Learning to Skoolaborate

We got introduced to a great, new learning space yesterday. The 8th grade is partnering with the World Affairs Council and few other local school programs in joining an international virtual worlds educational collaboration. This program, called Skoolaborate, was started a couple of years ago in Australia and has spread to over 40 schools in a dozen countries around the world. The program invites students to create an avatar for themselves and participate in a common virtual world (think 3D gaming environment, but set up for learning).

Individual schools are hosting a wide variety of different learning modules in-world and many involve connecting with other schools and students from around the globe. Here in the 8th grade, we are going to be extending our work in GAOC, math, and PPD into this environment and are also hoping to share our work with other schools and foster some cross-cultural conversations.

This whole program uses a software program and networking platform called Second Life, and more specifically we will be in the world Teen Second Life (TSL). This world is restricted to only people under 18 years of age, except for adults who do a background check with them and are restricted to "private islands." The Skoolaborate program itself operates on a set of these "private islands" and the only people who are allowed on these islands are the teachers and students participating in the program. Students, since they are teens, are allowed to wander throughout TSL, though we teachers are restricted as adults to just the Skoolaborate islands.

In starting this up, we reinforced our conversations with the girls from the beginning of the year about online safety, privacy, and appropriate behavior. Since this is a learning environment that can be used from home as well as from school, we encourage you to ask your daughters to show you what they're up to as we get going.