For Immediate Release: VWBPE 2023 Conference UNCOMMON REALITIES 23 - 25 March 2023 in Second Life®

 

The 16th annual Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Conference (#vwbpe23), beginning on Thursday, March 23rd, 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 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, and conceptual, and content creation supporting those technologies. Our theme for this year is Uncommon Realities and the exploration of areas outside of our expertise that may be potentially opposed to our current outlook or worldview. 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 We are facing urgent challenges in the areas of remote classroom management, outdated policies or policies not designed to be applied to online environments, child psychology and welfare in online environments, health and safety considerations,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. Additionally, this open and free conference would not be possible without the generous contributions of our VWBPE sponsors. https://www.vwbpe.org/our-sponsors/vwbpe-2023-sponsors. The Rockcliffe Registration Portal is open for people to register new Second Life® avatars and find out more about the VWBPE conference in-world. Go to http://urockcliffe.org/reg/second-life/. The instructions are there to get you and your friends started at this educator-friendly newcomers’ region in Second Life®.

** WEB PAGES ** Conference Information: http://vwbpe.org Registration: http://vwb.pe/register Sponsors: https://www.vwbpe.org/our-sponsors/vwbpe-2023-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 Discord Channel https://discord.gg/Xjp5nn9D Facebook http://www.facebook.com/vwbpe Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/vwbpe_org/ LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/groups/3754644/ Twitter http://twitter.com/vwbpe YouTube http://www.youtube.com/VWBPE ** MAJOR SPONSORS ** Linden Lab https://www.lindenlab.com/ Rockcliffe University Consortium https://urockcliffe.com/ Hire a Helper https://www.hireahelper.com/ Porch https://porch.com/ VSTE Virtual Environments PLN https://vste.org/ Virtual Ability https://virtualability.org/ Ageless Mind Project https://www.agelessmindproject.org/ Journal of Virtual Studies https://jovs.urockcliffe.press/ Agile Dimensions https://www.agiledimensions.com/blog/ ** CONTACT ** Beth Ghostraven VWBPE Communications Chair marketing@vwbpe.com