Second Life Best Practices in Education
Second Life Best Practices in Education 2007 International Conference
The Second Life Best Practices in Education (SLBPE2007) conference held in-world on May 25, 2007 appears to be the first 24 hour international educational conference ever to be held in a virtual world. The event was attended by over 1300 unique avatars across 6 sims, and was watched at real-world colleges and universities by groups who set up impromptu satellite sites to watch the conference proceedings through live web broadcasting provided by SLCN.tv.
Despite minor technical difficulties and a rolling restart of sims in the afternoon, the conference was hailed as a terrific success among those involved with the educational community in Second Life, and featured presenters from around the globe on a variety of topics about the innovative teaching and learning already occurring in-world. Educational institutions, non-profit organizations, and both real world and in-world businesses also set up booths in the Vendors & Exhibits area of the conference, hosted on the NMC Outreach sim.
The Second Life Best Practices conference resulted from an informal conversation between several people involved in the educational community, and based on that conversation, planning began in mid-April 2007. By early May, the Conference Co-Chairs had been selected and began to assemble the team of volunteers to make the conference a reality. The conference received sponsorship from a number of real world and in-world organizations and businesses, and included a keynote address by Longg Weeks and Ada Alfa, representatives of IBM.