism Discussion Excellent discussion on intellectual property in the US, Australia, Thailand, UK and Europe Visit VWBPE South 3 (130, 218, 26)

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The Virtual Language Resource project VWBPE This is a brilliant informal learning area packed with resources for French language students. This is an area for students to interact and find tools that will be meaningful for them. Magazines that are kept up to date, links to in-world and 2D sites. Student says it would be great to get more French learners to talk with – other language learners don't have a resource like this. Visit EduNation (28, 129, 25)

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Experimenting with rich media options of new SL viewer This clever avvie is looking at broadcasting his web cam into SL from a prim on his head… Visit EduNation (16, 124, 24)

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Join me this weekend at the Virtual Worlds Best Practice in Education conference – where more than 5,000 avatars from around the world will be attending some 190 plus events over the 44 hours starting in just under 5 hours or so (1AM US PST )

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This came to mind because last weekend my sister in law was talking about her search for a primary school for my oldest nephew. She expressed frustration at the school web sites for supplying mostly high-level vision statements rather than sharing how they set out to achieve those visions.

In researching some schools for her, one promise they all made was to partner with parents so that the education of each child was a parternship between the school, parent and child.

I know this is pretty typical, so I asked my sister over in New Hampshire, USA, if she could scan and send a copy of my niece’s (a senior in highschool) report card. I went to school in the States and as I wanted to track the evolution of the report card along one system, thought that made the most sense. Sis’ did one better and gave me the log in for her daughter’s school’s web site area for parents and guardians.

I couldn’t wait to see what would be there. Insightful notes from teachers would surely have to be there – how could my sister be a partner in her child’s education without communication from/with teachers? Perhaps examples of work good or bad so that she could see what her daughter has turned in? Perhaps a graph showing her improvement over time (or lack thereof) in critical skills?

What I found was the same information that used to be on my white cardboard report card in the manilla envelope in the 70s and 80s: letters and numbers. True there was also data on her attendance (really handy for checking up on kids who fib like a friend of hers apparently), but nothing else. No comments at all. I at least would get some database-ready stuff like “Could work harder” or “Pleasure to have in class”

So, letters and numbers. Links to the teacher’s email accounts. A history of her past grades that didn’t seem to go back too far. Course names that didn’t link to descriptions or learning outcomes. One course was “Advanced Health”. I asked my sister what that entailed – home surgery? Resurrection perhaps? She told me to ask my niece – she had NO idea.

So, if parents/guardians/involved adults are going to be partners in a child’s education – shouldn’t they get more information than letters and numbers?

PHOTO CREDIT: “Mark’s First Report Card” by laszlodemo, published to Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/11618809@N03/ CC (by) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

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As far as collaborative documents go, I was able to get to the menu of my Google Documents but wasn’t able to open a document. I could see the Loading message happen at the top of the page, but no dice. I had better luck with using Etherpad.  I mapped an Etherpad URL to a prim in Second Life and was able to chat to people using EtherPad from within Second Life and was able to co-author a document with them.  Those not using the new browser will only see a grey prim – and I noticed that prims with videos that work in the old browser didn’t work for me.

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They are voted on by and for the community.

My nominations are limited because I find I’m reading fewer and fewer blogs. If I can subscribe via email, blogs get my attention. If not, I might glance at my rss feeds in iGoogle, chances are not so much any more. Am going to put the subscribe via email option on my blog ASAP.

My nominations are:

Best individual tweeter – Middle Class Girl - http://twitter.com/middleclassgirl Funny, informative, warm-hearted, unashamedly herself and never, ever boring.

Best group blog -  The people I follow on Twitter – http://twitter.com/kerryank/following my first stop for resources, support, conversation and news.

Best resource sharing blog: Stephen Downes OL Daily http://www.downes.ca/ He sends it out via email and it’s part of my daily ritual.

Most influential tweet / series of tweets / tweet based discussion I’ve had so many this year I can’t pick. Okay, if I had to it would be #edayz09

Best educational tech support blog: Three Green Eggs - three cheers for an interactive script creator for virtual worlds to help those of us who aren’t programmers – http://www.3greeneggs.com/autoscript/

Best educational use of video / visual: Torley Linden is my video tut hero – an educator to tens of thousands whose style and delivery are unique and effective – http://torley.com

Best educational wiki: Second Life Wiki http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Main_Page Linden Labs has riled me quite a lot this year with stupid, community-destroying policies but this wiki, built by the SL community and insiders is a support and information resource I constantly tap into.

Best educational use of a social networking service: Allison Miller aka @theother66 She rocks Twitter and Facebook for education! http://twitter.com/theother66

Best educational use of a virtual world: Kyle Gomboy for Reaction Grid. Setting up Open Sim on a grid then keeping out the porn and violence so educators can thrive. Go Kyle, Chris, Felix and team! http://reactiongrid.com/

Lifetime achievement: Joanna McKay – for her work in Second Life and other virtual spaces, her graciousness in the face of adversity, her generosity in donating time and space to educators with ideas – http://jokay.com.au

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All you have to do is go to the home page of the eDayz conference: http://edayz.org

All times in Australian Central Daylight time – half an hour behind the Eastern States – if you’re from somewhere else, here is a great site for time conversion (use Australia – South Australia – Adelaide as your starting point) http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedform.html

• 830-845am Sound checks – your voluntary participation much appreciated
• 9am Welcome from Marlene and summary of Day one from Frankie Forsyth
• 920-1005am Nancy White keynote “Why shouldn’t “do” community or why not for learning?
• 10:05 to 10:35am Julian Ridden – Adding Variety to your Vanilla Moodle

We’ll then break our coverage until after lunch.

120pm Nancy White – Community and Learning: Going Deeper
205-245pm Michael Coghlan – E-learning: What’s on the Horizon

Looking forward to more good conversations and idea sharing!
I’m covering the conference using CoveritLive and Ustream (Ustream’s chat tool needs work IMHO). As a backup I’m taking a feed out from the board to a recording device that will allow for quick audio turn around.  I have Audacity set up ready to add a pre-recorded introduction to recorded audio and the LAME MP3 converter add on for Audacity to output MP3s.  Filezilla handles uploads.

I also have Tweetchat set up with my conference hashtag because there may be times I don’t want a Twitter feed feeding into my Coverit Live coverage (people use one conference tag for multiple sessions).  I can then copy and paste session-related Tweets from Tweetchat to CoveritLive.

TWO laptops for conference coverage.

Laptop 1: Feeding outUstream. PERIOD. Learned that I need to hit Pause button on the home page of the Ustream site because it seemed to auto play which caused echo.

Laptop 2:Although both laptops have the exact same software and web sites set up and ready to go, Laptop 2 is the one I use for CoveritLive, to monitor the conference home page where I have the Ustream widget embedded, to monitor TweetChat for related Tweets in sessions where I’ve disabled the Twitter hashtag feeding into Cover it Live as well as having the slide images to upload to Coverit Live

I have to admit that I am selective about which slides I upload because there is NO bulk upload tool in Coverit Live at this writing and it’s TEDIOUS. Plus, the way people use slides differs so vastly. My fav presenters have uploaded their slides to slideshare and I can just throw a link in at the start of their sessions…

Finally,KUDOS to the staff at Gilles Plains TAFE .  They and the infrastructure here are doing a far better job than larger and more high profile venues. Thanks everyone and look forward to catching up with you online tomorrow on Friday the 13th!