Day: April 2, 2025

Previewing the VWBPE 2025 conference in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
via VWBPE.org

The 18th Virtual Worlds Best Practice in Education (VWBPE) conference takes place between Thursday, April 3rd and Saturday April 5th, 2025 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. Its 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.

In the context of the conference, a “virtual environment” 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.

Every year, the event has an over-arching theme. For 2025 this is Transitions, which the organisers describe thus:

Transitions, like pivotal shifts in a story, capture the profound changes educators and students have faced in recent years. These shifts highlight the need to adapt and redefine social dynamics within virtual environments as education evolves to meet new challenges.
Join us as we all share experiences and successes in how virtual technologies used in the classroom have helped shape education for the better.
VWBPE 2025 Gateway

Programme

As with previous VWBPE conferences, this year’s event includes speakers, workshops, presentations, social activities 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 of major events (note: all times SLT and held at the main auditorium unless otherwise stated):

  • Thursday April 3rd:
  • Friday April 4th:
  • Saturday April 5th:
    • 07:00-08:00: Workshop Area B – Immersive AI Companion Design, presenter: ErlinaAzure (Helena Galani, TESOL International).
    • 08:00-09:00 Lecture Area B – Navigating Transitions Through Community Learning, a roundtable discussion with host: Rhiannon Chatnoir (RL: Joyce Bettencourt, Avacon, Inc.).
    • 09:00-10:00 – Auditorium Keynote – Rabindra Ratan (SL: Rabidth Rote) – Auditorium Floating Meadows entrance; Auditorium Rainbow Basin entrance.
    • 10:00-11:00: Workshop Area A –  Round the Campfire on Student Agency, presenter: Bluebarker Lowtide (Vasili A. Giannoutsos, VBCPS).
    • 12:00 noon-13:00: Lecture Area B – Go Ahead, Accept Failure, Fall Forward, and Fly, presenter: Zinnia Zauber (Renne Emiko Brock, Peninsula College).
    • 14:00-15:00: Lecture Area A – Transitioning from Virtual World Student to Pro, presenter: Kreatya Shannon (Shannon Broden, Graduate, San Jose State University).

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 Livestream Guide for the full schedule of events streamed to the VWBPE You Tube channel.

WWBPE Wetlands Visitor Centre

Region Themes and Facilities

For 2025, the conference continues with its Earth build, with each region representing a different terrestrial biome, including wetlands, desert, badlands, grasslands, and forests. Conference attendees will be able to explore 3D immersive virtual representations of these biomes.

The VWBPE Gateway

At the VWBPE Gateway you can find information on the conference – including the schedule for the day, a Swag Bag which includes the conference teleport HUD for easy access to all locations and venues, information on the biomes comprising the conference regions, and more. And, of course, VWBPE volunteers are on hand to answer your questions!

The VWBPE 2025 Swag Bag (from the conference gateway) includes a Teleport HUD for hopping around the conference more easily

Core Facilities and SLurls

Within these regions the following core facilities for the conference can be found – but please refer to your conference Swag Bag (and teleport HUD!) for full  information on all locations and facilities at this year’s conference.

VWBPE 2023: The Hearth

To keep up-to-date with the conference, be sure to check the VWBPE website daily.

Additional Links

The Quieting in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Quieting, April 2025 – click any image for full size

I’ve covered the region design work of Elo (WeeWangle Wumpkins) a number of times in these pages, both in terms of regions she has landscaped on behalf of others (such as Persephone Smythe (LeriaDraven) – see here) and in her own right, perhaps most notably – but by no means exclusively – with The Forgotten, which I originally blogged in April 2022 and again in January 2024.

While The Forgotten has since closed, its memory, in some ways at least, is carried on within The Quieting, a homestead region design by Elo which opened in March 2025. It abuts the home of Aardvark Animesh Pets & Animals, the store operated by Elo’s SL partner, Dash Phantom, with whom she landscaped that region.

The Quieting, April 2025

Although I’ve not met Elo, we appear to have a lot in common: a slightly whimsical / crooked sense of humour, an love of cats, books and fantasy, and an adoration of nature and natural settings. In fact, such is the beauty, whimsy and humour of The Quieting, that a simple description of the region just is not enough; it is a place deserving of careful exploration and observation, because it folds so much into itself. In this, it carries on the spirit of The Forgotten, and the words I used to describe that setting hold true here as well:

This is a place that offers itself as a book; the landscape seamlessly flowing from shore to shore … leading the visitor through vignettes and elements which stand as chapters to a story, each one unique unto itself but also joined to those which came before and which follow after, their tales combining to draw the explorer onwards as the words flowing across written pages draw the reader deeper into their narrative. 
The Quieting, April 2025

In fact, it is not unfair to say that whilst having its own unique personality, The Quieting has enough about it – the over-large full Moon that seems to reflect the light and colours of the clouds passing below it, the ritual stone circle with its central glowing crystal, the use of ruins – that those who recall The Forgotten will immediately sense the flow of unity between the two settings, even as The Quieting unfolds its own delights and stories.

From the Landing Point, located alongside a body of water that cuts deeply into the east side of the region, it is possible to strike out in several directions. Eastward, across a log bridge, offers a path through cavern rich in crystals and a tunnel to the beach, or if you prefer – a path up to the headland above said cavern and southward to where a little bookstore / reading corner sits within its own terrace. From there it is possible to pass through an avenue of trees and reach aged ruins enclosing a garden – a place also to be reached by stepping westward from the Landing Point and then heading south across the grass.

The Quieting, April 2025

Further to the west, beyond the greenhouse kitchen (where there appears to have something of a mishap!), it is possible to reach a pair of little cottages and, close by, the remnants of anther ancient structure huddled in a bowl of land alongside the walled and flower-carpeted walk to the local chapel standing within a darkly humorous (Here Lies Lester Moore, Four slugs from a .44 – No Less, No More) as well as quite touching. Above both chapel and ruins, sitting on the crown of a hill might be found a large greenhouse and yet more ruins which sit well-like in the hill, thick mist filing its deep.

Meanwhile, south of the cottages, the land rises to woodlands in which the noted ritual ring resides, surrounded by an almost mystical fog, reached via paths from both the grasslands and the high walls and walkway connecting the setting with Aardvark.

The Quieting, April 2025

Each of these locations – and the all points between offer their own stories, touches and humour. Some of these – the mentioned greenhouse kitchen, the mandrakes of folklore finding themselves the subject of unwanted attention from an Eagle, the goofy / homely charm of the bookshop / reading corner (keep an eye out for the chicken having a frank exchange with a bespectacled mouse).

Others might be more easily missed (whilst you may spot the piglet taking to the air in a makeshift balloon basket – will you spot the red-coated (and red faced!) individual about to bring piglet back to Earth with – if not a bang, then certainly a rata-tat-tat?!). Or how about the hang-gliding mouse, or the snide-looking llama almost daring you to blame it for the broken state of the chair next to it; or how about the little beagle behaving like a virtual interpretation of Greyfriars Bobby? And that’s barely scratching the surface of all that is waiting to be seen here.

The Quieting, April 2025

The fact is, The Quieting offers multiple vignettes, large (such as the ruins and their garden, the chapel and its graveyard) to the very small which sit both within the larger settings and entirely on their own (again, keep your eyes open as you follow the path around the base of the hill covering the cavern and tunnel, for example, or the opportunity to take to the air by a whimsical means).

Marvellously brought together, rich in details (and I haven’t really mentioned much of the wildlife scattered around, The Quieting is a richly engaging visit.

The Quieting, April 2025

 SLurl Details