The 2018 Virtual Worlds Best Practice in Education (VWBPE) conference takes place between Thursday, March 15th and Saturday March 17th, 2018 inclusive. A grass-roots community event focusing on education in immersive virtual environments, VWBPE attracts 2200-3500 educational professionals from around the world each year.
I recently gave a brief overview of this year’s conference at the end of February, so this piece is intended to provide a little more meat for potential visitors.
As with recent years, the conference is focused on the 8 core VWBPE regions in Second Life, centred on the VWBPE Gateway.
Event Calendar
The best way to keep abreast of the full schedule is via the VWBPE 2018 event calendar. By default, this displayed in posterboard (shown below), but can easily be switched to agenda, month or stream views via the drop-down menu in the top right corner. Individual events can also be added to a number of personal calendars – Google, Outlook, Apple – making it even easier for attendees to track the events and activities they particularly want to attend at this year’s conference.
Note: event details pages in the calendar include a “Where” item with an apparent SLurl. These links tend to open a further copy of the event details page, rather than provide a SLurl map page. Instead, and where provided, use the “location” SLurl at the bottom of event pages for direct access to the location via a SLurl map page OR note the location name and use the event Teleport HUD in-world – see below for more.
Event Selection
The following is a (personal) selection of events those curious about VWBPE 2018 might want to attend:
Thursday March 15th
All times SLT
- 08:00-09:00: Opening Ceremony at the VWBPE Gateway.
- 09:30-10:30: Keynote – Dr. Mark Childs, TEL Designer, Open University, UK: Identity, literacy, immersion and presence; joining together the building blocks of virtual world learning at the Main Auditorium.
- 13:00-14:00: Livestream – Ebbe Altberg, CEO Linden Lab: a livestream of the Above the Book Conversation event with Ebbe Altberg, at which questions from an invited group of educators and individuals will be put to him. Livestreamed at the Main Auditorium.
- Social event highlights:
- 11:30-12:00 noon Social Sim Opening Parade: Meet at the Lighthouse near Gateway and ride a seahorse in the parade over to the social sim.
- 12:00 noon – 13:00: Dancing under the sea at the Octopus’ Garden.
Friday March 16th
- 06:00-07:00: Morning Meet and Greet: meet VWBPE staff and volunteers, have your questions about events and the schedule answered and meet other attendees at the Social Area.
- 11:00 – 12:00 noon: keynote: Bryan Alexander, Education Futurist: VRevolution calls for a new digital literacy at the Main Auditorium.
- Social event highlights:
- 12:00 noon – 13:00: Live Music with Keeba Tammas and her backup band, “The Tiny Maniacs” at the Social Area.
- 14:00-14:50: Under the Sea Adventure: explore the beautiful underwater area of the social sim and become a mermaid or merman. Under the Social Area.
Saturday, March 17th
- 07:00-08:00: Morning Meet and Greet: meet VWBPE staff and volunteers, have your questions about events and the schedule answered and meet other attendees at the Social Area.
- 08:00-09:00: Blending VWs & Digital Tech. in Language Teaching: teaching immersive English literature by blending 3D worlds, machinima and other external digital tools. At Lecture Area A.
- 12:00 noon – 13:00: Liberate Agency Amplification Via Avatar Identity: at Lecture Area B.
- 16:00-17:00: Waiting for the VR Evolution: for many who have embraced change and have been early adopters, waiting for the rest of the world to catch up has not been easy. A discussion at the Quadrivium.
- 18:00-19:00: VWBPE 2018 Closing Ceremony at the Main Auditorium.
- Social event highlights:
- 13:00-14:00: Games and Fun on the Social Plaza.
- 17:00-18:00: Live Music with Nina Bing at the Main Auditorium.
- 19:00-21:30: Music and Dancing featuring Lightning Production’s U2 Tribute Concert. In honour of St Patrick’s Day (19:00-20:00) followed by DJ Coz Okelly 20:00-21:30). All at the Social Area.
Getting About
VWBPE takes place across 8 regions (including the exhibitors spaces). While exploring on foot is fun, the quickest way to get to event / activity venues is via the VWBPE Teleport HUD, which can be obtained from the vendors at the VWBPE Gateway.
Simply ADD the HUD to your screen and click it when needed to open a dialogue box listing the key locations in the VWBPE regions. Click on the location you require to open the World Map with the location marked. Click on Teleport on the World Map to TP to the location. Simples!
About VWBPE
VWBPE is a global grass-roots community event focusing on education in immersive virtual environments which attracts over 2,000 educational professionals from around the world each year, who participate in 150-200 on-line presentations including theoretical research, application of best practices, virtual world tours, hands-on workshops, discussion panels, machinima presentations, and poster exhibits.
In the context of the conference, a “virtual world” is an on-line community through which users can interact with one another and use and create ideas irrespective of time and space. As such, typical examples include Second Life, OpenSimulator, Unity, World of Warcraft, Eve Online, and so on, as well as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest or any virtual environments characterised by an open social presence and in which the direction of the platform’s evolution is manifest in the community.
