San Jose State University's School of Library
& Information Science is holding its Second Life Campus Opening on
May 16th, noon - 6:30
pm PDT on its 16 acre campus site in
the Second Life virtual environment. The project began with a Soros
Foundation grant to associate director Linda Main to acquire the island
and build the campus. Assistant director Jeremy Kemp then worked with a
design team of graduate students to develop the site and train faculty,
staff and students.
To participate in the opening, review this tutorial on how to enter
Second Life and find SLIS:
http://slisweb.sjsu.edu/sl/index.php/Campus
Tour guides and hosts will be available.
Dr. Daniel Livingstone from the School of Computing at the University of
Paisley in Scotland will be delivering a talk on “Immersive and Web-based
Virtual Learning Environments: Bridging the Gap with Sloodle” at 12:00
noon. The talk will be video simulcast into Second Life from the San Jose
SLIS.
At 5:00 pm Director Ken Haycock will give the dedication. A happy hour
and hosted cocktail bar in Second Life follow.
We will be giving magic carpet rides around the island and passing out
the newest Sloodle.com tools such as Classroom Gestures. Come see the
prototype Web-enabled calendaring system.
Current Spring classes are entering for short visits. Summer students
will use Second Life as a lab to experiment with virtual environments for
teaching, service and library space building. See this video for an
overview and recent developments:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADE0VSffgis
Livingstone and Kemp also received a first-year grant of £80,000 from
Britain’s Eduserv Foundation to develop their Sloodle project.
New developments for Spring 2007 include a design laboratory for young
adult spaces, an e-portfolio exhibit and new presentation spaces.
Beginning in Summer 2007 students will be taking full and partial classes
in Second Life.
San Jose has grown to become the world’s largest accredited MLIS program,
offering a variety of program delivery methods, from more traditional
on-site classes, to cohorts such as the world’s only Executive MLIS
program, to distance learning, to hybrids.
The School’s web site is at slisweb.sjsu.edu
****************************************
Dr. Ken Haycock, Professor and Director
School of Library and Information Science
San Jose State University
408.924.7039; fax: 408.924.2476
http://slisweb.sjsu.edu/
IAC
