The SL Enquirer: VWBPE 2022 Conference PHOENIX RISING Opens 31 March 2022 in Second Life®

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The 15th annual Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Conference, beginning on Thursday, March 31st, will be an online distributed conference happening in multiple virtual spaces. This conference focuses on the use of immersive virtual environments for educational purposes including virtual and augmented reality.

VWBPE provides educational and networking opportunities that are relevant to educational curriculum development by utilizing virtual environments and “best practices”. These include

- helping to build community through the extension of learning best practices to the practical application of those ideas and techniques;

- providing networking opportunities for educators and the communities that help support education; and

- providing access to current innovations, trends, ideas, case studies, and other best practices for educators and the communities that help support education.

Primarily, the issue being faced by the educational community is how to make the best use of new immersive technologies in a way that is sustainable and accessible based on limited budgets available to both instructors and students. Platforms that are free or open-source, or that can be shared across a broad audience are showcased including methods and research around best practices in their use and applicability.

VWBPE will again be using Linden Lab’s Second Life® environment as our primary conference venue for presentations, exhibits, roundtables, and discussions. Participants are free to submit proposals and immersive experience tours in any environment for education using technologies for virtual or augmented reality. We actively encourage showcasing multiple technology platforms. This includes practical application, researched papers, conceptual, and content creation supporting those technologies.

Our theme for this year is Phoenix Rising and the exploration of areas outside of our expertise that may be potentially opposed to our current outlook or world view. As educators, we are having to adjust to more than just a transition from in-person to online methodologies. We are facing urgent challenges in the areas of remote classroom management, outdated policies or policies not designed to be applied to online environments, child psychology and welfare in online environments, health and safety considerations, and personal privacy, among others. This means embracing the ability to quickly adapt to changing circumstances and innovative technologies to their best effect.

This year's keynote speakers are Dr. Randall Sadler and Oksana Levytska. We also have several invited speakers: Patch Linden, Maria Korolov, and Dr. Cynthia Calongne.

All of the conference events will be in Second Life® this year, and the locations are included in the listings. When you click on a conference event and click Add to Calendar, you can add the event to your own calendar (Google and more).

**VWBPE 2021 GATEWAY**

SLURL: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/VWBPE%20Gateway%20Pyxis/100/128/24

**WEB PAGES**

Conference Information: http://vwbpe.org

Program: https://www.vwbpe.org/conference/program

Registration: http://vwb.pe/register

Sponsors: https://www.vwbpe.org/vwbpe-2022-sponsors

Rockcliffe Gateway to Second Life®: http://urockcliffe.com/reg/second-life/

**SOCIAL MEDIA**

Second Life® Group - secondlife:///app/group/8b03480a-793d-ba5b-5b6b-dd10afb5d38e/about

Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/vwbpe

Flickr - http://www.flickr.com/photos/vwbpe_org