Between July and November 2008, about 30 Education Queensland teachers explored four virtual worlds: ActiveWorlds, OpenLife, There.com and Whyville. Their aims were to:
investigate the potential for learning in virtual worlds
evaluate the suitability of these worlds for adoption by Education Queensland.
What did participants do?
Participants:
spent time exploring the four virtual worlds
attended in-world staff meetings with other participants (about one each week)
built in-world spaces
ran an in-world event
shared their findings via a blog and answering surveys.
Participants and their in-world learning spaces
The participants were divided into learning sets. Each learning set developed an in-world learning space. Below find links to general information about each learning space and how the participants envisaged that learning space could be used in the curriculum.
Learning Set 10 acknowledges the contribution of Kym Barron of Caboolture Special School
Further investigating the potential for learning in virtual worlds
Throughout the trial, participants were asked to develop ideas for how a virtual world could be used in the classroom. Below are some learning experience ideas developed by teachers participating in the trial. Please note that these are ideas for learning experiences. These have not been implemented yet. All screenshots appearing in these examples were taken by project participants.
The Games in Learning project would like to thank these dedicated teachers for giving up so much of their time to be involved in this exciting project.
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