Virtual Worlds in Education (VieW) is focused on supporting the integration of virtual worlds into K-20 learning, both formal and informal. This effort is founded on ten years of experience centered at Cornell University in the SciCentr outreach program and builds on a user community centered in New York State and reaching as far as Singapore and Australia. The first activity for VieW was the Taxonomy of Virtual Worlds workshop, an NSF-funded workshop aimed at a deeper understanding of the application of virtual worlds in K-12 STEM education. In May, 2009, the community in New York State gathered to learn the outcomes of the NSF-funded WITS Broadening Participation in Computing project and to engage in a broader discussion focused on sustaining these efforts and building a flexible support infrastructure within the State.
VieW Activities
- Educators' Workshops
- Hands-on workshops for educators focus on demonstrating how project-based learning can support K-12 learning, while integrating computer literacy and mastery of the ISTE NETS for Students. These programs are supported by the NSF WITS demonstration project, school districts, and partners such as the New York Hall of Science and the National Institute of Aerospace.
- Publications
- Corbit, M., Kolodziej, S., and Wofford, J. (forthcoming). Virtual Wolds: Assessment Challenges and Opportunities. Chapter in Assessment of 3D MultiUser Games, Clemson University Press. Accepted
- Rosen, D. and Corbit, M. (2009). Social network analysis in virtual environments. Hypertext 2009: 317-322.
- A complete list of from the SciCentr program.
Resources
- The original Web site for SciCentr.org is archived here. Please contact GST BOCES for information about EDUni-NY.
- VLearn3D is archived. This community of researchers and educators using virtual worlds was active from 1998-2003.
- Immersive Education (IED) initiative supports open standards development of virtual world technologies through the efforts of the Media Grid.
- RezEd is an exciting community of educators focused primarily in Second Life.
- The Virtual Worlds Almanac, a wiki with the most up-to-date data available on the many virtual world environments and their users, ranging from Tapped In to Second Life, and the numbers are growing daily.