Taxonomy of Virtual Worlds for Education Workshop
March 12 and 13, 2009
University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education
3700 Walnut Street (corner of 37th and Walnut)
Philadelphia, PA
Registration and Plenary Sessions:
Silverstein Forum
Stiteler Hall
208 South 37th Street
How to Get Here
Detail Map for workshop;
the Silverstein Lounge is shown as a bold, red S on the map.
The National Science Foundation-funded Taxonomy of Virtual Worlds for Education workshop brings together practitioners—especially teachers and students, researchers, and technology providers to brainstorm the ideal virtual world software systems for STEM learning. The goal is to ensure that the ongoing evolution of this medium is informed by the educational user community.
From experience, educators have found that each virtual world system has both attractive and detractive features when considered for use in K-12 educational settings. This workshop is intended specifically to flesh out the landscape of educational virtual world applications:
- What would the ideal systems for STEM learning look like?
- In particular, what are the best ways to manage tasks specific to education, such as social interaction, student assessment, teacher support and development?
- How do we address issues of access, usability, system architecture, intellectual property, user identity and security?
- What tools are currently available for assessment and what do we need?
- How do we match software to teaching strategies?
This workshop centers mainly on K-12 education, from the points of view of teachers and students in classroom and informal settings, as well as from the perspective of teacher professional development and support professionals. Other efforts, such as the recent Microsoft Academic Days on Game Development in Computer Science Education, are focusing directly on the integration of virtual worlds and games into Computer Science education at the high school and college level.
We also hope to inform commercial and open source developers, and identify a second tier of tools that can be designed for cross-platform interoperability and will contribute to the MediaGrid Immersive Education initiative.
Ultimately, the outcomes will help inform the next generation of virtual world systems for education.
