Recently I have spent a great deal of time exploring and building in virtual environments in preparation for taking a group of our boys into Teen Life in the world of Skoolaborate. We’re gearing up for this to begin in Term 2.

In case you don’t know, Skoolaborate is a global project that uses a blend of technolocies including, blogs, an LMS, wiki’s and ‘virtual worlds’ for collaborative learning of both teachers and students. By providing a common place to learn and share ideas, educators can leverage the power of new media to engage students and provide opportunities that might otherwise not exist. Using a group of islands in SecondLife, Skoolaborate helps students to collaborate on social action projects that benefit students who are less privileged than themselves. These projects integrate curriculum and digital technologies into collaborative global actions.

So it was with much pleasure that I attended a Cisco Live event this morning (6am Sydney time) at the Cisco Bandwidth Stage. It was Time for a (Tech) Chat!

My wise colleague and friend John presented his talk on Learning 2.0: The Power of Learning in a Networked World. John says that the slides he used in the Second Life presentation are very basic – text-only – slides (actually they were great in SL!). Full versions of the presentation are available for download- one in Keynote (17.5mb), and one in Powerpoint (15mb). Also Cisco Live: Networkers Online will also have something available. I highly recommend downloading them and absorbing the content, or listening to John’s presentation when it becomes available at Cicso Live.

John very kindly let me come up on stage for a photo shoot! 🙂