"The whole educational and professional training system is a very elaborate filter,
which just weeds out people whoare too independent, and who
think for themselves, and who don't know how to be submissive, and so on
-- because they're dysfunctional to the institutions."
-Noam Chomsky

New AERA SIG: Applied Research for Virtual Environments for Learning

By John Moravec | 5/22/2007 | Filed under: Technology

Brock Dubbels is looking for more people that belong to (or that can soon join) the American Educational Research Association (AERA) – for a Special Interest Group (SIG) especially for 3D Virtual Worlds, such as Second Life.

http://www.simteach.com/wiki/index.php?title=ARVEL

The Applied Research for Virtual Environments for Learning (ARVEL) special interest group at AERA, “is a community of educators, scholars, and practitioners dedicated toward research in and on virtual environments. Using a variety of research methods, we support a diverse approach to understanding the optimal use of virtual worlds and environments for educational purposes. We’re interested in developing a comprehensive research agenda, intended to encompass the breadth and scope of learning potentialities, affordances, challenges, and shortcomings of immersive virtual learning environments.”

Comments

About John Moravec

Dr. John Moravec is a faculty member in the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development and the Innovation Studies/Master of Liberal Studies graduate programs at the University of Minnesota. He is the principal of Education Futures LLC; a co-founder of the Horizon Forum, a roundtable on the future of education at all levels; and is the editor of Education Futures. He can be emailed at john@educationfutures.com.

http://www.educationfutures.com/john

Tags: AERA, cyberspace, research, virtual reality

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Related posts

ARVEL launch party on Second Life

For those of us who will not be at the AERA conference in New York City, we can join the Applied Research in Virtual Environments for Learning (ARVEL) special interest group’s launch party via Second Life: Monday, March 24, 7:00 to 9:00 pm slurl.com/secondlife/EDTECH105/132/24 Or, in person: Hilton New York – Petit Trianon, 3rd Floor [...]

Virtual worlds colliding

Two interesting pieces of news emerged on virtual worlds: At the Virtual Worlds Conference, IBM and Linden Labs announced plans to develop a set of open standards that would allow avatars to traverse from one virtual environment to another. Multiverse Network is building tools that will allow virtual world developers to access and incorporate elements [...]

“My World” rumors persist

From Ars Technica: Rumors of Google’s plans to create a virtual world that rivals that of Second Life have popped up once again over the weekend. The company could now be collaborating with Arizona State University to test the 3D social network, which may be tied into Google’s current applications of Google Earth and Google [...]

Momentum building for collaborative knowledge course

Cristobal Cobo notes that people at the Argentinian Ministry of Education, Science and Technology are taking interest in our joint knowledge seminar, offered by the University of Minnesota and FLACSO Mexico. The course blog and wiki are taking shape already… For more information, click on one of the links, below: Comments

Virtual teachers and virtual ecophagy

Two articles surfaced recently regarding Second Life. First, CNN reports that over 60 educational organizations are using Second Life to explore how to promote learning in the virtual world. Whereas there is a concern that mainstay online education providers do not provide a sense of community or social interaction, virtual, three-dimensional online communities may fill [...]

tumblr statistics