Not the only (virtual) life...This was a really excellent (and well organised) event. Eduserve described the symposium as an "attempt to look past the hype surrounding virtual worlds such as Second Life and evaluate whether they offer real opportunities for learners at UK educational institutions". Although it did touch on a few other virtual worlds, it is fair to say that the content of the day focussed almost exclusively on Second Life. The speakers provided a diverse range of inspiring and thought provoking views on SL and learning, ranging from the very positive (Jim Purbrick, Linden Labs - no surprise there) through to the extremely sceptical (Stephen Downes, OLDaily and Institute for Information Technology, Canada).
In addition to the 'real life' event in London, the symposium was also being streamed live into 3 venues within SL (with a 6 second delay, which was interesting at times!). Eduserve also screened the live SL symposium activity on large screens within the venue, adjacent to the presentation screens. I'm not sure what others thought of this, but I really liked it as it gave me a good feel for the audience outside of the congress centre that were joining us. Having this beamed to us also highlighted any techie problems that SL delegates were having, which though did not appear to be many, was nevertheless interesting (to me anyway!). Those participating in SL could also (and did) pose questions to the speakers/panel - and I think that worked pretty well. However, Eduserve have clearly been engaging, and building, in SL for a while - and I do think you need that kind of technical know-how/familiarity with SL before it is sensible to try anything like this - so JISC would not be quite ready for something like this just yet!
I learned a few things (which is always good). In particular - that the evidence (so far) suggests that SL works best as a communication and collaborative tool, that although it is probably the best known virtual world/life, it certainly isn't alone (1), and that there are lots and lots of creative ways of using SL as a learning tool - the best examples of this came from Jim's presentation including designers, filmakers, business studies and marketing.
Not particularly surprising, but worth noting is the strong sentiment that very few (if any) of the speakers really knew where their dabble with SL would take them, nor what the future was likely to hold.
(1) A range of speakers gave lists of alternative virtual worlds - the most comprehensive was within Roo's (IBM) presentation, but another reasonable review of some of the alternatives was also given by Hamish (Edinburgh University).
Presentations available at: http://www.eduserv.org.uk/foundation/symposium/2007/presentations
Location: Congress Centre
Wireless: Good
Power: Not great - but with the help of Alice G I managed to get a socket :)
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