The 2021 Virtual Worlds Best Practice in Education (VWBPE) conference takes place between Thursday, March 18th and Saturday March 20th, 2019 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. It’s primary goals are to foster discussion on, and learning about educational opportunities presented through the use of such virtual spaces, a defining core values and best practices in doing so, including:
- Helping to build community through extension of learning best practices to practical application of those ideas and techniques;
- Providing networking opportunities for educators and the communities that help support education; and
- Offering access to current innovations, trends, ideas, case studies, and other best practices for educators and the communities that help support education.
Carrying the theme of Reconnaissance, the conference will, as usual, take place in a group of dedicated regions, and will comprise its usual engaging programme of events and activities.
Programme
As with previous VWBPE conferences, Reconnaissance includes keynote speakers, workshops, presentations, social events and more.
The best way to find out what is going on over the three days of the conference is through the VWBPE programme page, However, here are some of the highlights (note: all times SLT, and all events at the VWBPE auditorium – landing points: Auditorium, Area 52; Auditorium, Norganon; Auditorium SkywallLP – unless otherwise stated):
- Thursday, March 18th
- 08:00-09:00 – Kick Off and Ribbon Cutting: the official opening of the conference during which the Conference Executive and Organisation Committees will share a few of the upcoming highlights at the VWBPE 2021 Gateway.
- 09:00-09:50 – KEYNOTE: About the History of Virtual Reality and the Meaning of VR for Education, Dr. Undine Frömming (angenblick Winkler SL); HMKW Berlin, University of Applied Science for Media, Communication and Management.
- 15:00-15:50 – Above the Book: What’s up at the Lab? – Patch Linden, VP of Product Operations.
- Friday, March 19th
- 08:00-08:50 – KEYNOTE: Despacito!, Heike Philp (Gwen Gwasi SL).
- 13:00-13:50 – Reconnaissance with the Lab Round Table Discussion: Patch Linden, VP of Product Operations; Brett Linden, VP of Marketing; Grumpity Linden, VP of Product; Madori Linden, Product Specialist (Land Operations). Taking place at Quadrivium.
- 08:00-08:50 – KEYNOTE: Despacito!, Heike Philp (Gwen Gwasi SL).
- Saturday, March 20th
- 09:00-05:00 – KEYNOTE: Reconnoitering higher education’s next generation – Bryan Alexander (Bryan Zelmanov SL).
- 15:00-15:50 – Reconnaissance with the Lab – Brett Linden, VP of Marketing; Grumpity Linden, VP of Product. Taking place at Quadrivium.
If you cannot get in-world to attend any of these or the other major talks and presentations at the conference, note that you can watch them via You Tube – check the VWBPE website for the full schedule of You Tube live streams.
Conference Facilities
For 2021, the conference uses the same facilities as the 2020 event. These are intended to match the stellar theme, and are largely located in the air over their respective regions. The following is a quick run-down of some of core facilities.
- The VWBPE Gateway: located on the ground level, the Gateway offers a main landing point for in-coming visitors, complete with a swag bag for arrivals available through several givers.
- The VWBPE Auditorium: with three access points (Auditorium, Area 52; Auditorium, Norganon; Auditorium Skywall), the auditorium is an asteroid that has a cloud of debris floating before it – just click one of the little rocks and take a seat!
- The VWBPE Social Spaceport: the spaceport is the main entertainment centre for the conference, and offers rides and freebies and opportunities to relax.
The conference also includes lecture and workshop spaces and locations for presentations, all of which can be accessed via the teleport HUD.
The Teleport HUD
As noted above, the VWBPE teleport HUD is the best way of getting around the facilities. It can be obtained via the swag bag givers at the VWBPE Gateway and is delivered to inventory in a folder. Open the folder and right-click → ADD the HUD. Note that you will need to grant teleport permissions for it to work.
By default, the teleport HUD attaches to the bottom of the viewer window. Click the Show button to reveal / hide it. When displayed, it will show the main buttons to the left:
- Stations: displays buttons for all of the conference facilities except the main auditorium (shown active in the image above). click one of the buttons to be teleported to the named location.
- Exhibits: displays a directory of exhibits, each numbered, and a corresponding set of numbered buttons. Again, click a button to go to the desired exhibition.
- Sponsors: displays a directory of sponsors, each numbered, and a corresponding set of numbered buttons. Click a numbered button to visit the listed sponsor’s exhibit.
- Special: offers a teleport button to the VWBPE Luminaria centre.
- Auditorium: displays three buttons corresponding to the three landing points for the VWBPE Auditorium.
To keep up-to date with the conference, be sure to check the VWBPE website daily.
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 online 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.
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