Full Video: VWBPE 2020 Above the Book: What’s up at the Lab?

For anyone that missed that yesterday’s VWBPE 2020 Above the Book: What’s up at the Lab session here is the full video. Mal Burns interviews Ebbe Linden and Patch Linden. The session runs for one hour and 15 minutes.

Everyone should give it a watch and spread the word about this special session at VWBPE 2020. 

Summary

• Linden Lab have now introduced a limited time offer for education and non-profit organisations to get full regions. Reducing full region tier to US $99.00 per month
• Linden Lab focus is transitioning the Second Life infrastructure to the cloud
• Second Life is seeing a rise in concurrency and engagement
• Last Changes is just a few weeks away from launching 
• IOS Mobile Companion is very close to Alpha status. Work has started for the Android version
• Ebbe Altberg is 100% devoted to Second Life and Tilia 

VWBPE 2020 runs until 28th March 2020.

VWBPE 2020 Conference Starts Next Week

The 13th annual Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education (VWBPE) conference officially starts next Thursday 26th through until Saturday 28th March 2020 in Second Life. The theme for VWBPE 2020 is Stellar and the regions will reflect this year’s theme.

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The keynote speakers for this year’s conference. The keynote speeches will be presented at the newly re-built VWBPE Auditorium.

Dr. L. Robert Furman

Title TBA

Thursday, March 26

Opening the conference is Dr. Rob Furman. Dr. Rob is a well known educator, administrator, author and speaker from Pennsylvania. His engagement and enthusiasm for everyday education inspire audiences everywhere. We are excited to welcome Dr. Rob to Second Life and VWBPE.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drrobfurman/
Website: http://www.robfurman.com
Presentations: http://www.robfurman.com/YouTube
Podcast: http://www.robfurman.com/iTunes

 

Dr. Michael Thomas

Virtual Worlds and Social Justice: An Impact and Civic Engagement Agenda

Friday, March 27

Dr. Thomas has worked extensively with VWBPE partner vLanguages, working as PI of the CAMELOT project (EU KA3 ICT) about project-based learning with video (2013-2015); a partner in the (EU KA2) VITAL project on learning analytics (2015-2017); and PI on the GUINEVERE project (EU KA2) which examined gamification in virtual environments (2017-2019). He is a prolific author and researcher.

Dr. Thomas helps us launch Day 2 speaking on Virtual Worlds and Social Justice: An Impact and Civic Engagement Agenda.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drmichaelthomas/

Daniel Dyboski-Bryant and Lorelle VanFossen

Lessons Learned from the 2020 Educators in VR Conference

Saturday, March 28

The final Keynote address of the conference brings us the co-founders of Educators in VR: Daniel Dyboski-Bryant and Lorelle VanFossen. This dynamic duo will be reflecting on the lessons learned at their recent and highly successful Educators in VR International Summit — 24 hours a day for 6 days in VR environments.

Daniel Dyboski-Bryant

Daniel is a lifelong educator from a family of educators and speaks 5 languages. He is a trainer, speaker and consultant of VR in Education with clients including schools, colleges, universities, design teams, training companies, councils and private individuals.

In his daytime job Daniel is the Project Lead for Exploring VR in Further Education, Remote Learning and Language, ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) Lecturer, and Trainer at Coleg Llandrillo, Grwp Llandrillo-Menaia in North Wales UK.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-dyboski-bryant-1776045/

Educators in VR: https://educatorsinvr.com/

 

Lorelle VanFossen

Lorelle VanFossen is a keynote, trainer, writer, and consultant on web writing, digital storytelling, content curation, social media, and blogging, especially working with WordPress and virtual reality. Called a digital evangelist, on Lorelle on WordPress she writes and teaches more than you may want to know about how all this social publishing business stuff works.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorelle/

Educators in VR: https://educatorsinvr.com/

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VWBPE 2020 Map

About VWBPE

The VWBPE Conference is a completely virtual conference that is conducted using simulated environments. Participants experience the conference through a virtual reality type setting including conference rooms, theatres, exposition halls, meeting spaces, and other types of venues similar to a brick and mortar type conference.

The conference is free to attend. The cost of the conference is covered by sponsorship and donations.

Useful VWBPE 2020 Links

• VWBPE Program
• VWBPE Keynote Speakers
• Volunteer Signup

VWBPE19 (Above the Book) With Patch Linden and Grumpity Linden

Patch Linden (Senior Director, Product Operations) and Grumpity Linden (Senior Director of Product) went live during the (Above the Book) session at VWBPE 2019 yesterday afternoon (4th April) talking about what’s new at Linden Lab.

The session lasted for 55 minutes with a large audience at the VWBPE conference area. There were some updates on the new Linden Homes continent, new user experience and inworld tools in this session but nothing major to announce.

Some highlights worth mentioning were these…

• Linden Homes are about to come out which is a large project, structure of the regions are redesigned to be more organically
• The new continent will grow in time, water expansions/connections and spaces for flying expected to happen
• There are exciting things happening in the pipeline (late 2019/2020)
• The lab are working on IOS text based viewer
• Estate tools will be improving very soon
• Lab not been focused on media on a prim recently

Q&A started at 30 minutes with questions put to Patch Linden and Grumpity Linden from the community. There were mentions of search, mobile, community gateways, groups and much more.

If you have missed any of the VWBPE 2019 sessions so far then you can catch up here.

 

April 2019: VWBPE, Fantasy Faire and BURN2 Burnal Equinox

There are some big inworld events happening during April 2019 in Second Life including the 12th annual Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education conference, the 11th annual Fantasy Faire and the BURN2 Burnal Equinox.

There are more events happening across the grid next month from hunts, music/DJ events and most importantly Easter events. Check out Featured Events on the Second Life Destination Guide for more great events happening now until then.

• Don’t forget the Home and Expo runs through until Sunday 7th April 2019. There are ten regions to explore including the new Linden Homes Preview region.

12th Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Conference

The VWBPE conference will be held from 4th April through until 6th April 2019. The theme for this year is re:Vision and the keynote speakers are the following..Dr.Tom Boellstorff, Dr.Tuncer Can and Dr.Jonathon Richter.

Linden Lab – Above the Book

> Patch Linden (Senior Director, Product Operations) and Grumpity Linden (Senior Director, Product) will be going live at 2pm SLT on 4th April 2019 at the VWBPE Main Auditorium talking about what’s new at Linden Lab.

The VWBPE 2019 schedule has been published here. All times are SLT and all sessions are held in Second Life.

11th Fantasy Faire

The Fantasy Fair 2019 will open to the public on 18th April through until 5th May 2019. If you love fantasy this is the perfect event for you. There will be live music concerts, shopping and special events to help raise funds for Relay for Life of Second Life.

BURN2 Burnal Equinox

The BURN2 Burnal Equinox takes place from 12th April through until 14th April 2019. The theme for the spring event is Eyes to the Skies. BURN2 has been community supported since 2010 and has been very successful over the years.

Spread the word 🙂