Blackboard and Multi User Environment MUVE

Recently anounced at the Blackboard Development conference was a small intiative looking at integrating the functions of Blackboard with theose of MUVE.

http://tinyurl.com/co6lq.

There has already been a condsiderable amount of exploratory work undertaken in this area by the the sloodle project

www.sloodle.com
integrating the complimentary features of MUVE and VLE’s (in the sloodle case open source vle Moodle)

On reflection Im wondering if this is something the specifications and standards community should be monitoring closely. There does appear to be a groundswell of practitioners wishing to incorporate the use of MUVE in their teaching activity , weather its ‘flavour of the month’ a ecidence of sustained interest i’m unsure. There is certainly a lot of activity in this space.

(Not) Another “Second Life” Article

Second Life; its everywhere this weekend I attended “secondfest” a music festival sponsored by the Guardian “in world”. I have to say, common with many others, I was somewhat underwhelmed by the experience (well at least I didn’t get my feet muddy), Im not sure that the technology can cope (yet) with large audiences and something we should seriously note if we are to apply multi user virtual environments (MUVE) in education.
I was interested to learn that Andy Powell of Eduserve (aka Art Fossit) will be talking about Learning Acitivity Managment Sysatem (LAMS) for choreographing learning activity at this weeks LAMS conference http://lams2007.lamsfoundation.org/. This begs the question could the IMS learning Design Specification be of use/ interest to educatios practicing in Second Life and other MUVE, it also begs the question would avatar interoperability be a useful (or not)aim. Issues I will reflect on (or at least ask Moon Eggplant to)

Work Week Ending 22/06

Mon 18 Admin (start ALT paper) plus ACE call (JISC project spread sheet)
Tue 19th Management Meeting plus budget work
Wed 20th Meeting with DfES re ISB
Thur 21st WFH Budgets/admin plus paper
Fri 22nd JISC Aadmin (project budgets) plus JISC calls

Work Week Ending 15/6/07

Mon 11th JISC Ops Conference call and meeting with CRA
Tue 12th JISC CETIS Mangement Meeting
Wed13th Writning Paper (Educational affordance)
Thur 14th Attended Bolton Teaching and Learning Conference
Fri 15th Administartion/paper writing and Costing Group Meeting Bolton

Work Week Ending May 25th

Monday – AM Budget discussion/work PM- general admin emails
Tuesday – Admin user survey meeting and evaluation documents Time sheets collation
Wednesday – AM admin MOU/SLA/Budget PM- IIP Meeting
Thursday – AM Conference input /
Friday – AM Evaluation report & admin

JISC CETIS Conference 2007

Well it is official, there will be another JISC CETIS conference later this year. After conferences in Oxford, Edinburgh and Manchester the search is on for this year’s location with the early favourites being Birmingham and Manchester (again).

JISC CETIS Deputy Director Adam Cooper will be chairing the conference this year and is tasked with preparing the themes.