It is that season when mortar boards soar through the air, and thousands who once were students now declare themselves graduates. On the SL grid, a quieter commencement has taken place as a group of 20 educators from rural schools throughout Oregon (the real one) mark their first year as part of Project DIRECT.
Since November 2010, Second Life has been the major thrust of Project DIRECT (Distance Innovations for Rural Educators using Communication Technologies), a program within the Oregon Writing Project, which is part of University of Oregon’s Center for Advanced Technology in Education. The goal of this program is to enhance the abilities of participating teachers to integrate technology into their practices and their classrooms.
The picture above only looks like a “kumbaya” circle. The educators participating in this first class of Project DIRECT quickly turned their once monthly initial commitment into weekly Wednesday sessions of networking and resource sharing.