Hello fellow SL researchers and educators! My name is Tracy Kennedy - I'm a Virtual Research Assistant for the Center for Digital Media at Great Northern Way Campus in Vancouver, British Columbia. Some of you may remember me from last November when I posted an invitation to our Virtual Open House at the Virtual Center for Digital Media where we talked about a new Masters of Digital Media (MDM) program at the Great Northern Way Campus starting in September 2007. The open house was a great success and we are moving forward to put together some innovative ideas & educational tools in Second Life for our 'real life' curriculum. One initiative that we are currently working on is transforming traditional style educational spaces (for example lecture halls and seminar rooms) into student designed collaborative learning environments. We would like to move beyond conventional 'real life' pedagogical delivery modes and encourage students to actively engage and participate in their learning milieu by creating virtual learning spaces & places, and have students learn technical design skills (and modding) at the same time. Having said that, I'd like to invite you to a workshop we are having at the Virtual Center for Digital Media (139, 34, 25) on Thursday January 18th - 1pm SLT where we will have a 'brainstorming' session to take the existing seminar room at the Virtual Center for Digital Media, and transform it into a dynamic, creative workspace that is collaboratively designed and built by a group of individuals - the intention is to show that a group of individuals can come together and create their own learning space. The following week (Wed Jan 24th 1pm SLT) we will put theory into practice and actually do the modifications and changes to the room to see what the end result might look like. However if you only want to come to the brainstorming session on the 18th - that's fine too - We're interested in your thoughts, ideas and expertise. If you have questions, please feel free to email me off-list at tracy@gnwc.ca. More information about the program here: http://www.gnwc.ca/mdm/ http://www.mastersofdigitalmedia.blogspot.com http://www.flickr.com/photos/gnwc Thanks! Tracy Kennedy ******************************************** Second Life - TracyTrail Blazer Virtual Research Assistant Center for Digital Media Great Northern Way Campus 555 Great Northern Way Vancouver, BC V5T 1E2 tracy@gnwc.ca First Life - Tracy L. M. Kennedy PhD Candidate - Department of Sociology Graduate Fellow - Knowledge Media Design Institute www.kmdi.utoronto.ca/collaborative Research Coordinator - NetLab - Center for Urban & Community Studies University of Toronto 725 Spadina Ave. Toronto, ON M5S 2J4 www.netwomen.ca/Blog Research Director - Netwomen Consulting tkennedy@netwomen.ca ********************************************