Creativity! can SL help stop the rot?

The decline in creative thinking during the education of a young person is of major concern in education circles. As a toddler creativity in solving problems is running at well over 95% this diminishes to well under 10% in adults and yet we live in an incredibly fast world where creative thinking is much sought after. In my work in education the results from the use of creative alternative learning styles like mind mapping has been marked and my initial response to the linear nature of the 'virtual learning environments' being rolled out into schools was one of despair as it seemed we were using the highly creative technology we have developed to do no more than store files and turn pages. Nothing new there then!
Then came some hope. My very first reaction when I logged on to SL was this is more like it.
A place where you can experiment, create, display, discuss, collaborate, sell, buy, simulate experiences, go where no man has gone before, visualize concepts, have reasons to work out stuff, feel and see the purpose in learning to program, the list goes on.
As web 3.0 emerges we need to make sure we in education position ourselves to make the most of this opportunity to re-imagine education.

Imagine

Imagine you are sitting in your examinations !arg and during your time learning the key elements of your course you built 3D installations in your 3D learning space that represented those elements and you stored or displayed information and projects you completed. Your regular visits to that environment will have etched it in your long term memory.
As you sit there, rather than panic, you make your way through your virtual space (In your mind) and all the information is there for you to uncover. Neural connections that have been made through the creative process are reignited and the information flows.

Sloodle

Went to a sloodle meeting in SL last night(infusion of 3D SL into the open source VLE Moodle) Seems that progress is being made with a number of tools being developed by some great guys to facilitate running courses within SL. I must admit at one point in this serious meeting at the tech speak was flowing I took a copy of the seating at which point all 17 avatars flew up into the air and left us all standing. Didn't have the guts to own up.
One of the tools allows members of a class to be registered as they enter the learning zone. I am sure with a tweek it could also register and make the facilitator aware of students going awol.

Teen Educators

I am organising events for Teen Educators in SL. So this blog will also become an info hub for these events. It will be great to develop an on going conversation about the use of SL in mainstream education so please make yourself known and ask any questions through the comments.

The Labyrinth

I am in the process of creating a Labyrinth on my Bagworm propery. The idea is to have a path to follow that has both interactivity and purveyors of fine arts and crafts, and that also doubles as an ancient labyrinth taking the traveler on a spiritual journey towards the light. I shall post pictures and SLURLs as the parts are finished. This project is to get me up to scratch with building and hopefully basic scripting. Here is the attached art gallery, my first building project.

Scalability

The main grid seems to be creaking under the weight of 30K users at one time and I guess this could prove an issue with establishing lessons in world - Having mom write a letter to explain Lauren couldn't make it due to lag. The issue of scalability will however obviously be a business concern for Linden Labs and require solutions so I a not too worried :)!!! Really

SL MINDMAP

This an early mindmap getting my thoughts together for a project within Second Life. It was immediately apparent to me that the SL environment had tremendous potential in the realms of brain friendly learning. After much research and development within SL it is time to put this theory into practice and make stuff happen. This blog will detail my journey through this experience and my guess is we are in for one mad ride!
I hope you will join me :)
If you are an educator and would like to be involved in the Second Life educational development look out for the Teen educators group and the UK educators group in world.