Virtual worlds: for young and old....

The discussions continue regularly on Infolit iSchool in Second Life (SL), the virtual world. Most recently, Robin Ashford (a librarian from the USA, Robin Mochi in SL) led a discussion about the Academic librarian in Second Life. The picture show the assembled people, mainly from the UK and USA. She was speaking, and other people were using text chat: there is a transcript of the chat here : http://sleeds.org/chatlog/?c=339. There was a lively discussion so although you don't get most of Robin's comments, there are other observations you might find interesting. Robin recently did a presentation at a conference in SL and her powerpoint is here: http://www.slideshare.net/RobinAshford/
academic-librarian-in-second-life-presentation

The previous week, a Professor in the School of Education here at Sheffield University (Jackie Marsh, Jackie Darkstone in SL) gave a talk on Out of school play in online virtual worlds and the implications for literacy learning (6th November 2008). Her blog is here: http://digitalbeginnings.blogspot.com/ She has done research looking at how young children are using virtual worlds, particularly Club Penguin. She was speaking in chat, and the chatlog is here: http://sleeds.org/chatlog/?c=337

Finally, there was an exploration of Infolit iSchool (our island) last week. If you can get into SL, there is a notecard with landmarks and commentary here: http://slurl.com/secondlife/
Infolit%20iSchool/128/224/22/ and the text of the notecard is on the wiki here http://infolitischool.pbwiki.com/
An+exploration+of+the+island